The Project Gutenberg EBook of Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4, by Charles Dudley Warner This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 Author: Charles Dudley Warner Release Date: August 19, 2004 [EBook #13220] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEST LITERATURE, VOL. 4 *** Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE ANCIENT AND MODERN CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER EDITOR HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE GEORGE HENRY WARNER ASSOCIATE EDITORS Connoisseur Edition VOL. IV. THE ADVISORY COUNCIL * * * * * CRAWFORD H. TOY, A.M., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass. THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL.D., L.H.D., Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn. WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH.D., L.H.D., Professor of History and Political Science, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N.J. BRANDER MATTHEWS, A.M., LL.B., Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City. JAMES B. ANGELL, LL.D., President of the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich. WILLARD FISKE, A.M., PH.D., Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N.Y. EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A.M., LL.D., Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal. ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT.D., Professor of the Romance Languages, TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La. WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A., Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of English and History, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn. PAUL SHOREY, PH.D., Professor of Greek and Latin Literature, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill. WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D., United States Commissioner of Education, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C. MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D., Professor of Literature in the CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C. TABLE OF CONTENTS VOL. IV LIVED GEORGE BANCROFT--_Continued_: 1800-1891 Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham ('History of the United States') Lexington (same) Washington (same) JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM 1798-1874 The Publican's Dream ('The Bit of Writin'') Ailleen Soggarth Aroon Irish Maiden's Song THÉODORE DE BANVILLE 1823--1891 Le Café ('The Soul of Paris') The Mysterious Hosts of the Forests ('The Caryatids': Lang's Translation) Aux Enfants Perdus: Lang's Translation Ballade des Pendus: Lang's Translation ANNA LÆITIA BARBAULD 1743-1825 Against Inconsistency in Our Expectations A Dialogue of the Dead Life Praise to God ALEXANDER BARCLAY 1475-1552 The Courtier's Life (Second Eclogue) RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM 1788-1845 As I Laye A-Thynkynge The Lay of St. Cuthbert A Lay of St. Nicholas SABINE BARING-GOULD 1834- St. Patrick's Purgatory ('Curious Myths of the Middle Ages') The Cornish Wreckers ('The Vicar of Morwenstow') JANE BARLOW 18-- Widow Joyce's Cloak ('Strangers at Lisconnel') Walled Out ('Bogland Studies') JOEL BARLOW 1754-1812 A Feast ('Hasty Pudding') WILLIAM BARNES 1800-1886 Blackmwore Maidens May Milken Time Jessie Lee The Turnstile To the Water-Crowfoot Zummer an' Winter JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE 1860- The Courtin' of T'nowhead's Bell ('Auld Licht Idylls') Jess Left Alone ('A Window in Thrums') After the Sermon ('The Little Minister') The Mutual Discovery (same) Lost Illusions ('Sentimental Tommy') Sins of Circumstance (same) FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT 1801-1850 Petition of Manufacturers of Artificial Light Stulta and Puera Inapplicable Terms ('Economic Sophisms') CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (by Grace King) 1821-1867 Meditation Death of the Poor Music The Broken Bell The Enemy Beauty Death The Painter of Modern Life ('L'Art Romantique') Modernness From 'Little Poems in Prose': Every One His Own Chimera; Humanity; Windows; Drink From a Journal LORD BEACONSFIELD (by Isa Carrington Cabell) 1804-1881 A Day at Ems ('Vivian Grey') The Festa in the Alhambra ('The Young Duke') Squibs from 'The Young Duke': Charles Annesley; The Fussy Hostess; Public Speaking; Female Beauty Lothair in Palestine ('Lothair') BEAUMARCHAIS 1732-1799 Outwitting a Guardian ('The Barber of Seville') Outwitting a Husband ('The Marriage of Figaro') FRANCIS BEAUMONT AND JOHN FLETCHER 1584-1625 The Faithful Shepherdess Song Song Aspatia's Song Leandro's Song True Beauty Ode to Melancholy To Ben Jonson, on His 'Fox' On the Tombs in Westminster Arethusa's Declaration ('Philaster') The Story of Bellario (same) Evadne's Confession ('The Maid's Tragedy') Death of the Boy Hengo ('Bonduca') From 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' WILLIAM BECKFORD 1759-1844 The Incantation and the Sacrifice ('Vathek') Vathek and Nouronihar in the Halls of Eblis (same) HENRY WARD BEECHER 1813-1887 Book-Stores and Books ('Star Papers') Selected Paragraphs Sermon: Poverty and the Gospel A New England Sunday ('Norwood') LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (by Irenæus Stevenson) 1770-1827 Letters: To Dr. Wegeler; To the Same; To Bettina Brentano; To Countess Giulietta Guicciardi; To the Same; To His Brothers; To the Royal and Imperial High Court of Appeal; To Baroness von Drossdick; To Zmeskall; To the Same; To Stephan v. Breuning CARL MICHAEL BELLMAN (by Olga Flinch) 1740-1795 To Ulla Cradle-Song for My Son Carl Amaryllis Art and Politics Drink Out Thy Glass JEREMY BENTHAM 1748-1832 Of the Principle of Utility ('An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation') Reminiscences of Childhood Letter to George Wilson (1781) Fragment of a Letter to Lord Lansdowne (1790) JEAN-PIERRE DE BÉRANGER (by Alcée Fortier) 1780-1857 From 'The Gipsies' The Gad-Fly Draw It Mild The King of Yvetot Fortune The People's Reminiscences The Old Tramp Fifty Years The Garret My Tomb From His Preface to His Collected Poems GEORGE BERKELEY 1685-1753 On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America Essay on Tar-Water ('Siris') HECTOR BERLIOZ 1803-1869 The Italian Race as Musicians and Auditors ('Autobiography') The Famous "K Snuff-Box Treachery" (same) On Gluck (same) On Bach (same) Music as an Aristocratic Art (same) Beginning of a "Grand Passion" (same) On Theatrical Managers in Relation to Art SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 1091-1153 Saint Bernard's Hymn Monastic Luxury (Apology to the Abbot William of St. Thierry) From His Sermon on the Death of Gerard BERNARD OF CLUNY (by William C. Prime) Twelfth Century Brief Life Is Here Our Portion JULIANA BERNERS Fifteenth Century The Treatyse of Fyssbynge with an Angle WALTER BESANT 1838- Old-Time London ('London') The Synagogue ('The Rebel Queen') BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES (by L. Oscar Kuhns) The Lion The Pelican The Eagle The Phoenix The Ant The Siren The Whale The Crocodile The Turtle-Dove The Mandragora Sapphire Coral MARIE-HENRI BEYLE (Stendhal) (by Frederic Taber Cooper) 1783-1842 Princess Sanseverina's Interview ('Chartreuse de Parme') Clélia Aids Fabrice to Escape (same) WlLLEM BlLDERDIJK 1756-1831 Ode to Beauty From the 'Ode to Napoleon' Slighted Love The Village Schoolmaster ('Country Life') BION Second Century B.C. Threnody Hesper AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 1850- Dr. Johnson ('Obiter Dicta') The Office of Literature (same) Truth-Hunting (same) Benvenuto Cellini (same) On the Alleged Obscurity of Mr. Browning's Poetry (same) FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME IV. * * * * * PAGE Egyptian Hieroglyphics (Colored Plate) Frontispiece "The Irish Maiden's Song" (Photogravure) 1473 "Milking Time" (Photogravure) 1567 "Music" (Photogravure) 1625 Henry Ward Beecher (Portrait) 1714 "Beethoven" (Photogravure) 1750 Jean-Pierre de Béranger (Portrait) 1784 "Monastic Luxury" (Photogravure) 1824 VIGNETTE PORTRAITS John Banim Théodore de Banville Anna Lætitia Barbauld Richard Harris Barham Jane Barlow Joel Barlow James Matthew Barrie Frédéric Bastiat Charles Baudelaire Lord Beaconsfield Beaumarchais Francis Beaumont William Beckford Ludwig van Beethoven Jeremy Bentham George Berkeley Hector Berlioz Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Juliana Berners Walter Besant Henri Beyle (Stendhal) Augustine Birrell GEORGE BANCROFT (Continued from Volume III) WOLFE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM From 'History of the United States' But, in the meantime, Wolfe applied himself intently to reconnoitering the north shore above Quebec. Nature had given him good eyes, as well as a warmth of temper to follow first impressions. He himself discovered the cove which now bears his name, where the bending promontories almost form a basin, with a very narrow margin, over which the hill rises precipitously. He saw the path that wound up the steep, though so narrow that two men could hardly march in it abreast; and he knew, by the number of tents which he counted on the summit, that the Canadian post which guarded it could not exceed a hundred. Here he resolved to land his army by surprise. To mislead the enemy, his troops were kept far above the town; while Saunders, as if an attack was intended at Beauport, set Cook, the great mariner, with others, to sound the water and plant buoys along that shore. The day and night of the twelfth were employed in preparations. The autumn evening was bright; and the general, under the clear starlight, visited his stations, to make his final inspection and utter his last words of encouragement. As he passed from ship to ship, he spoke to those in the boat with him of the poet Gray, and the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' "I," said he, "would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow;" and, while the oars struck the river as it rippled in the silence of the night air under the flowing tide, he repeated:-- "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour-- The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Every officer knew his appointed duty, when, at one o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of September, Wolfe, Monckton, and Murray, and about half the forces, set off in boats, and, using neither sail nor oars, glided down with the tide. In three quarters of an hour the ships followed; and, though the night had become dark, aided by the rapid current, they reached the cove just in time to cover the landing. Wolfe and the troops with him leaped on shore; the light infantry, who found themselves borne by the current a little below the intrenched path, clambered up the steep hill, staying themselves by the roots and boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which guarded the height; the rest ascended safely by the pathway. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Colonel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec; and, advancing in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at daybreak with his invincible battalions on the Plains of Abraham, the battle-field of the Celtic and Saxon races. "It can be but a small party, come to burn a few houses and retire," said Montcalm, in amazement as the news reached him in his intrenchments the other side of the St. Charles; but, obtaining better information, "Then," he cried, "they have at last got to the weak side of this miserable garrison; we must give battle and crush them before mid-day." And, before ten, the two armies, equal in numbers, each being composed of less than five thousand men, were ranged in presence of one another for battle. The English, not easily accessible from intervening shallow ravines and rail fences, were all regulars, perfect in discipline, terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with pride at their morning's success, commanded by a man whom they obeyed with confidence and love. The doomed and devoted Montcalm had what Wolfe had called but "five weak French battalions," of less than two thousand men, "mingled with disorderly peasantry," formed on commanding ground. The French had three little pieces of artillery; the English, one or two. The two armies cannonaded each other for nearly an hour; when Montcalm, having summoned De Bougainville to his aid, and dispatched messenger after messenger for De Vaudreuil, who had fifteen hundred men at the camp, to come up before he should be driven from the ground, endeavored to flank the British and crowd them down the high bank of the river. Wolfe counteracted the movement by detaching Townshend with Amherst's regiment, and afterward a part of the Royal Americans, who formed on the left with a double front. Waiting no longer for more troops, Montcalm led the French army impetuously to the attack. The ill-disciplined companies broke by their precipitation and the unevenness of the ground; and fired by platoons, without unity. Their adversaries, especially the Forty-third and the Forty-seventh, where Monckton stood, of which three men out of four were Americans, received the shock with calmness; and after having, at Wolfe's command, reserved their fire till their enemy was within forty yards, their line began a regular, rapid, and exact discharge of musketry. Montcalm was present everywhere, braving danger, wounded, but cheering by his example. The second in command, De Sennezergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was killed. The brave but untried Canadians, flinching from a hot fire in the open field, began to waver; and, so soon as Wolfe, placing himself at the head of the Twenty-eighth and the Louisburg grenadiers, charged with bayonets, they everywhere gave way. Of the English officers, Carleton was wounded; Barré, who fought near Wolfe, received in the head a ball which made him blind of one eye, and ultimately of both. Wolfe, also, as he led the charge, was wounded in the wrist; but still pressing forward, he received a second ball; and having decided the day, was struck a third time, and mortally, in the breast. "Support me," he cried to an officer near him; "let not my brave fellows see me drop." He was carried to the rear, and they brought him water to quench his thirst. "They run! they run!" spoke the officer on whom he leaned. "Who run?" asked Wolfe, as his life was fast ebbing. "The French," replied the officer, "give way everywhere." "What," cried the expiring hero, "do they run already? Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton; bid him march Webb's regiment with all speed to Charles River to cut off the fugitives." Four days before, he had looked forward to early death with dismay. "Now, God be praised, I die happy." These were his words as his spirit escaped in the blaze of his glory. Night, silence, the rushing tide, veteran discipline, the sure inspiration of genius, had been his allies; his battle-field, high over the ocean river, was the grandest theatre for illustrious deeds; his victory, one of the most momentous in the annals of mankind, gave to the English tongue and the institutions of the Germanic race the unexplored and seemingly infinite West and South. He crowded into a few hours actions that would have given lustre to length of life; and, filling his day with greatness, completed it before its noon. Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York. LEXINGTON From 'History of the United States' Day came in all the beauty of an early spring. The trees were budding; the grass growing rankly a full month before its time; the bluebird and the robin gladdening the genial season, and calling forth the beams of the sun which on that morning shone with the warmth of summer; but distress and horror gathered over the inhabitants of the peaceful town. There on the green lay in death the gray-haired and the young; the grassy field was red "with the innocent blood of their brethren slain," crying unto God for vengeance from the ground. Seven of the men of Lexington were killed, nine wounded; a quarter part of all who stood in arms on the green. These are the village heroes, who were more than of noble blood, proving by their spirit that they were of a race divine. They gave their lives in testimony to the rights of mankind, bequeathing to their country an assurance of success in the mighty struggle which they began. Their names are held in grateful remembrance, and the expanding millions of their countrymen renew and multiply their praise from generation to generation. They fulfilled their duty not from the accidental impulse of the moment; their action was the slowly ripened fruit of Providence and of time. The light that led them on was combined of rays from the whole history of the race; from the traditions of the Hebrews in the gray of the world's morning; from the heroes and sages of republican Greece and Rome; from the example of Him who died on the cross for the life of humanity; from the religious creed which proclaimed the divine presence in man, and on this truth, as in a life-boat, floated the liberties of nations over the dark flood of the Middle Ages; from the customs of the Germans transmitted out of their forests to the councils of Saxon England; from the burning faith and courage of Martin Luther; from trust in the inevitable universality of God's sovereignty as taught by Paul of Tarsus and Augustine, through Calvin and the divines of New England; from the avenging fierceness of the Puritans, who dashed the mitre on the ruins of the throne; from the bold dissent and creative self-assertion of the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts; from the statesmen who made, and the philosophers who expounded, the revolution of England; from the liberal spirit and analyzing inquisitiveness of the eighteenth century; from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to the reality and the rightfulness of human freedom. All the centuries bowed themselves from the recesses of the past to cheer in their sacrifice the lowly men who proved themselves worthy of their forerunners, and whose children rise up and call them blessed. Heedless of his own danger, Samuel Adams, with the voice of a prophet, exclaimed: "Oh, what a glorious morning is this!" for he saw his country's independence hastening on, and, like Columbus in the tempest, knew that the storm did but bear him the more swiftly toward the undiscovered world. Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York. WASHINGTON From 'History of the United States' Then, on the fifteenth of June, it was voted to appoint a general. Thomas Johnson, of Maryland, nominated George Washington; and as he had been brought forward "at the particular request of the people of New England," he was elected by ballot unanimously. Washington was then forty-three years of age. In stature he a little exceeded six feet; his limbs were sinewy and well-proportioned; his chest broad; his figure stately, blending dignity of presence with ease. His robust constitution had been tried and invigorated by his early life in the wilderness, the habit of occupation out of doors, and rigid temperance; so that few equaled him in strength of arm, or power of endurance, or noble horsemanship. His complexion was florid; his hair dark brown; his head in its shape perfectly round. His broad nostrils seemed formed to give expression and escape to scornful anger. His eyebrows were rayed and finely arched. His dark-blue eyes, which were deeply set, had an expression of resignation, and an earnestness that was almost pensiveness. His forehead was sometimes marked with thought, but never with inquietude; his countenance was mild and pleasing and full of benignity. At eleven years old left an orphan to the care of an excellent but unlettered mother, he grew up without learning. Of arithmetic and geometry he acquired just knowledge enough to be able to practice measuring land; but all his instruction at school taught him not so much as the orthography or rules of grammar of his own tongue. His culture was altogether his own work, and he was in the strictest sense a self-made man; yet from his early life he never seemed uneducated. At sixteen, he went into the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years continued the pursuit, where the forests trained him, in meditative solitude, to freedom and largeness of mind; and nature revealed to him her obedience to serene and silent laws. In his intervals from toil, he seemed always to be attracted to the best men, and to be cherished by them. Fairfax, his employer, an Oxford scholar, already aged, became his fast friend. He read little, but with close attention. Whatever he took in hand he applied himself to with care; and his papers, which have been preserved, show how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of writing correctly; always expressing himself with clearness and directness, often with felicity of language and grace. When the frontiers on the west became disturbed, he at nineteen was commissioned an adjutant-general with the rank of major. At twenty-one, he went as the envoy of Virginia to the council of Indian chiefs on the Ohio, and to the French officers near Lake Erie. Fame waited upon him from his youth; and no one of his colony was so much spoken of. He conducted the first military expedition from Virginia that crossed the Alleghanies. Braddock selected him as an aid, and he was the only man who came out of the disastrous defeat near the Monongahela, with increased reputation, which extended to England. The next year, when he was but four-and-twenty, "the great esteem" in which he was held in Virginia, and his "real merit," led the lieutenant-governor of Maryland to request that he might be "commissioned and appointed second in command" of the army designed to march to the Ohio; and Shirley, the commander-in-chief, heard the proposal "with great satisfaction and pleasure," for "he knew no provincial officer upon the continent to whom he would so readily give that rank as to Washington." In 1758 he acted under Forbes as a brigadier, and but for him that general would never have crossed the mountains. Courage was so natural to him that it was hardly spoken of to his praise; no one ever at any moment of his life discovered in him the least shrinking in danger; and he had a hardihood of daring which escaped notice, because it was so enveloped by superior calmness and wisdom. His address was most easy and agreeable; his step firm and graceful; his air neither grave nor familiar. He was as cheerful as he was spirited, frank and communicative in the society of friends, fond of the fox-chase and the dance, often sportive in his letters, and liked a hearty laugh. "His smile," writes Chastellux, "was always the smile of benevolence." This joyousness of disposition remained to the last, though the vastness of his responsibilities was soon to take from him the right of displaying the impulsive qualities of his nature, and the weight which he was to bear up was to overlay and repress his gayety and openness. His hand was liberal; giving quietly and without observation, as though he was ashamed of nothing but being discovered in doing good. He was kindly and compassionate, and of lively sensibility to the sorrows of others; so that, if his country had only needed a victim for its relief, he would have willingly offered himself as a sacrifice. But while he was prodigal of himself, he was considerate for others; ever parsimonious of the blood of his countrymen. He was prudent in the management of his private affairs, purchased rich lands from the Mohawk valley to the flats of the Kanawha, and improved his fortune by the correctness of his judgment; but, as a public man, he knew no other aim than the good of his country, and in the hour of his country's poverty he refused personal emolument for his service. His faculties were so well balanced and combined that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well-ordered commonwealth; his passions, which had the intensest vigor, owned allegiance to reason; and with all the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was held in check by consummate judgment. He had in his composition a calm, which gave him in moments of highest excitement the power of self-control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause for disgust. Washington was offered a command when there was little to bring out the unorganized resources of the continent but his own influence, and authority was connected with the people by the most frail, most attenuated, scarcely discernible threads; yet, vehement as was his nature, impassioned as was his courage, he so retained his ardor that he never failed continuously to exert the attractive power of that influence, and never exerted it so sharply as to break its force. In secrecy he was unsurpassed; but his secrecy had the character of prudent reserve, not of cunning or concealment. His great natural power of vigilance had been developed by his life in the wilderness. His understanding was lucid, and his judgment accurate; so that his conduct never betrayed hurry or confusion. No detail was too minute for his personal inquiry and continued supervision; and at the same time he comprehended events in their widest aspects and relations. He never seemed above the object that engaged his attention, and he was always equal, without an effort, to the solution of the highest questions, even when there existed no precedents to guide his decision. In the perfection of the reflective powers, which he used habitually, he had no peer. In this way he never drew to himself admiration for the possession of any one quality in excess, never made in council any one suggestion that was sublime but impracticable, never in action took to himself the praise or the blame of undertakings astonishing in conception, but beyond his means of execution. It was the most wonderful accomplishment of this man that, placed upon the largest theatre of events, at the head of the greatest revolution in human affairs, he never failed to observe all that was possible, and at the same time to bound his aspirations by that which was possible. A slight tinge in his character, perceptible only to the close observer, revealed the region from which he sprung, and he might be described as the best specimen of manhood as developed in the South; but his qualities were so faultlessly proportioned that his whole country rather claimed him as its choicest representative, the most complete expression of all its attainments and aspirations. He studied his country and conformed to it. His countrymen felt that he was the best type of America, and rejoiced in it, and were proud of it. They lived in his life, and made his success and his praise their own. Profoundly impressed with confidence in God's providence, and exemplary in his respect for the forms of public worship, no philosopher of the eighteenth century was more firm in the support of freedom of religious opinion, none more remote from bigotry; but belief in God, and trust in his overruling power, formed the essence of his character. Divine wisdom not only illumines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a man of action, and not of theory or words; his creed appears in his life, not in his professions, which burst from him very rarely, and only at those great moments of crisis in the fortunes of his country, when earth and heaven seemed actually to meet, and his emotions became too intense for suppression; but his whole being was one continued act of faith in the eternal, intelligent, moral order of the universe. Integrity was so completely the law of his nature, that a planet would sooner have shot from its sphere than he have departed from his uprightness, which was so constant that it often seemed to be almost impersonal. "His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known," writes Jefferson; "no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision." They say of Giotto that he introduced goodness into the art of painting; Washington carried it with him to the camp and the Cabinet, and established a new criterion of human greatness. The purity of his will confirmed his fortitude: and as he never faltered in his faith in virtue, he stood fast by that which he knew to be just; free from illusions; never dejected by the apprehension of the difficulties and perils that went before him, and drawing the promise of success from the justice of his cause. Hence he was persevering, leaving nothing unfinished; devoid of all taint of obstinacy in his firmness; seeking and gladly receiving advice, but immovable in his devotedness to right. Of a "retiring modesty and habitual reserve," his ambition was no more than the consciousness of his power, and was subordinate to his sense of duty; he took the foremost place, for he knew from inborn magnanimity that it belonged to him, and he dared not withhold the service required of him; so that, with all his humility, he was by necessity the first, though never for himself or for private ends. He loved fame, the approval of coming generations, the good opinion of his fellow-men of his own time, and he desired to make his conduct coincide with his wishes; but not fear of censure, not the prospect of applause could tempt him to swerve from rectitude, and the praise which he coveted was the sympathy of that moral sentiment which exists in every human breast, and goes forth only to the welcome of virtue. There have been soldiers who have achieved mightier victories in the field, and made conquests more nearly corresponding to the boundlessness of selfish ambition; statesmen who have been connected with more startling upheavals of society: but it is the greatness of Washington that in public trusts he used power solely for the public good; that he was the life and moderator and stay of the most momentous revolution in human affairs; its moving impulse and its restraining power.... This also is the praise of Washington: that never in the tide of time has any man lived who had in so great a degree the almost divine faculty to command the confidence of his fellow-men and rule the willing. Wherever he became known, in his family, his neighborhood, his county, his native State, the continent, the camp, civil life, among the common people, in foreign courts, throughout the civilized world, and even among the savages, he, beyond all other men, had the confidence of his kind. Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York. JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM (1798-1846) (1796-1874) Of the writers who have won esteem by telling the pathetic stories of their country's people, the names of John and Michael Banim are ranked among the Irish Gael not lower than that of Sir Walter Scott among the British Gael. The works of the Banim brothers continued the same sad and fascinating story of the "mere Irish" which Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan had laid to the hearts of English readers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century days. The Banim family was one of those which belonged to the class of "middlemen," people so designated in Ireland who were neither rich nor poor, but in the fortunate mean. The family home was in the historic town of Kilkenny, famous alike for its fighting confederation and its fighting cats. Here Michael was born August 5th, 1796, and John April 3d, 1798. Michael lived to a green old age, and survived his younger brother John twenty-eight years, less seventeen days; he died at Booterstown, August 30th, 1874. [Illustration: JOHN BANIM] The first stories of this brotherly collaboration in letters appeared in 1825 without mark of authorship, as recitals contributed for instruction and amusement about the hearth-stone of an Irish household, called 'The O'Hara Family.' The minor chords of the soft music of the Gaelic English as it fell from the tongues of Irish lads and lasses, whether in note of sorrow or of sport, had already begun to touch with winsome tenderness the stolid Saxon hearts, when that idyl of their country's penal days, 'The Bit o' Writin',' was sent out from the O'Hara fireside. The almost instantaneous success and popularity of their first stories speedily broke down the anonymity of the Banims, and publishers became eager and gain-giving. About two dozen stories were published before the death of John, in 1842. The best-known of them, in addition to the one already mentioned, are 'The Boyne Water,' 'The Croppy,' and 'Father Connell.' The fact that during the long survival of Michael no more of the Banim stories appeared, is sometimes called in as evidence that the latter had little to do with the writing of the series. Michael and John, it was well known, had worked lovingly together, and Michael claimed a part in thirteen of the tales, without excluding his brother from joint authorship. Exactly what each wrote of the joint productions has never been known. A single dramatic work of the Banim brothers has attained to a position in the standard drama, the play of 'Damon and Pythias,' a free adaptation from an Italian original, written by John Banim at the instance of Richard Lalor Shiel. The songs are also attributed to John. It is but just to say that the great emigration to the United States which absorbed the Irish during the '40's and '50's depreciated the sale of such works as those of the Banims to the lowest point, and Michael had good reason, aside from the loss of his brother's aid, to lay down his pen. The audience of the Irish story-teller had gone away across the great western sea. There was nothing to do but sit by the lonesome hearth and await one's own to-morrow for the voyage of the greater sea. THE PUBLICAN'S DREAM From 'The Bit o' Writin' and Other Tales' The fair-day had passed over in a little straggling town in the southeast of Ireland, and was succeeded by a languor proportioned to the wild excitement it never failed to create. But of all in the village, its publicans suffered most under the reaction of great bustle. Few of their houses appeared open at broad noon; and some--the envy of their competitors--continued closed even after that late hour. Of these latter, many were of the very humblest kind; little cabins, in fact, skirting the outlets of the village, or standing alone on the roadside a good distance beyond it. About two o'clock upon the day in question, a house of "Entertainment for Man and Horse," the very last of the description noticed to be found between the village and the wild tract of mountain country adjacent to it, was opened by the proprietress, who had that moment arisen from bed. The cabin consisted of only two apartments, and scarce more than nominally even of two; for the half-plastered wicker and straw partition, which professed to cut off a sleeping-nook from the whole area inclosed by the clay walls, was little higher than a tall man, and moreover chinky and porous in many places. Let the assumed distinction be here allowed to stand, however, while the reader casts his eyes around what was sometimes called the kitchen, sometimes the tap-room, sometimes the "dancing-flure." Forms which had run by the walls, and planks by way of tables which had been propped before them, were turned topsy-turvy, and in some instances broken. Pewter pots and pints, battered and bruised, or squeezed together and flattened, and fragments of twisted glass tumblers, lay beside them. The clay floor was scraped with brogue-nails and indented with the heel of that primitive foot-gear, in token of the energetic dancing which had lately been performed upon it. In a corner still appeared (capsized, however) an empty eight-gallon beer barrel, recently the piper's throne, whence his bag had blown forth the inspiring storms of jigs and reels, which prompted to more antics than ever did a bag of the laughing-gas. Among the yellow turf-ashes of the hearth lay on its side an old blackened tin kettle, without a spout,--a principal utensil in brewing scalding water for the manufacture of whisky-punch; and its soft and yet warm bed was shared by a red cat, who had stolen in from his own orgies, through some cranny, since day-break. The single four-paned window of the apartment remained veiled by its rough shutter, that turned on leather hinges; but down the wide yawning chimney came sufficient light to reveal the objects here described. The proprietress opened her back door. She was a woman of about forty; of a robust, large-boned figure; with broad, rosy visage, dark, handsome eyes, and well-cut nose: but inheriting a mouth so wide as to proclaim her pure aboriginal Irish pedigree. After a look abroad, to inhale the fresh air, and then a remonstrance (ending in a kick) with the hungry pig, who ran, squeaking and grunting, to demand his long-deferred breakfast, she settled her cap, rubbed down her _prauskeen_ [coarse apron], tucked and pinned up her skirts behind, and saying in a loud, commanding voice, as she spoke into the sleeping-chamber, "Get up now at once, Jer, I bid you," vigorously if not tidily set about putting her tavern to rights. During her bustle the dame would stop an instant, and bend her ear to listen for a stir inside the partition; but at last losing patience she resumed:-- "Why, then, my heavy hatred on you, Jer Mulcahy, is it gone into a _sauvaun_ [pleasant drowsiness] you are, over again? or maybe you stole out of bed, an' put your hand on one o' them ould good-for-nothing books, that makes you the laziest man that a poor woman ever had tinder one roof wid her? ay, an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an' house, in the heart of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer Mulcahy, to sell drams o' whisky an' pots o' beer to all the riff-raff o' the counthry-side, instead o' the nate boots an' shoes you served your honest time to?" She entered his, or her chamber, rather, hoping that she might detect him luxuriantly perusing in bed one of the mutilated books, a love of which (or more truly a love of indolence, thus manifesting itself) had indeed chiefly caused his downfall in the world. Her husband, however, really tired after his unusual bodily efforts of the previous day, only slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had shaken and aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered,--nay, wept, or pretended to weep,--the dame returned to her household duties. She did not neglect, however, to keep calling to him every half-minute, until at last Mr. Jeremiah Mulcahy strode into the kitchen: a tall, ill-contrived figure, that had once been well fitted out, but that now wore its old skin, like its old clothes, very loosely; and those old clothes were a discolored, threadbare, half-polished kerseymere pair of trousers, and aged superfine black coat, the last relics of his former Sunday finery,--to which had recently and incongruously been added a calfskin vest, a pair of coarse sky-blue peasant's stockings, and a pair of brogues. His hanging cheeks and lips told, together, his present bad living and domestic subjection; and an eye that had been blinded by the smallpox wore neither patch nor band, although in better days it used to be genteelly hidden from remark,--an assumption of consequence now deemed incompatible with his altered condition in society. "O Cauth! oh, I had such a dhrame," he said, as he made his appearance. "An' I'll go bail you had," answered Cauth, "an' when do you ever go asleep without having one dhrame or another, that pesters me off o' my legs the livelong day, till the night falls again to let you have another? Musha, Jer, don't be ever an' always such a fool; an' never mind the dhrame now, but lend a hand to help me in the work o' the house. See the pewther there: haive it up, man alive, an' take it out into the garden, and sit on the big stone in the sun, an' make it look as well as you can, afther the ill usage it got last night; come, hurry, Jer--go an' do what I bid you." He retired in silence to "the garden," a little patch of ground luxuriant in potatoes and a few cabbages. Mrs. Mulcahy pursued her work till her own sensations warned her that it was time to prepare her husband's morning or rather day meal; for by the height of the sun it should now be many hours past noon. So she put down her pot of potatoes; and when they were boiled, took out a wooden trencher full of them, and a mug of sour milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his useful occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to something of their former shape. Stepping through the back door, and getting him in view, she stopped short in silent anger. His back was turned to her, because of the sun; and while the vessels, huddled about in confusion, seemed little the better of his latent skill and industry, there he sat on his favorite round stone, studiously perusing, half aloud to himself, some idle volume which doubtless he had smuggled into the garden in his pocket. Laying down her trencher and her mug, Mrs. Mulcahy stole forward on tiptoe, gained his shoulder without being heard, snatched the imperfect bundle of soiled pages out of his hand, and hurled it into a neighbor's cabbage-bed. Jeremiah complained, in his usual half-crying tone, declaring that "she never could let him alone, so she couldn't, and he would rather list for a soger than lade such a life, from year's end to year's end, so he would." "Well, an' do then--an' whistle that idle cur off wid you," pointing to a nondescript puppy, which had lain happily coiled up at his master's feet until Mrs. Mulcahy's appearance, but that now watched her closely, his ears half cocked and his eyes wide open, though his position remained unaltered. "Go along to the divil, you lazy whelp you!"--she took up a pint in which a few drops of beer remained since the previous night, and drained it on the puppy's head, who instantly ran off, jumping sideways, and yelping as loud as if some bodily injury had really visited him--"Yes, an' now you begin to yowl, like your masther, for nothing at all, only because a body axes you to stir your idle legs--hould your tongue, you foolish baste!" she stooped for a stone--"one would think I scalded you." "You know you did, once, Cauth, to the backbone; an' small blame for Shuffle to be afeard o' you ever since," said Jer. This vindication of his own occasional remonstrances, as well as of Shuffle's, was founded in truth. When very young, just to keep him from running against her legs while she was busy over the fire, Mrs. Mulcahy certainly had emptied a ladleful of boiling potato-water upon the poor puppy's back; and from that moment it was only necessary to spill a drop of the coldest possible water, or of any cold liquid, on any part of his body, and he believed he was again dreadfully scalded, and ran out of the house screaming in all the fancied theories of torture. "Will you ate your good dinner, now, Jer Mulcahy, an' promise to do something to help me, afther it?--Mother o' Saints!"--thus she interrupted herself, turning towards the place where she had deposited the eulogized food--"see that yon unlucky bird! May I never do an ill turn but there's the pig afther spilling the sweet milk, an' now shoveling the beautiful white-eyes down her throat at a mouthful!" Jer, really afflicted at this scene, promised to work hard the moment he got his dinner; and his spouse, first procuring a pitchfork to beat the pig into her sty, prepared a fresh meal for him, and retired to eat her own in the house, and then to continue her labor. In about an hour she thought of paying him another visit of inspection, when Jeremiah's voice reached her ear, calling out in disturbed accents, "Cauth! Cauth! _a-vourneen!_ For the love o' heaven, Cauth! where are you?" Running to him, she found her husband sitting upright, though not upon his round stone, amongst the still untouched heap of pots and pints, his pock-marked face very pale, his single eye staring, his hands clasped and shaking, and moisture on his forehead. "What!" she cried, "the pewther just as I left it, over again!" "O Cauth! Cauth! don't mind that now--but spake to me kind, Cauth, an' comfort me." "Why, what ails you, Jer _a-vous neen_?" affectionately taking his hand, when she saw how really agitated he was. "O Cauth, oh, I had such a dhrame, now, in earnest, at any rate!" "A dhrame!" she repeated, letting go his hand, "a dhrame, Jer Mulcahy! so, afther your good dinner, you go for to fall asleep, Jer Mulcahy, just to be ready wid a new dhrame for me, instead of the work you came out here to do, five blessed hours ago!" "Don't scould me, now, Cauth; don't, a-pet: only listen to me, an' then say what you like. You know the lonesome little glen between the hills, on the short cut for man or horse, to Kilbroggan? Well, Cauth, there I found myself in the dhrame; and I saw two sailors, tired afther a day's hard walking, sitting before one of the big rocks that stand upright in the wild place; an' they were ating or dhrinking, I couldn't make out which; and one was a tall, sthrong, broad-shouldhered man, an' the other was sthrong, too, but short an' burly; an' while they were talking very civilly to each other, lo an' behould you, Cauth, I seen the tall man whip his knife into the little man; an' then they both sthruggled, an' wrastled, an' schreeched together, till the rocks rung again; but at last the little man was a corpse; an' may I never see a sight o' glory, Cauth, but all this was afore me as plain as you are, in this garden! an' since the hour I was born, Cauth, I never got such a fright; an'--oh, Cauth! what's that now?" "What is it, you poor fool, you, but a customer, come at last into the kitchen--an' time for us to see the face o' one this blessed day. Get up out o' that, wid your dhrames--don't you hear 'em knocking? I'll stay here to put one vessel at laste to rights--for I see I must." Jeremiah arose, groaning, and entered the cabin through the back door. In a few seconds he hastened to his wife, more terror-stricken than he had left her, and settling his loins against the low garden wall, stared at her. "Why, then, duoul's in you, Jer Mulcahy (saints forgive me for cursing!)--and what's the matter wid you, at-all at-all?" "They're in the kitchen," he whispered. "Well, an' what will they take?" "I spoke never a word to them, Cauth, nor they to me;--I couldn't--an' I won't, for a duke's ransom: I only saw them stannin' together, in the dark that's coming on, behind the dour, an' I knew them at the first look--the tall one an' the little one." With a flout at his dreams, and his cowardice, and his good-for-nothingness, the dame hurried to serve her customers. Jeremiah heard her loud voice addressing them, and their hoarse tones answering. She came out again for two pints to draw some beer, and commanded him to follow her and "discoorse the customers." He remained motionless. She returned in a short time, and fairly drove him before her into the house. He took a seat remote from his guests, with difficulty pronouncing the ordinary words of "God save ye, genteels," which they bluffly and heartily answered. His glances towards them were also few; yet enough to inform him that they conversed together like friends, pledging healths and shaking hands. The tall sailor abruptly asked him how far it was, by the short cut, to a village where they proposed to pass the night--Kilbroggan?--Jeremiah started on his seat, and his wife, after a glance and a grumble at him, was obliged to speak for her husband. They finished their beer; paid for it; put up half a loaf and a cut of bad watery cheese, saying that they might feel more hungry a few miles on than they now did; and then they arose to leave the cabin. Jeremiah glanced in great trouble around. His wife had fortunately disappeared; he snatched up his old hat, and with more energy than he could himself remember, ran forward to be a short way on the road before them. They soon approached him; and then, obeying a conscientious impulse, Jeremiah saluted the smaller of the two, and requested to speak with him apart. The sailor, in evident surprise, assented. Jer vaguely cautioned him against going any farther that night, as it would be quite dark by the time he should get to the mountain pass, on the by-road to Kilbroggan. His warning was made light of. He grew more earnest, asserting, what was not the fact, that it was "a bad road," meaning one infested by robbers. Still the bluff tar paid no attention, and was turning away. "Oh, sir; oh, stop, sir," resumed Jeremiah, taking great courage, "I have a thing to tell you;" and he rehearsed his dream, averring that in it he had distinctly seen the present object of his solicitude set upon and slain by his colossal companion. The listener paused a moment; first looking at Jer, and then at the ground, very gravely: but the next moment he burst into a loud, and Jeremiah thought, frightful laugh, and walked rapidly to overtake his shipmate. Jeremiah, much oppressed, returned home. Towards dawn, next morning, the publican awoke in an ominous panic, and aroused his wife to listen to a loud knocking, and a clamor of voices at their door. She insisted that there was no such thing, and scolded him for disturbing her sleep. A renewal of the noise, however, convinced even her incredulity, and showed that Jeremiah was right for the first time in his life, at least. Both arose, and hastened to answer the summons. When they unbarred the front door, a gentleman, surrounded by a crowd of people of the village, stood before it. He had discovered on the by-road through the hills from Kilbroggan, a dead body, weltering in its gore, and wearing sailor's clothes; had ridden on in alarm; had raised the village; and some of its population, recollecting to have seen Mrs. Mulcahy's visitors of the previous evening, now brought him to her house to hear what she could say on the subject. Before she could say anything, her husband fell senseless at her side, groaning dolefully. While the bystanders raised him, she clapped her hands, and exalted her voice in ejaculations, as Irishwomen, when grieved or astonished or vexed, usually do; and now, as proud of Jeremiah's dreaming capabilities as she had before been impatient of them, rehearsed his vision of the murder, and authenticated the visit of the two sailors to her house, almost while he was in the act of making her the confidant of his prophetic ravings. The auditors stept back in consternation, crossing themselves, smiting their breasts, and crying out, "The Lord save us! The Lord have mercy upon us!" Jeremiah slowly awoke from his swoon. The gentleman who had discovered the body commanded his attendants back to the lonesome glen, where it lay. Poor Jeremiah fell on his knees, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, prayed to be saved from such a trial. His neighbors almost forced him along. All soon gained the spot, a narrow pass between slanting piles of displaced rocks; the hills from which they had tumbled rising brown and barren and to a great height above and beyond them. And there, indeed, upon the strip of verdure which formed the winding road through the defile, lay the corpse of one of the sailors who had visited the publican's house the evening before. Again Jeremiah dropt on his knees, at some distance from the body, exclaiming, "Lord save us!--yes! oh, yes, neighbors, this is the very place!--only--the saints be good to us again!--'twas the tall sailor I seen killing the little sailor, and here's the tall sailor murthered by the little sailor." "Dhrames go by conthraries, some way or another," observed one of his neighbors; and Jeremiah's puzzle was resolved. Two steps were now indispensable to be taken; the county coroner should be summoned, and the murderer sought after. The crowd parted to engage in both matters simultaneously. Evening drew on when they again met in the pass: and the first, who had gone for the coroner, returned with him, a distance of near twenty miles; but the second party did not prove so successful. In fact they had discovered no clue to the present retreat of the supposed assassin. The coroner impaneled his jury, and held his inquest under a large upright rock, bedded in the middle of the pass, such as Jeremiah said he had seen in his dream. A verdict of willful murder against the absent sailor was quickly agreed upon; but ere it could be recorded, all hesitated, not knowing how to individualize a man of whose name they were ignorant. The summer night had fallen upon their deliberations, and the moon arose in splendor, shining over the top of one of the high hills that inclosed the pass, so as fully to illumine the bosom of the other. During their pause, a man appeared standing upon the line of the hill thus favored by the moonlight, and every eye turned in that direction. He ran down the abrupt declivity beneath him; he gained the continued sweep of jumbled rocks which immediately walled in the little valley, springing from one to another of them with such agility and certainty that it seemed almost magical; and a general whisper of fear now attested the fact of his being dressed in a straw hat, a short jacket, and loose white trousers. As he jumped from the last rock upon the sward of the pass, the spectators drew back; but he, not seeming to notice them, walked up to the corpse, which had not yet been touched; took its hand; turned up its face into the moonlight, and attentively regarded the features; let the hand go; pushed his hat upon his forehead; glanced around him; recognized the person in authority; approached, and stood still before him, and said "Here I am, Tom Mills, that killed long Harry Holmes, and there he lies." The coroner cried out to secure him, now fearing that the man's sturdiness meant farther harm. "No need," resumed the self-accused; "here's my bread-and-cheese knife, the only weapon about me;" he threw it on the ground: "I come back just to ax you, commodore, to order me a cruise after poor Harry, bless his precious eyes, wherever he is bound." "You have been pursued hither?" "No, bless your heart; but I wouldn't pass such another watch as the last twenty-four hours for all the prize-money won at Trafalgar. 'Tisn't in regard of not tasting food or wetting my lips ever since I fell foul of Harry, or of hiding my head like a cursed animal o' the yearth, and starting if a bird only hopped nigh me: but I cannot go on living on this tack no longer; that's it; and the least I can say to you, Harry, my hearty." "What caused your quarrel with your comrade?" "There was no jar or jabber betwixt us, d'you see me." "Not at the time, I understand you to mean; but surely you must have long owed him a grudge?" "No, but long loved him; and he me." "Then, in heaven's name, what put the dreadful thought in your head?" "The devil, commodore, (the horned lubber!) and another lubber to help him"--pointing at Jeremiah, who shrank to the skirts of the crowd. "I'll tell you every word of it, commodore, as true as a log-book. For twenty long and merry years, Harry and I sailed together, and worked together, thro' a hard gale sometimes, and thro' hot sun another time; and never a squally word came between us till last night, and then it all came of that lubberly swipes-seller, I say again. I thought as how it was a real awful thing that a strange landsman, before ever he laid eyes on either of us, should come to have this here dream about us. After falling in with Harry, when the lubber and I parted company, my old mate saw I was cast down, and he told me as much in his own gruff, well-meaning way; upon which I gave him the story, laughing at it. _He_ didn't laugh in return, but grew glum--glummer than I ever seed him; and I wondered, and fell to boxing about my thoughts, more and more (deep sea sink that cursed thinking and thinking, say I!--it sends many an honest fellow out of his course); and 'It's hard to know the best man's mind,' I thought to myself. Well, we came on the tack into these rocky parts, and Harry says to me all on a sudden, 'Tom, try the soundings here, ahead, by yourself--or let me, by myself.' I axed him why? 'No matter,' says Harry again, 'but after what you chawed about, I don't like your company any farther, till we fall in again at the next village.' 'What, Harry,' I cries, laughing heartier than ever, 'are you afeard of your own mind with Tom Mills?' 'Pho,' he made answer, walking on before me, and I followed him. "'Yes,' I kept saying to myself, 'he _is_ afeard of his own mind with his old shipmate.' 'Twas a darker night than this, and when I looked ahead, the devil (for I know 'twas _he_ that boarded me!) made me take notice what a good spot it was for Harry to fall foul of me. And then I watched him making way before me, in the dark, and couldn't help thinking he was the better man of the two--a head and shoulders over me, and a match for any two of my inches. And then again, I brought to mind that Harry would be a heavy purse the better of sending me to Davy's locker, seeing we had both been just paid off, and got a lot of prize-money to boot;--and at last (the real red devil having fairly got me helm a-larboard) I argufied with myself that Tom Mills would be as well alive, with Harry Holmes's luck in his pocket, as he could be dead, and _his_ in Harry Holmes's; not to say nothing of taking one's own part, just to keep one's self afloat, if so be Harry let his mind run as mine was running. "All this time Harry never gave me no hail, but kept tacking through these cursed rocks; and that, and his last words, made me doubt him more and more. At last he stopped nigh where he now lies, and sitting with his back to that high stone, he calls for my blade to cut the bread and cheese he had got at the village; and while he spoke I believed he looked glummer and glummer, and that he wanted the blade, the only one between us, for some'at else than to cut bread and cheese; though now I don't believe no such thing howsumdever; but then I did: and so, d'you see me, commodore, I lost ballast all of a sudden, and when he stretched out his hand for the blade (hell's fire blazing up in my lubberly heart!)--'Here it is, Harry,' says I, and I gives it to him in the side!--once, twice, in the right place!" (the sailor's voice, hitherto calm, though broken and rugged, now rose into a high, wild cadence)--"and then how we did grapple! and sing out one to another! ahoy! yeho! aye; till I thought the whole crew of devils answered our hail from the hill-tops!--But I hit you again and again, Harry! before you could master me," continued the sailor, returning to the corpse, and once more taking its hand--"until at last you struck,--my old messmate!--And now--nothing remains for Tom Mills--but to man the yard-arm!" The narrator stood his trial at the ensuing assizes, and was executed for this avowed murder of his shipmate; Jeremiah appearing as a principal witness. Our story may seem drawn either from imagination, or from mere village gossip: its chief acts rest, however, upon the authority of members of the Irish bar, since risen to high professional eminence; and they can even vouch that at least Jeremiah asserted the truth of "The Publican's Dream." AILLEEN 'Tis not for love of gold I go, 'Tis not for love of fame; Tho' Fortune should her smile bestow, And I may win a name, Ailleen, And I may win a name. And yet it is for gold I go, And yet it is for fame,-- That they may deck another brow And bless another name, Ailleen, And bless another name. For this, but this, I go--for this I lose thy love awhile; And all the soft and quiet bliss Of thy young, faithful smile, Ailleen, Of thy young, faithful smile. And I go to brave a world I hate And woo it o'er and o'er, And tempt a wave and try a fate Upon a stranger shore, Ailleen. Upon a stranger shore. Oh! when the gold is wooed and won, I know a heart will care! Oh! when the bays are all my own, I know a brow shall wear, Ailleen, I know a brow shall wear. And when, with both returned again, My native land to see, I know a smile will meet me there And a hand will welcome me, Ailleen, And a hand will welcome me! SOGGARTH AROON ("O Priest, O Love!") THE IRISH PEASANT'S ADDRESS TO HIS PRIEST Am I the slave they say, Soggarth Aroon? Since you did show the way, Soggarth Aroon, Their slave no more to be, While they would work with me Ould Ireland's slavery, Soggarth Aroon? Why not her poorest man, Soggarth Aroon, Try and do all he can, Soggarth Aroon, Her commands to fulfill Of his own heart and will, Side by side with you still, Soggarth Aroon? Loyal and brave to you, Soggarth Aroon, Yet be no slave to you, Soggarth Aroon, Nor out of fear to you Stand up so near to you-- Och! out of fear to _you!_ Soggarth Aroon! Who, in the winter's night, Soggarth Aroon, When the cowld blast did bite, Soggarth Aroon, Came to my cabin door, And on my earthen floor Knelt by me, sick and poor, Soggarth Aroon? Who, on the marriage day, Soggarth Aroon, Made the poor cabin gay, Soggarth Aroon; And did both laugh and sing, Making our hearts to ring, At the poor christening, Soggarth Aroon? Who, as friend only met, Soggarth Aroon, Never did flout me yet, Soggarth Aroon? And when my hearth was dim Gave, while his eye did brim, What I should give to him, Soggarth Aroon? Och! you, and only you, Soggarth Aroon! And for this I was true to you, Soggarth Aroon; In love they'll never shake When for ould Ireland's sake We a true part did take, Soggarth Aroon! [Illustration: _THE IRISH MAIDEN'S SONG._ Photogravure from a Painting by E. Hebert.] THE IRISH MAIDEN'S SONG You know it now--it is betrayed This moment in mine eye, And in my young cheeks' crimson shade, And in my whispered sigh. You know it now--yet listen now-- Though ne'er was love more true, My plight and troth and virgin vow Still, still I keep from you, Ever! Ever, until a proof you give How oft you've heard me say, I would not even his empress live Who idles life away, Without one effort for the land In which my fathers' graves Were hollowed by a despot hand To darkly close on slaves-- Never! See! round yourself the shackles hang, Yet come you to love's bowers, That only he may soothe their pang Or hide their links in flowers-- But try all things to snap them first, And should all fail when tried, The fated chain you cannot burst My twining arms shall hide-- Ever! THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823-1891) Théodore Faullain De Banville is best known as a very skillful maker of polished artificial verse. His poetry stands high; but it is the poetry not of nature, but of elegant society. His muse, as Mr. Henley says, is always in evening dress. References to the classic poets are woven into all of his descriptions of nature. He is distinguished, scholarly, full of taste, and brilliant in execution; never failing in propriety, and never reaching inspiration. As an artist in words and cadences he has few superiors. [Illustration: De Banville] These qualities are partly acquired, and partly the result of birth. Born in 1823, the son of a naval officer, from his earliest years he devoted himself to literature. His birthplace, Moulins, an old provincial town on the banks of the Allier, where he spent a happy childhood, made little impression on him. Still almost a child he went to Paris, where he led a life without events,--without even a marriage or an election to the Academy; he died March 13th, 1891. His place was among the society people and the artists; the painter Courbet and the writers Mürger, Baudelaire, and Gautier were among his closest friends. He first attracted attention in 1848 by the publication of a volume of verse, 'The Caryatids.' In 1857 came another, 'Odes Funambulesque,' and later another series under the same title, the two together containing his best work in verse. Here he stands highest; though he wrote also many plays, one of which, 'Gringoire,' has been acted in various translations. 'The Wife of Socrates' also holds the stage. Like his other work, his drama is artificial, refined, and skillful. He presents a marked instance of the artist working for art's sake. During the latter years of his life he wrote mostly prose, and he has left many well-drawn portraits of his contemporaries, in addition to several books of criticism, with much color and charm, but little definiteness. He was always vague, for facts did not interest him; but he had the power of making his remote, unreal world attractive, and among the writers of the school of Gautier he stands among the first. LE CAFÉ From 'The Soul of Paris' Imagine a place where you do not endure the horror of being alone, and yet have the freedom of solitude. There, free from the dust, the boredom, the vulgarities of a household, you reflect at ease, comfortably seated before a table, unincumbered by all the things that oppress you in houses; for if useless objects and papers had accumulated here they would have been promptly removed. You smoke slowly, quietly, like a Turk, following your thoughts among the blue curves. If you have a voluptuous desire to taste some warm or refreshing beverage, well-trained waiters bring it to you immediately. If you feel like talking with clever men who will not bully you, you have within reach light sheets on which are printed winged thoughts, rapid, written for you, which you are not forced to bind and preserve in a library when they have ceased to please you. This place, the paradise of civilization, the last and inviolable refuge of the free man, is the café. It is the café; but in the ideal, as we dream it, as it ought to be. The lack of room and the fabulous cost of land on the boulevards of Paris make it hideous in actuality. In these little boxes--of which the rent is that of a palace--one would be foolish to look for the space of a vestiary. Besides, the walls are decorated with stovepipe hats and overcoats hung on clothes-pegs--an abominable sight, for which atonement is offered by multitudes of white panels and ignoble gilding, imitations made by economical process. And (let us not deceive ourselves) the overcoat, with which one never knows what to do, and which makes us worry everywhere,--in society, at the theatre, at balls,--is the great enemy and the abominable enslavement of modern life. Happy the gentlemen of the age of Louis XIV., who in the morning dressed themselves for all day, in satin and velvet, their brows protected by wigs, and who remained superb even when beaten by the storm, and who, moreover, brave as lions, ran the risk of pneumonia even if they had to put on, one outside the other, the innumerable waistcoats of Jodelet in 'Les Précieuses Ridicules'! "How shall I find my overcoat and my wife's party cape?" is the great and only cry, the Hamlet-monologue of the modern man, that poisons every minute of his life and makes him look with resignation toward his dying hour. On the morning after a ball given by Marshal MacMahon nothing is found: the overcoats have disappeared; the satin cloaks, the boas, the lace scarfs have gone up in smoke; and the women must rush in despair through the driving snow while their husbands try to button their evening coats, which will not button! One evening, at a party given by the wife of the President of the Chamber of Deputies, at which the gardens were lighted by electricity, Gambetta suddenly wished to show some of his guests a curiosity, and invited them to go down with him into the bushes. A valet hastened to hand him his overcoat, but the guests did not dare to ask for theirs, and followed Gambetta as they were! However, I believe one or two of them survived. At the café no one carries off your overcoat, no one hides it; but they are all hung up, spread out on the wall like masterpieces of art, treated as if they were portraits of Mona Lisa or Violante, and you have them before your eyes, you see them continually. Is there not reason to curse the moment your eyes first saw the light? One may, as I have said, read the papers; or rather one might read them if they were not hung on those abominable racks, which remove them a mile from you and force you to see them on your horizon. As to the drinks, give up all hope; for the owner of the café has no proper place for their preparation, and his rent is so enormous that he has to make the best even of the quality he sells. But aside from this reason, the drinks could not be good, because there are too many of them. The last thing one finds at these coffee-houses is coffee. It is delicious, divine, in those little Oriental shops where it is made to order for each drinker in a special little pot. As to syrups, how many are there in Paris? In what inconceivable place can they keep the jars containing the fruit juices needed to make them? A few real ladies, rich, well-born, good housekeepers, not reduced to slavery by the great shops, who do not rouge or paint their cheeks, still know how to make in their own homes good syrups from the fruit of their gardens and their vineyards. But they naturally do not give them away or sell them to the keepers of cafés, but keep them to gladden their flaxen-haired children. Such as it is,--with its failings and its vices, even a full century after the fame of Procope,--the café, which we cannot drive out of our memories, has been the asylum and the refuge of many charming spirits. The old Tabourey, who, after having been illustrious, now has a sort of half popularity and a pewter bar, formerly heard the captivating conversations of Barbey and of Aurevilly, who were rivals in the noblest salons, and who sometimes preferred to converse seated before a marble table in a hall from which one could see the foliage and the flowers of the Luxembourg. Baudelaire also talked there, with his clear caressing voice dropping diamonds and precious stones, like the princess of the fairy tale, from beautiful red, somewhat thick lips. A problem with no possible solution holds in check the writers and the artists of Paris. When one has worked hard all day it is pleasant to take a seat, during the short stroll that precedes the dinner, to meet one's comrades and talk with them of everything but politics. The only favorable place for these necessary accidental meetings is the café; but is the game worth the candle, or, to speak more exactly, the blinding gas-jets? Is it worth while, for the pleasure of exchanging words, to accept criminal absinthe, unnatural bitters, tragic vermouth, concocted in the sombre laboratories of the cafés by frightful parasites? Aurélien Scholl, who, being a fine poet and excellent writer, is naturally a practical man, had a pleasing idea. He wished that the reunions in the cafés might continue at the absinthe hour, but without the absinthe! A very honest man, chosen for that purpose, would pour out for the passers-by, in place of everything else, excellent claret with quinquina, which would have the double advantage of not poisoning them and of giving them a wholesome and comforting drink. But this seductive dream could never be realized. Of course, honest men exist in great numbers, among keepers of cafés as well as in other walks of life; but the individual honest man could not be found who would be willing to pour out quinquina wine in which there was both quinquina and wine. In the Palais Royal there used to be a café which had retained Empire fittings and oil lamps. One found there real wine, real coffee, real milk, and good beefsteaks. Roqueplan, Arsène Houssaye, Michel Lévy, and the handsome Fiorentino used to breakfast there, and they knew how to get the best mushrooms. The proprietor of the café had said that as soon as he could no longer make a living by selling genuine articles, he would not give up his stock in trade to another, but would sell his furniture and shut up shop. He kept his word. He was a hero. BALLADE ON THE MYSTERIOUS HOSTS OF THE FOREST From 'The Caryatids' Still sing the mocking fairies, as of old, Beneath the shade of thorn and holly-tree; The west wind breathes upon them pure and cold, And still wolves dread Diana roving free, In secret woodland with her company. 'Tis thought the peasants' hovels know her rite When now the wolds are bathed in silver light, And first the moonrise breaks the dusky gray; Then down the dells, with blown soft hair and bright, And through the dim wood, Dian thrids her way. With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be, The wild red dwarf, the nixies' enemy: Then, 'mid their mirth and laughter and affright, The sudden goddess enters, tall and white, With one long sigh for summers passed away; The swift feet tear the ivy nets outright, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. She gleans her sylvan trophies; down the wold She hears the sobbing of the stags that flee, Mixed with the music of the hunting rolled, But her delight is all in archery, And naught of ruth and pity wotteth she More than the hounds that follow on the flight; The tall nymph draws a golden bow of might, And thick she rains the gentle shafts that slay; She tosses loose her locks upon the night, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. ENVOI Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite, The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight; Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray There is the mystic home of our delight, And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way. Translation of Andrew Lang. AUX ENFANTS PERDUS I know Cythera long is desolate; I know the winds have stripped the garden green. Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, for we seek a fabled shore, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile; There let us land, there dream for evermore, "It may be we shall touch the happy isle." The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene We watch the bolt of Heaven, and scorn the hate Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen That veils the fairy coast we would explore. Come, though the sea be vexed, and breakers roar, Come, for the breath of this old world is vile, Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; "It may be we shall touch the happy isle." Gray serpents trail in temples desecrate Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, And ruined is the palace of our state; But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen The shrill winds sings the silken cords between. Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar. Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: "It may be we shall touch the happy isle." ENVOI Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs as heretofore. Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour; Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: "It may be we shall touch the happy isle." Translation of Andrew Lang. BALLADE DES PENDUS Where wide the forest bows are spread, Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, Are crowns and garlands of men dead, All golden in the morning gay; Within this ancient garden gray Are clusters such as no man knows, Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: _This is King Louis's orchard close_! These wretched folk wave overhead, With such strange thoughts as none may say; A moment still, then sudden sped, They swing in a ring and waste away. The morning smites them with her ray; They toss with every breeze that blows, They dance where fires of dawning play: _This is King Louis's orchard close_! All hanged and dead, they've summonèd (With Hell to aid, that hears them pray) New legions of an army dread. Now down the blue sky flames the day; The dew dies off; the foul array Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, With wings that flap and beaks that flay: _This is King Louis's orchard close_! ENVOI Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, A tree of bitter clusters grows; The bodies of men dead are they! _This is King Louis's orchard close_! Translation of Andrew Lang. ANNA LÆTITIA BARBAULD (1743-1825) When Lætitia Aikin Barbauld was about thirty years old, her friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, wishing to establish a college for women, asked her to be its principal. In her letter of refusal Mrs. Barbauld said:--"A kind of Academy for ladies, where they are to be taught in a regular manner the various branches of science, appears to me better calculated to form such characters as the _Précieuses_ or _Femmes Savantes_ than good wives or agreeable companions. The very best way for a woman to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father or brother.... The thefts of knowledge in our sex are only connived at while carefully concealed, and if displayed are punished with disgrace." It is odd to find Mrs. Barbauld thus reflecting the old-fashioned view of the capacity and requirements of her own sex, for she herself belonged to that brilliant group--Hannah More, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Joanna Baillie, Mary Russell Mitford--who were the living refutation of her inherited theories. Their influence shows a pedagogic impulse to present morally helpful ideas to the public. [Illustration: ANNA L. BARBAULD] From preceding generations whose lives had been concentrated upon household affairs, these women pioneers had acquired the strictly practical bent of mind which comes out in all their verse, as in all their prose. The child born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, a century and a half ago, became one of the first of these pleasant writers for young and old. She was one of the thousand refutations of the stupid popular idea that precocious children never amount to anything. When only two, she "could read roundly without spelling, and in half a year more could read as well as most women." Her father was master of a boys' school, where her childhood was passed under the rule of a loving but austere mother, who disliked all intercourse with the pupils for her daughter. It was not the fashion for women to be highly educated; but, stimulated perhaps by the scholastic atmosphere, Lætitia implored her father for a classical training, until, against his judgment, he allowed her to study Greek and Latin as well as French and Italian. Though not fond of the housewifely accomplishments insisted upon by Mrs. Aikin, the eager student also cooked and sewed with due obedience. Her dull childhood ended when she was fifteen, for then her father accepted a position as classical tutor in a boys' school at Warrington, Lancashire, to which place the family moved. The new home afforded greater freedom and an interesting circle of friends, among them Currie, William Roscoe, John Taylor, and the famous Dr. Priestley. A very pretty girl, with brilliant blonde coloring and animated dark-blue eyes, she was witty and vivacious, too, under the modest diffidence to which she had been trained. Naturally she attracted much admiration from the schoolboys and even from their elders, but on the whole she seems to have found study and writing more interesting than love affairs. The first suitor, who presented himself when she was about sixteen, was a farmer from her early home at Kibworth. He stated his wishes to her father. "She is in the garden," said Mr. Aikin. "You may ask her yourself." Lætitia was not propitious, but the young man was persistent, and the position grew irksome. So the nimble girl scrambled into a convenient tree, and escaped her rustic wooer by swinging herself down upon the other side of the garden wall. During these years at Warrington she wrote for her own pleasure, and when her brother John returned home after several years' absence, he helped her to arrange and publish a selection of her poems. The little book which appeared in 1773 was highly praised, and ran through four editions within a year. In spite of grace and fluency, most of these verses seem flat and antiquated to the modern reader. Of the spirited first poem 'Corsica,' Dr. Priestley wrote to her:--"I consider that you are as much a general as Tyrtæus was, and your poems (which I am confident are much better than his ever were) may have as great effect as his. They may be the _coup de grace_ to the French troops in that island, and Paoli, who reads English, will cause it to be printed in every history in that renowned island." Miss Aikin's next venture was a small volume in collaboration with her brother, 'Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose by J. and A.L. Aikin.' This too was widely read and admired. Samuel Rogers has related an amusing conversation about the book in its first vogue:--"I am greatly pleased with your 'Miscellaneous Pieces,'" said Charles James Fox to Mrs. Barbauld's brother. Dr. Aikin bowed. "I particularly admire," continued Fox, "your essay 'Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.'" "That," replied Aikin, "is my sister's." "I like much," continued Fox, "your essay on 'Monastic Institutions.'" "That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's." Fox thought it wise to say no more about the book. The essay 'Against Inconsistency in our Expectations' was most highly praised by the critics, and pronounced by Mackintosh "the best short essay in the language." When thirty years old, Lætitia Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, and went to live at Palgrave in Suffolk, where her husband opened a boys' school, soon made popular by her personal charm and influence. Sir William Gell, a classic topographer still remembered; William Taylor, author of a 'Historic Survey of German Poetry '; and Lord Chief Justice Denman, were a few among the many who looked back with gratitude to a childhood under her care. Perhaps her best known work is the 'Early Lessons for Children,' which was written during this period. Coming as it did when, as Hannah More said, there was nothing for children to read between 'Cinderella' and the Spectator, it was largely welcomed, and has been used by generations of English children. The lessons were written for a real little Charles, her adopted son, the child of her brother, Dr. Aikin. For him, too, she wrote her 'Hymns in Prose for Children,' a book equally successful, which has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, and even Latin. After eleven busy years at Palgrave, during which, in spite of her cheerful energy, Mrs. Barbauld had been much harassed by the nervous irritability of her invalid husband, the Barbaulds gave up their school and treated themselves to a year of Continental travel. On their return they settled at Hampstead, where Mr. Barbauld became pastor of a small Unitarian congregation. The nearness to London was a great advantage to Mrs. Barbauld's refreshed activity, and she soon made the new home a pleasant rendezvous for literary men and women. At one of her London dinner parties she met Sir Walter Scott, who declared that her reading of Taylor's translation of Bürger's 'Lenore' had inspired him to write poetry. She met Dr. Johnson too, who, though he railed at her after his fashion, calling her Deborah and Virago Barbauld, did sometimes betray a sincere admiration for her character and accomplishments. Miss Edgeworth and Hannah More were dear friends and regular correspondents. From time to time she published a poem or an essay; not many, for in spite of her brother's continual admonition to write, hers was a somewhat indolent talent. In 1790 she wrote a capable essay upon the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; a year later, a poetical epistle to Mr. Wilberforce on the Slave Trade; in 1792, a defense of Public Worship; and in 1793, a discourse as to a Fast Day upon the Sins of Government. In 1808 her husband's violent death, the result of a long insanity, prostrated her for a time. Then as a diversion from morbid thought she undertook an edition of the best English novels in fifty volumes, for which she wrote an admirable introductory essay. She also made a compilation from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Free-holder, with a preliminary discourse, which she published in 1811. It was called 'The Female Speaker,' and intended for young women. The same year her 'Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,' a patriotic didactic poem, wounded national self-love and drew upon her much unfriendly criticism, which so pained her that she would publish no more. But the stirring lines were widely read, and in them Macaulay found the original of his famous traveler from New Zealand, who meditates on the ruined arches of London Bridge. Her prose style, in its light philosophy, its humorously sympathetic dealing with every-day affairs, has been often compared with Addison's. Her old age was serene and happy, rich in intellectual companionships and in the love and respect of many friends. Somewhere she speaks of "that state of middling life to which I have been accustomed and which I love." She disliked extremes, in emotion as in all things, and took what came with cheerful courage. The poem 'Life,' which the self-satisfied Wordsworth wished that he had written, expresses her serene and philosophic spirit. AGAINST INCONSISTENCY IN OUR EXPECTATIONS As most of the unhappiness in the world arises rather from disappointed desires than from positive evil, it is of the utmost consequence to attain just notions of the laws and order of the universe, that we may not vex ourselves with fruitless wishes, or give way to groundless and unreasonable discontent. The laws of natural philosophy, indeed, are tolerably understood and attended to; and though we may suffer inconveniences, we are seldom disappointed in consequence of them. No man expects to preserve orange-trees in the open air through an English winter; or when he has planted an acorn, to see it become a large oak in a few months. The mind of man naturally yields to necessity; and our wishes soon subside when we see the impossibility of their being gratified. Now, upon an accurate inspection, we shall find in the moral government of the world, and the order of the intellectual system, laws as determinate, fixed, and invariable as any in Newton's 'Principia.' The progress of vegetation is not more certain than the growth of habit; nor is the power of attraction more clearly proved than the force of affection or the influence of example. The man, therefore, who has well studied the operations of nature in mind as well as matter, will acquire a certain moderation and equity in his claims upon Providence. He never will be disappointed either in himself or others. He will act with precision; and expect that effect and that alone, from his efforts, which they are naturally adapted to produce. For want of this, men of merit and integrity often censure the dispositions of Providence for suffering characters they despise to run away with advantages which, they yet know, are purchased by such means as a high and noble spirit could never submit to. If you refuse to pay the price, why expect the purchase? We should consider this world as a great mart of commerce, where fortune exposes to our view various commodities,--riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price. Our time, our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your own judgment: and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase. Such is the force of well-regulated industry, that a steady and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure success. Would you, for instance, be rich: Do you think that single point worth the sacrificing everything else to? You may then be rich. Thousands have become so from the lowest beginnings, by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest article of expense and profit. But you must give up the pleasures of leisure, of a vacant mind, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard if not unjust things; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain, household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right hand or to the left. "But I cannot submit to drudgery like this: I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well: be above it then; only do not repine that you are not rich. Is knowledge the pearl of price? That too may be purchased--by steady application, and long solitary hours of study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be wise. "But" (says the man of letters) "what a hardship is it that many an illiterate fellow who cannot construe the motto of the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and make a figure, while I have little more than the common conveniences of life." _Et tibi magni satis_!--Was it in order to raise a fortune that you consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and retirement? Was it to be rich that you grew pale over the midnight lamp, and distilled the sweetness from the Greek and Roman spring? You have then mistaken your path, and ill employed your industry. "What reward have I then for all my labors?" What reward! A large, comprehensive soul, well purged from vulgar fears and perturbations and prejudices; able to comprehend and interpret the works of man--of God. A rich, flourishing, cultivated mind, pregnant with inexhaustible stores of entertainment and reflection. A perpetual spring of fresh ideas; and the conscious dignity of superior intelligence. Good heaven! and what reward can you ask besides? "But is it not some reproach upon the economy of Providence that such a one, who is a mean, dirty fellow, should have amassed wealth enough to buy half a nation?" Not in the least. He made himself a mean, dirty fellow for that very end. He has paid his health, his conscience, his liberty, for it; and will you envy him his bargain? Will you hang your head and blush in his presence because he outshines you in equipage and show? Lift up your brow with a noble confidence, and say to yourself, I have not these things, it is true; but it is because I have not sought, because I have not desired them; it is because I possess something better. I have chosen my lot. I am content and satisfied. You are a modest man--you love quiet and independence, and have a delicacy and reserve in your temper which renders it impossible for you to elbow your way in the world, and be the herald of your own merits. Be content then with a modest retirement, with the esteem of your intimate friends, with the praises of a blameless heart, and a delicate, ingenuous spirit; but resign the splendid distinctions of the world to those who can better scramble for them. The man whose tender sensibility of conscience and strict regard to the rules of morality makes him scrupulous and fearful of offending, is often heard to complain of the disadvantages he lies under in every path of honor and profit. "Could I but get over some nice points, and conform to the practice and opinion of those about me, I might stand as fair a chance as others for dignities and preferment." And why can you not? What hinders you from discarding this troublesome scrupulosity of yours which stands so grievously in your way? If it be a small thing to enjoy a healthful mind, sound at the very core, that does not shrink from the keenest inspection; inward freedom from remorse and perturbation; unsullied whiteness and simplicity of manners; a genuine integrity, "Pure in the last recesses of the mind;" if you think these advantages an inadequate recompense for what you resign, dismiss your scruples this instant, and be a slave-merchant, a parasite, or--what you please. "If these be motives weak, break off betimes;" and as you have not spirit to assert the dignity of virtue, be wise enough not to forego the emoluments of vice. I much admire the spirit of the ancient philosophers, in that they never attempted, as our moralists often do, to lower the tone of philosophy, and make it consistent with all the indulgences of indolence and sensuality. They never thought of having the bulk of mankind for their disciples; but kept themselves as distinct as possible from a worldly life. They plainly told men what sacrifices were required, and what advantages they were which might be expected. "Si virtus hoc una potest dare, fortis omissis Hoc age deliciis ..." If you would be a philosopher, these are the terms. You must do thus and thus; there is no other way. If not, go and be one of the vulgar. There is no one quality gives so much dignity to a character as consistency of conduct. Even if a man's pursuits be wrong and unjustifiable, yet if they are prosecuted with steadiness and vigor, we cannot withhold our admiration. The most characteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some one important object, and pursue it through life. It was this made Cæsar a great man. His object was ambition: he pursued it steadily; and was always ready to sacrifice to it every interfering passion or inclination. There is a pretty passage in one of Lucian's dialogues, where Jupiter complains to Cupid that though he has had so many intrigues, he was never sincerely beloved. In order to be loved, says Cupid, you must lay aside your aegis and your thunderbolts, and you must curl and perfume your hair, and place a garland on your head, and walk with a soft step, and assume a winning, obsequious deportment. But, replied Jupiter, I am not willing to resign so much of my dignity. Then, returns Cupid, leave off desiring to be loved. He wanted to be Jupiter and Adonis at the same time. It must be confessed that men of genius are of all others most inclined to make these unreasonable claims. As their relish for enjoyment is strong, their views large and comprehensive, and they feel themselves lifted above the common bulk of mankind, they are apt to slight that natural reward of praise and admiration which is ever largely paid to distinguished abilities; and to expect to be called forth to public notice and favor: without considering that their talents are commonly very unfit for active life; that their eccentricity and turn for speculation disqualifies them for the business of the world, which is best carried on by men of moderate genius; and that society is not obliged to reward any one who is not useful to it. The poets have been a very unreasonable race, and have often complained loudly of the neglect of genius and the ingratitude of the age. The tender and pensive Cowley, and the elegant Shenstone, had their minds tinctured by this discontent; and even the sublime melancholy of Young was too much owing to the stings of disappointed ambition. The moderation we have been endeavoring to inculcate will likewise prevent much mortification and disgust in our commerce with mankind. As we ought not to wish in ourselves, so neither should we expect in our friends, contrary qualifications. Young and sanguine, when we enter the world, and feel our affections drawn forth by any particular excellence in a character, we immediately give it credit for all others; and are beyond measure disgusted when we come to discover, as we soon must discover, the defects in the other side of the balance. But nature is much more frugal than to heap together all manner of shining qualities in one glaring mass. Like a judicious painter, she endeavors to preserve a certain unity of style and coloring in her pieces. Models of absolute perfection are only to be met with in romance; where exquisite beauty, and brilliant wit, and profound judgment, and immaculate virtue, are all blended together to adorn some favorite character. As an anatomist knows that the racer cannot have the strength and muscles of the draught-horse; and that winged men, griffins, and mermaids must be mere creatures of the imagination: so the philosopher is sensible that there are combinations of moral qualities which never can take place but in idea. There is a different air and complexion in characters as well as in faces, though perhaps each equally beautiful; and the excellences of one cannot be transferred to the other. Thus if one man possesses a stoical apathy of soul, acts independent of the opinion of the world, and fulfills every duty with mathematical exactness, you must not expect that man to be greatly influenced by the weakness of pity, or the partialities of friendship; you must not be offended that he does not fly to meet you after a short absence, or require from him the convivial spirit and honest effusions of a warm, open, susceptible heart. If another is remarkable for a lively, active zeal, inflexible integrity, a strong indignation against vice, and freedom in reproving it, he will probably have some little bluntness in his address not altogether suitable to polished life; he will want the winning arts of conversation; he will disgust by a kind of haughtiness and negligence in his manner, and often hurt the delicacy of his acquaintance with harsh and disagreeable truths. We usually say--That man is a genius, but he has some whims and oddities--Such a one has a very general knowledge, but he is superficial, etc. Now in all such cases we should speak more rationally, did we substitute "therefore" for "but": "He is a genius, therefore he is whimsical" and the like. It is the fault of the present age, owing to the freer commerce that different ranks and professions now enjoy with each other, that characters are not marked with sufficient strength; the several classes run too much into one another. We have fewer pedants, it is true, but we have fewer striking originals. Every one is expected to have such a tincture of general knowledge as is incompatible with going deep into any science; and such a conformity to fashionable manners as checks the free workings of the ruling passion, and gives an insipid sameness to the face of society, under the idea of polish and regularity. There is a cast of manners peculiar and becoming to each age, sex, and profession; one, therefore, should not throw out illiberal and commonplace censures against another. Each is perfect in its kind: a woman as a woman; a tradesman as a tradesman. We are often hurt by the brutality and sluggish conceptions of the vulgar; not considering that some there must be to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that cultivated genius, or even any great refinement and delicacy in their moral feelings, would be a real misfortune to them. Let us then study the philosophy of the human mind. The man who is master of this science will know what to expect from every one. From this man, wise advice; from that, cordial sympathy; from another, casual entertainment. The passions and inclinations of others are his tools, which he can use with as much precision as he would the mechanical powers; and he can as readily make allowance for the workings of vanity, or the bias of self-interest in his friends, as for the power of friction, or the irregularities of the needle. A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD BETWEEN HELEN AND MADAME MAINTENON _Helen_--Whence comes it, my dear Madame Maintenon, that beauty, which in the age I lived in produced such extraordinary effects, has now lost almost all its power? _Maintenon_--I should wish first to be convinced of the fact, before I offer to give you a reason for it. _Helen_--That will be very easy; for there is no occasion to go any further than our own histories and experience to prove what I advance. You were beautiful, accomplished, and fortunate; endowed with every talent and every grace to bend the heart of man and mold it to your wish; and your schemes were successful; for you raised yourself from obscurity and dependence to be the wife of a great monarch.--But what is this to the influence my beauty had over sovereigns and nations! I occasioned a long ten-years' war between the most celebrated heroes of antiquity; contending kingdoms disputed the honor of placing me on their respective thrones; my story is recorded by the father of verse; and my charms make a figure even in the annals of mankind. You were, it is true, the wife of Louis XIV., and respected in his court, but you occasioned no wars; you are not spoken of in the history of France, though you furnished materials for the memoirs of a court. Are the love and admiration that were paid you merely as an amiable woman to be compared with the enthusiasm I inspired, and the boundless empire I obtained over all that was celebrated, great, or powerful in the age I lived in? _Maintenon_--All this, my dear Helen, has a splendid appearance, and sounds well in a heroic poem; but you greatly deceive yourself if you impute it all to your personal merit. Do you imagine that half the chiefs concerned in the war of Troy were at all influenced by your beauty, or troubled their heads what became of you, provided they came off with honor? Believe me, love had very little to do in the affair: Menelaus sought to revenge the affront he had received; Agamemnon was flattered with the supreme command; some came to share the glory, others the plunder; some because they had bad wives at home, some in hopes of getting Trojan mistresses abroad; and Homer thought the story extremely proper for the subject of the best poem in the world. Thus you became famous; your elopement was made a national quarrel; the animosities of both nations were kindled by frequent battles; and the object was not the restoring of Helen to Menelaus, but the destruction of Troy by the Greeks.--My triumphs, on the other hand, were all owing to myself, and to the influence of personal merit and charms over the heart of man. My birth was obscure; my fortunes low; I had past the bloom of youth, and was advancing to that period at which the generality of our sex lose all importance with the other; I had to do with a man of gallantry and intrigue, a monarch who had been long familiarized with beauty, and accustomed to every refinement of pleasure which the most splendid court in Europe could afford: Love and Beauty seemed to have exhausted all their powers of pleasing for him in vain. Yet this man I captivated, I fixed; and far from being content, as other beauties had been, with the honor of possessing his heart, I brought him to make me his wife, and gained an honorable title to his tenderest affection.--The infatuation of Paris reflected little honor upon you. A thoughtless youth, gay, tender, and impressible, struck with your beauty, in violation of all the most sacred laws of hospitality carries you off, and obstinately refuses to restore you to your husband. You seduced Paris from his duty, I recovered Louis from vice; you were the mistress of the Trojan prince, I was the companion of the French monarch. _Helen_--I grant you were the wife of Louis, but not the Queen of France. Your great object was ambition, and in that you met with a partial success;--my ruling star was love, and I gave up everything for it. But tell me, did not I show my influence over Menelaus in his taking me again after the destruction of Troy? _Maintenon_--That circumstance alone is sufficient to show that he did not love you with any delicacy. He took you as a possession that was restored to him, as a booty that he had recovered; and he had not sentiment enough to care whether he had your heart or not. The heroes of your age were capable of admiring beauty, and often fought for the possession of it; but they had not refinement enough to be capable of any pure, sentimental attachment or delicate passion. Was that period the triumph of love and gallantry, when a fine woman and a tripod were placed together for prizes at a wrestling-bout, and the tripod esteemed the most valuable reward of the two? No; it is our Clélia, our Cassandra and Princess of Cleves, that have polished mankind and taught them how to love. _Helen_--Rather say you have lost sight of nature and passion, between bombast on one hand and conceit on the other. Shall one of the cold temperament of France teach a Grecian how to love? Greece, the parent of fair forms and soft desires, the nurse of poetry, whose soft climate and tempered skies disposed to every gentler feeling, and tuned the heart to harmony and love!--was Greece a land of barbarians? But recollect, if you can, an incident which showed the power of beauty in stronger colors--that when the grave old counselors of Priam on my appearance were struck with fond admiration, and could not bring themselves to blame the cause of a war that had almost ruined their country;--you see I charmed the old as well as seduced the young. _Maintenon_--But I, after I was grown old, charmed the young; I was idolized in a capital where taste, luxury, and magnificence were at the height; I was celebrated by the greatest wits of my time, and my letters have been carefully handed down to posterity. _Helen_--Tell me now sincerely, were you happy in your elevated fortune? _Maintenon_--- Alas! Heaven knows I was far otherwise: a thousand times did I wish for my dear Scarron again. He was a very ugly fellow, it is true, and had but little money: but the most easy, entertaining companion in the world: we danced, laughed, and sung; I spoke without fear or anxiety, and was sure to please. With Louis all was gloom, constraint, and a painful solicitude to please--which seldom produces its effect; the king's temper had been soured in the latter part of life by frequent disappointments; and I was forced continually to endeavor to procure him that cheerfulness which I had not myself. Louis was accustomed to the most delicate flatteries; and though I had a good share of wit, my faculties were continually on the stretch to entertain him,--a state of mind little consistent with happiness or ease; I was afraid to advance my friends or punish my enemies. My pupils at St. Cyr were not more secluded from the world in a cloister than I was in the bosom of the court; a secret disgust and weariness consumed me. I had no relief but in my work and books of devotion; with these alone I had a gleam of happiness. _Helen_--Alas! one need not have married a great monarch for that. _Maintenon_--But deign to inform me, Helen, if you were really as beautiful as fame reports? for to say truth, I cannot in your shade see the beauty which for nine long years had set the world in arms. _Helen_--Honestly, no: I was rather low, and something sunburnt; but I had the good fortune to please; that was all. I was greatly obliged to Homer. _Maintenon_--And did you live tolerably with Menelaus after all your adventures? _Helen_--As well as possible. Menelaus was a good-natured domestic man, and was glad to sit down and end his days in quiet. I persuaded him that Venus and the Fates were the cause of all my irregularities, which he complaisantly believed. Besides, I was not sorry to return home: for to tell you a secret, Paris had been unfaithful to me long before his death, and was fond of a little Trojan brunette whose office it was to hold up my train; but it was thought dishonorable to give me up. I began to think love a very foolish thing: I became a great housekeeper, worked the battles of Troy in tapestry, and spun with my maids by the side of Menelaus, who was so satisfied with my conduct, and behaved, good man, with so much fondness, that I verily think this was the happiest period of my life. _Maintenon_--Nothing more likely; but the most obscure wife in Greece could rival you there.--Adieu! you have convinced me how little fame and greatness conduce to happiness. LIFE Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when or how or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet. But this I know, when thou art fled, Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, No clod so valueless shall be, As all that then remains of me. O whither, whither dost thou fly, Where bend unseen thy trackless course, And in this strange divorce, Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I? To the vast ocean of empyreal flame, From whence thy essence came, Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed From matter's base encumbering weed? Or dost thou, hid from sight, Wait, like some spell-bound knight, Through blank oblivion's years th' appointed hour, To break thy trance and reassume thy power? Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? O say what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee? Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime Bid me good-morning. PRAISE TO GOD Praise to God, immortal praise, For the love that crowns our days-- Bounteous source of every joy, Let Thy praise our tongues employ! For the blessings of the field, For the stores the gardens yield, For the vine's exalted juice, For the generous olive's use; Flocks that whiten all the plain, Yellow sheaves of ripened grain, Clouds that drop their fattening dews, Suns that temperate warmth diffuse-- All that Spring, with bounteous hand, Scatters o'er the smiling land; All that liberal Autumn pours From her rich o'erflowing stores: These to Thee, my God, we owe-- Source whence all our blessings flow! And for these my soul shall raise Grateful vows and solemn praise. Yet should rising whirlwinds tear From its stem the ripening ear-- Should the fig-tree's blasted shoot Drop her green untimely fruit-- Should the vine put forth no more, Nor the olive yield her store-- Though the sickening flocks should fall, And the herds desert the stall-- Should Thine altered hand restrain The early and the latter rain, Blast each opening bud of joy, And the rising year destroy: Yet to Thee my soul should raise Grateful vows and solemn praise, And, when every blessing's flown, Love Thee--for Thyself alone. ALEXANDER BARCLAY (1475-1552) Barclay's reputation rests upon his translation of the famous 'Ship of Fools' and his original 'Eclogues.' A controversy as to the land of his birth--an event which happened about the year 1475--has lasted from his century to our own. The decision in favor of Scotland rests upon the testimony of two witnesses: first, Dr. William Bullim, a younger contemporary of Barclay, who mentions him in 'A Dialogue Both Pleasaunt and Pietifull Wherein is a Godlie Regement Against the Fever Pestilence with a Consolation and Comforte Against Death,' which was published in 1564; and secondly, Barclay himself. Bullim groups the Muses at the foot of Parnassus, and gathers about them Greek and Latin poets, and such Englishmen as Chaucer, Gower, Skelton, and Barclay, the latter "with an hoopyng russet long coate, with a pretie hood in his necke, and five knottes upon his girdle, after Francis's tricks. He was borne beyond the cold river of Twede. He lodged upon a sweetebed of chamomill under the sinamone-tree: about him many shepherdes and shepe, with pleasaunte pipes; greatly abhorring the life of Courtiers, Citizens, Usurers, and Banckruptes, etc., whose daies are miserable. And the estate of shepherdes and countrie people he accompted moste happie and sure." Deprived of its poetic fancy, this passage means that Barclay was a monk of the order of St. Francis, that he was born north of the Tweed, that his verse was infused with such bitterness and tonic qualities as camomile possesses, and that he advocated the cause of the country people in his independent and admirable 'Eclogues,' another title for the first three of which is 'Miseryes of Courtiers and Courtes of all Princes in General.' Barclay was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and upon his return to England after several years of residence abroad, he was made one of the priests of Saint Mary Ottery, an institution of devout practice and learning in Devonshire. Here in 1508 was finished 'The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde translated out of Laten, Frenche, and Doche into Englysshe tonge by Alexander Barclay, Preste, and at that time chaplen in the sayd College.' After his work was completed Barclay went to London, where his poem was "imprentyd ... in Fleet Street at the signe of Saynt George by Rycharde Pyreson to hys Coste and charge: ended the yere of our Saviour MDIX. the XIII. day of December." That he became a Benedictine and lived at the monastery of the order at Ely is evident from his 'Eclogues.' Here he translated at the instance of Sir Giles Arlington, Knight, 'The Myrrour of Good Maners,' from a Latin elegiac poem which Dominic Mancini published in the year 1516. "It was about this period of his life," says Mr. Jamieson in his admirable edition of the 'Ship of Fools,' "probably the period of the full bloom of his popularity, that the quiet life of the poet and priest was interrupted by the recognition of his eminence in the highest quarters, and by a request for his aid in maintaining the honor of the country on an occasion to which the eyes of all Europe were then directed. In a letter to Wolsey dated 10th April, 1520, Sir Nicholas Vaux--busied with the preparation for that meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I called the Field of the Cloth of Gold--begs the Cardinal to send them ... Maistre Barkleye, the Black Monke and Poete, to devise histoires and convenient raisons to florisshe the buildings and banquet house withal." He became a Franciscan, the habit of which order Bullim refers to; and "sure 'tis," says Wood, "that living to see his monastery dissolv'd, in 1539, at the general dissolution by act of Henry VIII, he became vicar of Much Badew in Essex, and in 1546, the same year, of the Church of St. Matthew the Apostle at Wokey, in Somersetshire, and finally in 1552, the year in which he died, of that of All Saints, Lombard Street, London. In his younger days he was esteemed a good poet and orator, but when years came on, he spent his time mostly in pious matters, and in reading the histories of Saints." 'The Ship of Fools' is the most important work associated with Barclay's name. It was a translation of Sebastian Brandt's 'Stultifera Navis,' a book which had attracted universal attention on the Continent when it appeared in 1494. In his preface, Barclay admits that "it is not translated word by word according to the verses of my actor. For I have but only drawn into our mother tongue in rude language the sentences of the verses as near as the paucity of my wit will suffer me, sometime adding, sometime detracting and taking away such things as seemeth me necessary." The classes and conditions of society that Barclay knew were as deserving of satire as those of Germany. He tells us that his work was undertaken "to cleanse the vanity and madness of foolish people, of whom over great number is in the Realm of England." The diction of Barclay's version is exceptionally fine. Jamieson calls it "a rich and unique exhibition of early art," and says:--"Page after page, even in the antique spelling of Pynson's edition, may be read by the ordinary reader of to-day without reference to a dictionary; and when reference is required, it will be found in nine cases out of ten that the archaism is Saxon, not Latin. This is all the more remarkable that it occurs in the case of a priest translating mainly from the Latin and French, and can only be explained with reference to his standpoint as a social reformer of the broadest type, and to his evident intention that his book should be an appeal to all classes, but especially to the mass of people for amendment of their follies." As the original work belonged to the German satirist, the extract from the 'Ship of Fools' is placed under the essay entitled 'Sebastian Brandt.' His 'Eclogues' show Barclay at his best. They portray the manners and customs of the period, and are full of local proverbs and wise sayings. According to Warton, Barclay's are the first 'Eclogues' that appeared in the English language. "They are like Petrarch's," he says, "and Mantuans of the moral and satirical kind; and contain but few touches of moral description and bucolic imagery." Two shepherds meet to talk about the pleasures and crosses of rustic life and life at court. The hoary locks of the one show that he is old. His suit of Kendal green is threadbare, his rough boots are patched, and the torn side of his coat reveals a bottle never full and never empty. His wallet contains bread and cheese; he has a crook, and an oaten pipe. His name is Cornix, and he boasts that he has had worldly experience. The other shepherd, Coridon, having seen nothing, complains of country life. He grumbles at the summer's heat and the winter's cold; at beds on the flinty ground, and the dangers of sleeping where the wolves may creep in to devour the sheep; of his stiff rough hands, and his parched, wrinkled, and weather-beaten skin. He asks whether all men are so unhappy. Cornix, refreshing himself at intervals with his bottle and crusts, shows him the small amount of liberty at court, discourses upon the folly of ambition, lays bare the rapine, avarice, and covetousness of the worldly-minded, and demonstrates that the court is "painted fair without, but within it is ugly and vile." He then gives the picture of a courtier's life, which is cited below. He tells how the minstrels and singers, philosophers, poets, and orators are but the slaves of patronizing princes; how beautiful women deceive; describes to him, who has known nothing but a diet of bread and cheese, the delights of the table; dilates on the cups of silver and gold, and the crystal glass shining with red and yellow wine; the sewers bearing in roasted crane, gorgeous peacocks, and savory joints of beef and mutton; the carver wielding his dexterous knife; the puddings, the pasties, the fish fried in sweet oils and garnished with herbs; the costumes of the men and women in cloth of gold and silver and gay damask; the din of music, voices, laughter, and jests; and then paints a picture of the lords and ladies who plunge their knives into the meats and their hands into platters, spilling wine and gravy upon their equally gluttonous neighbors. He finishes by saying:-- "Shepherds have not so wretched lives as they: Though they live poorely on cruddes, chese, and whey, On apples, plummes, and drinke cleree water deepe, As it were lordes reigning among their sheepe. The wretched lazar with clinking of his bell, Hath life which doth the courtiers excell; The caytif begger hath meate and libertie, When courtiers hunger in harde captivitie. The poore man beggeth nothing hurting his name, As touching courters they dare not beg for shame. And an olde proverb is sayde by men moste sage, That oft yonge courters be beggars in their age." The third 'Eclogue' begins with Coridon relating a dream that he went to court and saw the scullions standing "about me thicke With knives ready for to flay me quicke." This is a text for Cornix, who continues his tirade, and convinces Coridon of the misery of the court and his happier life, ending as follows:-- "Than let all shepheardes, from hence to Salisbury With easie riches, live well, laugh and be mery, Pipe under shadowes, small riches hath most rest, In greatest seas moste sorest is tempest, The court is nought els but a tempesteous sea; Avoyde the rockes. He ruled after me." The fourth 'Eclogue' is a dialogue on the rich man's treatment of poets, by two shepherds, Codrus and Menalcas, musing in "shadowe on the green," while their snowy flocks graze on the sweet meadow. This contains a fine allegorical description of 'Labour.' The fifth 'Eclogue' is the 'Cytezen and the Uplondyshman.' Here the scene changes, and two shepherds, Faustus and Amyntas, discourse in a cottage while the snows of January whirl without. Amyntas has learned in London "to go so manerly." Not a wrinkle may be found in his clothes, not a hair on his cloak, and he wears a brooch of tin high on his bonnet. He has been hostler, costermonger, and taverner, and sings the delights of the city. Faustus, the rustic, is contented with his lot. The 'Cytezen and the Uplondyshman' was printed from the original edition of Wynkyn de Worde, with a preface by F. W. Fairholt, Percy Society (Vol. xxii.). Other works ascribed to Barclay are:--'The Figure of Our Holy Mother Church, Oppressed by the French King'; 'The Lyfe of the Glorious Martyr Saynt George,' translated (from Mantuan) by Alexander Barclay; 'The Lyfe of the Blessed Martyr, Saynte Thomas'; 'Contra Skeltonum,' in which the quarrel he had with his contemporary poet, John Skelton, was doubtless continued. Estimates of Barclay may be found in 'The Ship of Fools,' edited by T. H. Jamieson (1874); 'Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry,' from the thirteenth century to the union of the crowns (1802); 'The History of English Poetry,' by Thomas Warton (1824); 'The History of Scottish Poetry,' by David Irving (1861); and 'Chips from a German Workshop,' by F. Max Müller (1870). THE COURTIER'S LIFE Second Eclogue CORNIX Some men deliteth beholding men to fight, Or goodly knights in pleasaunt apparayle, Or sturdie soldiers in bright harnes and male, Or an army arrayde ready to the warre, Or to see them fight, so that he stand afarre. Some glad is to see those ladies beauteous Goodly appoynted in clothing sumpteous: A number of people appoynted in like wise In costly clothing after the newest gise, Sportes, disgising, fayre coursers mount and praunce, Or goodly ladies and knightes sing and daunce, To see fayre houses and curious picture, Or pleasaunt hanging or sumpteous vesture Of silke, of purpure or golde moste oriente, And other clothing divers and excellent, Hye curious buildinges or palaces royall, Or chapels, temples fayre and substantial, Images graven or vaultes curious, Gardeyns and medowes, or place delicious, Forestes and parkes well furnished with dere, Cold pleasaunt streams or welles fayre and clere, Curious cundites or shadowie mountaynes, Swete pleasaunt valleys, laundes or playnes, Houndes, and such other things manyfolde Some men take pleasour and solace to beholde. But all these pleasoures be much more jocounde, To private persons which not to court be bounde, Than to such other whiche of necessitie Are bounde to the court as in captivitie; For they which be bounde to princes without fayle When they must nedes be present in battayle, When shall they not be at large to see the sight, But as souldiours in the middest of the fight, To runne here and there sometime his foe to smite, And oftetimes wounded, herein is small delite, And more muste he think his body to defende, Than for any pleasour about him to intende, And oft is he faynt and beaten to the grounde, I trowe in suche sight small pleasour may be founde. As for fayre ladies, clothed in silke and golde, In court at thy pleasour thou canst not beholde. At thy princes pleasour thou shalt them only see, Then suche shalt thou see which little set by thee, Whose shape and beautie may so inflame thine heart, That thought and languor may cause thee for to smart. For a small sparcle may kindle love certayne, But skantly Severne may quench it clene againe; And beautie blindeth and causeth man to set His hearte on the thing which he shall never get. To see men clothed in silkes pleasauntly It is small pleasour, and ofte causeth envy. While thy lean jade halteth by thy side, To see another upon a, courser ride, Though he be neyther gentleman nor knight, Nothing is thy fortune, thy hart cannot be light. As touching sportes and games of pleasaunce. To sing, to revell, and other daliaunce: Who that will truely upon his lord attende, Unto suche sportes he seldome may entende. Palaces, pictures, and temples sumptuous, And other buildings both gay and curious, These may marchauntes more at their pleasour see, Men suche as in court be bounde alway to bee. Sith kinges for moste part passe not their regions, Thou seest nowe cities of foreyn nations. Suche outwarde pleasoures may the people see, So may not courtiers for lacke of libertie. As for these pleasours of thinges vanable Whiche in the fieldes appeareth delectable, But seldome season mayest thou obtayne respite. The same to beholde with pleasour and delite, Sometime the courtier remayneth halfe the yere Close within walls muche like a prisonere, To make escapes some seldome times are wont, Save when the powers have pleasour for to hunt, Or its otherwise themselfe to recreate, And then this pleasour shall they not love but hate; For then shall they foorth most chiefely to their payne, When they in mindes would at home remayne. Other in the frost, hayle, or els snowe, Or when some tempest or mightie wind doth blowe, Or else in great heat and fervour excessife, But close in houses the moste parte waste their life, Of colour faded, and choked were with duste: This is of courtiers the joy and all the lust. CORIDON What! yet may they sing and with fayre ladies daunce, Both commen and laugh; herein is some pleasaunce. CORNIX Nay, nay, Coridon, that pleasour is but small, Some to contente what man will pleasour call, For some in the daunce his pincheth by the hande, Which gladly would see him stretched in a bande. Some galand seketh his favour to purchase Which playne abhorreth for to beholde his face. And still in dauncing moste parte inclineth she To one muche viler and more abject then he. No day over passeth but that in court men finde A thousande thinges to vexe and greve their minde; Alway thy foes are present in thy sight, And often so great is their degree and might That nedes must thou kisse the hand which did thee harm, Though thou would see it cut gladly from the arme. And briefly to speake, if thou to courte resorte, If thou see one thing of pleasour or comfort, Thou shalt see many, before or thou depart, To thy displeasour and pensiveness of heart: So findeth thy sight there more of bitternes And of displeasour, than pleasour and gladnes. RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM (1788-1845) The author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends' belonged to a well-defined and delightful class of men, chiefly found in modern England, and indeed mostly bred and made possible by the conditions of English society and the Anglican Church. It is that of clergymen who in the public eye are chiefly wits and diners-out, jokers and literary humorists, yet are conscientious and devoted ministers of their religion and curators of their religious charges, honoring their profession and humanity by true and useful lives and lovable characters. They are men of the sort loathed by Lewis Carroll's heroine in the 'Two Voices,' "a kind of folk Who have no horror of a joke," and indeed love it dearly, but are as firm in principle and unostentatiously dutiful in conduct as if they were leaden Puritans or narrow devotees. [Illustration: RICHARD H. BARHAM] By far the best remembered of this class, for themselves or their work, are Sydney Smith and Richard Harris Barham; but their relative repute is one of the oddest paradoxes in literary history. Roughly speaking, the one is remembered and unread, the other read and unremembered. Sydney Smith's name is almost as familiar to the masses as Scott's, and few could tell a line that he wrote; Barham's writing is almost as familiar as Scott's, and few would recognize his name. Yet he is in the foremost rank of humorists; his place is wholly unique, and is likely to remain so. It will be an age before a similar combination of tastes and abilities is found once more. Macaulay said truly of Sir Walter Scott that he "combined the minute learning of an antiquary with the fire of a great poet." Barham combined a like learning in different fields, and joined to a different outlook and temper of mind, with the quick perceptions of a great wit, the brimming zest and high spirits of a great joker, the genial nature and lightness of a born man of the world, and the gifts of a wonderful improvisatore in verse. Withal, he had just enough of serious purpose to give much of his work a certain measure of cohesive unity, and thus impress it on the mind as no collection of random skits could do. That purpose is the feathering which steadies the arrows and sends them home. It is pleasant to know that one who has given so good a time to others had a very good time himself; that we are not, as so often happens, relishing a farce that stood for tragedy with the maker, and substituting our laughter for his tears. Barham had the cruel sorrows of personal bereavement so few escape; but in material things his career was wholly among pleasant ways. He was well born and with means, well educated, well nurtured. He was free from the sordid squabbles or anxious watching and privation which fall to the lot of so many of the best. He was happy in his marriage and its attendant home and family, and most fortunate in his friendships and the superb society he enjoyed. His birth and position as a gentleman of good landed family, combined with his profession, opened all doors to him. But it was the qualities personal to himself, after all, which made these things available for enjoyment. His desires were moderate; he counted success what more eager and covetous natures might have esteemed comparative failure. His really strong intellect and wide knowledge and cultivation enabled him to meet the foremost men of letters on equal terms. His kind heart, generous nature, exuberant fun, and entertaining conversation endeared him to every one and made his company sought by every one; they saved much trouble from coming upon him and lightened what did come. And no blight could have withered that perennial fountain of jollity, drollery, and light-heartedness. But these were only the ornaments of a stanchly loyal and honorable nature, and a lovable and unselfish soul. One of his friends writes of him thus:-- "The profits of agitating pettifoggers would have materially lessened in a district where he acted as a magistrate; and duels would have been nipped in the bud at his regimental mess. It is not always an easy task to do as you would be done by; but to think as you would be thought of and thought for, and to feel as you would be felt for, is perhaps still more difficult, as superior powers of tact and intellect are here required in order to second good intentions. These faculties, backed by an uncompromising love of truth and fair dealing, indefatigable good nature, and a nice sense of what was due to every one in the several relations of life, both gentle and simple, rendered our late friend invaluable, either as an adviser or a peacemaker, in matters of delicate and difficult handling." Barham was born in Canterbury, England, December 6th, 1788, and died in London, June 17th, 1845. His ancestry was superior, the family having derived its name from possessions in Kent in Norman days. He lost his father--a genial _bon vivant_ of literary tastes who seems like a reduced copy of his son--when but five years old; and became heir to a fair estate, including Tappington Hall, the picturesque old gabled mansion so often imaginatively misdescribed in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' but really having the famous blood-stained stairway. He had an expensive private education, which was nearly ended with his life at the age of fourteen by a carriage accident which shattered and mangled his right arm, crippling it permanently. As so often happens, the disaster was really a piece of good fortune: it turned him to or confirmed him in quiet antiquarian scholarship, and established connections which ultimately led to the 'Legends'; he may owe immortality to it. After passing through St. Paul's (London) and Brasenose (Oxford), he studied law, but finally entered the church. After a couple of small curacies in Kent, he was made rector of Snargate and curate of Warehorn, near Romney Marsh; all four in a district where smuggling was a chief industry, and the Marsh in especial a noted haunt of desperadoes (for smugglers then took their lives in their hands), of which the 'Legends' are rich in reminiscences. In 1819, during this incumbency, he wrote a novel, 'Baldwin,' which was a failure; and part of another, 'My Cousin Nicholas,' which, finished fifteen years later, had fair success as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine. An opportunity offering in 1821, he stood for a minor canonry in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and obtained it; his income was less than before, but he had entered the metropolitan field, which brought him rich enjoyment and permanent fame. He paid a terrible price for them: his unhealthy London house cost him the lives of three of his children. To make up for his shortened means he became editor of the London Chronicle and a contributor to various other periodicals, including the notorious weekly John Bull, sometime edited by Theodore Hook. In 1824 he became a priest in the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace, and soon after gained a couple of excellent livings in Essex, which put him at ease financially. He was inflexible in principle, a firm Tory, though without rancor. He was very High Church, but had no sympathy with the Oxford movement or Catholicism. He preached careful and sober sermons, without oratorical display and with rigid avoidance of levity. He would not make the church a field either for fireworks or jokes, or even for displays of scholarship or intellectual gymnastics. In his opinion, religious establishments were kept up to advance religion and morals. And both he and his wife wrought zealously in the humble but exacting field of parochial good works. He was, however, fast becoming one of the chief ornaments of that brilliant group of London wits whose repute still vibrates from the early part of the century. Many of them--actors, authors, artists, musicians, and others met at the Garrick Club, and Barham joined it. The names of Sydney Smith and Theodore Hook are enough to show what it was; but there were others equally delightful,--not the least so, or least useful, a few who could not see a joke at all, and whose simplicity and good nature made them butts for the hoaxes and solemn chaff of the rest. Barbara's diary, quoted in his son's (Life,) gives an exquisite instance. In 1834 his old schoolmaster Bentley established Bentley's Miscellany; and Barham was asked for contributions. The first he sent was the amusing but quite "conceivable" (Spectre of Tappington); but there soon began the immortal series of versified local stories, legendary church miracles, antiquarian curios, witty summaries of popular plays, skits on London life, and so on, under the pseudonym of 'Thomas Ingoldsby,' which sprang instantly into wide popularity, and have never fallen from public favor since--nor can they till appreciation of humor is dead in the world. They were collected and illustrated by Leech, Cruikshank, and others, who were inspired by them to some of their best designs: perhaps the most perfect realization in art of the Devil in his moments of jocose triumph is Leech's figure in 'The House-Warming.' A later series appeared in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine in 1843. He wrote some excellent pieces (of their kind) in prose, besides the one already mentioned: the weird and well-constructed 'Leech of Folkestone' and the 'Passage in the Life of Henry Harris,' both half-serious tales of mediaeval magic; the thoroughly Ingoldsbian 'Legend of Sheppey,' with its irreverent farce, high animal spirits, and antiquarianism; the equally characteristic 'Lady Rohesia,' which would be vulgar but for his sly wit and drollery. But none of these are as familiar as the versified 'Legends,' nor have they the astonishing variety of entertainment found in the latter. The 'Ingoldsby Legends' have been called an English naturalization of the French metrical _contes;_ but Barham owes nothing to his French models save the suggestion of method and form. Not only is his matter all his own, but he has _Anglified_ the whole being of the metrical form itself. His facility of versification, the way in which the whole language seems to be liquid in his hands and ready to pour into any channel of verse, was one of the marvelous things of literature. It did not need the free random movement of the majority of the tales, where the lines may be anything from one foot to six, from spondaic to dactylic: in some of them he tied himself down to the most rigid and inflexible metrical forms, and moved as lightly and freely in those fetters as if they were non-existent. As to the astonishing rhymes which meet us at every step, they form in themselves a poignant kind of wit; often double and even treble, one word rhyming with an entire phrase or one phrase with another,--not only of the oddest kind, but as nicely adapted to the necessities of expression and meaning as if intended or invented for that purpose alone,--they produce on us the effect of the richest humor. One of his most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where the Devil has captured the heir of the house, "Whom the nurse had forgot and left there in his chair, Alternately sucking his thumb and his pear," the moral is drawn, among others,-- "Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums, And pears in their season--and sucking their thumbs." And part of the moral to the 'Lay of St. Medard' is-- "Don't give people nicknames! don't, even in fun, Call any one 'snuff-colored son of a gun'!" And they generally wind up with some slyly shrewd piece of worldly wisdom and wit. Thus, the closing moral to 'The Blasphemer's Warning' is:-- "To married men this--For the rest of your lives, Think how your misconduct may act on your wives! Don't swear then before them, lest haply they faint, Or--what sometimes occurs--run away with a Saint!" Often they are broader yet, and intended for the club rather than the family. Indeed, the tales as a whole are club tales, with an audience of club-men always in mind; not, be it remembered, bestialities like their French counterparts, or the later English and American improvements on the French, not even objectionable for general reading, but full of exclusively masculine joking, allusions, and winks, unintelligible to the other sex, and not welcome if they were intelligible. He has plenty of melody, but it is hardly recognized because of the doggerel meaning, which swamps the music in the farce. And this applies to more important things than the melody. The average reader floats on the surface of this rapid and foamy stream, covered with sticks and straws and flowers and bonbons, and never realizes its depth and volume. This light frothy verse is only the vehicle of a solid and laborious antiquarian scholarship, of an immense knowledge of the world and society, books and men. He modestly disclaimed having any imagination, and said he must always have facts to work upon. This was true; but the same may be said of some great poets, who have lacked invention except around a skeleton ready furnished. What was true of Keats and Fitzgerald cannot nullify the merit of Barham. His fancy erected a huge and consistent superstructure on a very slender foundation. The same materials lay ready to the hands of thousands of others, who, however, saw only stupid monkish fables or dull country superstition. His own explanation of his handling of the church legends tickles a critic's sense of humor almost as much as the verses themselves. It is true that while differing utterly in his tone of mind, and his attitude toward the mediaeval stories, from that of the mediaeval artists and sculptors,--whose gargoyles and other grotesques were carved without a thought of travesty on anything religious,--he is at one with them in combining extreme irreverence of form with a total lack of irreverence of spirit toward the real spiritual mysteries of religion. He burlesques saints and devils alike, mocks the swarm of miracles of the mediaeval Church, makes salient all the ludicrous aspects of mediaeval religious faith in its devout credulity and barbarous gropings; yet he never sneers at holiness or real aspiration, and through all the riot of fun in his masques, one feels the sincere Christian and the warm-hearted man. But he was evidently troubled by the feeling that a clergyman ought not to ridicule any form in which religious feeling had ever clothed itself; and he justified himself by professing that he wished to expose the absurdity of old superstitions and mummeries to help countervail the effect of the Oxford movement. Ingoldsby as a soldier of Protestantism, turning monkish stories into rollicking farces in order to show up what he conceived to be the errors of his opponents, is as truly Ingoldsbian a figure as any in his own 'Legends.' Yet one need not accuse him of hypocrisy or falsehood, hardly even of self-deception. He felt that dead superstitions, and stories not reverenced even by the Church that developed them, were legitimate material for any use he could make of them; he felt that in dressing them up with his wit and fancy he was harming nothing that existed, nor making any one look lightly on the religion of Christ or the Church of Christ: and that they were the property of an opposing church body was a happy thought to set his conscience at rest. He wrote them thenceforth with greater peace of mind and added satisfaction, and no doubt really believed that he was doing good in the way he alleged. And if the excuse gave to the world even one more of the inimitable 'Legends,' it was worth feeling and making. Barham's nature was not one which felt the problems and tragedies of the world deeply. He grieved for his friends, he helped the distresses he saw, but his imagination rested closely in the concrete. He was incapable of _weltschmerz_; even for things just beyond his personal ken he had little vision or fancy. His treatment of the perpetual problem of sex-temptations and lapses is a good example: he never seems to be conscious of the tragedy they envelop. To him they are always good jokes, to wink over or smile at or be indulgent to. No one would ever guess from 'Ingoldsby' the truth he finds even in 'Don Juan,' that "A heavy price must all pay who thus err, In some shape." But we cannot have everything: if Barham had been sensitive to the tragic side of life, he could not have been the incomparable fun-maker he was. We do not go to the 'Ingoldsby Legends' to solace our souls when hurt or remorseful, to brace ourselves for duty, or to feel ourselves nobler by contact with the expression of nobility. But there must be play and rest for the senses, as well as work and aspiration; and there are worse services than relieving the strain of serious endeavor by enabling us to become jolly pagans once again for a little space, and care naught for the morrow. AS I LAYE A-THYNKYNGE THE LAST LINES OF BARHAM As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, Merrie sang the Birde as she sat upon the spraye; There came a noble Knighte, With his hauberke shynynge brighte, And his gallant heart was lyghte, Free and gaye; As I laye a-thynkynge, he rode upon his waye. As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, Sadly sang the Birde as she sat upon the tree! There seemed a crimson plain, Where a gallant Knyghte lay slayne, And a steed with broken rein Ran free, As I laye a-thynkynge, most pitiful to see! As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, Merrie sang the Birde as she sat upon the boughe; A lovely mayde came bye, And a gentil youth was nyghe, And he breathed many a syghe, And a vowe; As I laye a-thynkynge, her hearte was gladsome now. As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, Sadly sang the Birde as she sat upon the thorne; No more a youth was there, But a Maiden rent her haire, And cried in sad despaire, "That I was borne!" As I laye a-thynkynge, she perished forlorne. As I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, Sweetly sang the Birde as she sat upon the briar; There came a lovely childe, And his face was meek and milde, Yet joyously he smiled On his sire; As I laye a-thynkynge, a Cherub mote admire. But I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, And sadly sang the Birde as it perched upon a bier; That joyous smile was gone, And the face was white and wan, As the downe upon the Swan Doth appear, As I laye a-thynkynge,--oh! bitter flowed the tear! As I laye a-thynkynge, the golden sun was sinking, Oh, merrie sang that Birde, as it glittered on her breast With a thousand gorgeous dyes; While soaring to the skies, 'Mid the stars she seemed to rise, As to her nest; As I laye a-thynkynge, her meaning was exprest:-- "Follow me away, It boots not to delay,"-- 'Twas so she seemed to saye, "HERE IS REST!" THE LAY OF ST. CUTHBERT OR THE DEVIL'S DINNER-PARTY A LEGEND OF THE NORTH COUNTREE Nobilis quidam, cui nomen _Monsr. Lescrop, Chivaler_, cum invitasset convivas, et, hora convivii jam instante et apparatu facto, spe frustratus esset, excusantibus se convivis cur non compararent, prorupit iratus in haec verba: "_Veniant igitur omnes dæmones, si nullus hominum mecum esse potest_!" Quod cum fieret, et Dominus, et famuli, et ancillæ, a domo properantes, forte obliti, infantem in cunis jacentem secum non auferent, Dæmones incipiunt commessari et vociferari, prospicereque per fenestras formis ursorum, luporum, felium, et monstrare pocula vino repleta. _Ah_, inquit pater, _ubi infans meus?_ Vix cum haec dixisset, unus ex Dæmonibus ulnis suis infantem ad fenestram gestat, etc.--_Chronicon de Bolton_. It's in Bolton Hall, and the clock strikes One, And the roast meat's brown and the boiled meat's done, And the barbecued sucking-pig's crisped to a turn, And the pancakes are fried and beginning to burn; The fat stubble-goose Swims in gravy and juice, With the mustard and apple-sauce ready for use; Fish, flesh, and fowl, and all of the best, Want nothing but eating--they're all ready drest, But where is the Host, and where is the Guest? Pantler and serving-man, henchman and page Stand sniffing the duck-stuffing (onion and sage), And the scullions and cooks, With fidgety looks, Are grumbling and mutt'ring, and scowling as black As cooks always do when the dinner's put back; For though the board's deckt, and the napery, fair As the unsunned snow-flake, is spread out with care, And the Dais is furnished with stool and with chair, And plate of _orféverie_ costly and rare, Apostle-spoons, salt-cellar, all are there, And Mess John in his place, With his rubicund face, And his hands ready folded, prepared to say Grace, Yet where is the Host?--and his convives--where? The Scroope sits lonely in Bolton Hall, And he watches the dial that hangs by the wall, He watches the large hand, he watches the small, And he fidgets and looks As cross as the cooks, And he utters--a word which we'll soften to "Zooks!" And he cries, "What on earth has become of them all?-- What can delay De Vaux and De Saye? What makes Sir Gilbert de Umfraville stay? What's gone with Poyntz, and Sir Reginald Braye? Why are Ralph Ufford and Marny away? And De Nokes and De Styles, and Lord Marmaduke Grey? And De Roe? And De Doe? Poynings and Vavasour--where be they? Fitz-Walter, Fitz-Osbert, Fitz-Hugh, and Fitz-John, And the Mandevilles, _père et filz_ (father and son); Their cards said 'Dinner precisely at One!' There's nothing I hate, in The world, like waiting! It's a monstrous great bore, when a Gentleman feels A good appetite, thus to be kept from his meals!" It's in Bolton Hall, and the clock strikes Two! And the scullions and cooks are themselves "in a stew," And the kitchen-maids stand, and don't know what to do, For the rich plum-puddings are bursting their bags, And the mutton and turnips are boiling to rags, And the fish is all spoiled, And the butter's all oiled, And the soup's got cold in the silver tureen, And there's nothing, in short, that is fit to be seen! While Sir Guy Le Scroope continues to fume, And to fret by himself in the tapestried room, And still fidgets and looks More cross than the cooks, And repeats that bad word, which we've softened to "Zooks!" Two o'clock's come, and Two o'clock's gone, And the large and the small hands move steadily on, Still nobody's there, No De Roos, or De Clare, To taste of the Scroope's most delicate fare, Or to quaff off a health unto Bolton's Heir, That nice little boy who sits in his chair, Some four years old, and a few months to spare, With his laughing blue eyes and his long curly hair, Now sucking his thumb, and now munching his pear. Again Sir Guy the silence broke, "It's hard upon Three!--it's just on the stroke! Come, serve up the dinner!--A joke is a joke"-- Little he deems that Stephen de Hoaques, Who "his fun," as the Yankees say, everywhere "pokes," And is always a great deal too fond of his jokes, Has written a circular note to De Nokes, And De Styles and De Roe, and the rest of the folks, One and all, Great and small, Who were asked to the Hall To dine there and sup, and wind up with a ball, And had told all the party a great bouncing lie, he Cooked up, that the "_fête_ was postponed _sine die_, The dear little curly-wigged heir of Le Scroope Being taken alarmingly ill with the croop!" When the clock struck Three, And the Page on his knee Said, "An't please you, Sir Guy Le Scroope, _On a servi_!" And the Knight found the banquet-hall empty and clear, With nobody near To partake of his cheer, He stamped, and he stormed--then his language!--Oh dear! 'Twas awful to see, and 'twas awful to hear! And he cried to the button-decked Page at his knee, Who had told him so civilly "_On a servi,"_ "Ten thousand fiends seize them, wherever they be! --The Devil take _them_! and the Devil take _thee!_ And the DEVIL MAY EAT UP THE DINNER FOR ME!" In a terrible fume He bounced out of the room, He bounced out of the house--and page, footman, and groom Bounced after their master; for scarce had they heard Of this left-handed grace the last finishing word, Ere the horn at the gate of the Barbican tower Was blown with a loud twenty-trumpeter power, And in rush'd a troop Of strange guests!--such a group As had ne'er before darkened the door of the Scroope! This looks like De Saye--yet--it is not De Saye-- And this is--no, 'tis not--Sir Reginald Braye, This has somewhat the favor of Marmaduke Grey-- But stay!--_Where on earth did he get those long nails?_ Why, they're _claws_!--then Good Gracious!--they've all of them _tails!_ That can't be De Vaux--why, his nose is a bill, Or, I would say a beak!--and he can't keep it still!-- Is that Poynings?--Oh, Gemini! look at his feet!! Why, they're absolute _hoofs_!--is it gout or his corns, That have crumpled them up so?--by Jingo, he's _horns!_ Run! run!--There's Fitz-Walter, Fitz-Hugh, and Fitz-John, And the Mandevilles, _père et filz_ (father and son), And Fitz-Osbert, and Ufford--_they've all got them on!_ Then their great saucer eyes-- It's the Father of lies And his Imps--run! run! run!--they're all fiends in disguise, Who've partly assumed, with more sombre complexions, The forms of Sir Guy Le Scroope's friends and connections, And He--at the top there--that grim-looking elf-- Run! run!--that's the "muckle-horned Clootie" himself! And now what a din Without and within! For the courtyard is full of them.--How they begin To mop, and to mowe, and to make faces, and grin! Cock their tails up together, Like cows in hot weather, And butt at each other, all eating and drinking, The viands and wine disappearing like winking, And then such a lot As together had got! Master Cabbage, the steward, who'd made a machine To calculate with, and count noses,--I ween The cleverest thing of the kind ever seen,-- Declared, when he'd made By the said machine's aid, Up, what's now called the "tottle" of those he surveyed, There were just--how he proved it I cannot divine-- _Nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety and nine._ Exclusive of Him Who, giant in limb, And black as the crow they denominate _Jim_, With a tail like a bull, and a head like a bear, Stands forth at the window--and what holds he there, Which he hugs with such care, And pokes out in the air, And grasps as its limbs from each other he'd tear? Oh! grief and despair! I vow and declare It's Le Scroope's poor, dear, sweet, little, curly-wigged Heir! Whom the nurse had forgot and left there in his chair, Alternately sucking his thumb and his pear. What words can express The dismay and distress Of Sir Guy, when he found what a terrible mess His cursing and banning had now got him into? That words, which to use are a shame and a sin too, Had thus on their speaker recoiled, and his malison Placed in the hands of the Devil's own "pal" his son!-- He sobbed and he sighed, And he screamed, and he cried, And behaved like a man that is mad or in liquor--he Tore his peaked beard, and he dashed off his "Vicary," Stamped on the jasey As though he were crazy, And staggering about just as if he were "hazy," Exclaimed, "Fifty pounds!" (a large sum in those times) "To the person, whoever he may be, that climbs To that window above there, _en ogive_, and painted, And brings down my curly-wi'--" Here Sir Guy fainted! With many a moan, And many a groan, What with tweaks of the nose, and some _eau de Cologne_, He revived,--Reason once more remounted her throne, Or rather the instinct of Nature--'twere treason To her, in the Scroope's case, perhaps, to say Reason-- But what saw he then--Oh! my goodness! a sight Enough to have banished his reason outright!-- In that broad banquet-hall The fiends one and all Regardless of shriek, and of squeak, and of squall, From one to another were tossing that small Pretty, curly-wigged boy, as if playing at ball; Yet none of his friends or his vassals might dare To fly to the rescue or rush up the stair, And bring down in safety his curly-wigged Heir! Well a day! Well a day! All he can say Is but just so much trouble and time thrown away; Not a man can be tempted to join the _mêlée:_ E'en those words cabalistic, "I promise to pay Fifty pounds on demand," have for once lost their sway, And there the Knight stands Wringing his hands In his agony--when on a sudden, one ray Of hope darts through his midriff!--His Saint!-- Oh, it's funny And almost absurd, That it never occurred!-- "Ay! the Scroope's Patron Saint!--he's the man for my money! Saint--who is it?--really I'm sadly to blame,-- On my word I'm afraid,--I confess it with shame,-- That I've almost forgot the good Gentleman's name,-- Cut--let me see--Cutbeard?--no--CUTHBERT!--egad! St. Cuthbert of Bolton!--I'm right--he's the lad! O holy St. Cuthbert, if forbears of mine-- Of myself I say little--have knelt at your shrine, And have lashed their bare backs, and--no matter--with twine, Oh! list to the vow Which I make to you now, Only snatch my poor little boy out of the row Which that Imp's kicking up with his fiendish bow-wow, And his head like a bear, and his tail like a cow! Bring him back here in safety!--perform but this task, And I'll give--Oh!--I'll give you whatever you ask!-- There is not a shrine In the county shall shine With a brilliancy half so resplendent as thine, Or have so many candles, or look half so fine!-- Haste, holy St. Cuthbert, then,--hasten in pity!--" Conceive his surprise When a strange voice replies, "It's a bargain!--but, mind, sir, THE BEST SPERMACETI!"-- Say, whose that voice?--whose that form by his side, That old, old, gray man, with his beard long and wide, In his coarse Palmer's weeds, And his cockle and beads?-- And how did he come?--did he walk?--did he ride? Oh! none could determine,--oh! none could decide,-- The fact is, I don't believe any one tried; For while every one stared, with a dignified stride And without a word more, He marched on before, Up a flight of stone steps, and so through the front door, To the banqueting-hall that was on the first floor, While the fiendish assembly were making a rare Little shuttlecock there of the curly-wigged Heir. --I wish, gentle Reader, that you could have seen The pause that ensued when he stepped in between, With his resolute air, and his dignified mien, And said, in a tone most decided though mild, "Come! I'll trouble you just to hand over that child!" The Demoniac crowd In an instant seemed cowed; Not one of the crew volunteered a reply, All shrunk from the glance of that keen-flashing eye, Save one horrid Humgruffin, who seemed by his talk, And the airs he assumed, to be cock of the walk. He quailed not before it, but saucily met it, And as saucily said, "Don't you wish you may get it?" My goodness!--the look that the old Palmer gave! And his frown!--'twas quite dreadful to witness--"Why, slave! You rascal!" quoth he, "This language to ME! At once, Mr. Nicholas! down on your knee, And hand me that curly-wigged boy!--I command it-- Come!--none of your nonsense!--you know I won't stand it." Old Nicholas trembled,--he shook in his shoes, And seemed half inclined, but afraid, to refuse. "Well, Cuthbert," said he, "If so it must be, For you've had your own way from the first time I knew ye;-- Take your curly-wigged brat, and much good may he do ye! But I'll have in exchange"--here his eye flashed with rage-- "That chap with the buttons--he _gave me_ the Page!" "Come, come," the saint answered, "you very well know The young man's no more his than your own to bestow. Touch one button of his if you dare, Nick---no! no! Cut your stick, sir--come, mizzle! be off with you! go!"-- The Devil grew hot-- "If I do I'll be shot! An you come to that, Cuthbert, I'll tell you what's what; He has _asked_ us to _dine here_, and go we will not! Why, you Skinflint,--at least You may leave us the feast! Here we've come all that way from our brimstone abode, Ten million good leagues, sir, as ever you strode, And the deuce of a luncheon we've had on the road-- 'Go!'--'Mizzle!' indeed--Mr. Saint, who are you, I should like to know?--'Go!' I'll be hanged if I do! He invited us all--we've a right here--it's known That a Baron may do what he likes with his own-- Here, Asmodeus--a slice of that beef;--now the mustard!-- What have _you_ got?--oh, apple-pie--try it with custard." The Saint made a pause As uncertain, because He knew Nick is pretty well "up" in the laws, And they _might_ be on _his_ side--and then, he'd such claws! On the whole, it was better, he thought, to retire With the curly-wigged boy he'd picked out of the fire, And give up the victuals--to retrace his path, And to compromise--(spite of the Member for Bath). So to Old Nick's appeal, As he turned on his heel, He replied, "Well, I'll leave you the mutton and veal, And the soup _à la Reine_, and the sauce _Bechamel;_ As the Scroope _did_ invite you to dinner, I feel I can't well turn you out--'twould be hardly genteel--- But be moderate, pray,--and remember thus much, Since you're treated as Gentlemen--show yourselves such, And don't make it late, But mind and go straight Home to bed when you've finished--and don't steal the plate, Nor wrench off the knocker, or bell from the gate. Walk away, like respectable Devils, in peace, And don't 'lark' with the watch, or annoy the police!" Having thus said his say, That Palmer gray Took up little La Scroope, and walked coolly away, While the Demons all set up a "Hip! hip! hurrah!" Then fell, tooth and nail, on the victuals, as they Had been guests at Guildhall upon Lord Mayor's day, All scrambling and scuffling for what was before 'em, No care for precedence or common decorum. Few ate more hearty Than Madame Astarte, And Hecate,--considered the Belles of the party. Between them was seated Leviathan, eager To "do the polite," and take wine with Belphegor; Here was _Morbleu_ (a French devil), supping soup-meagre, And there, munching leeks, Davy Jones of Tredegar (A Welsh one), who'd left the domains of Ap Morgan To "follow the sea,"--and next him Demogorgon,-- Then Pan with his pipes, and Fauns grinding the organ To Mammon and Belial, and half a score dancers, Who'd joined with Medusa to get up 'the Lancers'; Here's Lucifer lying blind drunk with Scotch ale, While Beelzebub's tying huge knots in his tail. There's Setebos, storming because Mephistopheles Gave him the lie, Said he'd "blacken his eye," And dashed in his face a whole cup of hot coffee-lees;-- Ramping and roaring, Hiccoughing, snoring, Never was seen such a riot before in A gentleman's house, or such profligate reveling At any _soirée_--where they don't let the Devil in. Hark! as sure as fate The clock's striking Eight! (An hour which our ancestors called "getting late,") When Nick, who by this time was rather elate, Rose up and addressed them:-- "'Tis full time," he said, "For all elderly Devils to be in their bed; For my own part I mean to be jogging, because I don't find myself now quite so young as I was; But, Gentlemen, ere I depart from my post I must call on you all for one bumper--the toast Which I have to propose is,--OUR EXCELLENT HOST! Many thanks for his kind hospitality--may _We_ also be able To see at _our_ table Himself, and enjoy, in a family way, His good company _down-stairs_ at no distant day! You'd, I'm sure, think me rude If I did not include, In the toast my young friend there, the curly-wigged Heir! He's in very good hands, for you're all well aware That St. Cuthbert has taken him under his care; Though I must not say 'bless,'-- Why, you'll easily guess,-- May our curly-wigged Friend's shadow never be less!" Nick took off his heel-taps--bowed--smiled---with an air Most graciously grim,--and vacated the chair. Of course the _élite_ Rose at once on their feet, And followed their leader, and beat a retreat: When a sky-larking Imp took the President's seat, And requesting that each would replenish his cup, Said, "Where we have dined, my boys, there let us sup!"-- It was three in the morning before they broke up!!! * * * * * I scarcely need say Sir Guy didn't delay To fulfill his vow made to St. Cuthbert, or pay For the candles he'd promised, or make light as day The shrine he assured him he'd render so gay. In fact, when the votaries came there to pray, All said there was naught to compare with it--nay, For fear that the Abbey Might think he was shabby, Four Brethren, thenceforward, two cleric, two lay, He ordained should take charge of a new-founded chantry, With six marcs apiece, and some claims on the pantry; In short, the whole county Declared, through his bounty, The Abbey of Bolton exhibited fresh scenes From any displayed since Sir William de Meschines And Cecily Roumeli came to this nation With William the Norman, and laid its foundation. For the rest, it is said, And I know I have read In some Chronicle--whose, has gone out of my head-- That what with these candles, and other expenses, Which no man would go to if quite in his senses, He reduced and brought low His property so, That at last he'd not much of it left to bestow; And that many years after that terrible feast, Sir Guy, in the Abbey, was living a priest; And there, in one thousand and---something--deceased. (It's supposed by this trick He bamboozled Old Nick, And slipped through his fingers remarkably "slick.") While as to young Curly-wig,--dear little Soul, Would you know more of him, you must look at "The Roll," Which records the dispute, And the subsequent suit, Commenced in "Thirteen sev'nty-five,"--which took root In Le Grosvenor's assuming the arms Le Scroope swore That none but _his_ ancestors, ever before, In foray, joust, battle, or tournament wore, To wit, "_On a Prussian-blue Field_, a _Bend Or_;" While the Grosvenor averred that _his_ ancestors bore The same, and Scroope lied like a--somebody tore Off the simile,--so I can tell you no more, Till some A double S shall the fragment restore. MORAL This Legend sound maxims exemplifies--_e.g._ 1_mo._ Should anything tease you, Annoy, or displease you, Remember what Lilly says, "_Animum rege!_" And as for that shocking bad habit of swearing,-- In all good society voted past bearing,-- Eschew it! and leave it to dustmen and mobs, Nor commit yourself much beyond "Zooks!" or "Odsbobs!" 2_do._ When asked out to dine by a Person of Quality, Mind, and observe the most strict punctuality! For should you come late, And make dinner wait, And the victuals get cold, you'll incur, sure as fate, The Master's displeasure, the Mistress's hate. And though both may perhaps be too well-bred to swear, They'll heartily _wish_ you--I will not say _Where_. 3_tio._ Look well to your Maid-servants!--say you expect them To see to the children, and not to neglect them! And if you're a widower, just throw a cursory Glance in, at times, when you go near the Nursery. Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums, And from pears in the season,--and sucking their thumbs! 4_to._ To sum up the whole with a "saw" of much use, Be _just_ and be _generous_,--don't be _profuse!_-- Pay the debts that you owe, keep your word to your friends, But--DON'T SET YOUR CANDLES ALIGHT AT BOTH ENDS!!-- For of this be assured, if you "go it" too fast, You'll be "dished" like Sir Guy, And like him, perhaps, die A poor, old, half-starved Country Parson at last! A LAY OF ST. NICHOLAS "Statim sacerdoti apparuit diabolus in specie puellæ pulchritudinis miræ, et ecce Divus, fide catholicâ, et cruce, et aquâ benedicta armatus venit, et aspersit aquam in nomine Sanctæ et Individuæ Trinitatis, quam, quasi ardentem, diabolus, nequaquam sustinere valens, mugitibus fugit."--ROGER HOVEDEN. "Lord Abbot! Lord Abbot! I'd fain confess; I am a-weary, and worn with woe; Many a grief doth my heart oppress, And haunt me whithersoever I go!" On bended knee spake the beautiful Maid; "Now lithe and listen, Lord Abbot, to me!"-- "Now naye, fair daughter," the Lord Abbot said, "Now naye, in sooth it may hardly be. "There is Mess Michael, and holy Mess John, Sage penitauncers I ween be they! And hard by doth dwell, in St. Catherine's cell, Ambrose, the anchorite old and gray!" --"Oh, I will have none of Ambrose or John, Though sage penitauncers I trow they be; Shrive me may none save the Abbot alone-- Now listen, Lord Abbot, I speak to thee. "Nor think foul scorn, though mitre adorn Thy brow, to listen to shrift of mine! I am a maiden royally born, And I come of old Plantagenet's line. "Though hither I stray in lowly array, I am a damsel of high degree; And the Compte of Eu, and the Lord of Ponthieu, They serve my father on bended knee! "Counts a many, and Dukes a few, A suitoring came to my father's Hall; But the Duke of Lorraine, with his large domain, He pleased my father beyond them all. "Dukes a many, and Counts a few, I would have wedded right cheerfullie; But the Duke of Lorraine was uncommonly plain, And I vowed that he ne'er should my bridegroom be! "So hither I fly, in lowly guise, From their gilded domes and their princely halls; Fain would I dwell in some holy cell, Or within some Convent's peaceful walls!" --Then out and spake that proud Lord Abbot, "Now rest thee, fair daughter, withouten fear. Nor Count nor Duke but shall meet the rebuke Of Holy Church an he seek thee here: "Holy Church denieth all search 'Midst her sanctified ewes and her saintly rams, And the wolves doth mock who would scathe her flock, Or, especially, worry her little pet lambs. "Then lay, fair daughter, thy fears aside, For here this day shalt thou dine with me!"-- "Now naye, now naye," the fair maiden cried; "In sooth, Lord Abbot, that scarce may be! "Friends would whisper, and foes would frown, Sith thou art a Churchman of high degree, And ill mote it match with thy fair renown That a wandering damsel dine with thee! "There is Simon the Deacon hath pulse in store, With beans and lettuces fair to see: His lenten fare now let me share, I pray thee, Lord Abbot, in charitie!" --"Though Simon the Deacon hath pulse in store, To our patron Saint foul shame it were Should wayworn guest, with toil oppressed, Meet in his Abbey such churlish fare. "There is Peter the Prior, and Francis the Friar, And Roger the Monk shall our convives be; Small scandal I ween shall then be seen: They are a goodly companie!" The Abbot hath donned his mitre and ring, His rich dalmatic, and maniple fine; And the choristers sing, as the lay-brothers bring To the board a magnificent turkey and chine. The turkey and chine, they are done to a nicety; Liver, and gizzard, and all are there; Ne'er mote Lord Abbot pronounce _Benedicite_ Over more luscious or delicate fare. But no pious stave he, no _Pater_ or _Ave_ Pronounced, as he gazed on that maiden's face; She asked him for stuffing, she asked him for gravy, She asked him for gizzard;--but not for grace! Yet gayly the Lord Abbot smiled, and pressed, And the blood-red wine in the wine-cup filled; And he helped his guest to a bit of the breast, And he sent the drumsticks down to be grilled. There was no lack of the old Sherris sack, Of Hippocras fine, or of Malmsey bright; And aye, as he drained off his cup with a smack, He grew less pious and more polite. She pledged him once, and she pledged him twice, And she drank as Lady ought not to drink; And he pressed her hand 'neath the table thrice, And he winked as Abbot ought not to wink. And Peter the Prior, and Francis the Friar, Sat each with a napkin under his chin; But Roger the Monk got excessively drunk, So they put him to bed, and they tucked him in! The lay-brothers gazed on each other, amazed; And Simon the Deacon, with grief and surprise. As he peeped through the key-hole, could scarce fancy real The scene he beheld, or believe his own eyes. In his ear was ringing the Lord Abbot singing-- He could not distinguish the words very plain, But 'twas all about "Cole," and "jolly old Soul," And "Fiddlers," and "Punch," and things quite as profane. Even Porter Paul, at the sound of such reveling, With fervor himself began to bless; For he thought he must somehow have let the Devil in-- And perhaps was not very much out in his guess. The Accusing Byers[1] "flew up to Heaven's Chancery," Blushing like scarlet with shame and concern; The Archangel took down his tale, and in answer he Wept (see the works of the late Mr. Sterne). Indeed, it is said, a less taking both were in When, after a lapse of a great many years, They booked Uncle Toby five shillings for swearing, And blotted the fine out again with their tears! But St. Nicholas's agony who may paint? His senses at first were well-nigh gone; The beatified saint was ready to faint When he saw in his Abbey such sad goings on! For never, I ween, had such doings been seen There before, from the time that most excellent Prince, Earl Baldwin of Flanders, and other Commanders, Had built and endowed it some centuries since. --But hark--'tis a sound from the outermost gate: A startling sound from a powerful blow.-- Who knocks so late?--it is half after eight By the clock,--and the clock's five minutes too slow. Never, perhaps, had such loud double raps Been heard in St. Nicholas's Abbey before; All agreed "it was shocking to keep people knocking," But none seemed inclined to "answer the door." Now a louder bang through the cloisters rang, And the gate on its hinges wide open flew; And all were aware of a Palmer there, With his cockle, hat, staff, and his sandal shoe. Many a furrow, and many a frown, By toil and time on his brow were traced; And his long loose gown was of ginger brown, And his rosary dangled below his waist. Now seldom, I ween, is such costume seen, Except at a stage-play or masquerade; But who doth not know it was rather the go With Pilgrims and Saints in the second Crusade? With noiseless stride did that Palmer glide Across that oaken floor; And he made them all jump, he gave such a thump Against the Refectory door! Wide open it flew, and plain to the view The Lord Abbot they all mote see; In his hand was a cup and he lifted it up, "Here's the Pope's good health with three!" Rang in their ears three deafening cheers, "Huzza! huzza! huzza!" And one of the party said, "Go it, my hearty!"-- When outspake that Pilgrim gray-- "A boon, Lord Abbot! a boon! a boon! Worn is my foot, and empty my scrip; And nothing to speak of since yesterday noon Of food, Lord Abbot, hath passed my lip. "And I am come from a far countree, And have visited many a holy shrine; And long have I trod the sacred sod Where the Saints do rest in Palestine!"-- "An thou art come from a far countree, And if thou in Paynim lands hast been, Now rede me aright the most wonderful sight, Thou Palmer gray, that thine eyes have seen. "Arede me aright the most wonderful sight, Gray Palmer, that ever thine eyes did see, And a manchette of bread, and a good warm bed, And a cup o' the best shall thy guerdon be!" "Oh! I have been east, and I have been west, And I have seen many a wonderful sight; But never to me did it happen to see A wonder like that which I see this night! "To see a Lord Abbot, in rochet and stole, With Prior and Friar,--a strange mar-velle!-- O'er a jolly full bowl, sitting cheek by jowl, And hob-nobbing away with a Devil from Hell!" He felt in his gown of ginger brown, And he pulled out a flask from beneath; It was rather tough work to get out the cork, But he drew it at last with his teeth. O'er a pint and a quarter of holy water, He made a sacred sign; And he dashed the whole on the _soi-disant_ daughter Of old Plantagenet's line! Oh! then did she reek, and squeak, and shriek, With a wild unearthly scream; And fizzled, and hissed, and produced such a mist, They were all half-choked by the steam. Her dove-like eyes turned to coals of fire, Her beautiful nose to a horrible snout, Her hands to paws, with nasty great claws, And her bosom went in and her tail came out. On her chin there appeared a long Nanny-goat's beard, And her tusks and her teeth no man mote tell; And her horns and her hoofs gave infallible proofs 'Twas a frightful Fiend from the nethermost hell! The Palmer threw down his ginger gown, His hat and his cockle; and, plain to sight, Stood St. Nicholas' self, and his shaven crown Had a glow-worm halo of heavenly light. The fiend made a grasp the Abbot to clasp; But St. Nicholas lifted his holy toe, And, just in the nick, let fly such a kick On his elderly namesake, he made him let go. And out of the window he flew like a shot, For the foot flew up with a terrible thwack, And caught the foul demon about the spot Where his tail joins on to the small of his back. And he bounded away like a foot-ball at play, Till into the bottomless pit he fell slap, Knocking Mammon the meagre o'er pursy Belphegor, And Lucifer into Beëlzebub's lap. Oh! happy the slip from his Succubine grip, That saved the Lord Abbot,--though breathless with fright, In escaping he tumbled, and fractured his hip, And his left leg was shorter thenceforth than his right! * * * * * On the banks of the Rhine, as he's stopping to dine, From a certain inn-window the traveler is shown Most picturesque ruins, the scene of these doings, Some miles up the river south-east of Cologne. And while "_sauer-kraut_" she sells you, the landlady tells you That there, in those walls all roofless and bare, One Simon, a Deacon, from a lean grew a sleek one On filling a _ci-devant_ Abbot's state chair. How a _ci-devant_ Abbot, all clothed in drab, but Of texture the coarsest, hair shirt and no shoes (His mitre and ring, and all that sort of thing Laid aside), in yon cave lived a pious recluse; How he rose with the sun, limping "dot and go one," To yon rill of the mountain, in all sorts of weather, Where a Prior and a Friar, who lived somewhat higher Up the rock, used to come and eat cresses together; How a thirsty old codger the neighbors called Roger, With them drank cold water in lieu of old wine! What its quality wanted he made up in quantity, Swigging as though he would empty the Rhine! And how, as their bodily strength failed, the mental man Gained tenfold vigor and force in all four; And how, to the day of their death, the "Old Gentleman" Never attempted to kidnap them more. And how, when at length, in the odor of sanctity, All of them died without grief or complaint, The monks of St. Nicholas said 'twas ridiculous Not to suppose every one was a Saint. And how, in the Abbey, no one was so shabby As not to say yearly four masses ahead, On the eve of that supper, and kick on the crupper Which Satan received, for the souls of the dead! How folks long held in reverence their reliques and memories, How the _ci-devant_ Abbot's obtained greater still, When some cripples, on touching his fractured _os femoris_, Threw down their crutches and danced a quadrille! And how Abbot Simon (who turned out a prime one) These words, which grew into a proverb full soon, O'er the late Abbot's grotto, stuck up as a motto, "Who Suppes with the Deville sholde have a long spoone!" [Footnote 1: The Prince of Peripatetic Informers, and terror of Stage Coachmen, when such things were.] SABINE BARING-GOULD (1834-) The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould was born in Exeter, England, in 1834. The addition of Gould to the name of Baring came in the time of his great-grandfather, a brother of Sir Francis Baring, who married an only daughter and heiress of W.D. Gould of Devonshire. Much of the early life of Baring-Gould was passed in Germany and France, and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1854, taking orders ten years later, and in 1881 becoming rector of Lew Trenchard, Devonshire, where he holds estates and privileges belonging to his family. He has worked in many fields, and in all with so much acceptance that a list of his books would be the best exposition of the range of his untiring pen. To a gift of ready words and ready illustration, whether he concerns himself with diversities of early Christian belief, the course of country-dances in England, or the growth of mediaeval legends, he adds the grace of telling a tale and drawing a character. He has published nearly a hundred volumes, not one of them unreadable. But no one man may write with equal pen of German history, of comparative mythology and philology, of theological dissertations, and of the pleasures of English rural life, while he adds to these a long list of novels. His secret of popularity lies not in his treatment, which is neither critical nor scientific, but rather in a clever, easy, diffuse, jovial, amusing way of saying clearly what at the moment comes to him to say. His books have a certain raciness and spirit that recall the English squire of tradition. They rarely smell of the lamp. Now and then appears a strain of sturdy scholarship, leading the reader to wonder what his author might have accomplished had he not enjoyed the comfortable ease of a country justice of the peace, and a rector with large landed estates, to whom his poorer neighbors appear a sort of dancing puppets. Between 1857 and 1870, Baring-Gould had published nine volumes, the best known of these being 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.' From 1870 to 1890 his name appeared as author on the title-page of forty-three books: sermons, lectures, essays, archaeological treatises, memoirs, curiosities of literature, histories, and fiction; sixteen novels, tales, and romances being included. From 1890 to 1896 he published seventeen more novels, and many of his books have passed through several editions. His most successful novels are 'Mehalah; a Tale of the Salt Marshes,' 'In the Roar of the Sea,' 'Red Spider,' 'Richard Cable,' and 'Noémi; a Story of Rock-Dwellers.' In an essay upon his fiction, Mr. J.M. Barrie writes in The Contemporary Review (February, 1890):-- "Of our eight or ten living novelists who are popular by merit, few have greater ability than Mr. Baring-Gould. His characters are bold and forcible figures, his wit is as ready as his figures of speech are apt. He has a powerful imagination, and is quaintly fanciful. When he describes a storm, we can see his trees breaking in the gale. So enormous and accurate is his general information that there is no trade or profession with which he does not seem familiar. So far as scientific knowledge is concerned, he is obviously better equipped than any contemporary writer of fiction. Yet one rises from his books with a feeling of repulsion, or at least with the glad conviction that his ignoble views of life are as untrue as the characters who illustrate them. Here is a melancholy case of a novelist, not only clever but sincere, undone by want of sympathy.... The author's want of sympathy prevents 'Mehalah's' rising to the highest art; for though we shudder at the end, there the effect of the story stops. It illustrates the futility of battling with fate, but the theme is not allowable to writers with the modern notion of a Supreme Power.... But 'Mehalah' is still one of the most powerful romances of recent years." ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY From 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages' In that charming mediaeval romance 'Fortunatus and his Sons,' which by the way is a treasury of popular mythology, is an account of a visit paid by the favored youth to that cave of mystery in Lough Derg, the Purgatory of St. Patrick. Fortunatus, we are told, had heard in his travels of how two days' journey from the town Valdric, in Ireland, was a town, Vernic, where was the entrance to the Purgatory; so thither he went with many servants. He found a great abbey, and behind the altar of the church a door, which led into the dark cave which is called the Purgatory of St. Patrick. In order to enter it, leave had to be obtained from the abbot; consequently Leopold, servant to Fortunatus, betook himself to that worthy and made known to him that a nobleman from Cyprus desired to enter the mysterious cavern. The abbot at once requested Leopold to bring his master to supper with him. Fortunatus bought a large jar of wine and sent it as a present to the monastery, and followed at the meal-time. "Venerable sir!" said Fortunatus, "I understand the Purgatory of St. Patrick is here: is it so?" The abbot replied, "It is so indeed. Many hundred years ago, this place, where stand the abbey and the town, was a howling wilderness. Not far off, however, lived a venerable hermit, Patrick by name, who often sought the desert for the purpose of therein exercising his austerities. One day he lighted on this cave, which is of vast extent. He entered it, and wandering on in the dark, lost his way, so that he could no more find how to return to the light of day. After long ramblings through the gloomy passages, he fell on his knees and besought Almighty God, if it were His will, to deliver him from the great peril wherein he lay. Whilst Patrick thus prayed, he was ware of piteous cries issuing from the depths of the cave, just such as would be the wailings of souls in purgatory. The hermit rose from his orison, and by God's mercy found his way back to the surface, and from that day exercised greater austerities, and after his death he was numbered with the saints. Pious people, who had heard the story of Patrick's adventure in the cave, built this cloister on the site." Then Fortunatus asked whether all who ventured into the place heard likewise the howls of the tormented souls. The abbot replied, "Some have affirmed that they have heard a bitter crying and piping therein; whilst others have heard and seen nothing. No one, however, has penetrated as yet to the furthest limits of the cavern." Fortunatus then asked permission to enter, and the abbot cheerfully consented, only stipulating that his guest should keep near the entrance and not ramble too far, as some who had ventured in had never returned. Next day early, Fortunatus received the Blessed Sacrament with his trusty Leopold; the door of the Purgatory was unlocked, each was provided with a taper, and then with the blessing of the abbot they were left in total darkness, and the door bolted behind them. Both wandered on in the cave, hearing faintly the chanting of the monks in the church, till the sound died away. They traversed several passages, lost their way, their candles burned out, and they sat down in despair on the ground, a prey to hunger, thirst, and fear. The monks waited in the church hour after hour; and the visitors of the Purgatory had not returned. Day declined, vespers were sung, and still there was no sign of the two who in the morning had passed from the church into the cave. Then the servants of Fortunatus began to exhibit anger, and to insist on their master being restored to them. The abbot was frightened, and sent for an old man who had once penetrated far into the cave with a ball of twine, the end attached to the door-handle. This man volunteered to seek Fortunatus, and providentially his search was successful. After this the abbot refused permission to any one to visit the cave. In the reign of Henry II. lived Henry of Saltrey, who wrote a history of the visit of a Knight Owen to the Purgatory of St. Patrick, which gained immense popularity, ... was soon translated into other languages, and spread the fable through mediaeval Europe.... In English there are two versions. In one of these, 'Owayne Miles,' the origin of the purgatory is thus described:-- "Holy byschoppes some tyme ther were, That tawgte me of Goddes lore. In Irlonde preched Seyn Patryke; In that londe was non hym lyke: He prechede Goddes worde full wyde, And tolde men what shullde betyde. Fyrste he preched of Heven blysse, Who ever go thyder may ryght nowgt mysse: Sethen he preched of Hell pyne, Howe we them ys that cometh therinne: And then he preched of purgatory, As he fonde in hisstory; But yet the folke of the contré Beleved not that hit mygth be; And seyed, but gyf hit were so, That eny non myth hymself go, And se alle that, and come ageyn, Then wolde they beleve fayn." Vexed at the obstinacy of his hearers, St. Patrick besought the Almighty to make the truth manifest to the unbelievers; whereupon "God spakke to Saynt Patryke tho By nam, and badde hym with Hym go: He ladde hym ynte a wyldernesse, Wher was no reste more no lesse, And shewed that he might se Inte the erthe a pryvé entré: Hit was yn a depe dyches ende. 'What mon,' He sayde, 'that wylle hereyn wende, And dwelle theryn a day and a nyght, And hold his byleve and ryght, And come ageyn that he ne dwelle, Mony a mervayle he may of telle. And alle tho that doth thys pylgrymage, I shalle hem graunt for her wage, Whether he be sqwyer or knave, Other purgatorye shalle he non have.'" Thereupon St. Patrick, "he ne stynte ner day ne night," till he had built there a "fayr abbey," and stocked it with pious canons. Then he made a door to the cave, and locked the door, and gave the key to the keeping of the prior. The Knight Owain, who had served under King Stephen, had lived a life of violence and dissolution; but filled with repentance, he sought by way of penance St. Patrick's Purgatory. Fifteen days he spent in preliminary devotions and alms-deeds, and then he heard mass, was washed with holy water, received the Holy Sacrament, and followed the sacred relics in procession, whilst the priests sang for him the Litany, "as lowde as they mygth crye." Then Sir Owain was locked in the cave, and he groped his way onward in darkness, till he reached a glimmering light; this brightened, and he came out into an underground land, where was a great hall and cloister, in which were men with shaven heads and white garments. These men informed the knight how he was to protect himself against the assaults of evil spirits. After having received this instruction, he heard "grete dynn," and "Then come ther develes on every syde, Wykked gostes, I wote, fro Helle, So mony that no tonge mygte telle: They fylled the hows yn two rowes; Some grenned on hym and some mad mowes." He then visits the different places of torment. In one, the souls are nailed to the ground with glowing hot brazen nails; in another they are fastened to the soil by their hair, and are bitten by fiery reptiles. In another, again, they are hung over fires by those members which had sinned, whilst others are roasted on spits. In one place were pits in which were molten metals. In these pits were men and women, some up to their chins, others to their breasts, others to their hams. The knight was pushed by the devils into one of these pits and was dreadfully scalded, but he cried to the Savior and escaped. Then he visited a lake where souls were tormented with great cold; and a river of pitch, which he crossed on a frail and narrow bridge. Beyond this bridge was a wall of glass, in which opened a beautiful gate, which conducted into Paradise. This place so delighted him that he would fain have remained in it had he been suffered, but he was bidden return to earth and finish there his penitence. He was put into a shorter and pleasanter way back to the cave than that by which he had come; and the prior found the knight next morning at the door, waiting to be let out, and full of his adventures. He afterwards went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and ended his life in piety.... Froissart tells us of a conversation he had with one Sir William Lisle, who had been in the Purgatory. "I asked him of what sort was the cave that is in Ireland, called St. Patrick's Purgatory, and if that were true which was related of it. He replied that there certainly was such a cave, for he and another English knight had been there whilst the king was at Dublin, and said that they entered the cave, and were shut in as the sun set, and that they remained there all night and left it next morning at sunrise. And then I asked if he had seen the strange sights and visions spoken of. Then he said that when he and his companion had passed the gate of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, that they had descended as though into a cellar, and that a hot vapor rose towards them and so affected their heads that they were obliged to sit down on the stone steps. And after sitting there awhile they felt heavy with sleep, and so fell asleep, and slept all night. Then I asked if they knew where they were in their sleep, and what sort of dreams they had had; he answered that they had been oppressed with many fancies and wonderful dreams, different from those they were accustomed to in their chambers; and in the morning when they went out, in a short while they had clean forgotten their dreams and visions; wherefore he concluded that the whole matter was fancy." The next to give us an account of his descent into St. Patrick's Purgatory is William Staunton of Durham, who went down into the cave on the Friday next after the feast of Holyrood, in the year 1409. "I was put in by the Prior of St. Matthew, of the same Purgatory, with procession and devout prayers of the prior, and the convent gave me an orison to bless me with, and to write the first word in my forehead, the which prayer is this, 'Jhesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, miserere mihi peccatori.' And the prior taught me to say this prayer when any spirit, good or evil, appeared unto me, or when I heard any noise that I should be afraid of." When left in the cave, William fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw coming to him St. John of Bridlington and St. Ive, who undertook to conduct him through the scenes of mystery. After they had proceeded a while, William was found to be guilty of a trespass against Holy Church, of which he had to be purged before he could proceed much further. Of this trespass he was accused by his sister, who appeared in the way. "I make my complaint unto you against my brother that here standeth; for this man that standeth hereby loved me, and I loved him, and either of us would have had the other according to God's law, as Holy Church teaches, and I should have gotten of me three-souls to God, but my brother hindered us from marrying." St. John of Bridlington then turned to William, and asked him why he did not allow the two who loved one another to be married. "I tell thee there is no man that hindereth man or woman from being united in the bond of God, though the man be a shepherd and all his ancestors and the woman be come of kings or of emperors, or if the man be come of never so high kin and the woman of never so low kin, if they love one another, but he sinneth in Holy Church against God and his deed, and therefore he shall have much pain and tribulations." Being assoiled of this crying sin, St. John takes William to a fire "grete and styngkyng," in which he sees people burning in their gay clothes. "I saw some with collars of gold about their necks, and some of silver, and some men I saw with gay girdles of silver and gold, and harnessed with horns about their necks, some with mo jagges on their clothes than whole cloth, others full of jingles and bells of silver all over set, and some with long pokes on their sleeves, and women with gowns trailing behind them a long space, and some with chaplets on their heads of gold and pearls and other precious stones. And I looked on him that I saw first in pain, and saw the collars and gay girdles and baldrics burning, and the fiends dragging him by two fingermits. And I saw the jagges that men were clothed in turn all to adders, to dragons, and to toads, and 'many other orrible bestes,' sucking them, and biting them, and stinging them with all their might, and through every jingle I saw fiends smite burning nails of fire into their flesh. I also saw fiends drawing down the skin of their shoulders like to pokes, and cutting them off, and drawing them to the heads of those they cut them from, all burning as fire. And then I saw the women that had side trails behind them, and the side trails cut off by the fiends and burned on their head; and some took of the cutting all burning and stopped therewith their mouths, their noses, and their ears. I saw also their gay chaplets of gold and pearls and precious stones turned into nails of iron, burning, and fiends with burning hammers smiting them into their heads." These were proud and vain people. Then he saw another fire, where the fiends were putting out people's eyes and pouring molten brass and lead into the sockets, and tearing off their arms and the nails of their feet and hands, and soldering them on again. This was the doom of swearers. William saw other fires wherein the devils were executing tortures varied and horrible on their unfortunate victims. We need follow him no further. At the end of the fifteenth century the Purgatory in Lough Derg was destroyed by orders of the Pope, on hearing the report of a monk of Eymstadt in Holland, who had visited it, and had satisfied himself that there was nothing in it more remarkable than in any ordinary cavern. The Purgatory was closed on St. Patrick's Day, 1497; but the belief in it was not so speedily banished from popular superstition. Calderon made it the subject of one of his dramas; and it became the subject of numerous popular chap-books in France and Spain, where during last century it occupied in the religious belief of the people precisely the same position which is assumed by the marvelous visions of heaven and hell sold by hawkers in England at the present day. THE CORNISH WRECKERS From 'The Vicar of Morwenstow' When the Rev. R.S. Hawker came to Morwenstow in 1834, he found that he had much to contend with, not only in the external condition of church and vicarage, but also in that which is of greater importance.... "The farmers of the parish were simple-hearted and respectable; but the denizens of the hamlet, after receiving the wages of the harvest time, eked out a precarious existence in the winter, and watched eagerly and expectantly for the shipwrecks that were certain to happen, and upon the plunder of which they surely calculated for the scant provision of their families. The wrecked goods supplied them with the necessaries of life, and the rended planks of the dismembered vessel contributed to the warmth of the hovel hearthstone. "When Mr. Hawker came to Morwenstow, 'the cruel and covetous natives of the strand, the wreckers of the seas and rocks for flotsam and jetsam,' held as an axiom and an injunction to be strictly obeyed:-- "'Save a stranger from the sea, And he'll turn your enemy!' "The Morwenstow wreckers allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety,--nay, more, for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed, permitted and absolved the crime of murder by 'shoving the drowning man into the sea,' to be swallowed by the waves. Cain! Cain! where is thy brother? And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered and pleaded in excuse, as in the case of undiluted brandy after meals, 'It is Cornish custom.' The illicit spirit of Cornish custom was supplied by the smuggler, and the gold of the wreck paid him for the cursed abomination of drink." One of Mr. Hawker's parishioners, Peter Barrow, had been for full forty years a wrecker, but of a much more harmless description: he had been a watcher of the coast for such objects as the waves might turn up to reward his patience. Another was Tristam Pentire, a hero of contraband adventure, and agent for sale of smuggled cargoes in bygone times. With a merry twinkle of the eye, and in a sharp and ringing tone, he loved to tell such tales of wild adventure and of "derring do," as would make the foot of the exciseman falter and his cheek turn pale. During the latter years of last century there lived in Wellcombe, one of Mr. Hawker's parishes, a man whose name is still remembered with terror--Cruel Coppinger. There are people still alive who remember his wife. Local recollections of the man have molded themselves into the rhyme-- Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger? He came from a foreign land: He was brought to us by the salt water, He was carried away by the wind!" His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalized by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. A strange vessel of foreign rig went on the reefs of Harty Race, and was broken to pieces by the waves. The only man who came ashore was the skipper. A crowd was gathered on the sand, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst rushed the dripping stranger, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and shouting in some foreign tongue, urged the double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his homeward way. The damsel was Miss Dinah Hamlyn. The stranger descended at her father's door, and lifted her off her saddle. He then announced himself as a Dane, named Coppinger. He took his place at the family board, and there remained until he had secured the affections and hand of Dinah. The father died, and Coppinger at once succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thenceforth became a den and refuge of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night. It was discovered that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that "Cruel Coppinger" was their captain. In those days, and in that far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were unprotected. There was not a single resident gentleman of property and weight in the entire district. No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar; and to put an end to all such surveillance at once, the head of a gauger was chopped off by one of Coppinger's gang on the gunwale of a boat. Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the headlands to lead them into the safest creek or cove. Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the chief terror of the Cornish Channel. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board, she led a revenue-cutter into an intricate channel near the Bull Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings, The Black Prince escaped scathless, while the king's vessel perished with all on board. In those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger's men, he was seized and carried on board The Black Prince, and obliged to save his life by enrolling himself in the crew. In 1835, an old man of the age of ninety-seven related to Mr. Hawker that he had been so abducted, and after two years' service had been ransomed by his friends with a large sum. "And all," said the old man very simply, "because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I would mention it." Amid such practices, ill-gotten gold began to flow and ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came, he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer and paid the money in dollars, ducats, doubloons, and pistoles. The man of law demurred, but Coppinger with an oath bade him take this or none. The document bearing Coppinger's name is still extant. His signature is traced in stern bold characters, and under his autograph is the word "Thuro" (thorough) also in his own handwriting. Long impunity increased Coppinger's daring. There were certain bridle roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did. They were called "Coppinger's Tracks." They all converged at a headland which had the name of Steeple Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood three hundred feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth rock towards the beach, with an overhanging face one hundred feet down from the brow. Under this was a cave, only reached by a cable ladder lowered from above, and made fast below on a projecting crag. It received the name of "Coppinger's Cave." Here sheep were tethered to the rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till slaughtered; kegs of brandy and hollands were piled around; chests of tea; and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels and revenues of the Coppinger royalty of the sea.... But the end arrived. Money became scarce, and more than one armed king's cutter was seen day and night hovering off the land. So he "who came with the water went with the wind." His disappearance, like his arrival, was commemorated by a storm. A wrecker who had gone to watch the shore, saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came to the beach, put off in a boat to the vessel, and jumped on board. She spread canvas, stood off shore, and with Coppinger in her was seen no more. That night was one of storm. Whether the vessel rode it out, or was lost, none knew. * * * * * In 1864 a large ship was seen in distress off the coast. The Rev. A. Thynne, rector of Kilkhampton, at once drove to Morwenstow. The vessel was riding at anchor a mile off shore, west of Hartland Race. He found Mr. Hawker in the greatest excitement, pacing his room and shouting for some things he wanted to put in his greatcoat-pockets, and intensely impatient because his carriage was not round. With him was the Rev. W. Valentine, rector of Whixley in Yorkshire, then resident at Chapel in the parish of Morwenstow. "What are you going to do?" asked the rector of Kilkhampton: "I shall drive at once to Bude for the lifeboat." "No good!" thundered the vicar, "no good comes out of the west. You must go east. I shall go to Clovelly, and then, if that fails, to Appledore. I shall not stop till I have got a lifeboat to take those poor fellows off the wreck." "Then," said the rector of Kilkhampton, "I shall go to Bude, and see to the lifeboat there being brought out." "Do as you like; but mark my words, no good comes of turning to the west. Why," said he, "in the primitive church they turned to the west to renounce the Devil." His carriage came to the door, and he drove off with Mr. Valentine as fast as his horses could spin him along the hilly, wretched roads. Before he reached Clovelly, a boat had put off with the mate from the ship, which was the Margaret Quail, laden with salt. The captain would not leave the vessel; for, till deserted by him, no salvage could be claimed. The mate was picked up on the way, and the three reached Clovelly. Down the street proceeded the following procession--the street of Clovelly being a flight of stairs:-- _First_, the vicar of Morwenstow in a claret-colored coat, with long tails flying in the gale, blue knitted jersey, and pilot-boots, his long silver locks fluttering about his head. He was appealing to the fishermen and sailors of Clovelly to put out in their lifeboat to rescue the crew of the Margaret Quail. The men stood sulky, lounging about with folded arms, or hands in their pockets, and sou'-westers slouched over their brows. The women were screaming at the tops of their voices that they would not have their husbands and sons and sweethearts enticed away to risk their lives to save wrecked men. Above the clamor of their shrill tongues and the sough of the wind rose the roar of the vicar's voice: he was convulsed with indignation, and poured forth the most sacred appeals to their compassion for drowning sailors. _Second_ in the procession moved the Rev. W. Valentine, with purse full of gold in his hand, offering any amount of money to the Clovelly men, if they would only go forth in the lifeboat to the wreck. _Third_ came the mate of the Margaret Quail, restrained by no consideration of cloth, swearing and damning right and left, in a towering rage at the cowardice of the Clovelly men. _Fourth_ came John, the servant of Mr. Hawker, with bottles of whisky under his arm, another inducement to the men to relent and be merciful to their imperiled brethren. The first appeal was to their love of heaven and to their humanity; the second was to their pockets, their love of gold; the third to their terrors, their fear of Satan, to whom they were consigned; and the fourth to their stomachs, their love of grog. But all appeals were in vain. Then Mr. Hawker returned to his carriage, and drove away farther east to Appledore, where he secured the lifeboat. It was mounted on a wagon; ten horses were harnessed to it; and as fast as possible it was conveyed to the scene of distress. But in the mean while the captain of the Margaret Quail, despairing of help and thinking that his vessel would break up under him, came off in his boat with the rest of the crew, trusting rather to a rotten boat, patched with canvas which they had tarred over, than to the tender mercies of the covetous Clovellites, in whose veins ran the too recent blood of wreckers. The only living being left on board was a poor dog. No sooner was the captain seen to leave the ship than the Clovelly men lost their repugnance to go to sea. They manned boats at once, gained the Margaret Quail, and claimed three thousand pounds for salvage. There was an action in court, as the owners refused to pay such a sum; and it was lost by the Clovelly men, who however got an award of twelve hundred pounds. The case turned somewhat on the presence of the dog on the wreck; and it was argued that the vessel was not deserted, because a dog had been left on board to keep guard for its masters. The owner of the cargo failed; and the amount actually paid to the salvors was six hundred pounds to two steam-tugs (three hundred pounds each), and three hundred pounds to the Clovelly skiff and sixteen men. Mr. Hawker went round the country indignantly denouncing the sailors of Clovelly, and with justice. It roused all the righteous wrath in his breast. And as may well be believed, no love was borne him by the inhabitants of that little fishing village. They would probably have made a wreck of him had he ventured among them. Jane Barlow (18-) The general reader has yet to learn the most private and sacred events of Miss Jane Barlow's life, now known only to herself and friends. She is the daughter of Dr. Barlow of Trinity College, and lives in the seclusion of a collage at Raheny, a hamlet near Dublin. Her family has been in Ireland for generations, and she comes of German and Norman stock. As some one has said, the knowledge and skill displayed in depicting Irish peasant life, which her books show, are hers not through Celtic blood and affinities, but by a sympathetic genius and inspiration. [Illustration: Jane Barlow] The publication of her writings in book form was preceded by the appearance of some poems and stories in the magazines, the Dublin University Review of 1885 containing 'Walled Out; or, Eschatology in a Bog.' 'Irish Idyls' (1892), and 'Bogland Studies' (of the same year), show the same pitiful, sombre pictures of Irish peasant life about the sodden-roofed mud hut and "pitaties" boiling, which only a genial, impulsive, generous, light-hearted, half-Greek and half-philosophic people could make endurable to the reader or attractive to the writer. The innate sweetness of the Irish character, which the author brings out with fine touches, makes it worth portrayal. "It is safe to say," writes a critic, "that the philanthropist or the political student interested in the eternal Irish problem will learn more from Miss Barlow's twin volumes than from a dozen Royal Commissions and a hundred Blue Books." Her sympathy constantly crops out, as, for instance, in the mirthful tale of 'Jerry Dunne's Basket,' where-- "Andy Joyce had an ill-advised predilection for seeing things which he called 'dacint and proper' about him, and he built some highly superior sheds on the lawn, to the bettering, no doubt, of his cattle's condition. The abrupt raising of his rent by fifty per cent, was a broad hint which most men would have taken; and it did keep Andy ruefully quiet for a season or two. Then, however, having again saved up a trifle, he could not resist the temptation to drain the swampy corner of the farthest river-field, which was as kind a bit of land as you could wish, only for the water lying on it, and in which he afterward raised himself a remarkably fine crop of white oats. The sight of them 'done his heart good,' he said, exultantly, nothing recking that it was the last touch of farmer's pride he would ever feel. Yet on the next quarter-day the Joyces received notice to quit, and their landlord determined to keep the vacated holding in his own hands; those new sheds were just the thing for his young stock. Andy, in fact, had done his best to improve himself off the face of the earth." The long story which Miss Barlow has published, 'Kerrigan's Quality' (1894), is told with her distinguishing charm, but the book has not the close-knit force of the 'Idyls.' Miss Barlow herself prefers the 'Bogland Studies,' because, she says, they are "a sort of poetry." "I had set my heart too long upon being a poet ever to give up the idea quite contentedly; 'the old hope is hardest to be lost.' A real poet I can never be, as I have, I fear, nothing of the lyrical faculty; and a poet without that is worse than a bird without wings, so, like Mrs. Browning's Nazianzen, I am doomed to look 'at the lyre hung out of reach.'" Besides the three books named, Miss Barlow has published 'Mockus of the Shallow Waters' (1893); 'The End of Elfintown' (1894); 'The Battle of the Frogs and Mice in English' (1894); 'Maureen's Fairing and other Stories' (1895); and 'Strangers at Lisconnel,' a second series of 'Irish Idyls' (1895). In the last book we again have the sorrows and joys of the small hamlet in the west of Ireland, where "the broad level spreads away and away to the horizon before and behind and on either side of you, very sombre-hued, yet less black-a-vised than more frequent bergs," where in the distance the mountains "loom up on its borders much less substantial, apparently, in fabric than so many spirals of blue turf smoke," and where the curlew's cry "can set a whole landscape to melancholy in one chromatic phrase." THE WIDOW JOYCE'S CLOAK From 'Strangers at Lisconnel' Still, although the Tinkers' name has become a byword among us through a long series of petty offenses rather than any one flagrant crime, there is a notable misdeed on record against them, which has never been forgotten in the lapse of many years. It was perpetrated soon after the death of Mrs. Kilfoyle's mother, the Widow Joyce, an event which is but dimly recollected now at Lisconnel, as nearly half a century has gone by. She did not very long survive her husband, and he had left his roots behind in his little place at Clonmena, where, as we know, he had farmed not wisely but too well, and had been put out of it for his pains to expend his energy upon our oozy black sods and stark-white bowlders. But instead he moped about, fretting for his fair green fields, and few proudly cherished beasts,--especially the little old Kerry cow. And at his funeral the neighbors said, "Ah, bedad, poor man, God help him, he niver held up his head agin from that good day to this." When Mrs. Joyce felt that it behooved her to settle her affairs, she found that the most important possession she had to dispose of was her large cloak. She had acquired it at the prosperous time of her marriage, and it was a very superior specimen of its kind, in dark-blue cloth being superfine, and its ample capes and capacious hood being double-lined and quilted and stitched in a way which I cannot pretend to describe, but which made it a most substantial and handsome garment. If Mrs. Joyce had been left entirely to her own choice in the matter, I think she would have bequeathed it to her younger daughter Theresa, notwithstanding that custom clearly designated Bessy Kilfoyle, the eldest of the family, as the heiress. For she said to herself that poor Bessy had her husband and childer to consowl her, any way, but little Theresa, the crathur, had ne'er such a thing at all, and wouldn't have, not she, God love her. "And the back of me hand to some I could name." It seemed to her that to leave the child the cloak would be almost like keeping a warm wing spread over her in the cold wide world; and there was no fear that Bessy would take it amiss. But Theresa herself protested strongly against such a disposition, urging for one thing that sure she'd be lost in it entirely if ever she put it on; a not unfounded objection, as Theresa was several sizes smaller than Bessy, and even she fell far short of her mother in stature and portliness. Theresa also said confidently with a sinking heart, "But sure, anyhow, mother jewel, what matter about it? 'Twill be all gone to houles and flitters and thraneens, and so it will, plase goodness, afore there's any talk of anybody else wearin' it except your own ould self." And she expressed much the same conviction one day to her next-door neighbor, old Biddy Ryan, to whom she had run in for the loan of a sup of sour milk, which Mrs. Joyce fancied. To Biddy's sincere regret she could offer Theresa barely a skimpy noggin of milk, and only a meagre shred of encouragement; and by way of eking out the latter with its sorry substitute, consolation, she said as she tilted the jug perpendicularly to extract its last drop:-- "Well, sure, me dear, I do be sayin' me prayers for her every sun goes over our heads that she might be left wid you this great while yet; 'deed, I do so. But ah, acushla, if we could be keepin' people that-a-way, would there be e'er a funeral iver goin' black on the road at all at all? I'm thinkin' there's scarce a one livin', and he as ould and foolish and little-good-for as you plase, but some crathur'ill be grudgin' him to his grave, that's himself may be all the while wishin' he was in it. Or, morebetoken, how can we tell what quare ugly misfortin' thim that's took is took out of the road of, that we should be as good as biddin' thim stay till it comes to ruinate them? So it's prayin' away I am, honey," said old Biddy, whom Theresa could not help hating heart-sickly. "But like enough the Lord might know better than to be mindin' a word I say." And it seemed that He did; anyway, the day soon came when the heavy blue cloak passed into Mrs. Kilfoyle's possession. At that time it was clear, still autumn weather, with just a sprinkle of frost white on the wayside grass, like the wraith of belated moonlight, when the sun rose, and shimmering into rainbow stars by noon. But about a month later the winter swooped suddenly on Lisconnel: with wild winds and cold rain that made crystal-silver streaks down the purple of the great mountainheads peering in over our bogland. So one perishing Saturday Mrs. Kilfoyle made up her mind that she would wear her warm legacy on the bleak walk to Mass next morning, and reaching it down from where it was stored away among the rafters wrapped in an old sack, she shook it respectfully out of its straight-creased folds. As she did so she noticed that the binding of the hood had ripped in one place, and that the lining was fraying out, a mishap which should be promptly remedied before it spread any further. She was not a very expert needlewoman, and she thought she had better run over the way to consult Mrs. O'Driscoll, then a young matron, esteemed the handiest and most helpful person in Lisconnel. "It's the nathur of her to be settin' things straight wherever she goes," Mrs. Kilfoyle said to herself as she stood in her doorway waiting for the rain to clear off, and looking across the road to the sodden roof which sheltered her neighbor's head. It had long been lying low, vanquished by a trouble which even she could not set to rights, and some of the older people say that things have gone a little crookeder in Lisconnel ever since. The shower was a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples, all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible connection with such a very damp and disagreeable earth. You could not see far in any direction for the fluttering sheets of mist, and a stranger who had been coming along the road from Duffelane stepped out of them abruptly quite close to Mrs. Kilfoyle's door, before she knew that there was anybody near. He was a tall, elderly man, gaunt and grizzled, very ragged, and so miserable-looking that Mrs. Kilfoyle could have felt nothing but compassion for him had he not carried over his shoulder a bunch of shiny cans, which was to her mind as satisfactory a passport as a ticket of leave. For although these were yet rather early days at Lisconnel, the Tinkers had already begun to establish their reputation. So when he stopped in front of her and said, "Good-day, ma'am," she only replied distantly, "It's a hardy mornin'," and hoped he would move on. But he said, "It's cruel could, ma'am," and continued to stand looking at her with wide and woful eyes, in which she conjectured--erroneously, as it happened--hunger for warmth or food. Under these circumstances, what could be done by a woman who was conscious of owning a redly glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking and bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the responsibilities of poverty are no doubt very imperfectly understood. Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp, "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes, whose earth-colored skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within; and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, onto the chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be the fire, there, and git a taste of the heat." Then she lifted her old shawl over her head, and ran out to see where at all Brian and Thady were gettin' their deaths on her under the pours of rain; and as she passed the Keoghs' adjacent door--which was afterward the Sheridans', whence their Larry departed so reluctantly--young Mrs. Keogh called her to come in and look at "the child," who, being a new and unique possession, was liable to develop alarmingly strange symptoms, and had now "woke up wid his head that hot, you might as well put your hand on the hob of the grate." Mrs. Kilfoyle stayed only long enough to suggest, as a possible remedy, a drop of two-milk whey. "But ah, sure, woman dear, where at all 'ud we come by that, wid the crathur of a goat scarce wettin' the bottom of the pan?" and to draw reassuring omens from the avidity with which the invalid grabbed at a sugared crust. In fact, she was less than five minutes out of her house; but when she returned to it, she found it empty. First, she noted with a moderate thrill of surprise that her visitor had gone away leaving his potatoes untouched; and next, with a rough shock of dismay, that her cloak no longer lay on the window seat where she had left it. From that moment she never felt any real doubts about what had befallen her, though for some time she kept on trying to conjure them up, and searched wildly round and round and round her little room, like a distracted bee strayed into the hollow furze-bush, before she sped over to Mrs. O'Driscoll with the news of her loss. It spread rapidly through Lisconnel, and brought the neighbors together exclaiming and condoling, though not in great force, as there was a fair going on down beyant, which nearly all the men and some of the women had attended. This was accounted cruel unlucky, as it left the place without any one able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief. A prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be a "thrifle lame-futted"; though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at a grasshopper's lep, and then thinkin' better of it." Little Thady Kilfoyle reported that he had met the strange man a bit down the road, "leggin' it along at a great rate, wid a black rowl of somethin' under his arm that he looked to be crumplin' up as small as he could,"--the word "crumpling" went acutely to Mrs. Kilfoyle's heart,--and some long-sighted people declared that they could still catch glimpses of a receding figure through the hovering fog on the way toward Sallinbeg. "I'd think he'd be beyant seein' afore now," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, who stood in the rain, the disconsolate centre of the group about her door; all women and children except old Johnny Keogh, who was so bothered and deaf that he grasped new situations slowly and feebly, and had now an impression of somebody's house being on fire. "He must ha' took off wid himself the instiant me back was turned, for ne'er a crumb had he touched of the pitaties." "Maybe he'd that much shame in him," said Mrs. O'Driscoll. "They'd a right to ha' choked him, troth and they had," said Ody Rafferty's aunt. "Is it chokin'?" said young Mrs. M'Gurk, bitterly. "Sure the bigger thief a body is, the more he'll thrive on whatever he gits; you might think villiny was as good as butter to people's pitaties, you might so. Sharne how are you? Liker he'd ate all he could swally in the last place he got the chance of layin' his hands on anythin'." "Och, woman alive, but it's the fool you were to let him out of your sight," said Ody Rafferty's aunt. "If it had been me, I'd niver ha' took me eyes off him, for the look of him on'y goin' by made me flesh creep upon me bones." "'Deed was I," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, sorrowfully, "a fine fool. And vexed she'd be, rael vexed, if she guessed the way it was gone on us, for the dear knows what dirty ould rapscallions 'ill get the wearin' of it now. Rael vexed she'd be." This speculation was more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak, though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come over her prospects. "I wish to goodness a couple of the lads 'ud step home wid themselves this minit of time," said Mrs. M'Gurk. "They'd come tip wid him yet, and take it off of him ready enough. And smash his ugly head for him, if he would be givin' them any impidence." "Aye, and 'twould be a real charity--the mane baste;--or sling him in one of the bog-houles," said the elder Mrs. Keogh, a mild-looking little old woman. "I'd liefer than nine nine-pennies see thim comin' along. But I'm afeard it's early for thim yet." Everybody's eyes turned, as she spoke, toward the ridge of the Knockawn, though with no particular expectation of seeing what they wished upon it. But behold, just at that moment three figures, blurred among the gray rain-mists, looming into view. "Be the powers," said Mrs. M'Gurk, jubilantly, "it's Ody Rafferty himself. To your sowls! Now you've a great good chance, ma'am, to be gettin' it back. He's the boy 'ill leg it over all before him"--for in those days Ody was lithe and limber--"and it's hard-set the thievin' Turk 'ill be to get the better of him at a racin' match--Hi--Och." She had begun to hail him with a call eager and shrill, which broke off in a strangled croak, like a young cock's unsuccessful effort. "Och, murdher, murdher, murdher," she said to the bystanders, in a disgusted undertone. "I'll give you me misfort'nit word thim other two is the pólis." Now it might seem on the face of things that the arrival of those two active and stalwart civil servants would have been welcomed as happening just in the nick of time; yet it argues an alien ignorance to suppose such a view of the matter by any means possible. The men in invisible green tunics belonged completely to the category of pitaty-blights, rint-warnin's, fevers, and the like devastators of life, that dog a man more or less all through it, but close in on him, a pitiful quarry, when the bad seasons come and the childer and the old crathurs are starvin' wid the hunger, and his own heart is broke; therefore, to accept assistance from them in their official capacity would have been a proceeding most reprehensibly unnatural. To put a private quarrel or injury into the hands of the peelers were a disloyal making of terms with the public foe; a condoning of great permanent wrongs for the sake of a trivial temporary convenience. Lisconnel has never been skilled in the profitable and ignoble art of utilizing its enemies. Not that anybody was more than vaguely conscious of these sentiments, much less attempted to express them in set terms. When a policeman appeared there in an inquiring mood, what people said among themselves was, "Musha cock him up. I hope he'll get his health till I would be tellin' him," or words to that effect; while in reply to his questions, they made statements superficially so clear and simple, and essentially so bewilderingly involved, that the longest experience could do little more for a constable than teach him the futility of wasting his time in attempts to disentangle them. Thus it was that when Mrs. Kilfoyle saw who Ody's companions were, she bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property. For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables, striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with fluttering shawls and flapping cap-borders, said briskly, "Good-day to you all. Did any of yous happen to see e'er a one of them tinkerin' people goin' by here this mornin'?" It was a moment of strong temptation to everybody, but especially to Mrs. Kilfoyle, who had in her mind that vivid picture of her precious cloak receding from her along the wet road, recklessly wisped up in the grasp of as thankless a thievin' black-hearted slieveen as ever stepped, and not yet, perhaps, utterly out of reach, though every fleeting instant carried it nearer to that hopeless point. However, she and her neighbors stood the test unshaken. Mrs. Ryan rolled her eyes deliberatively, and said to Mrs. M'Gurk, "The saints bless us, was it yisterday or the day before, me dear, you said you seen a couple of them below, near ould O'Beirne's?" And Mrs. M'Gurk replied, "Ah, sure, not at all, ma'am, glory be to goodness. I couldn't ha' tould you such a thing, for I wasn't next or nigh the place. Would it ha' been Ody Rafferty's aunt? She was below there fetchin' up a bag of male, and bedad she came home that dhreeped, the crathur, you might ha' thought she'd been after fishin' it up out of the botthom of one of thim bog-houles." And Mrs. Kilfoyle heroically hustled her Thady into the house, as she saw him on the brink of beginning loudly to relate his encounter with a strange man, and desired him to whisht and stay where he was in a manner so sternly repressive that he actually remained there as if he had been a pebble dropped into a pool, and not, as usual, a cork to bob up again immediately. Then Mrs. M'Gurk made a bold stroke, designed to shake off the hampering presence of the professionals, and enable Ody's amateur services to be utilized while there was yet time. "I declare," she said, "now that I think of it, I seen a feller crossin' the ridge along there a while ago, like as if he was comin' from Sallinbeg ways; and according to the apparence of him, I wouldn't won'er if he _was_ a one of thim tinker crathures--carryin' a big clump of cans he was, at any rate--I noticed the shine of thim. And he couldn't ha' got any great way yet to spake of, supposin' there was anybody lookin' to folly after him." But Constable Black crushed her hopes as he replied, "Ah, it's nobody comin' _from_ Sallinbeg that we've anything to say to. There's after bein' a robbery last night, down below at Jerry Dunne's--a shawl as good as new took, that his wife's ragin' over frantic, along wid a sight of fowl and other things. And the Tinkers that was settled this long while in the boreen at the back of his haggard is quit out of it afore daylight this mornin', every rogue of them. So we'd have more than a notion where the property's went to if we could tell the road they've took. We thought like enough some of them might ha' come this way." Now, Mr. Jerry Dunne was not a popular person in Lisconnel, where he has even become, as we have seen, proverbial for what we call "ould naygurliness." So there was a general tendency to say, "The divil's cure to him," and listen complacently to any details their visitors could impart. For in his private capacity a policeman, provided that he be otherwise "a dacint lad," which to do him justice is commonly the case, may join, with a few unobtrusive restrictions, in our neighborly gossips; the rule in fact being--Free admission except on business. Only Mrs. Kilfoyle was so much cast down by her misfortune that she could not raise herself to the level of an interest in the affairs of her thrifty suitor, and the babble of voices relating and commenting sounded as meaningless as the patter of the drops which jumped like little fishes in the large puddle at their feet. It had spread considerably before Constable Black said to his comrade:-- "Well, Daly, we'd better be steppin' home wid ourselves as wise as we come, as the man said when he'd axed his road of the ould black horse in the dark lane. There's no good goin' further, for the whole gang of them's scattered over the counthry agin now like a seedin' thistle in a high win'." "Aye, bedad," said Constable Daly, "and be the same token, this win' ud skin a tanned elephant. It's on'y bogged and drenched we'd git. Look at what's comin' up over there. That rain's snow on the hills, every could drop of it; I seen Ben Bawn this mornin' as white as the top of a musharoon, and it's thickenin' wid sleet here this minute, and so it is." The landscape did, indeed, frown upon further explorations. In quarters where the rain had abated it seemed as if the mists had curdled on the breath of the bitter air, and they lay floating in long white bars and reefs low on the track of their own shadow, which threw down upon the sombre bogland deeper stains of gloom. Here and there one caught on the crest of some gray-bowldered knoll, and was teazed into fleecy threads that trailed melting instead of tangling. But toward the north the horizon was all blank, with one vast, smooth slant of slate-color, like a pent-house roof, which had a sliding motion onwards. Ody Rafferty pointed to it and said, "Troth, it's teemin' powerful this instiant up there in the mountains. 'Twill be much if you land home afore it's atop of you; for 'twould be the most I could do myself." And as the constables departed hastily, most people forgot the stolen cloak for a while to wonder whether their friends would escape being entirely drowned on the way back from the fair. Mrs. Kilfoyle, however, still stood in deep dejection at her door, and said, "Och, but she was the great fool to go let the likes of him set fut widin' her house." To console her Mrs. O'Driscoll said, "Ah, sure, sorra a fool were you, woman dear; how would you know the villiny of him? And if you'd turned the man away widout givin' him e'er a bit, it's bad you'd be thinkin' of it all the day after." And to improve the occasion for her juniors, old Mrs. Keogh added, "Aye, and morebetoken you'd ha' been committin' a sin." But Mrs. Kilfoyle replied with much candor, "'Deed, then, I'd a dale liefer be after committin' a sin, or a dozen sins, than to have me poor mother's good cloak thieved away on me, and walkin' wild about the world." As it happened, the fate of Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak was very different from her forecast. But I do not think that a knowledge of it would have teen consolatory to her by any means. If she had heard of it, she would probably have said, "The cross of Christ upon us. God be good to the misfort'nit crathur." For she was not at all of an implacable temper, and would, under the circumstances, have condoned even the injury that obliged her to appear at Mass with a flannel petticoat over her head until the end of her days. Yet she did hold the Tinkers in a perhaps somewhat too unqualified reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers. Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves,--veritable birds of prey,--whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their habits, who roosted, for the most part, a long way off, and made their collections by deputy. Copyrighted 1895, by Dodd, Mead and Company. WALLED OUT From 'Bogland Studies' An' wanst we were restin' a bit in the sun on the smooth hillside, Where the grass felt warm to your hand as the fleece of a sheep, for wide, As ye'd look overhead an' around, 'twas all a-blaze and a-glow, An' the blue was blinkin' up from the blackest bog-holes below; An' the scent o' the bogmint was sthrong on the air, an' never a sound But the plover's pipe that ye'll seldom miss by a lone bit o' ground. An' he laned--Misther Pierce--on his elbow, an' stared at the sky as he smoked, Till just in an idle way he sthretched out his hand an' sthroked The feathers o' wan of the snipe that was kilt an' lay close by on the grass; An' there was the death in the crathur's eyes like a breath upon glass. An' sez he, "It's quare to think that a hole ye might bore wid a pin 'Ill be wide enough to let such a power o' darkness in On such a power o' light; an' it's quarer to think," sez he, "That wan o' these days the like is bound to happen to you an' me." Thin Misther Barry, he sez: "Musha, how's wan to know but there's light On t'other side o' the dark, as the day comes afther the night?" An' "Och," says Misther Pierce, "what more's our knowin'--save the mark-- Than guessin' which way the chances run, an' thinks I they run to the dark; Or else agin now some glint of a bame'd ha' come slithered an' slid; Sure light's not aisy to hide, an' what for should it be hid?" Up he stood with a sort o' laugh: "If on light," sez he, "ye're set, Let's make the most o' this same, as it's all that we're like to get." Thim were his words, as I minded well, for often afore an' sin, The 'dintical thought 'ud bother me head that seemed to bother him thin; An' many's the time I'd be wond'rin' whatever it all might mane, The sky, an' the lan', an' the bastes, an' the rest o' thim plain as plain, And all behind an' beyant thim a big black shadow let fall; Ye'll sthrain the sight out of your eyes, but there it stands like a wall. "An' there," sez I to meself, "we're goin' wherever we go, But where we'll be whin we git there it's never a know I know." Thin whiles I thought I was maybe a sthookawn to throuble me mind Wid sthrivin' to comprehind onnathural things o' the kind; An' Quality, now, that have larnin', might know the rights o' the case, But ignorant wans like me had betther lave it in pace. Priest, tubbe sure, an' Parson, accordin' to what they say, The whole matther's plain as a pikestaff an' clear as the day, An' to hear thim talk of a world beyant, ye'd think at the laste They'd been dead an' buried half their lives, an' had thramped it from west to aist; An' who's for above an' who's for below they've as pat as if they could tell The name of every saint in heaven an' every divil in hell. But cock up the lives of thimselves to be settlin' it all to their taste-- I sez, and the wife she sez I'm no more nor a haythin baste-- For mighty few o' thim's rael Quality, musha, they're mostly a pack O' playbians, each wid a tag to his name an' a long black coat to his back; An' it's on'y romancin' they are belike; a man must stick be his trade, An' _they_ git their livin' by lettin' on they know how wan's sowl is made. And in chapel or church they're bound to know somethin' for sure, good or bad, Or where'd be the sinse o' their preachin' an' prayers an' hymns an' howlin' like mad? So who'd go mindin' o' thim? barrin' women, in coorse, an' wanes, That believe 'most aught ye tell thim, if they don't understand what it manes-- Bedad, if it worn't the nathur o' women to want the wit, Parson and Priest I'm a-thinkin' might shut up their shop an' quit. But, och, it's lost an' disthracted the crathurs 'ud be without Their bit of divarsion on Sundays whin all o' thim gits about, Cluth'rin' an' pluth'rin' together like hins, an' a-roostin' in rows, An' meetin' their frins an' their neighbors, and wearin' their dacint clothes. An' sure it's quare that the clergy can't ever agree to keep Be tellin' the same thrue story, sin' they know such a won'erful heap; For many a thing Priest tells ye that Parson sez is a lie, An' which has a right to be wrong, the divil a much know I, For all the differ I see 'twixt the pair o' thim 'd fit in a nut: Wan for the Union, an' wan for the League, an' both o' thim bitther as sut. But Misther Pierce, that's a gintleman born, an' has college larnin' and all, There he was starin' no wiser than me where the shadow stands like a wall. Authorized American Edition, Dodd, Mead and Company. JOEL BARLOW (1754-1812) One morning late in the July of 1778, a select company gathered in the little chapel of Yale College to listen to orations and other exercises by a picked number of students of the Senior class, one of whom, named Barlow, had been given the coveted honor of delivering what was termed the 'Commencement Poem.' Those of the audience who came from a distance carried back to their homes in elm-shaded Norwich, or Stratford, or Litchfield, high on its hills, lively recollections of a handsome young man and of his 'Prospect of Peace,' whose cheerful prophecies in heroic verse so greatly "improved the occasion." They had heard that he was a farmer's son from Redding, Connecticut, who had been to school at Hanover, New Hampshire, and had entered Dartmouth College, but soon removed to Yale on account of its superior advantages; that he had twice seen active service in the Continental army, and that he was engaged to marry a beautiful New Haven girl. [Illustration: Joel Barlow] The brilliant career predicted for Barlow did not begin immediately. Distaste for war, hope of securing a tutorship in college, and--we may well believe--Miss Ruth's entreaties, kept him in New Haven two years longer, engaged in teaching and in various courses of study. 'The Prospect of Peace' had been issued in pamphlet form, and the compliments paid the author incited him to plan a poem of a philosophic character on the subject of America at large, bearing the title 'The Vision of Columbus.' The appointment as tutor never came, and instead of cultivating the Muse in peaceful New Haven, he was forced to evoke her aid in a tent on the banks of the Hudson, whither after a hurried course in theology, he proceeded as an army chaplain in 1780. During his connection with the army, which lasted until its disbandment in 1783, he won repute by lyrics written to encourage the soldiers, and by "a flaming political sermon," as he termed it, on the treason of Arnold. Army life ended, Barlow removed to Hartford, where he studied law, edited the American Mercury,--a weekly paper he had helped to found,--- and with John Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, and David Humphreys formed a literary club which became widely known as the "Hartford Wits." Its chief publication, a series of political lampoons styled 'The Anarchiad,' satirized those factions whose disputes imperiled the young republic, and did much to influence public opinion in Connecticut and elsewhere in favor of the Federal Constitution. A revision and enlargement of Dr. Watts's 'Book of Psalmody,' and the publication (1787) of his own 'Vision of Columbus,' occupied part of Barlow's time while in Hartford. The latter poem was extravagantly praised, ran through several editions, and was republished in London and Paris; but the poet, who now had a wife to support, could not live by his pen nor by the law, and when in 1788 he was urged by the Scioto Land Company to become its agent in Paris, he gladly accepted. The company was a private association, formed to buy large tracts of government land situated in Ohio and sell them in Europe to capitalists or actual settlers. This failed disastrously, and Barlow was left stranded in Paris, where he remained, supporting himself partly by writing, partly by business ventures. Becoming intimate with the leaders of the Girondist party, the man who had dedicated his 'Vision of Columbus' to Louis XVI., and had also dined with the nobility, now began to figure as a zealous Republican and as a Liberal in religion. From 1790 to 1793 he passed most of his time in London, where he wrote a number of political pamphlets for the Society for Constitutional Information, an organization openly favoring French Republicanism and a revision of the British Constitution. Here also, in 1791, he finished a work entitled 'Advice to the Privileged Orders,' which probably would have run through many editions had it not been suppressed by the British government. The book was an arraignment of tyranny in church and state, and was quickly followed by 'The Conspiracy of Kings,' an attack in verse on those European countries which had combined to kill Republicanism in France. In 1792 Barlow was made a citizen of France as a mark of appreciation of a 'Letter' addressed to the National Convention, giving that body advice, and when the convention sent commissioners to organize the province of Savoy into a department, Barlow was one of the number. As a candidate for deputy from Savoy, he was defeated; but his visit was not fruitless, for at Chambéry the sight of a dish of maize-meal porridge reminded him of his early home in Connecticut, and inspired him to write in that ancient French town a typical Yankee poem, 'Hasty Pudding.' Its preface, in prose, addressed to Mrs. Washington, assured her that simplicity of diet was one of the virtues; and if cherished by her, as it doubtless was, it would be more highly regarded by her countrywomen. Between the years of 1795-97, Barlow held the important but unenviable position of United States Consul at Algiers, and succeeded both in liberating many of his countrymen who were held as prisoners, and in perfecting treaties with the rulers of the Barbary States, which gave United States vessels entrance to their ports and secured them from piratical attacks. On his return to Paris he translated Volney's 'Ruins' into English, made preparations for writing histories of the American and French revolutions, and expanded his 'Vision of Columbus' into a volume which as 'The Columbiad'--a beautiful specimen of typography--was published in Philadelphia in 1807 and republished in London. The poem was held to have increased Barlow's fame; but it is stilted and monotonous, and 'Hasty Pudding' has done more to perpetuate his name. In 1805 Barlow returned to the United States and bought an estate near Washington, D.C., where he entertained distinguished visitors. In 1811 he returned to France authorized to negotiate a treaty of commerce. After waiting nine months, he was invited by Napoleon, who was then in Poland, to a conference at Wilna. On his arrival Barlow found the French army on the retreat from Moscow, and endured such privations on the march that on December 24th he died of exhaustion at the village of Zarnowiec, near Cracow, and there was buried. Barlow's part in developing American literature was important, and therefore he has a rightful place in a work which traces that development. He certainly was a man of varied ability and power, who advanced more than one good cause and stimulated the movement toward higher thought. The only complete 'Life and Letters of Joel Barlow,' by Charles Burr Todd, published in 1888, gives him unstinted praise as excelling in statesmanship, letters, and philosophy. With more assured justice, which all can echo, it praises his nobility of spirit as a man. No one can read the letter to his wife, written from Algiers when he thought himself in danger of death, without a warm feeling for so unselfish and affectionate a nature. A FEAST From 'Hasty Pudding' There are various ways of preparing and eating Hasty Pudding, with molasses, butter, sugar, cream, and fried. Why so excellent a thing cannot be eaten alone? Nothing is perfect alone; even man, who boasts of so much perfection, is nothing without his fellow-substance. In eating, beware of the lurking heat that lies deep in the mass; dip your spoon gently, take shallow dips and cool it by degrees. It is sometimes necessary to blow. This is indicated by certain signs which every experienced feeder knows. They should be taught to young beginners. I have known a child's tongue blistered for want of this attention, and then the school-dame would insist that the poor thing had told a lie. A mistake: the falsehood was in the faithless pudding. A prudent mother will cool it for her child with her own sweet breath. The husband, seeing this, pretends his own wants blowing, too, from the same lips. A sly deceit of love. She knows the cheat, but, feigning ignorance, lends her pouting lips and gives a gentle blast, which warms the husband's heart more than it cools his pudding. The days grow short; but though the falling sun To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done, Night's pleasing shades his various tasks prolong, And yield new subjects to my various song. For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home, The invited neighbors to the husking come; A frolic scene, where work and mirth and play Unite their charms to chase the hours away. Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall, The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall, Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-handed beaux, Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows, Assume their seats, the solid mass attack; The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack; The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound, And the sweet cider trips in silence round. The laws of husking every wight can tell; And sure, no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, Red as her lips, and taper as her waist, She walks the round, and culls one favored beau, Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. Various the sport, as are the wits and brains Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains; Till the vast mound of corn is swept away, And he that gets the last ear wins the day. Meanwhile the housewife urges all her care, The well-earned feast to hasten and prepare. The sifted meal already waits her hand, The milk is strained, the bowls in order stand, The fire flames high; and as a pool (that takes The headlong stream that o'er the mill-dam breaks) Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils, So the vexed caldron rages, roars and boils. First with clean salt she seasons well the food, Then strews the flour, and thickens well the flood. Long o'er the simmering fire she lets it stand; To stir it well demands a stronger hand: The husband takes his turn, and round and round The ladle flies; at last the toil is crowned; When to the board the thronging huskers pour, And take their seats as at the corn before. I leave them to their feast. There still belong More useful matters to my faithful song. For rules there are, though ne'er unfolded yet, Nice rules and wise, how pudding should be ate. Some with molasses grace the luscious treat, And mix, like bards, the useful and the sweet; A wholesome dish, and well deserving praise, A great resource in those bleak wintry days, When the chilled earth lies buried deep in snow, And raging Boreas dries the shivering cow. Blest cow! thy praise shall still my notes employ, Great source of health, the only source of joy; Mother of Egypt's god, but sure, for me, Were I to leave my God, I'd worship thee. How oft thy teats these pious hands have pressed! How oft thy bounties prove my only feast! How oft I've fed thee with my favorite grain! And roared, like thee, to see thy children slain. Ye swains who know her various worth to prize, Ah! house her well from winter's angry skies. Potatoes, pumpkins, should her sadness cheer, Corn from your crib, and mashes from your beer; When spring returns, she'll well acquit the loan, And nurse at once your infants and her own. Milk, then, with pudding I should always choose; To this in future I confine my muse, Till she in haste some further hints unfold, Good for the young, nor useless to the old. First in your bowl the milk abundant take, Then drop with care along the silver lake Your flakes of pudding: these at first will hide Their little bulk beneath the swelling tide; But when their growing mass no more can sink, When the soft island looms above the brink, Then check your hand; you've got the portion due, So taught my sire, and what he taught is true. There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear. The deep-bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to scoop In ample draughts the thin diluted soup, Performs not well in those substantial things, Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings; Where the strong labial muscles must embrace The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space. With ease to enter and discharge the freight, A bowl less concave, but still more dilate, Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the size, A secret rests, unknown to vulgar eyes. Experienced feeders can alone impart A rule so much above the lore of art. These tuneful lips that thousand spoons have tried, With just precision could the point decide, Though not in song--the muse but poorly shines In cones, and cubes, and geometric lines; Yet the true form, as near as she can tell, Is that small section of a goose-egg shell, Which in two equal portions shall divide The distance from the centre to the side. Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin;-- Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin Suspend the ready napkin; or like me, Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee; Just in the zenith your wise head project, Your full spoon rising in a line direct, Bold as a bucket, heed no drops that fall. The wide-mouthed bowl will surely catch them all! WILLIAM BARNES (1800-1886) Had he chosen to write solely in familiar English, rather than in the dialect of his native Dorsetshire, every modern anthology would be graced by the verses of William Barnes, and to multitudes who now know him not, his name would have become associated with many a country sight and sound. Other poets have taken homely subjects for their themes,--the hayfield, the chimney-nook, milking-time, the blossoming of "high-boughed hedges"; but it is not every one who has sung out of the fullness of his heart and with a naïve delight in that of which he sung: and so by reason of their faithfulness to every-day life and to nature, and by their spontaneity and tenderness, his lyrics, fables, and eclogues appeal to cultivated readers as well as to the rustics whose quaint speech he made his own. Short and simple are the annals of his life; for, a brief period excepted, it was passed in his native county--though Dorset, for all his purposes, was as wide as the world itself. His birthplace was Bagbere in the vale of Blackmore, far up the valley of the Stour, where his ancestors had been freeholders. The death of his parents while he was a boy threw him on his own resources; and while he was at school at Sturminster and Dorchester he supported himself by clerical work in attorneys' offices. After he left school his education was mainly self-gained; but it was so thorough that in 1827 he became master of a school at Mere, Wilts, and in 1835 opened a boarding-school in Dorchester, which he conducted for a number of years. A little later he spent a few terms at Cambridge, and in 1847 received ordination. From that time until his death in 1886, most of his days were spent in the little parishes of Whitcombe and Winterbourne Came, near Dorchester, where his duties as rector left him plenty of time to spend on his favorite studies. To the last, Barnes wore the picturesque dress of the eighteenth century, and to the tourist he became almost as much a curiosity as the relics of Roman occupation described in a guide-book he compiled. When one is at the same time a linguist, a musician, an antiquary, a profound student of philology, and skilled withal in the graphic arts, it would seem inevitable that he should have more than a local reputation; but when, in 1844, a thin volume entitled 'Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect' appeared in London, few bookshop frequenters had ever heard of the author. But he was already well known throughout Dorset, and there he was content to be known; a welcome guest in castle and hall, but never happier than when, gathering about him the Jobs and Lettys with whom Thomas Hardy has made us familiar, he delighted their ears by reciting his verses. The dialect of Dorset, he boasted, was the least corrupted form of English; therefore to commend it as a vehicle of expression and to help preserve his mother tongue from corruption, and to purge it of words not of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic origin,--this was one of the dreams of his life,--he put his impressions of rural scenery and his knowledge of human character into metrical form. He is remembered by scholars here and there for a number of works on philology, and one ('Outline of English Speech-Craft') in which, with zeal, but with the battle against him, he aimed to teach the English language by using words of Teutonic derivation only; but it is through his four volumes of poems that he is better remembered. These include 'Hwomely Rhymes' (1859), 'Poems of Rural Life' (1862), and 'Poems of Rural Life in Common English' (1863). The three collections of dialect poems were brought out in one volume, with a glossary, in 1879. "A poet fresh as the dew," "The first of English purely pastoral poets," "The best writer of eclogues since Theocritus,"--these are some of the tardy tributes paid him. With a sympathy for his fellow-man and a humor akin to that of Burns, with a feeling for nature as keen as Wordsworth's, though less subjective, and with a power of depicting a scene with a few well-chosen epithets which recalls Tennyson, Barnes has fairly earned his title to remembrance. 'The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist,' written by his daughter, Mrs. Baxter, was published in 1887. There are numerous articles relating to him in periodical literature, one of which, a sketch by Thomas Hardy, in Vol. 86 of the 'Athenaeum,' is of peculiar interest. BLACKMWORE MAIDENS The primrwose in the sheäde do blow, The cowslip in the zun, The thyme upon the down do grow, The clote where streams do run; An' where do pretty maidens grow An' blow, but where the tow'r Do rise among the bricken tuns, In Blackmwore by the Stour? If you could zee their comely gait, An' pretty feäces' smiles, A-trippèn on so light o' waïght, An' steppèn off the stiles; A-gwaïn to church, as bells do swing An' ring 'ithin the tow'r, You'd own the pretty maïdens' pleäce Is Blackmwore by the Stour? If you vrom Wimborne took your road, To Stower or Paladore, An' all the farmers' housen show'd Their daughters at the door; You'd cry to bachelors at hwome-- "Here, come: 'ithin an hour You'll vind ten maidens to your mind, In Blackmwore by the Stour." An' if you look'd 'ithin their door, To zee em in their pleäce, A-doèn housework up avore Their smilèn mother's feäce; You'd cry,--"Why, if a man would wive An' thrive, 'ithout a dow'r, Then let en look en out a wife In Blackmwore by the Stour." As I upon my road did pass A school-house back in May, There out upon the beäten grass Wer maïdens at their play; An' as the pretty souls did tweil An' smile, I cried, "The flow'r O' beauty, then, is still in bud In Blackmwore by the Stour." MAY Come out o' door, 'tis Spring! 'tis May! The trees be green, the yields be gay; The weather's warm, the winter blast, Wi' all his traïn o' clouds, is past; The zun do rise while vo'k do sleep, To teäke a higher daily zweep, Wi' cloudless feäce a-flingèn down His sparklèn light upon the groun'. The aïr's a-streamèn soft,--come drow The winder open; let it blow In drough the house, where vire, an' door A-shut, kept out the cwold avore. Come, let the vew dull embers die, An' come below the open sky; An' wear your best, vor fear the groun' In colors gäy mid sheäme your gown: An' goo an' rig wi' me a mile Or two up over geäte an' stile, Drough zunny parrocks that do lead, Wi' crooked hedges, to the meäd, Where elems high, in steätely ranks, Do rise vrom yollow cowslip-banks, An' birds do twitter vrom the spräy O' bushes deck'd wi' snow-white mäy; An' gil' cups, wi' the deäisy bed, Be under ev'ry step you tread. We'll wind up roun' the hill, an' look All down the thickly timber'd nook, Out where the squier's house do show His gray-walled peaks up drough the row O' sheädy elems, where the rock Do build her nest; an' where the brook Do creep along the meäds, an' lie To catch the brightness o' the sky; An' cows, in water to theïr knees, Do stan' a-whiskèn off the vlees. Mother o' blossoms, and ov all That's feäir a-vield vrom Spring till Fall, The gookoo over white-weäv'd seas Do come to zing in thy green trees, An' buttervlees, in giddy flight, Do gleäm the mwost by thy gäy light. [Illustration: _MILKING TIME_. Photogravure from a Painting by A. Roll.] Oh! when, at last, my fleshly eyes Shall shut upon the vields an' skies, Mid zummer's zunny days be gone, An' winter's clouds be comèn on: Nor mid I draw upon the e'th, O' thy sweet aïr my leätest breath; Alassen I mid want to stäy Behine' for thee, O flow'ry May! MILKEN TIME 'Poems of Rural Life' 'Twer when the busy birds did vlee, Wi' sheenèn wings, vrom tree to tree, To build upon the mossy lim' Their hollow nestes' rounded rim; The while the zun, a-zinkèn low, Did roll along his evenèn bow, I come along where wide-horn'd cows, 'Ithin a nook, a-screen'd by boughs, Did stan' an' flip the white-hooped pails Wi' heäiry tufts o' swingèn taïls; An' there were Jenny Coom a-gone Along the path a vew steps on, A-beärèn on her head, upstraïght, Her païl, wi' slowly-ridèn waight, An hoops a-sheenèn, lily-white, Ageän the evenèn's slantèn light; An' zo I took her païl, an' left Her neck a-freed vrom all his heft; An' she a-lookèn up an' down, Wi' sheäply head an' glossy crown, Then took my zide, an' kept my peäce, A-talkèn on wi' smilèn feäce, An' zettèn things in sich a light, I'd faïn ha' heär'd her talk all night; An' when I brought her milk avore The geäte, she took it in to door, An' if her païl had but allow'd Her head to vall, she would ha' bow'd; An' still, as 'twer, I had the zight Ov' her sweet smile, droughout the night. JESSIE LEE Above the timber's bendèn sh'ouds, The western wind did softly blow; An' up avore the knap, the clouds Did ride as white as driven snow. Vrom west to east the clouds did zwim Wi' wind that plied the elem's lim'; Vrom west to east the stream did glide, A sheenèn wide, wi' windèn brim. How feäir, I thought, avore the sky The slowly-zwimmèn clouds do look; How soft the win's a-streamèn by; How bright do roll the weävy brook: When there, a-passèn on my right, A-walkèn slow, an' treadèn light, Young Jessie Lee come by, an' there Took all my ceäre, an' all my zight. Vor lovely wer the looks her feäce Held up avore the western sky: An' comely wer the steps her peäce Did meäke a-walkèn slowly by: But I went east, wi' beatèn breast, Wi' wind, an' cloud, an' brook, vor rest, Wi' rest a-lost, vor Jessie gone So lovely on, toward the west. Blow on, O winds, athirt the hill; Zwim on, O clouds; O waters vall, Down maeshy rocks, vrom mill to mill: I now can overlook ye all. But roll, O zun, an' bring to me My day, if such a day there be, When zome dear path to my abode Shall be the road o' Jessie Lee. THE TURNSTILE Ah! sad wer we as we did peäce The wold church road, wi' downcast feäce, The while the bells, that mwoan'd so deep Above our child a-left asleep, Wer now a-zingèn all alive Wi' tother bells to meäke the vive. But up at woone pleäce we come by, 'Twere hard to keep woone's two eyes dry; On Steän-cliff road, 'ithin the drong, Up where, as vo'k do pass along, The turnèn stile, a-painted white, Do sheen by day an' show by night. Vor always there, as we did goo To church, thik stile did let us drough, Wi' spreadèn eärms that wheel'd to guide Us each in turn to tother zide. An' vu'st ov all the traïn he took My wife, wi' winsome gaït an' look; An' then zent on my little maïd, A-skippèn onward, overjäy'd To reach ageän the pleäce o' pride, Her comely mother's left han' zide. An' then, a-wheelèn roun' he took On me, 'ithin his third white nook. An' in the fourth, a-sheäken wild, He zent us on our giddy child. But eesterday he guided slow My downcast Jenny, vull o' woe, An' then my little maïd in black, A-walken softly on her track; An' after he'd a-turn'd ageän, To let me goo along the leäne, He had noo little bwoy to vill His last white eärms, an' they stood still. TO THE WATER-CROWFOOT O small-feäc'd flow'r that now dost bloom, To stud wi' white the shallow Frome, An' leäve the [2]clote to spread his flow'r On darksome pools o' stwoneless Stour, When sof'ly-rizèn airs do cool The water in the sheenèn pool, Thy beds o' snow white buds do gleam So feäir upon the sky-blue stream, As whitest clouds, a-hangèn high Avore the blueness of the sky. [Footnote 2: The yellow water-lily.] ZUMMER AN' WINTER When I led by zummer streams The pride o' Lea, as naïghbours thought her, While the zun, wi' evenèn beams, Did cast our sheädes athirt the water: Winds a-blowèn, Streams a-flowèn, Skies a-glowèn, Tokens ov my jay zoo fleetèn, Heightened it, that happy meetèn. Then, when maïd and man took pleäces, Gay in winter's Chris'mas dances, Showèn in their merry feäces Kindly smiles an' glisnèn glances: Stars a-winkèn, Days a-shrinkèn, Sheädes a-zinkèn, Brought anew the happy meetèn, That did meäke the night too fleetèn. JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE (1860-) James Matthew Barrie was born May 9th, 1860, at Kirriemuir, Scotland ('Thrums'); son of a physician whom he has lovingly embodied as 'Dr. McQueen,' and with a mother and sister who will live as 'Jess' and 'Leeby.' After an academy course at Dumfries he entered the University of Edinburgh at eighteen, where he graduated M.A., and took honors in the English Literature class. A few months later he took a place on a newspaper in Nottingham, England, and in the spring of 1885 went to London, where the papers had begun to accept his work. [Illustration: "JAMES M. BARRIE"] Above all, the St. James's Gazette had published the first of the 'Auld Licht Idylls' November 17th, 1884; and the editor, Frederick Greenwood, instantly perceiving a new and rich genius, advised him to work the vein further, enforcing the advice by refusing to accept his contributions on other subjects. He had the usual painful struggle to become a successful journalist, detailed in 'When a Man's Single'; but his real work was other and greater. In 1887 'When a Man's Single' came out serially in the British Weekly; it has little merit except in the Scottish prelude, which is of high quality in style and pathos. It is curious how utterly his powers desert him the moment he leaves his native heath: like Antæus, he is a giant on his mother earth and a pigmy off it. His first published book was 'Better Dead' (1887); it works out a cynical idea which would be amusing in five pages, but is diluted into tediousness by being spread over fifty. But in 1889 came a second masterpiece, 'A Window in Thrums,' a continuation of the Auld Licht series from an inside instead of an outside standpoint,--not superior to the first, but their full equals in a deliciousness of which one cannot say how much is matter and how much style. 'My Lady Nicotine' appeared in 1890; it was very popular, and has some amusing sketches, but no enduring quality. 'An Edinburgh Eleven' (1890) is a set of sketches of his classmates and professors. In 1891 the third of his Scotch works appeared,--'The Little Minister,'--which raised him from the rank of an admirable sketch writer to that of an admirable novelist, despite its fantastic plot and detail. Since then he has written three plays,--'Walker, London,' 'Jane Annie,' and 'The Professor's Love Story,' the latter very successful and adding to his reputation; but no literature except his novel 'Sentimental Tommy,' just closed in Scribner's Magazine. This novel is not only a great advance on 'The Little Minister' in symmetry of construction, reality of matter, tragic power, and insight, but its tone is very different. Though as rich in humor, the humor is largely of a grim, bitter, and sardonic sort. The light, gay, buoyant fun of 'The Little Minister,' which makes it a perpetual enjoyment, has mostly vanished; in its stead we feel that the writer's sensitive nature is wrung by the swarming catastrophes he cannot avert, the endless wrecks on the ocean of life he cannot succor, and hardly less by those spiritual tragedies and ironies so much worse, on a true scale of valuation, than any material misfortune. The full secret of Mr. Barrie's genius, as of all genius, eludes analysis; but some of its characteristics are not hard to define. His wonderful keenness of observation and tenacity of remembrance of the pettinesses of daily existence, which in its amazing minuteness reminds us of Dickens and Mark Twain, and his sensitiveness to the humorous aspects of their little misfits and hypocrisies and lack of proportion, might if untempered have made him a literary cynic like some others, remembered chiefly for the salience he gave to the ugly meannesses of life and the ironies of fate. But his good angel added to these a gift of quick, sure, and spontaneous sympathy and wide spiritual understanding. This fills all his higher work with a generous appreciativeness, a justness of judgment, a tenderness of feeling, which elevate as well as charm the reader. He makes us love the most grotesque characters, whom in life we should dislike and avoid, by the sympathetic fineness of his interpretation of their springs of life and their warping by circumstance. The impression left on one by the studies of the Thrums community is not primarily of intellectual and spiritual narrowness, or niggardly thrift, or dour natures: all are there, but with them are souls reaching after God and often flowering into beauty, and we reverence the quenchless aspiration of maligned human nature for an ideal far above its reach. He achieves the rare feat of portraying every pettiness and prejudice, even the meannesses and dishonors of a poor and hidebound country village, yet leaving us with both sincere respect and warm liking for it; a thing possible only to one himself of a fine nature as well as of a large mind. Nor is there any mawkishness or cheap surface sentimentality in it all. His pathos never makes you wince: you can always read his works aloud, the deadly and unfailing test of anything flat or pinchbeck in literature. His gift of humor saves him from this: true humor and true pathos are always found together because they are not two but one, twin aspects of the very same events. He who sees the ludicrous in misfits must see their sadness too; he who can laugh at a tumble must grieve over it: both are inevitable and both are coincident. As a literary artist, he belongs in the foremost rank. He has that sense of the typical in incident, of the universal in feeling, and of the suggestive in language, which mark the chiefs of letters. No one can express an idea with fewer strokes; he never expands a sufficient hint into an essay. His management of the Scotch dialect is masterly: he uses it sparingly, in the nearest form to English compatible with retaining the flavor; he never makes it so hard as to interfere with enjoyment; in few dialect writers do we feel so little alienness. 'Auld Licht Idylls' is a set of regular descriptions of the life of "Thrums," with special reference to the ways and character of the "Old Lights," the stubborn conservative Scotch Puritans; it contains also a most amusing and characteristic love story of the sect (given below), and a satiric political skit. 'A Window in Thrums' is mainly a series of selected incidents in detail, partly from the point of view of a crippled woman ("Jess"), sitting at her window and piecing out what she sees with great shrewdness from her knowledge of the general current of affairs, aided by her daughter "Leeby." 'The Little Minister' is developed from the real story of a Scotch clergyman who brought home a wife from afar, of so alien a sort to the general run that the parish spent the rest of her short life in speculating on her previous history and weaving legends about her. Barrie's imagined explanation is of Arabian-Nights preposterousness of incident, and indeed is only a careless fairy-tale in substance; but it is so rich in delicious filling, so full of his best humor, sentiment, character-drawing, and fine feeling, that one hardly cares whether it has any plot at all. 'Sentimental Tommy' is a study of a sensitive mobile boy, a born _poseur_, who passes his life in cloud-castles where he always dramatizes himself as the hero, who has no continuity of purpose, and no capacity of self-sacrifice except in spasms of impulse, and in emotional feeling which is real to itself; a spiritual Proteus who deceives even himself, and only now and then recognizes his own moral illusiveness, like Hawthorne's scarecrow-gentleman before the mirror: but with the irresistible instincts also of the born literary creator and constructor. The other characters are drawn with great power and truth. The judgment of contemporaries is rarely conclusive; and we will not attempt to anticipate that of posterity. It may be said, however, that the best applicable touchstone of permanency is that of seeming continuously fresh to cultivated tastes after many readings; and that Mr. Barrie's four best books bear the test without failure. THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL From 'Auld Licht Idylls' For two years it had been notorious in the square that Sam'l Dickie was thinking of courting T'nowhead's Bell, and that if little Sanders Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation of Alexander Alexander) went in for her, he might prove a formidable rival. Sam'l was a weaver in the Tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter whose trade-mark was a bell on his horse's neck that told when coals were coming. Being something of a public man, Sanders had not, perhaps, so high a social position as Sam'l; but he had succeeded his father on the coal-cart, while the weaver had already tried several trades. It had always been against Sam'l, too, that once when the kirk was vacant he had advised the selection of the third minister who preached for it, on the ground that it came expensive to pay a large number of candidates. The scandal of the thing was hushed up, out of respect for his father, who was a God-fearing man, but Sam'l was known by it in Lang Tammas's circle. The coal-carter was called Little Sanders, to distinguish him from his father, who was not much more than half his size. He had grown up with the name, and its inapplicability now came home to nobody. Sam'l's mother had been more far-seeing than Sanders's. Her man had been called Sammy all his life, because it was the name he got as a boy, so when their eldest son was born she spoke of him as Sam'l while still in his cradle. The neighbors imitated her, and thus the young man had a better start in life than had been granted to Sammy, his father. It was Saturday evening--the night in the week when Auld Licht young men fell in love. Sam'l Dickie, wearing a blue Glengarry bonnet with a red ball on the top, came to the door of a one-story house in the Tenements, and stood there wriggling, for he was in a suit of tweeds for the first time that week, and did not feel at one with them. When his feeling of being a stranger to himself wore off, he looked up and down the road, which straggles between houses and gardens, and then, picking his way over the puddles, crossed to his father's hen-house and sat down on it. He was now on his way to the square. Eppie Fargus was sitting on an adjoining dike, knitting stockings, and Sam'l looked at her for a time. "Is't yersel, Eppie?" he said at last. "It's a' that," said Eppie. "Hoo's a' wi' ye?" asked Sam'l. "We're juist aff an' on," replied Eppie, cautiously. There was not much more to say, but as Sam'l sidled off the hen-house, he murmured politely, "Ay, ay." In another minute he would have been fairly started, but Eppie resumed the conversation. "Sam'l," she said, with a twinkle in her eye, "ye can tell Lisbeth Fargus I'll likely be drappin' in on her aboot Munday or Teisday." Lisbeth was sister to Eppie, and wife of Thomas McQuhatty, better known as T'nowhead, which was the name of his farm. She was thus Bell's mistress. Sam'l leaned against the hen-house, as if all his desire to depart had gone. "Hoo d'ye kin I'll be at the T'nowhead the nicht?" he asked, grinning in anticipation. "Ou, I'se warrant ye'll be after Bell," said Eppie. "Am no sae sure o' that," said Sam'l, trying to leer. He was enjoying himself now. "Am no sure o' that," he repeated, for Eppie seemed lost in stitches. "Sam'l?" "Ay." "Ye'll be speirin' her sune noo, I dinna doot?" This took Sam'l, who had only been courting Bell for a year or two, a little aback. "Hoo d'ye mean, Eppie?" he asked. "Maybe ye'll do't the nicht." "Na, there's nae hurry," said Sam'l. "Weel, we're a' coontin' on't, Sam'l." "Gae wa wi' ye." "What for no?" "Gae wa wi' ye," said Sam'l again. "Bell's gei an' fond o' ye, Sam'l." "Ay," said Sam'l. "But am dootin' ye're a fell billy wi' the lasses." "Ay, oh, I d'na kin, moderate, moderate," said Sam'l, in high delight. "I saw ye," said Eppie, speaking with a wire in her mouth, "gaen on terr'ble wi' Mysy Haggart at the pump last Saturday." "We was juist amoosin' oorsels," said Sam'l. "It'll be nae amoosement to Mysy," said Eppie, "gin ye brak her heart." "Losh, Eppie," said Sam'l, "I didna think o' that." "Ye maun kin weel, Sam'l, at there's mony a lass wid jump at ye." "Ou, weel," said Sam'l, implying that a man must take these things as they come. "For ye're a dainty chield to look at, Sam'l." "Do ye think so, Eppie? Ay, ay; oh, I d'na kin am onything by the ordinar." "Ye mayna be," said Eppie, "but lasses doesna do to be ower partikler." Sam'l resented this, and prepared to depart again. "Ye'll no tell Bell that?" he asked, anxiously. "Tell her what?" "Aboot me an' Mysy." "We'll see hoo ye behave yersel, Sam'l." "No 'at I care, Eppie; ye can tell her gin ye like. I widna think twice o' tellin' her mysel." "The Lord forgie ye for leein', Sam'l," said Eppie, as he disappeared down Tammy Tosh's close. Here he came upon Henders Webster. "Ye're late, Sam'l," said Henders. "What for?" "Ou, I was thinkin' ye wid be gaen the length o' T'nowhead the nicht, an' I saw Sanders Elshioner makkin's wy there an oor syne." "Did ye?" cried Sam'l, adding craftily; "but its naething to me." "Tod, lad," said Henders; "gin ye dinna buckle to, Sanders'll be carryin' her off!" Sam'l flung back his head and passed on. "Sam'l!" cried Henders after him. "Ay," said Sam'l, wheeling round. "Gie Bell a kiss frae me." The full force of this joke struck neither all at once. Sam'l began to smile at it as he turned down the school-wynd, and it came upon Henders while he was in his garden feeding his ferret. Then he slapped his legs gleefully, and explained the conceit to Will'um Byars, who went into the house and thought it over. There were twelve or twenty little groups of men in the square, which was lighted by a flare of oil suspended over a cadger's cart. Now and again a staid young woman passed through the square with a basket on her arm, and if she had lingered long enough to give them time, some of the idlers would have addressed her, As it was, they gazed after her, and then grinned to each other. "Ay, Sam'l," said two or three young men, as Sam'l joined them beneath the town clock. "Ay, Davit," replied Sam'l. This group was composed of some of the sharpest wits in Thrums, and it was not to be expected that they would let this opportunity pass. Perhaps when Sam'l joined them he knew what was in store for him. "Was ye lookin' for T'nowhead's Bell, Sam'l?" asked one. "Or mebbe ye was wantin' the minister?" suggested another, the same who had walked out twice with Chirsty Duff and not married her after all. Sam'l could not think of a good reply at the moment, so he laughed good-naturedly. "Ondoobtedly she's a snod bit crittur," said Davit, archly. "An' michty clever wi' her fingers," added Jamie Deuchars. "Man, I've thocht o' makkin' up to Bell myself," said Pete Ogle. "Wid there be ony chance, think ye, Sam'l?" "I'm thinkin' she widna hae ye for her first, Pete," replied Sam'l, in one of those happy flashes that come to some men, "but there's nae sayin' but what she micht tak ye to finish up wi'." The unexpectedness of this sally startled every one. Though Sam'l did not set up for a wit, however, like Davit, it was notorious that he could say a cutting thing once in a way. "Did ye ever see Bell reddin' up?" asked Pete, recovering from his overthrow. He was a man who bore no malice. "It's a sicht," said Sam'l, solemnly. "Hoo will that be?" asked Jamie Deuchars. "It's weel worth yer while," said Pete, "to ging atower to the T'nowhead an' see. Ye'll mind the closed-in beds i' the kitchen? Ay, weel, they're a fell spoilt crew, T'nowhead's litlins, an' no that aisy to manage. Th' ither lasses Lisbeth's ha'en had a michty trouble wi' them. When they war i' the middle o' their reddin up the bairns wid come tumlin' about the floor, but, sal, I assure ye, Bell didna fash lang wi' them. Did she, Sam'l?" "She did not," said Sam'l, dropping into a fine mode of speech to add emphasis to his remark. "I'll tell ye what she did," said Pete to the others. "She juist lifted up the litlins, twa at a time, an' flung them into the coffin-beds. Syne she snibbit the doors on them, an' keepit them there till the floor was dry." "Ay, man, did she so?" said Davit, admiringly. "I've seen her do't myself," said Sam'l. "There's no a lassie maks better bannocks this side o' Fetter Lums," continued Pete. "Her mither tocht her that," said Sam'l; "she was a gran' han' at the bakin', Kitty Ogilvy." "I've heard say," remarked Jamie, putting it this way so as not to tie himself down to anything, "'at Bell's scones is equal to Mag Lunan's." "So they are," said Sam'l, almost fiercely. "I kin she's a neat han' at singein' a hen," said Pete. "An' wi't a'," said Davit, "she's a snod, canty bit stocky in her Sabbath claes." "If onything, thick in the waist," suggested Jamie. "I dinna see that," said Sam'l. "I d'na care for her hair either," continued Jamie, who was very nice in his tastes; "something mair yallowchy wid be an improvement." "A'body kins," growled Sam'l, "'at black hair's the bonniest." The others chuckled. "Puir Sam'l!" Pete said. Sam'l, not being certain whether this should be received with a smile or a frown, opened his mouth wide as a kind of compromise. This was position one with him for thinking things over. Few Auld Lichts, as I have said, went the length of choosing a helpmate for themselves. One day a young man's friends would see him mending the washing-tub of a maiden's mother. They kept the joke until Saturday night, and then he learned from them what he had been after. It dazed him for a time, but in a year or so he grew accustomed to the idea, and they were then married. With a little help, he fell in love just like other people. Sam'l was going the way of the others, but he found it difficult to come to the point. He only went courting once a week, and he could never take up the running at the place where he left off the Saturday before. Thus he had not, so far, made great headway. His method of making up to Bell had been to drop in at T'nowhead on Saturday nights and talk with the farmer about the rinderpest. The farm-kitchen was Bell's testimonial. Its chairs, tables, and stools were scoured by her to the whiteness of Rob Angus's saw-mill boards, and the muslin blind on the window was starched like a child's pinafore. Bell was brave, too, as well as energetic. Once Thrums had been overrun with thieves. It is now thought that there may have been only one; but he had the wicked cleverness of a gang. Such was his repute, that there were weavers who spoke of locking their doors when they went from home. He was not very skillful, however, being generally caught, and when they said they knew he was a robber he gave them their things back and went away. If they had given him time there is no doubt that he would have gone off with his plunder. One night he went to T'nowhead, and Bell, who slept in the kitchen, was awakened by the noise. She knew who it would be, so she rose and dressed herself, and went to look for him with a candle. The thief had not known what to do when he got in, and as it was very lonely he was glad to see Bell. She told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, and would not let him out by the door until he had taken off his boots, so as not to soil the carpet. On this Saturday evening Sam'l stood his ground in the square, until by and by he found himself alone. There were other groups there still, but his circle had melted away. They went separately, and no one said good-night. Each took himself off slowly, backing out of the group until he was fairly started. Sam'l looked about him, and then, seeing that the others had gone, walked round the town-house into the darkness of the brae that leads down and then up to the farm of T'nowhead. To get into the good graces of Lisbeth Fargus you had to know her ways and humor them. Sam'l, who was a student of women, knew this, and so, instead of pushing the door open and walking in, he went through the rather ridiculous ceremony of knocking. Sanders Elshioner was also aware of this weakness of Lisbeth, but though he often made up his mind to knock, the absurdity of the thing prevented his doing so when he reached the door. T'nowhead himself had never got used to his wife's refined notions, and when any one knocked he always started to his feet, thinking there must be something wrong. Lisbeth came to the door, her expansive figure blocking the way in. "Sam'l," she said. "Lisbeth," said Sam'l. He shook hands with the farmer's wife, knowing that she liked it, but only said, "Ay, Bell," to his sweetheart, "Ay, T'nowhead," to McQuhatty, and "It's yersel, Sanders," to his rival. They were all sitting round the fire; T'nowhead with his feet on the ribs, wondering why he felt so warm, and Bell darned a stocking, while Lisbeth kept an eye on a goblet full of potatoes. "Sit in to the fire, Sam'l," said the farmer, not, however, making way for him. "Na, na," said Sam'l, "I'm to bide nae time." Then he sat in to the fire. His face was turned away from Bell, and when she spoke he answered her without looking round. Sam'l felt a little anxious. Sanders Elshioner, who had one leg shorter than the other, but looked well when sitting, seemed suspiciously at home. He asked Bell questions out of his own head, which was beyond Sam'l, and once he said something to her in such a low voice that the others could not catch it. T'nowhead asked curiously what it was, and Sanders explained that he had only said, "Ay, Bell, the morn's the Sabbath." There was nothing startling in this, but Sam'l did not like it. He began to wonder if he was too late, and had he seen his opportunity would have told Bell of a nasty rumor, that Sanders intended to go over to the Free Church if they would make him kirk-officer. Sam'l had the good-will of T'nowhead's wife, who liked a polite man. Sanders did his best, but from want of practice he constantly made mistakes. To-night, for instance, he wore his hat in the house, because he did not like to put up his hand and take it off. T'nowhead had not taken his off either, but that was because he meant to go out by and by and lock the byre door. It was impossible to say which of her lovers Bell preferred. The proper course with an Auld Licht lassie was to prefer the man who proposed to her. "Yell bide a wee, an' hae something to eat?" Lisbeth asked Sam'l, with her eyes on the goblet. "No, I thank ye," said Sam'l, with true gentility. "Ye'll better?" "I dinna think it." "Hoots ay; what's to hender ye?" "Weel, since ye're sae pressin', I'll bide." No one asked Sanders to stay. Bell could not, for she was but the servant, and T'nowhead knew that the kick his wife had given him meant that he was not to do so either. Sanders whistled to show that he was not uncomfortable. "Ay, then, I'll be stappin' ower the brae," he said at last. He did not go, however. There was sufficient pride in him to get him off his chair, but only slowly, for he had to get accustomed to the notion of going. At intervals of two or three minutes he remarked that he must now be going. In the same circumstances Sam'l would have acted similarly. For a Thrums man it is one of the hardest things in life to get away from anywhere. At last Lisbeth saw that something must be done. The potatoes were burning, and T'nowhead had an invitation on his tongue. "Yes, I'll hae to be movin'," said Sanders, hopelessly, for the fifth time. "Guid-nicht to ye, then, Sanders," said Lisbeth. "Gie the door a fling-to ahent ye." Sanders, with a mighty effort, pulled himself together. He looked boldly at Bell, and then took off his hat carefully. Sam'l saw with misgivings that there was something in it which was not a handkerchief. It was a paper bag glittering with gold braid, and contained such an assortment of sweets as lads bought for their lasses on the Muckle Friday. "Hae, Bell," said Sanders, handing the bag to Bell in an off-hand way, as if it were but a trifle. Nevertheless, he was a little excited, for he went off without saying good-night. No one spoke. Bell's face was crimson. T'nowhead fidgeted on his chair, and Lisbeth looked at Sam'l. The weaver was strangely calm and collected, though he would have liked to know whether this was a proposal. "Sit in by to the table, Sam'l," said Lisbeth, trying to look as if things were as they had been before. She put a saucerful of butter, salt, and pepper near the fire to melt, for melted butter is the shoeing-horn that helps over a meal of potatoes. Sam'l, however, saw what the hour required, and jumping up, he seized his bonnet. "Hing the tatties higher up the joist, Lisbeth," he said with dignity; "I'se be back in ten meenits." He hurried out of the house, leaving the others looking at each other. "What do ye think?" asked Lisbeth. "I d'na kin," faltered Bell. "Thae tatties is lang o' comin' to the boil," said T'nowhead. In some circles a lover who behaved like Sam'l would have been suspected of intent upon his rival's life, but neither Bell nor Lisbeth did the weaver that injustice. In a case of this kind it does not much matter what T'nowhead thought. The ten minutes had barely passed when Sam'l was back in the farm-kitchen. He was too flurried to knock this time, and indeed Lisbeth did not expect it of him. "Bell, hae!" he cried, handing his sweetheart a tinsel bag twice the size of Sanders' gift. "Losh preserve's!" exclaimed Lisbeth; "I'se warrant there's a shillin's worth." "There's a' that, Lisbeth--an' mair," said Sam'l, firmly. "I thank ye, Sam'l," said Bell, feeling an unwonted elation as she gazed at the two paper bags in her lap. "Ye're ower extravegint, Sam'l," Lisbeth said. "Not at all," said Sam'l; "not at all. But I wouldna advise ye to eat thae ither anes, Bell--they're second quality." Bell drew back a step from Sam'l. "How do ye kin?" asked the farmer, shortly; for he liked Sanders. "I speired i' the shop," said Sam'l. The goblet was placed on a broken plate on the table, with the saucer beside it, and Sam'l, like the others, helped himself. What he did was to take potatoes from the pot with his fingers, peel off their coats, and then dip them into the butter. Lisbeth would have liked to provide knives and forks, but she knew that beyond a certain point T'nowhead was master in his own house. As for Sam'l, he felt victory in his hands, and began to think that he had gone too far. In the meantime, Sanders, little witting that Sam'l had trumped his trick, was sauntering along the kirk-wynd with his hat on the side of his head. Fortunately he did not meet the minister. The courting of T'nowhead's Bell reached its crisis one Sabbath about a month after the events above recorded. The minister was in great force that day, but it is no part of mine to tell how he bore himself. I was there, and am not likely to forget the scene. It was a fateful Sabbath for T'nowhead's Bell and her swains, and destined to be remembered for the painful scandal which they perpetrated in their passion. Bell was not in the kirk. There being an infant of six months in the house, it was a question of either Lisbeth or the lassie's staying at home with him, and though Lisbeth was unselfish in a general way, she could not resist the delight of going to church. She had nine children besides the baby, and being but a woman, it was the pride of her life to march them into the T'nowhead pew, so well watched that they dared not disbehave, and so tightly packed that they could not fall. The congregation looked at that pew, the mothers enviously, when they sung the lines:-- "Jerusalem like a city is Compactly built together." The first half of the service had been gone through on this particular Sunday without anything remarkable happening. It was at the end of the psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in that attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of the church. In their eagerness to be at the sermon, many of the congregation did not notice him, and those who did, put the matter by in their minds for future investigation. Sam'l, however, could not take it so coolly. From his seat in the gallery he saw Sanders disappear and his mind misgave him. With the true lover's instinct, he understood it all. Sanders had been struck by the fine turn-out in the T'nowhead pew. Bell was alone at the farm. What an opportunity to work one's way up to a proposal. T'nowhead was so overrun with children that such a chance seldom occurred, except on a Sabbath. Sanders, doubtless, was off to propose, and he, Sam'l, was left behind. The suspense was terrible. Sam'l and Sanders had both known all along that Bell would take the first of the two who asked her. Even those who thought her proud admitted that she was modest. Bitterly the weaver repented having waited so long. Now it was too late. In ten minutes Sanders would be at T'nowhead; in an hour all would be over. Sam'l rose to his feet in a daze. His mother pulled him down by the coat-tail, and his father shook him, thinking he was walking in his sleep. He tottered past them, however, hurried up the aisle, which was so narrow that Dan'l Ross could only reach his seat by walking sideways, and was gone before the minister could do more than stop in the middle of a whirl and gape in horror after him. A number of the congregation felt that day the advantage of sitting in the laft. What was a mystery to those down-stairs was revealed to them. From the gallery windows they had a fine open view to the south; and as Sam'l took the common, which was a short cut, though a steep ascent, to T'nowhead, he was never out of their line of vision. Sanders was not to be seen, but they guessed rightly the reason why. Thinking he had ample time, he had gone round by the main road to save his boots--perhaps a little scared by what was coming. Sam'l's design was to forestall him by taking the shorter path over the burn and up the commonty. It was a race for a wife, and several onlookers in the gallery braved the minister's displeasure to see who won. Those who favored Sam'l's suit exultingly saw him leap the stream, while the friends of Sanders fixed their eyes on the top of the common where it ran into the road. Sanders must come into sight there, and the one who reached this point first would get Bell. As Auld Lichts do not walk abroad on the Sabbath, Sanders would probably not be delayed. The chances were in his favor. Had it been any other day in the week, Sam'l might have run. So some of the congregation in the gallery were thinking, when suddenly they saw him bend low and then take to his heels. He had caught sight of Sanders's head bobbing over the hedge that separated the road from the common, and feared that Sanders might see him. The congregation who could crane their necks sufficiently saw a black object, which they guessed to be the carter's hat, crawling along the hedge-top. For a moment it was motionless, and then it shot ahead. The rivals had seen each other. It was now a hot race. Sam'l, dissembling no longer, clattered up the common, becoming smaller and smaller to the onlookers as he neared the top. More than one person in the gallery almost rose to their feet in their excitement. Sam'l had it. No, Sanders was in front. Then the two figures disappeared from view. They seemed to run into each other at the top of the brae, and no one could say who was first. The congregation looked at one another. Some of them perspired. But the minister held on his course. Sam'l had just been in time to cut Sanders out. It was the weaver's saving that Sanders saw this when his rival turned the corner; for Sam'l was sadly blown. Sanders took in the situation and gave in at once. The last hundred yards of the distance he covered at his leisure, and when he arrived at his destination he did not go in. It was a fine afternoon for the time of year, and he went round to have a look at the pig, about which T'nowhead was a little sinfully puffed up. "Ay," said Sanders, digging his fingers critically into the grunting animal; "quite so." "Grumph!" said the pig, getting reluctantly to his feet. "Ou ay; yes," said Sanders, thoughtfully. Then he sat down on the edge of the sty, and looked long and silently at an empty bucket. But whether his thoughts were of T'nowhead's Bell, whom he had lost forever, or of the food the farmer fed his pig on, is not known. "Lord preserve's! Are ye no at the kirk?" cried Bell, nearly dropping the baby as Sam'l broke into the room. "Bell!" cried Sam'l. Then T'nowhead's Bell knew that her hour had come. "Sam'l," she faltered. "Will ye hae's, Bell?" demanded Sam'l, glaring at her sheepishly. "Ay," answered Bell. Sam'l fell into a chair. "Bring's a drink o' water, Bell," he said. But Bell thought the occasion required milk, and there was none in the kitchen. She went out to the byre, still with the baby in her arms, and saw Sanders Elshioner sitting gloomily on the pig-sty. "Weel, Bell," said Sanders. "I thocht ye'd been at the kirk, Sanders," said Bell. Then there was a silence between them. "Has Sam'l speired ye, Bell?" asked Sanders, stolidly. "Ay," said Bell again, and this time there was a tear in her eye. Sanders was little better than an "orra man," and Sam'l was a weaver, and yet-- But it was too late now. Sanders gave the pig a vicious poke with a stick, and when it had ceased to grunt, Bell was back in the kitchen. She had forgotten about the milk, however, and Sam'l only got water after all. In after days, when the story of Bell's wooing was told, there were some who held that the circumstances would have almost justified the lassie in giving Sam'l the go-by. But these perhaps forgot that her other lover was in the same predicament as the accepted one--that, of the two, indeed, he was the more to blame, for he set off to T'nowhead on the Sabbath of his own accord, while Sam'l only ran after him. And then there is no one to say for certain whether Bell heard of her suitors' delinquencies until Lisbeth's return from the kirk. Sam'l could never remember whether he told her, and Bell was not sure whether, if he did, she took it in. Sanders was greatly in demand for weeks after to tell what he knew of the affair, but though he was twice asked to tea to the manse among the trees, and subjected thereafter to ministerial cross-examinations, this is all he told. He remained at the pigsty until Sam'l left the farm, when he joined him at the top of the brae, and they went home together. "It's yersel, Sanders," said Sam'l. "It is so, Sam'l," said Sanders. "Very cauld," said Sam'l. "Blawy," assented Sanders. After a pause-- "Sam'l," said Sanders. "Ay." "I'm hearin' yer to be mairit." "Ay." "Weel, Sam'l, she's a snod bit lassie." "Thank ye," said Sam'l. "I had ance a kin' o' notion o' Bell mysel," continued Sanders. "Ye had?" "Yes, Sam'l; but I thocht better o't." "Hoo d'ye mean?" asked Sam'l, a little anxiously. "Weel, Sam'l, mairitch is a terrible responsibeelity." "It is so," said Sam'l, wincing. "An' no the thing to take up withoot conseederation." "But it's a blessed and honorable state, Sanders; ye've heard the minister on't." "They say," continued the relentless Sanders, "'at the minister doesna get on sair wi' the wife himsel." "So they do," cried Sam'l, with a sinking at the heart. "I've been telt," Sanders went on, "'at gin you can get the upper han' o' the wife for awhile at first, there's the mair chance o' a harmonious exeestence." "Bell's no the lassie," said Sam'l, appealingly, "to thwart her man." Sanders smiled. "D'ye think she is, Sanders?" "Weel, Sam'l, I d'na want to fluster ye, but she's been ower lang wi' Lisbeth Fargus no to hae learnt her ways. An' a'body kins what a life T'nowhead has wi' her." "Guid sake, Sanders, hoo did ye no speak o' this afoore?" "I thocht ye kent o't, Sam'l." They had now reached the square, and the U.P. kirk was coming out. The Auld Licht kirk would be half an hour yet. "But, Sanders," said Sam'l, brightening up, "ye was on yer wy to spier her yersel." "I was, Sam'l," said Sanders, "and I canna but be thankfu' ye was ower quick for's." "Gin't hadna been for you," said Sam'l, "I wid never hae thocht o't." "I'm sayin' naething agin Bell," pursued the other, "but, man Sam'l, a body should be mair deleeberate in a thing o' the kind." "It was michty hurried," said Sam'l, wofully. "It's a serious thing to spier a lassie," said Sanders. "It's an awfu' thing," said Sam'l. "But we'll hope for the best," added Sanders, in a hopeless, voice. They were close to the Tenements now, and Sam'l looked as if he were on his way to be hanged. "Sam'l?" "Ay, Sanders." "Did ye--did ye kiss her, Sam'l?" "Na." "Hoo?" "There's was varra little time, Sanders." "Half an 'oor," said Sanders. "Was there? Man Sanders, to tell ye the truth, I never thocht o't." Then the soul of Sanders Elshioner was filled with contempt for Sam'l Dickie. The scandal blew over. At first it was expected that the minister would interfere to prevent the union, but beyond intimating from the pulpit that the souls of Sabbath-breakers were beyond praying for, and then praying for Sam'l and Sanders at great length, with a word thrown in for Bell, he let things take their course. Some said it was because he was always frightened lest his young men should intermarry with other denominations, but Sanders explained it differently to Sam'l. "I hav'na a word to say agin the minister," he said; "they're gran' prayers, but Sam'l, he's a mairit man himsel." "He's a' the better for that, Sanders, isna he?" "Do ye no see," asked Sanders, compassionately, "'at he's tryin' to mak the best o't?" "Oh, Sanders, man!" said Sam'l. "Cheer up, Sam'l," said Sanders; "it'll sune be ower." Their having been rival suitors had not interfered with their friendship. On the contrary, while they had hitherto been mere acquaintances, they became inseparables as the wedding-day drew near. It was noticed that they had much to say to each other, and that when they could not get a room to themselves they wandered about together in the churchyard. When Sam'l had anything to tell Bell, he sent Sanders to tell it, and Sanders did as he was bid. There was nothing that he would not have done for Sam'l. The more obliging Sanders was, however, the sadder Sam'l grew. He never laughed now on Saturdays, and sometimes his loom was silent half the day. Sam'l felt that Sanders's was the kindness of a friend for a dying man. It was to be a penny wedding, and Lisbeth Fargus said it was delicacy that made Sam'l superintend the fitting-up of the barn by deputy. Once he came to see it in person, but he looked so ill that Sanders had to see him home. This was on the Thursday afternoon, and the wedding was fixed for Friday. "Sanders, Sanders," said Sam'l, in a voice strangely unlike his own, "it'll a' be ower by this time the morn." "It will," said Sanders. "If I had only kent her langer," continued Sam'l. "It wid hae been safer," said Sanders. "Did ye see the yallow floor in Bell's bonnet?" asked the accepted swain. "Ay," said Sanders, reluctantly. "I'm dootin'--I'm sair dootin' she's but a flichty, licht-hearted crittur, after a'." "I had ay my suspeecions o't," said Sanders. "Ye hae kent her langer than me," said Sam'l. "Yes," said Sanders, "but there's nae gettin' at the heart o' women. Man Sam'l, they're desperate cunnin'." "I'm dootin't; I'm sair dootin't." "It'll be a warnin' to ye, Sam'l, no to be in sic a hurry i' the futur," said Sanders. Sam'l groaned. "Ye'll be gaein up to the manse to arrange wi' the minister the morn's mornin'," continued Sanders, in a subdued voice. Sam'l looked wistfully at his friend. "I canna do't, Sanders," he said, "I canna do't." "Ye maun," said Sanders. "It's aisy to speak," retorted Sam'l, bitterly. "We have a' oor troubles, Sam'l," said Sanders, soothingly, "an' every man maun bear his ain burdens. Johnny Davie's wife's dead, an' he's no repinin'." "Ay," said Sam'l, "but a death's no a mairitch. We hae haen deaths in our family, too." "It may a' be for the best," added Sanders, "an' there wid be a michty talk i' the hale country-side gin ye didna ging to the minister like a man." "I maun hae langer to think o't," said Sam'l. "Bell's mairitch is the morn," said Sanders, decisively. Sam'l glanced up with a wild look in his eyes. "Sanders!" he cried. "Sam'l!" "Ye hae been a guid friend to me, Sanders, in this sair affliction." "Nothing ava," said Sanders; "dount mention't." "But, Sanders, ye canna deny but what your rinnin oot o' the kirk that awfu' day was at the bottom o't a'." "It was so," said Sanders, bravely. "An' ye used to be fond o' Bell, Sanders." "I dinna deny't." "Sanders, laddie," said Sam'l, bending forward and speaking in a wheedling voice, "I aye thocht it was you she likit." "I had some sic idea mysel," said Sanders. "Sanders, I canna think to pairt twa fowk sae weel suited to ane anither as you an' Bell." "Canna ye, Sam'l?" "She wid make ye a guid wife, Sanders. I hae studied her weel, and she's a thrifty, douce, clever lassie. Sanders, there's no the like o' her. Mony a time, Sanders, I hae said to mysel, There's a lass ony man micht be prood to tak. A'body says the same, Sanders. There's nae risk ava, man; nane to speak o'. Tak her, laddie, tak her, Sanders, it's a grand chance, Sanders. She's yours for the speirin. I'll gie her up, Sanders." "Will ye, though?" said Sanders. "What d'ye think?" asked Sam'l. "If ye wid rayther," said Sanders, politely. "There's my han' on't," said Sam'l. "Bless ye, Sanders; ye've been a true frien' to me." Then they shook hands for the first time in their lives; and soon afterward Sanders struck up the brae to T'nowhead. Next morning Sanders Elshioner, who had been very busy the night before, put on his Sabbath clothes and strolled up to the manse. "But--but where is Sam'l?" asked the minister. "I must see himself." "It's a new arrangement," said Sanders. "What do you mean, Sanders?" "Bell's to marry me," explained Sanders. "But--- but what does Sam'l say?" "He's willin'," said Sanders. "And Bell?" "She's willin', too. She prefers it." "It is unusual," said the minister. "It's a' richt," said Sanders. "Well, you know best," said the minister. "You see, the hoose was taen, at ony rate," continued Sanders. "An' I'll juist ging in til't instead o' Sam'l." "Quite so." "An" I cudna think to disappoint the lassie." "Your sentiments do you credit, Sanders," said the minister; "but I hope you do not enter upon the blessed state of matrimony without full consideration of its responsibilities. It is a serious business, marriage." "It's a' that," said Sanders; "but I'm willin' to stan' the risk." So, as soon as it could be done, Sanders Elshioner took to wife T'nowhead's Bell, and I remember seeing Sam'l Dickie trying to dance at the penny wedding. Years afterward it was said in Thrums that Sam'l had treated Bell badly, but he was never sure about it himself. "It was a near thing--a michty near thing," he admitted in the square. "They say," some other weaver would remark, "'at it was you Bell liked best." "I d'na kin," Sam'l would reply, "but there's nae doot the lassie was fell fond o' me. Ou, a mere passin' fancy's ye micht say." JESS LEFT ALONE From 'A Window in Thrums' There may be a few who care to know how the lives of Jess and Hendry ended. Leeby died in the back end of the year I have been speaking of, and as I was snowed up in the school-house at the time, I heard the news from Gavin Birse too late to attend her funeral. She got her death on the commonty one day of sudden rain, when she had run out to bring in her washing, for the terrible cold she woke with next morning carried her off very quickly. Leeby did not blame Jamie for not coming to her, nor did I, for I knew that even in the presence of death the poor must drag their chains. He never got Hendry's letter with the news, and we know now that he was already in the hands of her who played the devil with his life. Before the spring came he had been lost to Jess. "Them 'at has got sae mony blessin's mair than the generality," Hendry said to me one day, when Craigiebuckle had given me a lift into Thrums, "has nae shame if they would pray aye for mair. The Lord has gi'en this hoose sae muckle, 'at to pray for mair looks like no bein' thankfu' for what we've got. Ay, but I canna help prayin' to Him 'at in His great mercy he'll tak Jess afore me. Noo 'at Leeby's gone, an' Jamie never lets us hear frae him, I canna gulp doon the thocht o' Jess bein' left alane." This was a prayer that Hendry may be pardoned for having so often in his heart, though God did not think fit to grant it. In Thrums, when a weaver died, his women-folk had to take his seat at the loom, and those who, by reason of infirmities, could not do so, went to a place, the name of which, I thank God, I am not compelled to write in this chapter. I could not, even at this day, have told any episode in the life of Jess had it ended in the poor house. Hendry would probably have recovered from the fever had not this terrible dread darkened his intellect when he was still prostrate. He was lying in the kitchen when I saw him last in life, and his parting words must be sadder to the reader than they were to me. "Ay, richt ye are," he said, in a voice that had become a child's; "I hae muckle, muckle to be thankfu' for, an' no the least is 'at baith me an' Jess has aye belonged to a bural society. We hae nae cause to be anxious aboot a' thing bein' dune respectable aince we're gone. It was Jess 'at insisted on oor joinin': a' the wisest things I ever did I was put up to by her." I parted from Hendry, cheered by the doctor's report, but the old weaver died a few days afterward. His end was mournful, yet I can recall it now as the not unworthy close of a good man's life. One night poor worn Jess had been helped ben into the room, Tibbie Birse having undertaken to sit up with Hendry. Jess slept for the first time for many days, and as the night was dying Tibbie fell asleep too. Hendry had been better than usual, lying quietly, Tibbie said, and the fever was gone. About three o'clock Tibbie woke and rose to mend the fire. Then she saw that Hendry was not in his bed. Tibbie went ben the house in her stocking soles, but Jess heard her. "What is't, Tibbie?" she asked, anxiously. "Ou, it's no naething," Tibbie said; "he's lyin' rale quiet." Then she went up to the attic. Hendry was not in the house. She opened the door gently and stole out. It was not snowing, but there had been a heavy fall two days before, and the night was windy. A tearing gale had blown the upper part of the brae clear, and from T'nowhead's fields the snow was rising like smoke. Tibbie ran to the farm and woke up T'nowhead. For an hour they looked in vain for Hendry. At last some one asked who was working in Elshioner's shop all night. This was the long earthen-floored room in which Hendry's loom stood with three others. "It'll be Sanders Whamond likely," T'nowhead said, and the other men nodded. But it happened that T'nowhead's Bell, who had flung on a wrapper, and hastened across to sit with Jess, heard of the light in Elshioner's shop. "It's Hendry," she cried; and then every one moved toward the workshop. The light at the diminutive, darn-covered window was pale and dim, but Bell, who was at the house first, could make the most of a cruizey's glimmer. "It's him," she said; and then, with swelling throat, she ran back to Jess. The door of the workshop was wide open, held against the wall by the wind. T'nowhead and the others went in. The cruizey stood on the little window. Hendry's back was to the door, and he was leaning forward on the silent loom. He had been dead for some time, but his fellow-workers saw that he must have weaved for nearly an hour. So it came about that for the last few months of her pilgrimage Jess was left alone. Yet I may not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should have been with her, was undergoing his own ordeal far away; where, we did not now even know. But though the poorhouse stands in Thrums, where all may see it, the neighbors did not think only of themselves. Than Tammas Haggart there can scarcely have been a poorer man, but Tammas was the first to come forward with offer of help. To the day of Jess's death he did not once fail to carry her water to her in the morning, and the luxuriously living men of Thrums in these present days of pumps at every corner, can hardly realize what that meant. Often there were lines of people at the well by three o'clock in the morning, and each had to wait his turn. Tammas filled his own pitcher and pan, and then had to take his place at the end of the line with Jess's pitcher and pan, to wait his turn again. His own house was in the Tenements, far from the brae in winter time, but he always said to Jess it was "naething ava." Every Saturday old Robbie Angus sent a bag of sticks and shavings from the sawmill by his little son Rob, who was afterward to become a man for speaking about at nights. Of all the friends that Jess and Hendry had, T'nowhead was the ablest to help, and the sweetest memory I have of the farmer and his wife is the delicate way they offered it. You who read will see Jess wince at the offer of charity. But the poor have fine feelings beneath the grime, as you will discover if you care to look for them; and when Jess said she would bake if anyone would buy, you would wonder to hear how many kindly folk came to her door for scones. She had the house to herself at nights, but Tibbie Birse was with her early in the morning, and other neighbors dropped in. Not for long did she have to wait the summons to the better home. "Na," she said to the minister, who has told me that he was a better man from knowing her, "my thocht is no nane set on the vanities o' the world noo. I kenna hoo I could ever hae haen sic an ambeetion to hae thae stuff-bottomed chairs." I have tried to keep away from Jamie, whom the neighbors sometimes upbraided in her presence. It is of him you who read would like to hear, and I cannot pretend that Jess did not sit at her window looking for him. "Even when she was bakin'," Tibbie told me, "she aye had an eye on the brae. If Jamie had come at ony time when it was licht she would hae seen 'im as sune as he turned the corner." "If he ever comes back, the sacket" (rascal), T'nowhead said to Jess, "we'll show 'im the door gey quick." Jess just looked, and all the women knew how she would take Jamie to her arms. We did not know of the London woman then, and Jess never knew of her. Jamie's mother never for an hour allowed that he had become anything but the loving laddie of his youth. "I ken 'im ower weel," she always said, "my ain Jamie." Toward the end she was sure he was dead. I do not know when she first made up her mind to this, nor whether it was not merely a phrase for those who wanted to discuss him with her. I know that she still sat at the window looking at the elbow of the brae. The minister was with her when she died. She was in her chair, and he asked her, as was his custom, if there was any particular chapter which she would like him to read. Since her husband's death she had always asked for the fourteenth of John, "Hendry's chapter," as it is still called among a very few old people in Thrums. This time she asked him to read the sixteenth chapter of Genesis. "When I came to the thirteenth verse," the minister told me, "'And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me,' she covered her face with her two hands, and said, 'Joey's text, Joey's text. Oh, but I grudged ye sair, Joey.'" "I shut the book," the minister said, "when I came to the end of the chapter, and then I saw that she was dead. It is my belief that her heart broke one-and-twenty years ago." AFTER THE SERMON From 'The Little Minister': by permission of the American Publishers' Corporation. One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in a town, without losing his character, and I used to await the return of my neighbor, the farmer of Waster Lunny, and of Birse, the Glen Quharity post, at the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny was a man whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from his wife his great pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on the other hand, he told outright what he thought of it, praising it to its face and blackguarding it as it deserved, and I have seen him, when completely baffled by the brute, sit down before it on a stone and thus harangue:--"You think you're clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you're mista'en. You're a thrawn limmer, that's what you are. You think you have blood in you. You ha'e blood! Gae awa, and dinna blether. I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man yestreen that kent your mither, and he says she was a feikie,[3] fushionless besom. What do you say to that?" [Footnote 3: Feikie, over-particular.] As for the post, I will say no more of him than that his bitter topic was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him graciously when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he had none, "aye implying that I ha'e a letter, but keep it back." On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the usual place awaiting my friends, and saw before they reached me that they had something untoward to tell. The farmer, his wife, and three children, holding each other's hands, stretched across the road. Birse was a little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by shouting. All were walking the Sabbath pace, and the family having started half a minute in advance, the post had not yet made up on them. "It's sitting to snaw," Waster Lunny said, drawing near, and just as I was to reply, "It is so," Silva slipped in the words before me. "You wasna at the kirk," was Elspeth's salutation. I had been at the glen church, but did not contradict her, for it is Established, and so neither here nor there. I was anxious, too, to know what their long faces meant, and therefore asked at once,--"Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?" "Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no," replied Waster Lunny, walking round his wife to get nearer me. "Dominie, a queery thing happened in the kirk this day, sic as--" "Waster Lunny," interrupted Elspeth sharply, "have you on your Sabbath shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?" "Guid care you took I should ha'e the dagont oncanny things on," retorted the farmer. "Keep out o' the gutter, then," said Elspeth, "on the Lord's day." "Him," said her man, "that is forced by a foolish woman to wear genteel 'lastic-sided boots canna forget them until he takes them aff. Whaur's the extra reverence in wearing shoon twa sizes ower sma'?" "It mayna be mair reverent," suggested Birse, to whom Elspeth's kitchen was a pleasant place, "but it's grand, and you canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable." I reminded them that they were speaking of Mr. Dishart. "We was saying," began the post briskly, "that--" "It was me that was saying it," said Waster Lunny. "So, Dominie--" "Haud your gabs, baith o' you," interrupted Elspeth. "You've been roaring the story to one another till you're hoarse." "In the forenoon," Waster Lunny went on determinedly, "Mr. Dishart preached on the riot, and fine he was. Oh, dominie, you should hae heard him ladling it on to Lang Tammas, no by name, but in sic a way that there was no mistaking wha he was preaching at. Sal! oh, losh! Tammas got it strong." "But he's dull in the uptake," broke in the post, "by what I expected. I spoke to him after the sermon, and I says, just to see if he was properly humbled:--'Ay, Tammas,' I says, 'them that discourse was preached against winna think themselves seven-feet men for a while again.' 'Ay, Birse,' he answers, 'and glad I am to hear you admit it, for he had you in his eye.' I was fair scunnered at Tammas the day." "Mr. Dishart was preaching at the whole clan-jamfray o' you," said Elspeth. "Maybe he was," said her husband, leering; "but you needna cast it at us, for my certie, if the men got it frae him in the forenoon, the women got it in the afternoon." "He redd them up most michty," said the post. "Thae was his very words or something like them:--'Adam,' says he, 'was an erring man, but aside Eve he was respectable.'" "Ay, but it wasna a' women he meant," Elspeth explained, "for when he said that, he pointed his finger direct at T'nowhead's lassie, and I hope it'll do her good." "But, I wonder," I said, "that Mr. Dishart chose such a subject to-day. I thought he would be on the riot at both services." "You'll wonder mair," said Elspeth, "when you hear what happened afore he began the afternoon sermon. But I canna get in a word wi' that man o' mine." "We've been speaking about it," said Birse, "ever since we left the kirk door. Tod, we've been sawing it like seed a' alang the glen." "And we meant to tell you about it at once," said Waster Lunny; "but there's aye so muckle to say about a minister. Dagont, to hae ane keeps a body out o' languor. Aye, but this breaks the drum. Dominie, either Mr. Dishart wasna weel or he was in the devil's grip." This startled me, for the farmer was looking serious. "He was weel eneuch," said Birse, "for a heap o' fowk spiered at Jean if he had ta'en his porridge as usual, and she admitted he had. But the lassie was skeered hersel', and said it was a mercy Mrs. Dishart wasna in the kirk." "Why was she not there?" I asked anxiously. "Ou, he winna let her out in sic weather." "I wish you would tell me what happened," I said to Elspeth. "So I will," she answered, "if Waster Lunny would haud his wheest for a minute. You see the afternoon diet began in the ordinary way, and a' was richt until we came to the sermon. 'You will find my text,' he says, in his piercing voice, 'in the eighth chapter of Ezra.'" "And at thae words," said Waster Lunny, "my heart gae a loup, for Ezra is an unca ill book to find; ay, and so is Ruth." "I kent the books o' the Bible by heart," said Elspeth, scornfully, "when I was a sax-year-auld." "So did I," said Waster Lunny, "and I ken them yet, except when I'm hurried. When Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra he a sort o' keeked round the kirk to find out if he had puzzled onybody, and so there was a kind o' a competition among the congregation wha would lay hand on it first. That was what doited me. Ay, there was Ruth when she wasna wanted, but Ezra, dagont, it looked as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the Bible." "You wasna the only distressed crittur," said his wife. "I was ashamed to see Eppie McLaren looking up the order o' the books at the beginning o' the Bible." "Tibbie Birse was even mair brazen," said the post, "for the sly cuttie opened at Kings and pretended it was Ezra." "None o' thae things would I do," said Waster Lunny, "and sal, I dauredna, for Davit Lunan was glowering ower my shuther. Ay, you may scowl at me, Elspeth Proctor, but as far back as I can mind Ezra has done me. Mony a time afore I start for the kirk I take my Bible to a quiet place and look Ezra up. In the very pew I says canny to mysel', 'Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job,' the which should be a help, but the moment the minister gi'es out that awfu' book, away goes Ezra like the Egyptian." "And you after her," said Elspeth, "like the weavers that wouldna fecht. You make a windmill of your Bible." "Oh, I winna admit I'm beat. Never mind, there's queer things in the world forby Ezra. How is cripples aye so puffed up mair than other folk? How does flour-bread aye fall on the buttered side?" "I will mind," Elspeth said, "for I was terrified the minister would admonish you frae the pulpit." "He couldna hae done that, for was he no baffled to find Ezra himsel'?" "Him no find Ezra!" cried Elspeth. "I hae telled you a dozen times he found it as easy as you could yoke a horse." "The thing can be explained in no other way," said her husband doggedly; "if he was weel and in sound mind." "Maybe the dominie can clear it up," suggested the post, "him being a scholar." "Then tell me what happened," I asked. "Man, hae we no telled you?" Birse said. "I thocht we had." "It was a terrible scene," said Elspeth, giving her husband a shove. "As I said, Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra eighth. Weel, I turned it up in a jiffy, and syne looked cautiously to see how Eppie McLaren was getting on. Just at that minute I heard a groan frae the pulpit. It didna stop short o' a groan. Ay, you may be sure I looked quick at the minister, and there I saw a sicht that would hae made the grandest gape. His face was as white as a baker's, and he had a sort of fallen against the back o' the pulpit, staring demented-like at his open Bible." "And I saw him," said Birse, "put up his hand atween him and the Book, as if he thocht it was to jump at him." "Twice," said Elspeth, "he tried to speak, and twice he let the words fall." "That," said Waster Lunny, "the whole congregation admits, but I didna see it mysel', for a' this time you may picture me hunting savage-like for Ezra. I thocht the minister was waiting till I found it." "Hendry Munn," said Birse, "stood upon one leg, wondering whether he should run to the session-house for a glass of water." "But by that time," said Elspeth, "the fit had left Mr. Dishart, or rather it had ta'en a new turn. He grew red, and it's gospel that he stamped his foot." "He had the face of one using bad words," said the post. "He didna swear, of course, but that was the face he had on." "I missed it," said Waster Lunny, "for I was in full cry after Ezra, with the sweat running down my face." "But the most astounding thing has yet to be telled," went on Elspeth. "The minister shook himsel' like one wakening frae a nasty dream, and he cries in a voice of thunder, just as if he was shaking his fist at somebody--" "He cries," Birse interposed, cleverly, "he cries, 'You will find the text in Genesis, chapter three, verse six.'" "Yes," said Elspeth, "first he gave out one text, and then he gave out another, being the most amazing thing to my mind that ever happened in the town of Thrums. What will our children's children think o't? I wouldna ha'e missed it for a pound note." "Nor me," said Waster Lunny, "though I only got the tail o't. Dominie, no sooner had he said Genesis third and sixth, than I laid my finger on Ezra. Was it no provoking? Onybody can turn up Genesis, but it needs an able-bodied man to find Ezra." "He preached on the Fall," Elspeth said, "for an hour and twenty-five minutes, but powerful though he was I would rather he had telled us what made him gie the go-by to Ezra." "All I can say," said Waster Lunny, "is that I never heard him mair awe-inspiring. Whaur has he got sic a knowledge of women? He riddled them, he fair riddled them, till I was ashamed o' being married." "It's easy kent whaur he got his knowledge of women," Birse explained, "it's a' in the original Hebrew. You can howk ony mortal thing out o' the original Hebrew, the which all ministers hae at their finger ends. What else makes them ken to jump a verse now and then when giving out a psalm?" "It wasna women like me he denounced," Elspeth insisted, "but young lassies that leads men astray wi' their abominable wheedling ways." "Tod," said her husband, "if they try their hands on Mr. Dishart they'll meet their match." "They will," chuckled the post. "The Hebrew's a grand thing, though teuch, I'm telled, michty teuch." "His sublimest burst," Waster Lunny came back to tell me, "was about the beauty o' the soul being everything and the beauty o' the face no worth a snuff. What a scorn he has for bonny faces and toom souls! I dinna deny but what a bonny face fell takes me, but Mr. Dishart wouldna gi'e a blade o' grass for't. Ay, and I used to think that in their foolishness about women there was dagont little differ atween the unlearned and the highly edicated." THE MUTUAL DISCOVERY From 'The Little Minister': by permission of the American Publishers' Corporation A young man thinks that he alone of mortals is impervious to love, and so the discovery that he is in it suddenly alters his views of his own mechanism. It is thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone. Did Gavin make this discovery when the Egyptian left him? Apparently he only came to the brink of it and stood blind. He had driven her from him for ever, and his sense of loss was so acute that his soul cried out for the cure rather than for the name of the malady. In time he would have realized what had happened, but time was denied him, for just as he was starting for the mudhouse Babbie saved his dignity by returning to him.... She looked up surprised, or seemingly surprised, to find him still there. "I thought you had gone away long ago," she said stiffly. "Otherwise," asked Gavin the dejected, "you would not have came back to the well?" "Certainly not." "I am very sorry. Had you waited another moment I should have been gone." This was said in apology, but the willful Egyptian chose to change its meaning. "You have no right to blame me for disturbing you," she declared with warmth. "I did not. I only--" "You could have been a mile away by this time. Nanny wanted more water." Babbie scrutinized the minister sharply as she made this statement. Surely her conscience troubled her, for on his not answering immediately she said, "Do you presume to disbelieve me? What could have made me return except to fill the pans again?" "Nothing," Gavin admitted eagerly, "and I assure you---" Babbie should have been grateful to his denseness, but it merely set her mind at rest. "Say anything against me you choose," she told him. "Say it as brutally as you like, for I won't listen." She stopped to hear his response to that, and she looked so cold that it almost froze on Gavin's lips. "I had no right," he said dolefully, "to speak to you as I did." "You had not," answered the proud Egyptian. She was looking away from him to show that his repentance was not even interesting to her. However, she had forgotten already not to listen.... She was very near him, and the tears had not yet dried on her eyes. They were laughing eyes, eyes in distress, imploring eyes. Her pale face, smiling, sad, dimpled yet entreating forgiveness, was the one prominent thing in the world to him just then. He wanted to kiss her. He would do it as soon as her eyes rested on his, but she continued without regarding him. "How mean that sounds! Oh, if I were a man I would wish to be everything that I am not, and nothing that I am. I would scorn to be a liar, I would choose to be open in all things, I would try to fight the world honestly. But I am only a woman, and so--well, that is the kind of man I would like to marry." "A minister may be all these things," said Gavin breathlessly. "The man I could love," Babbie went on, not heeding him, almost forgetting that he was there, "must not spend his days in idleness as the men I know do." "I do not." "He must be brave, no mere worker among others, but a leader of men." "All ministers are." "Who makes his influence felt." "Assuredly." "And takes the side of the weak against the strong, even though the strong be in the right." "Always my tendency." "A man who has a mind of his own, and having once made it up stands to it in defiance even of--" "Of his session." "Of the world. He must understand me." "I do." "And be my master." "It is his lawful position in the house." "He must not yield to my coaxing or tempers." "It would be weakness." "But compel me to do his bidding; yes, even thrash me if-" "If you won't listen to reason. Babbie," cried Gavin, "I am that man!" Here the inventory abruptly ended, and these two people found themselves staring at each other, as if of a sudden they had heard something dreadful. I do not know how long they stood thus motionless and horrified. I cannot tell even which stirred first. All I know is that almost simultaneously they turned from each other and hurried out of the wood in opposite directions. LOST ILLUSIONS From 'Sentimental Tommy' To-morrow came, and with it two eager little figures rose and gulped their porridge, and set off to see Thrums. They were dressed in the black clothes Aaron Latta had bought for them in London, and they had agreed just to walk, but when they reached the door and saw the tree-tops of the Den they--they ran. Would you not like to hold them back? It is a child's tragedy. They went first into the Den, and the rocks were dripping wet, all the trees save the firs were bare, and the mud round a tiny spring pulled off one of Elspeth's boots. "Tommy," she cried, quaking, "that narsty puddle can't not be the Cuttle Well, can it?" "No, it ain't," said Tommy, quickly, but he feared it was. "It's c-c-colder here than London," Elspeth said, shivering, and Tommy was shivering too, but he answered, "I'm--I'm--I'm warm." The Den was strangely small, and soon they were on a shabby brae, where women in short gowns came to their doors and men in night-caps sat down on the shafts of their barrows to look at Jean Myles's bairns. "What does yer think?" Elspeth whispered, very doubtfully. "They're beauties," Tommy answered, determinedly. Presently Elspeth cried, "Oh, Tommy, what a ugly stair! Where is the beauty stairs as it wore outside for show?" This was one of them, and Tommy knew it. "Wait till you see the west town end," he said, bravely: "it's grand." But when they were in the west town end, and he had to admit it, "Wait till you see the square," he said, and when they were in the square, "Wait," he said, huskily, "till you see the town-house." Alas, this was the town-house facing them, and when they knew it, he said, hurriedly, "Wait till you see the Auld Licht kirk." They stood long in front of the Auld Licht kirk, which he had sworn was bigger and lovelier than St. Paul's, but--well, it is a different style of architecture, and had Elspeth not been there with tears in waiting, Tommy would have blubbered. "It's--it's littler than I thought," he said, desperately, "but--the minister, oh, what a wonderful big man he is!" "Are you sure?" Elspeth squeaked. "I swear he is." The church door opened and a gentleman came out, a little man, boyish in the back, with the eager face of those who live too quickly. But it was not at him that Tommy pointed reassuringly; it was at the monster church key, half of which protruded from his tail pocket and waggled as he moved, like the hilt of a sword. Speaking like an old residenter, Tommy explained that he had brought his sister to see the church. "She's ta'en aback," he said, picking out Scotch words carefully, "because it's littler than the London kirks, but I telled her--I telled her that the preaching is better." This seemed to please the stranger, for he patted Tommy on the head while inquiring, "How do you know that the preaching is better?" "Tell him, Elspeth," replied Tommy, modestly. "There ain't nuthin' as Tommy don't know," Elspeth explained. "He knows what the minister is like, too." "He's a noble sight," said Tommy. "He can get anything from God he likes," said Elspeth. "He's a terrible big man," said Tommy. This seemed to please the little gentleman less. "Big!" he exclaimed, irritably; "why should he be big?" "He is big," Elspeth almost screamed, for the minister was her last hope. "Nonsense!" said the little gentleman. "He is--well, I am the minister." "You!" roared Tommy, wrathfully. "Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Elspeth. For a moment the Rev. Mr. Dishart looked as if he would like to knock two little heads together, but he walked away without doing it. "Never mind," whispered Tommy hoarsely to Elspeth. "Never mind, Elspeth, you have me yet." This consolation seldom failed to gladden her, but her disappointment was so sharp to-day that she would not even look up. "Come away to the cemetery, it's grand," he said; but still she would not be comforted. "And I'll let you hold my hand--as soon as we're past the houses," he added. "I'll let you hold it now," he said, eventually; but even then Elspeth cried dismally, and her sobs were hurting him more than her. He knew all the ways of getting round Elspeth, and when next he spoke it was with a sorrowful dignity. "I didna think," he said, "as yer wanted me never to be able to speak again; no, I didna think it, Elspeth." She took her hands from her face and looked at him inquiringly. "One of the stories mamma telled me and Reddy," he said, "were a man what saw such a beauty thing that he was struck dumb with admiration. Struck dumb is never to be able to speak again, and I wish I had been struck dumb when you wanted it." "But I didn't want it!" Elspeth cried. "If Thrums had been one little bit beautier than it is," he went on, solemnly, "it would have struck me dumb. It would have hurt me sore, but what about that, if it pleased you!" Then did Elspeth see what a wicked girl she had been, and when next the two were seen by the curious (it was on the cemetery road), they were once more looking cheerful. At the smallest provocation they exchanged notes of admiration, such as, "O Tommy, what a bonny barrel!" or "O Elspeth, I tell yer that's a dike, and there's just walls in London;" but sometimes Elspeth would stoop hastily, pretending that she wanted to tie her boot-lace, but really to brush away a tear, and there were moments when Tommy hung very limp. Each was trying to deceive the other for the other's sake, and one of them was never good at deception. They saw through each other, yet kept up the chilly game, because they could think of nothing better; and perhaps the game was worth playing, for love invented it. Scribner's Magazine. Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. SINS OF CIRCUMSTANCE From 'Sentimental Tommy' With the darkness, too, crept into the Muckley certain devils in the color of the night who spoke thickly and rolled braw lads in the mire, and egged on friends to fight, and cast lewd thoughts into the minds of the women. At first the men had been bashful swains. To the women's "Gie me my faring, Jock," they had replied, "Wait, Jean, till I'm fee'd," but by night most had got their arles, with a dram above it, and he who could only guffaw at Jean a few hours ago had her round the waist now, and still an arm free for rough play with other kimmers. The Jeans were as boisterous as the Jocks, giving them leer for leer, running from them with a giggle, waiting to be caught and rudely kissed. Grand, patient, long-suffering fellows these men were, up at five, summer and winter, foddering their horses, maybe, hours before there would be food for themselves, miserably paid, housed like cattle, and when the rheumatism seized them, liable to be flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was the life of the women: coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes their portion; their sweethearts in the service of masters who were loth to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day; that these girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish that they might wake no more? Scribner's Magazine. Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT (1801-1850) Political economy has been called the "dismal science"; and probably the majority think of it as either merely a matter of words and phrases, or as something too abstruse for the common mind to comprehend. It was the distinction of Bastiat that he was able to write economic tracts in such a language that he that ran might read, and to clothe the apparently dry bones with such integuments as manifested vitality. Under his pen, questions of finance, of tax, of exchange, became questions which concern the lives of individual men and women, with sentiments, hopes, and aspirations. [Illustration: FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT] He was born at Bayonne in France, June 19th, 1801. At nine years of age he was left an orphan, but he was cared for by his grandfather and aunt. He received his schooling at the college of St. Sever and at Sorèze, where he was noted as a diligent student. When about twenty years of age he was taken into the commercial house of his uncle at Bayonne. His leisure was employed in cultivating art and literature, and he became accomplished in languages and in instrumental and vocal music. He was early interested in political and social economy through the writings of Adam Smith, J.B. Say, Comte, and others; and having inherited considerable landed property at Mugron on the death of his grandfather in 1827, he undertook the personal charge of it, at the same time continuing his economic studies. His experiment in farming did not prove successful; but he rapidly developed clear ideas upon economical problems, being much assisted in their consideration by frequent conferences with his neighbor, M. Felix Coudroy. These two worked much together, and cherished a close sympathy in thought and heart. The bourgeois revolution of 1830 was welcomed enthusiastically by Bastiat. It was a revolution of prosperous and well-instructed men, willing to make sacrifices to attain an orderly and systematic method of government. To him the form of the administration did not greatly matter: the right to vote taxes was the right which governed the governors. "There is always a tendency on the part of governments to extend their powers," he said; "the administration therefore must be under constant surveillance." His motto was "Foi systematiqtie à la libre activité de I'individu; defiance systematique vis-à-vis de l'État conçu abstraitement,--c'est-à-dire, defiance parfaitement pure de toute hostilité de parti." [Systematic faith in the free activity of the individual; systematic distrust of the State conceived abstractly,--that is, a distrust entirely free from prejudice.] His work with his pen seems to have been begun about 1830, and from the first was concerned with matters of economy and government. A year later he was chosen to local office, and every opportunity which offered was seized upon to bring before the common people the true milk of the economic word, as he conceived it. The germ of his theory of values appeared in a pamphlet of 1834, and the line of his development was a steady one; his leading principles being the importance of restricting the functions of government to the maintenance of order, and of removing all shackles from the freedom of production and exchange. Through subscription to an English periodical he became familiar with Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League, and his subsequent intimacy with Cobden contributed much to broaden his horizon. In 1844-5 appeared his brilliant 'Sophismes économiques', which in their kind have never been equaled; and his reputation rapidly expanded. He enthusiastically espoused the cause of Free Trade, and issued a work entitled 'Cobden et la Ligue, ou l'Agitation anglaise pour la liberté des échanges' (Cobden and the League, or the English Agitation for Liberty of Exchange), which attracted great attention, and won for its author the title of corresponding member of the Institute. A movement for organization in favor of tariff reform was begun, of which he naturally became a leader; and feeling that Paris was the centre from which influence should flow, to Paris he removed. M. de Molinari gives an account of his debut:--"We still seem to see him making his first round among the journals which had shown themselves favorable to cause of the freedom of commerce. He had not yet had time to call upon a Parisian tailor or hatter, and in truth it had not occurred to him to do so. With his long hair and his small hat, his large surtout and his family umbrella, he would naturally be taken for a reputable countryman looking at the sights of the metropolis. But his countryman's-face was at the same time roguish and spirituelle, his large black eyes were bright and luminous, and his forehead, of medium breadth but squarely formed, bore the imprint of thought. At a glance one could see that he was a peasant of the country of Montaigne, and in listening to him one realized that here was a disciple of Franklin." He plunged at once into work, and his activity was prodigious. He contributed to numerous journals, maintained an active correspondence with Cobden, kept up communications with organizations throughout the country, and was always ready to meet his opponents in debate. The Republic of 1848 was accepted in good faith; but he was strongly impressed by the extravagant schemes which accompanied the Republican movement, as well as by the thirst for peace which animated multitudes. The Provisional government had made solemn promises: it must pile on taxes to enable it to keep its promises. "Poor people! How they have deceived themselves! It would have been so easy and so just to have eased matters by reducing the taxes; instead, this is to be done by profusion of expenditure, and people do not see that all this machinery amounts to taking away ten in order to return eight, _without counting the fact that liberty will succumb under the operation_." He tried to stem the tide of extravagance; he published a journal, the République Française, for the express purpose of promulgating his views; he entered the Constituent and then the Legislative Assembly, as a member for the department of Landes, and spoke eloquently from the tribune. He was a constitutional "Mugwump": he cared for neither parties nor men, but for ideas. He was equally opposed to the domination of arbitrary power and to the tyranny of Socialism. He voted with the right against the left on extravagant Utopian schemes, and with the left against the right when he felt that the legitimate complaints of the poor and suffering were unheeded. In the midst of his activity he was overcome by a trouble in the throat, which induced his physicians to send him to Italy. The effort for relief was a vain one, however, and he died in Rome December 24th, 1850. His complete works, mostly composed of occasional essays, were printed in 1855. Besides those mentioned, the most important are 'Propriété et Loi' (Property and Law), 'Justice et Fraternité,' 'Protectionisme et Communisme,' and 'Harmonies économiques.' The 'Harmonies économiques' and 'Sophismes économiques' have been translated and published in English. PETITION OF THE MANUFACTURERS OF CANDLES, WAX-LIGHTS, LAMPS, CANDLE-STICKS, STREET LAMPS, SNUFFERS, EXTINGUISHERS, AND OF THE PRODUCERS OF OIL, TALLOW, ROSIN, ALCOHOL, AND GENERALLY OF EVERYTHING CONNECTED WITH LIGHTING. _To Messieurs the Members of the Chamber of Deputies: Gentlemen_:--You are on the right road. You reject abstract theories, and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty. Your chief care is the interest of the producer. You desire to emancipate him from external competition, and reserve the _national market_ for _national industry_. We are about to offer you an admirable opportunity of applying your--what shall we call it? your theory? no: nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? your system? your principle? but you dislike doctrines, you abhor systems, and as for principles, you deny that there are any in social economy. We shall say, then, your practice, your practice without theory and without principle. We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to ours for the production of light, that he absolutely _inundates_ our _national market_ with it at a price fabulously reduced. The moment he shows himself, our trade leaves us--all consumers apply to him; and a branch of native industry, having countless ramifications, is all at once rendered completely stagnant. This rival, who is no other than the Sun, wages war to the knife against us, and we suspect that he has been raised up by _perfidious Albion_ (good policy as times go); inasmuch as he displays towards that haughty island a circumspection with which he dispenses in our case. What we pray for is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer windows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country,--a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife so unequal. We trust, gentlemen, that you will not regard this our request as a satire, or refuse it without at least previously hearing the reasons which we have to urge in its support. And first, if you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light, and create a demand for artificial light, which of our French manufactures will not be encouraged by it? If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep; and consequently, we shall behold the multiplication of artificial meadows, meat, wool, hides, and above all manure, which is the basis and foundation of all agricultural wealth. If more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of rape. These rich and exhausting plants will come at the right time to enable us to avail ourselves of the increased fertility which the rearing of additional cattle will impart to our lands. Our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather perfumed treasures, now wasting their fragrance on the desert air, like the flowers from which they emanate. No branch of agriculture but will then exhibit a cheering development. The same remark applies to navigation. Thousands of vessels will proceed to the whale fishery; and in a short time we shall possess a navy capable of maintaining the honor of France, and gratifying the patriotic aspirations of your petitioners, the under-signed candle-makers and others. But what shall we say of the manufacture of _articles de Paris?_ Henceforth you will behold gildings, bronzes, crystals, in candlesticks, in lamps, in lustres, in candelabra, shining forth in spacious warerooms, compared with which those of the present day can be regarded but as mere shops. No poor _résinier_ from his heights on the sea-coast, no coal-miner from the depth of his sable gallery, but will rejoice in higher wages and increased prosperity. Only have the goodness to reflect, gentlemen, and you will be convinced that there is perhaps no Frenchman, from the wealthy coal-master to the humblest vender of lucifer matches, whose lot will not be ameliorated by the success of this our petition. We foresee your objections, gentlemen, but we know that you can oppose to us none but such as you have picked up from the effete works of the partisans of Free Trade. We defy you to utter a single word against us which will not instantly rebound against yourselves and your entire policy. You will tell us that if we gain by the protection which we seek, the country will lose by it, because the consumer must bear the loss. We answer:-- You have ceased to have any right to invoke the interest of the consumer; for whenever his interest is found opposed to that of the producer, you sacrifice the former. You have done so for the purpose of _encouraging labor and increasing employment_. For the same reason you should do so again. You have yourself refuted this objection. When you are told that the consumer is interested in the free importation of iron, coal, corn, textile fabrics--yes, you reply, but the producer is interested in their exclusion. Well, be it so;--if consumers are interested in the free admission of natural light, the producers of artificial light are equally interested in its prohibition. But again, you may say that the producer and consumer are identical. If the manufacturer gain by protection, he will make the agriculturist also a gainer; and if agriculture prosper, it will open a vent to manufactures. Very well: if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light during the day,--first of all, we shall purchase quantities of tallow, coals, oils, resinous substances, wax, alcohol--besides silver, iron, bronze, crystal--to carry on our manufactures; and then we, and those who furnish us with such commodities, having become rich, will consume a great deal, and impart prosperity to all the other branches of our national industry. If you urge that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject wealth itself under pretense of encouraging the means of acquiring it, we would caution you against giving a death-blow to your own policy. Remember that hitherto you have always repelled foreign products, _because_ they approximate more nearly than home products to the character of gratuitous gifts. To comply with the exactions of other monopolists, you have only _half a motive_; and to repulse us simply because we stand on a stronger vantage-ground than others would be to adopt the equation, +X+=--; in other words, it would be to heap _absurdity_ upon _absurdity_. Nature and human labor co-operate in various proportions (depending on countries and climates) in the production of commodities. The part which nature executes is always gratuitous; it is the part executed by human labor which constitutes value, and is paid for. If a Lisbon orange sells for half the price of a Paris orange, it is because natural and consequently gratuitous heat does for the one what artificial and therefore expensive heat must do for the other. When an orange comes to us from Portugal, we may conclude that it is furnished in part gratuitously, in part for an onerous consideration; in other words, it comes to us at _half-price_ as compared with those of Paris. Now, it is precisely the _gratuitous half_ (pardon the word) which we contend should be excluded. You say, How can natural labor sustain competition with foreign labor, when the former has all the work to do, and the latter only does one-half, the sun supplying the remainder? But if this _half_, being _gratuitous_, determines you to exclude competition, how should the _whole_, being _gratuitous_, induce you to admit competition? If you were consistent, you would, while excluding as hurtful to native industry what is half gratuitous, exclude _a fortiori_ and with double zeal that which is altogether gratuitous. Once more, when products such as coal, iron, corn, or textile fabrics are sent us from abroad, and we can acquire them with less labor than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a free gift conferred upon us. The gift is more or less considerable in proportion as the difference is more or less great. It amounts to a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product, when the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths, a half, or a quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. It is as perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like the sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing. The question, and we ask it formally, is this, Do you desire for our country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended advantages of onerous production? Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude, as you do, coal, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, _in proportion_ as their price approximates to _zero_, what inconsistency would it be to admit the light of the sun, the price of which is already at _zero_ during the entire day! STULTA AND PUERA There were, no matter where, two towns called Fooltown and Babytown. They completed at great cost a highway from the one town to the other. When this was done, Fooltown said to herself, "See how Babytown inundates us with her products; we must see to it." In consequence, they created and paid a body of _obstructives_, so called because their business was to place _obstacles_ in the way of traffic coming from Babytown. Soon afterwards Babytown did the same. At the end of some centuries, knowledge having in the interim made great progress, the common sense of Babytown enabled her to see that such reciprocal obstacles could only be reciprocally hurtful. She therefore sent a diplomatist to Fooltown, who, laying aside official phraseology, spoke to this effect: "We have made a highway, and now we throw obstacles in the way of using it. This is absurd. It would have been better to have left things as they were. We should not, in that case, have had to pay for making the road in the first place, nor afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining _obstructives_. In the name of Babytown, I come to propose to you, not to give up opposing each other all at once,--that would be to act upon a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do,--but to lessen somewhat the present obstacles, taking care to estimate equitably the respective _sacrifices_ we make for this purpose." So spoke the diplomatist. Fooltown asked for time to consider the proposal, and proceeded to consult in succession her manufacturers and agriculturists. At length, after the lapse of some years, she declared that the negotiations were broken off. On receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of Babytown held a meeting. An old gentleman (they always suspected he had been secretly bought by Fooltown) rose and said:--"The obstacles created by Fooltown injure our sales, which is a misfortune. Those which we have ourselves created injure our purchases, which is another misfortune. With reference to the first, we are powerless; but the second rests with ourselves. Let us at least get quit of one, since we cannot rid ourselves of both evils. Let us suppress our _obstructives_ without requiring Fooltown to do the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to know her own interests better." A second counselor, a practical, matter-of-fact man, guiltless of any acquaintance with principles, and brought up in the ways of his forefathers, replied-- "Don't listen to that Utopian dreamer, that theorist, that innovator, that economist; that _Stultomaniac_. We shall all be undone if the stoppages of the road are not equalized, weighed, and balanced between Fooltown and Babytown. There would be greater difficulty in _going_ than in _coming_, in _exporting_ than in _importing_. We should find ourselves in the same condition of inferiority relatively to Fooltown, as Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon, London, Hamburg, and New Orleans, are with relation to the towns situated at the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the Mississippi; for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to descend a river. [_A Voice_--'Towns at the _embouchures_ of rivers prosper more than towns at their source.'] This is impossible. [_Same Voice_--'But it is so.'] Well, if it be so, they have prospered _contrary to rules_." Reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly, and the orator followed up his victory by talking largely of national independence, national honor, national dignity, national labor, inundation of products, tributes, murderous competition. In short, he carried the vote in favor of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at all curious on the subject, I can point out to you countries, where you will see with your own eyes Roadmakers and Obstructives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable. INAPPLICABLE TERMS From 'Economic Sophisms' Let us give up ... the puerility of applying to industrial competition phrases applicable to war,--a way of speaking which is only specious when applied to competition between two rival trades. The moment we come to take into account the effect produced on the general prosperity, the analogy disappears. In a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much the strength of the army. In industry, a workshop is shut up only when what it produced is obtained by the public from another source and in _greater abundance_. Figure a state of things where for one man killed on the spot two should rise up full of life and vigor. Were such a state of things possible, war would no longer merit its name. This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so absurdly called _industrial war_. Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of their iron ever so much; let them, if they will, send it to us for nothing: this might extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but immediately, and as a _necessary_ consequence of this very cheapness, there would rise up a thousand other branches of industry more profitable than the one which had been superseded. We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labor is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all superiority which manifests itself among a people means cheapness, and tends only to impart force to all other nations. Let us banish, then, from political economy all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: _to fight with equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute_, etc. What do such phrases mean? Squeeze them, and you obtain nothing. Yes, you do obtain something; for from such words proceed absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices. Such phrases tend to arrest the fusion of nations, are inimical to their peaceful, universal, and indissoluble alliance, and retard the progress of the human race. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867) BY GRACE KING Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821; he died there in 1867. Between these dates lies the evolution of one of the most striking personalities in French literature, and the development of an influence which affected not only the literature of the poet's own country, but that of all Europe and America. The genuineness of both personality and influence was one of the first critical issues raised after Baudelaire's advent into literature; it is still one of the main issues in all critical consideration of him. A question which involves by implication the whole relation of poetry, and of art as such, to life, is obviously one that furnishes more than literary issues, and engages other than literary interests. And thus, by easy and natural corollaries, Baudelaire has been made a subject of appeal not only to judgment, but even to conscience. At first sight, therefore, he appears surrounded either by an intricate moral maze, or by a no less troublesome confusion of contradictory theories from opposing camps rather than schools of criticism. But no author--no dead author--is more accessible, or more communicable in his way; his poems, his theories, and a goodly portion of his life, lie at the disposition of any reader who cares to know him. [Illustration: CHARLES BAUDELAIRE] The Baudelaire legend, as it is called by French critics, is one of the blooms of that romantic period of French literature which is presided over by the genius of Théophile Gautier. Indeed; it is against the golden background of Gautier's imagination that the picture of the youthful poet is best preserved for us, appearing in all the delicate and illusive radiance of the youth and beauty of legendary saints on the gilded canvases of mediaeval art. The radiant youth and beauty may be no more truthful to nature than the gilded background, but the fact of the impression sought to be conveyed is not on that account to be disbelieved. Baudelaire, Gautier writes, was born in the Rue Hautefeuille, in one of those old houses with a pepper-pot turret at the corner which have disappeared from the city under the advancing improvement of straight lines and clear openings. His father, a gentleman of learning, retained all the eighteenth-century courtesy and distinction of manner, which, like the pepper-pot turret, has also disappeared under the advance of Republican enlightenment. An absent-minded, reserved child, Baudelaire attracted no especial attention during his school days. When they were over, his predilection for a literary vocation became known. From this his parents sought to divert him by sending him to travel. He voyaged through the Indian Ocean, visiting the great islands: Madagascar, Ceylon, Mauritius, Bourbon. Had there been a chance for irresolution in the mind of the youth, this voyage destroyed it forever. His imagination, essentially exotic, succumbed to the passionate charm of a new, strange, and splendidly glowing form of nature; the stars, the skies, the gigantic vegetation, the color, the perfumes, the dark-skinned figures in white draperies, formed for him at that time a heaven, for which his senses unceasingly yearned afterwards amid the charms and enchantments of civilization, in the world's capital of pleasure and luxury. Returning to Paris, of age and master of his fortune, he established himself in his independence, openly adopting his chosen career. He and Théophile Gautier met for the first time in 1849, in the Hotel Pimodau, where were held the meetings of the Hashish Club. Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture, bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, holding the reclining figures of the members of the club; women celebrated in the world of beauty, men in the world of letters, meeting not only for the enjoyment of the artificial ecstasies of the drug, but to talk of art, literature, and love, as in the days of the Decameron--here Baudelaire made what might be called his historic impression upon literature. He was at that time twenty-eight years of age; and even in that assemblage, in those surroundings, his personality was striking. His black hair, worn close to the head, grew in regular scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the color of Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too insistently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple accentuated the chin; the bluish-black tint of the shaven skin, softened with rice-powder, contrasted with the clear rose and white of the upper part of his cheeks. Always dressed with meticulous neatness and simplicity, following English rather than French taste; in manner punctiliously observant of the strictest conventionality, scrupulously, even excessively polite; in talk measuring his phrases, using only the most select terms, and pronouncing certain words as if the sound itself possessed a certain subtle, mystical value,--throwing his voice into capitals and italics;--in contrast with the dress and manners about him, he, according to Gautier, looked like a dandy who had strayed into Bohemia. The contrast was no less violent between Baudelaire's form and the substance of his conversation. With a simple, natural, and perfectly impartial manner, as if he were conveying commonplace information about every-day life, he would advance some axiom monstrously Satanic, or sustain, with the utmost grace and coolness, some mathematical extravagance in the way of a theory. And no one could so inflexibly push a paradox to the uttermost limits, regardless of consequences to received notions of morality or religion; always employing the most rigorous methods of logic and reason. His wit was found to lie neither in words nor thoughts, but in the peculiar standpoint from which he regarded things, a standpoint which altered their outlines,--like those of objects looked down upon from a bird's flight, or looked up to on a ceiling. In this way, to continue the exposition of Gautier, Baudelaire saw relations inappreciable to others, whose logical bizarrerie was startling. His first productions were critical articles for the Parisian journals; articles that at the time passed unperceived, but which to-day furnish perhaps the best evidences of that keen artistic insight and foresight of the poet, which was at once his greatest good and evil genius. In 1856 appeared his translation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe; a translation which may be said to have naturalized Poe in French literature, where he has played a role curiously like that of Baudelaire in Poe's native literature. The natural predisposition of Baudelaire, which fitted him to be the French interpreter of Poe, rendered him also peculiarly sensitive to Poe's mysteriously subtle yet rankly vigorous charms; and he showed himself as sensitively responsive to these as he had been to the exotic charms of the East. The influence upon his intellectual development was decisive and final. His indebtedness to Poe, or it might better be said, his identification with Poe, is visible not only in his paradoxical manias, but in his poetry, and in his theories of art and poetry set forth in his various essays and fugitive prose expressions, and notably in his introduction to his translations of the American author's works. In 1857 appeared the "Fleurs du Mal" (Flowers of Evil), the volume of poems upon which Baudelaire's fame as a poet is founded. It was the result of his thirty years' devotion to the study of his art and meditation upon it. Six of the poems were suppressed by the censor of the Second Empire. This action called out, in form of protest, that fine appreciation and defense of Baudelaire's genius and best defense of his methods, by four of the foremost critics and keenest artists in poetry of Paris, which form, with the letters from Sainte-Beuve, de Custine, and Deschamps, a precious appendix to the third edition of the poems. The name 'Flowers of Evil' is a sufficient indication of the intentions and aim of the author. Their companions in the volume are: 'Spleen and Ideal,' 'Parisian Pictures,' 'Wine,' 'Revolt,' 'Death.' The simplest description of them is that they are indescribable. They must not only be read, they must be studied repeatedly to be understood as they deserve. The paradox of their most exquisite art, and their at times most revolting revelations of the degradations and perversities of humanity, can be accepted with full appreciation of the author's meaning only by granting the same paradox to his genuine nature; by crediting him with being not only an ardent idealist of art for art's sake, but an idealist of humanity for humanity's sake; one to whom humanity, even in its lowest degradations and vilest perversions, is sublimely sacred;--one to whom life offered but one tragedy, that of human souls flying like Cain from a guilt-stricken paradise, but pursued by the remorse of innocence, and scourged by the consciousness of their own infinitude. But the poet's own words are the best explanation of his aim and intention:-- "Poetry, though one delve ever so little into his own self, interrogate his own soul, recall his memories of enthusiasms, has no other end than itself; it cannot have any other aim, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, as that which shall have been written solely for the pleasure of writing a poem. I do not wish to say that poetry should not ennoble manners--that its final result should not be to raise man above vulgar interests. That would be an evident absurdity. I say that if the poet has pursued a moral end, he has diminished his poetic force, and it would not be imprudent to wager that his work would be bad. Poetry cannot, under penalty of death or forfeiture, assimilate itself to science or morality. It has not Truth for object, it has only itself. Truth's modes of demonstration are different and elsewhere. Truth has nothing to do with ballads; all that constitutes the charm, the irresistible grace of a ballad, would strip Truth of its authority and power. Cold, calm, impassive, the demonstrative temperament rejects the diamonds and flowers of the muse; it is, therefore, the absolute inverse of the poetic temperament. Pure Intellect aims at Truth, Taste shows us Beauty, and the Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true that the middle term has intimate connection with the two extremes, and only separates itself from Moral Sense by a difference so slight that Aristotle did not hesitate to class some of its delicate operations amongst the virtues. And accordingly what, above all, exasperates the man of taste is the spectacle of vice, is its deformity, its disproportions. Vice threatens the just and true, and revolts intellect and conscience; but as an outrage upon harmony, as dissonance, it would particularly wound certain poetic minds, and I do not think it would be scandal to consider all infractions of moral beauty as a species of sin against rhythm and universal prosody. "It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of the Beautiful which makes us consider the earth and its spectacle as a sketch, as a correspondent of Heaven. The insatiable thirst for all that is beyond that which life veils is the most living proof of our immortality. It is at once by poetry and across it, across and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendors that lie beyond the tomb. And when an exquisite poem causes tears to rise in the eye, these tears are not the proof of excessive enjoyment, but rather the testimony of a moved melancholy, of a postulation of the nerves, of a nature exiled in the imperfect, which wishes to take immediate possession, even on earth, of a revealed paradise. "Thus the principle of poetry is strictly and simply human aspiration toward superior beauty; and the manifestation of this principle is enthusiasm and uplifting of the soul,--enthusiasm entirely independent of passion,--which is the intoxication of heart, and of truth which is the food of reason. For passion is a natural thing, even too natural not to introduce a wounding, discordant tone into the domain of pure beauty; too familiar, too violent, not to shock the pure Desires, the gracious Melancholies, and the noble Despairs which inhabit the supernatural regions of poetry." Baudelaire saw himself as the poet of a decadent epoch, an epoch in which art had arrived at the over-ripened maturity of an aging civilization; a glowing, savorous, fragrant over-ripeness, that is already softening into decomposition. And to be the fitting poet of such an epoch, he modeled his style on that of the poets of the Latin decadence; for, as he expressed it for himself and for the modern school of "decadents" in French poetry founded upon his name:-- "Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the last Latin decadence--that supreme sigh of a robust person already transformed and prepared for spiritual life--is singularly fitted to express passion as it is understood and felt by the modern world? Mysticism is the other end of the magnet of which Catullus and his band, brutal and purely epidermic poets, knew only the sensual pole. In this wonderful language, solecisms and barbarisms seem to express the forced carelessness of a passion which forgets itself, and mocks at rules. The words, used in a novel sense, reveal the charming awkwardness of a barbarian from the North, kneeling before Roman Beauty." Nature, the nature of Wordsworth and Tennyson, did not exist for Baudelaire; inspiration he denied; simplicity he scouted as an anachronism in a decadent period of perfected art, whose last word in poetry should be the apotheosis of the Artificial. "A little charlatanism is permitted even to genius," he wrote: "it is like fard on the cheeks of a naturally beautiful woman; an appetizer for the mind." Again he expresses himself: "It seems to me, two women are presented to me, one a rustic matron, repulsive in health and virtue, without manners, without expression; in short, owing nothing except to simple nature;--the other, one of those beauties that dominate and oppress memory, uniting to her original and unfathomable charms all the eloquence of dress; who is mistress of her part, conscious of and queen of herself, speaking like an instrument well tuned; with looks freighted with thought, yet letting flow only what she would. My choice would not be doubtful; and yet there are pedagogic sphinxes who would reproach me as recreant to classical honor." In music it was the same choice. He saw the consummate art and artificiality of Wagner, and preferred it to all other music, at a time when the German master was ignored and despised by a classicized musical world. In perfumes it was not the simple fragrance of the rose or violet that he loved, but musk and amber; and he said, "my soul hovers over perfumes as the souls of other men hover over music." Besides his essays and sketches, Baudelaire published in prose a novelette; 'Fanfarlo,' 'Artificial Paradises,' opium and hashish, imitations of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater'; and 'Little Prose Poems,' also inspired by a book, the 'Gaspard de la Nuit' of Aloysius Bertrand, and which Baudelaire thus describes:-- "The idea came to me to attempt something analogous, and to apply to the description of modern life, or rather a modern and more abstract life, the methods he had applied to the painting of ancient life, so strangely picturesque. Which one of us in his ambitious days has not dreamed of a miracle of poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to the undulations of reverie, and to the assaults of conscience?" Failing health induced Baudelaire to quit Paris and establish himself in Brussels; but he received no benefit from the change of climate, and the first symptoms of his terrible malady manifested themselves--a slowness of speech, and hesitation over words. As a slow and sententious enunciation was characteristic of him, the symptoms attracted no attention, until he fell under a sudden and violent attack. He was brought back to Paris and conveyed to a "maison de santé," where he died, after lingering several months in a paralyzed condition, motionless, speechless; nothing alive in him but thought, seeking to express itself through his eyes. The nature of Baudelaire's malady and death was, by the public at large, accepted as confirmation of the suspicion that he was in the habit of seeking his inspiration in the excitation of hashish and opium. His friends, however, recall the fact of his incessant work, and intense striving after his ideal in art; his fatigue of body and mind, and his increasing weariness of spirit under the accumulating worries and griefs of a life for which his very genius unfitted him. He was also known to be sober in his tastes, as all great workers are. That he had lent himself more than once to the physiological and psychological experiment of hashish was admitted; but he was a rare visitor at the séances in the saloon of the Hotel Pimodau, and came as a simple observer of others. His masterly description of the hallucinations produced by hashish is accompanied by analytical and moral commentaries which unmistakably express repugnance to and condemnation of the drug:-- "Admitting for the moment," he writes, "the hypothesis of a constitution tempered enough and strong enough to resist the evil effects of the perfidious drug, another, a fatal and terrible danger, must be thought of,--that of habit. He who has recourse to a poison to enable him to think, will soon not be able to think without the poison. Imagine the horrible fate of a man whose paralyzed imagination is unable to work without the aid of hashish or opium.... But man is not so deprived of honest means of gaining heaven, that he is obliged to invoke the aid of pharmacy or witchcraft; he need not sell his soul in order to pay for the intoxicating caresses and the love of houris. What is a paradise that one purchases at the expense of one's own soul?... Unfortunate wretches who have neither fasted nor prayed, and who have refused the redemption of labor, ask from black magic the means to elevate themselves at a single stroke to a supernatural existence. Magic dupes them, and lights for them a false happiness and a false light; while we, poets and philosophers, who have regenerated our souls by incessant work and contemplation, by the assiduous exercise of the will and permanent nobility of intention, we have created for our use a garden of true beauty. Confiding in the words that 'faith will remove mountains,' we have accomplished the one miracle for which God has given us license." The perfect art-form of Baudelaire's poems makes translation of them indeed a literal impossibility. The 'Little Old Women,' 'The Voyage,' 'The Voyage to Cytherea,' 'A Red-haired Beggar-girl,' 'The Seven Old Men,' and sonnet after sonnet in 'Spleen and Ideal,' seem to rise only more and more ineffable from every attempt to filter them through another language, or through another mind than that of their original, and, it would seem, one possible creator. [Illustration: Manuscript signature here: Grace King] MEDITATION Be pitiful, my sorrow--be thou still: For night thy thirst was--lo, it falleth down, Slowly darkening it veils the town, Bringing its peace to some, to some its ill. While the dull herd in its mad career Under the pitiless scourge, the lash of unclean desire, Goes culling remorse with fingers that never tire:-- My sorrow,--thy hand! Come, sit thou by me here. Here, far from them all. From heaven's high balconies See! in their threadbare robes the dead years cast their eyes: And from the depths below regret's wan smiles appear. The sun, about to set, under the arch sinks low, Trailing its weltering pall far through the East aglow. Hark, dear one, hark! Sweet night's approach is near. Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.' THE DEATH OF THE POOR This is death the consoler--death that bids live again; Here life its aim: here is our hope to be found, Making, like magic elixir, our poor weak heads to swim round, And giving us heart for the struggle till night makes end of the pain. Athwart the hurricane--athwart the snow and the sleet, Afar there twinkles over the black earth's waste, The light of the Scriptural inn where the weary and the faint may taste The sweets of welcome, the plenteous feast and the secure retreat. It is an angel, in whose soothing palms Are held the boon of sleep and dreamy balms, Who makes a bed for poor unclothèd men; It is the pride of the gods--the all-mysterious room, The pauper's purse--this fatherland of gloom, The open gate to heaven, and heavens beyond our ken. Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.' [Illustration: _Copyright 1895, by the Photographische Gesellschaft_] _MUSIC_. Photogravure from a Painting by J.M. Strudwick. MUSIC Sweet music sweeps me like the sea Toward my pale star, Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free I sail afar. With front outspread and swelling breasts, On swifter sail I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests Under night's veil. Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash A bark in distress: By the blast I am lulled--by the tempest's wild crash On the salt wilderness. Then comes the dead calm--mirrored there I behold my despair. Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.' THE BROKEN BELL Bitter and sweet, when wintry evenings fall Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear Old memory's notes sway softly far and near, While ring the chimes across the gray fog's pall. Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent, Still calls afar its old and pious song, Responding faithfully in accents strong, Like some old sentinel before his tent. I too--my soul is shattered;--when at times It would beguile the wintry nights with rhymes Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves Beside the blood-pools--'neath the human sheaves Gasping in anguish toward their fixèd dreams. Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.' The two poems following are used by permission of the J.B. Lippincott Company. THE ENEMY My youth swept by in storm and cloudy gloom, Lit here and there by glimpses of the sun; But in my garden, now the storm is done, Few fruits are left to gather purple bloom. Here have I touched the autumn of the mind; And now the careful spade to labor comes, Smoothing the earth torn by the waves and wind, Full of great holes, like open mouths of tombs. And who knows if the flowers whereof I dream Shall find, beneath this soil washed like the stream, The force that bids them into beauty start? O grief! O grief! Time eats our life away, And the dark Enemy that gnaws our heart Grows with the ebbing life-blood of his prey! Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard. BEAUTY Beautiful am I as a dream in stone; And for my breast, where each falls bruised in turn, The poet with an endless love must yearn-- Endless as Matter, silent and alone. A sphinx unguessed, enthroned in azure skies, White as the swan, my heart is cold as snow; No hated motion breaks my lines' pure flow, Nor tears nor laughter ever dim mine eyes. Poets, before the attitudes sublime I seem to steal from proudest monuments, In austere studies waste the ling'ring time; For I possess, to charm my lover's sight, Mirrors wherein all things are fair and bright-- My eyes, my large eyes of eternal light! Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard. DEATH Ho, Death, Boatman Death, it is time we set sail; Up anchor, away from this region of blight: Though ocean and sky are like ink for the gale, Thou knowest our hearts are consoled with the light. Thy poison pour out--it will comfort us well; Yea--for the fire that burns in our brain We would plunge through the depth, be it heaven or hell, Through the fathomless gulf--the new vision to gain. Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.' THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE From 'L'Art Romantique' The crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the bird and the water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is "to wed the crowd." For the perfect _flâneur_, for the passionate observer, it is an immense pleasure to choose his home in number, change, motion, in the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from one's home and yet to be always at home; to be in the midst of the world, to see it, and yet to be hidden from it; such are some of the least pleasures of these independent, passionate, impartial minds which language can but awkwardly define. The observer is a prince who everywhere enjoys his incognito. The amateur of life makes the world his family, as the lover of the fair sex makes his family of all beauties, discovered, discoverable, and indiscoverable, as the lover of painting lives in an enchanted dreamland painted on canvas. Thus the man who is in love with all life goes into a crowd as into an immense electric battery. One might also compare him to a mirror as immense as the crowd; to a conscious kaleidoscope which in each movement represents the multiform life and the moving grace of all life's elements. He is an ego insatiably hungry for the non-ego, every moment rendering it and expressing it in images more vital than life itself, which is always unstable and fugitive. "Any man," said Mr. G---- one day, in one of those conversations which he lights up with intense look and vivid gesture, "any man, not overcome by a sorrow so heavy that it absorbs all the faculties, who is bored in the midst of a crowd is a fool, a fool, and I despise him." When Mr. G---- awakens and sees the blustering sun attacking the window-panes, he says with remorse, with regret:--"What imperial order! What a trumpet flourish of light! For hours already there has been light everywhere, light lost by my sleep! How many lighted objects I might have seen and have not seen!" And then he starts off, he watches in its flow the river of vitality, so majestic and so brilliant. He admires the eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in great cities, a harmony maintained in so providential a way in the tumult of human liberty. He contemplates the landscapes of the great city, landscapes of stone caressed by the mist or struck by the blows of the sun. He enjoys the fine carriages, the fiery horses, the shining neatness of the grooms, the dexterity of the valets, the walk of the gliding women, of the beautiful children, happy that they are alive and dressed; in a word, he enjoys the universal life. If a fashion, the cut of a piece of clothing has been slightly changed, if bunches of ribbon or buckles have been displaced by cockades, if the bonnet is larger and the back hair a notch lower on the neck, if the waist is higher and the skirt fuller, be sure that his eagle eye will see it at an enormous distance. A regiment passes, going perhaps to the end of the earth, throwing into the air of the boulevards the flourish of trumpets compelling and light as hope; the eye of Mr. G---- has already seen, studied, analyzed the arms, the gait, the physiognomy of the troop. Trappings, scintillations, music, firm looks, heavy and serious mustaches, all enters pell-mell into him, and in a few moments the resulting poem will be virtually composed. His soul is alive with the soul of this regiment which is marching like a single animal, the proud image of joy in obedience! But evening has come. It is the strange, uncertain hour at which the curtains of the sky are drawn and the cities are lighted. The gas throws spots on the purple of the sunset. Honest or dishonest, sane or mad, men say to themselves, "At last the day is at an end!" The wise and the good-for-nothing think of pleasure, and each hurries to the place of his choice to drink the cup of pleasure. Mr. G---- will be the last to leave any place where the light may blaze, where poetry may throb, where life may tingle, where music may vibrate, where a passion may strike an attitude for his eye, where the man of nature and the man of convention show themselves in a strange light, where the sun lights up the rapid joys of fallen creatures! "A day well spent," says a kind of reader whom we all know, "any one of us has genius enough to spend a day that way." No! Few men are gifted with the power to see; still fewer have the power of expression. Now, at the hour when others are asleep, this man is bent over his table, darting on his paper the same look which a short time ago he was casting on the world, battling with his pencil, his pen, his brush, throwing the water out of his glass against the ceiling, wiping his pen on his shirt,--driven, violent, active, as if he fears that his images will escape him, a quarreler although alone,--a cudgeler of himself. And the things he has seen are born again upon the paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful, singular and endowed with an enthusiastic life like the soul of the author. The phantasmagoria have been distilled from nature. All the materials with which his memory is crowded become classified, orderly, harmonious, and undergo that compulsory idealization which is the result of a childlike perception, that is to say, of a perception that is keen, magical by force of ingenuousness. MODERNNESS Thus he goes, he runs, he seeks. What does he seek? Certainly this man, such as I have portrayed him, this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, always traveling through the great desert of mankind, has a higher end than that of a mere observer, an end more general than the fugitive pleasure of the passing event. He seeks this thing which we may call modernness, for no better word to express the idea presents itself. His object is to detach from fashion whatever it may contain of the poetry in history, to draw the eternal from the transitory. If we glance at the exhibitions of modern pictures, we are struck with the general tendency of the artists to dress all their subjects in ancient costumes. That is obviously the sign of great laziness, for it is much easier to declare that everything in the costume of a certain period is ugly than to undertake the work of extracting from it the mysterious beauty which may be contained in it, however slight or light it may be. The modern is the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent, the half of art, whose other half is the unchanging and the eternal. There was a modernness for every ancient painter; most of the beautiful portraits which remain to us from earlier times are dressed in the costumes of their times. They are perfectly harmonious, because the costumes, the hair, even the gesture, the look and the smile (every epoch has its look and its smile), form a whole that is entirely lifelike. You have no right to despise or neglect this transitory, fleeting element, of which the changes are so frequent. In suppressing it you fall by necessity into the void of an abstract and undefinable beauty, like that of the only woman before the fall. If instead of the costume of the epoch, which is a necessary element, you substitute another, you create an anomaly which can have no excuse unless it is a burlesque called for by the vogue of the moment. Thus, the goddesses, the nymphs, the sultans of the eighteenth century are portraits morally accurate. FROM 'LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE' EVERY ONE HIS OWN CHIMERA Under a great gray sky, in a great powdery plain without roads, without grass, without a thistle, without a nettle, I met several men who were walking with heads bowed down. Each one bore upon his back an enormous Chimera, as heavy as a bag of flour or coal, or the accoutrements of a Roman soldier. But the monstrous beast was not an inert weight; on the contrary, it enveloped and oppressed the man with its elastic and mighty muscles; it fastened with its two vast claws to the breast of the bearer, and its fabulous head surmounted the brow of the man, like one of those horrible helmets by which the ancient warriors hoped to increase the terror of the enemy. I questioned one of these men, and I asked him whither they were bound thus. He answered that he knew not, neither he nor the others; but that evidently they were bound somewhere, since they were impelled by an irresistible desire to go forward. It is curious to note that not one of these travelers looked irritated at the ferocious beast suspended from his neck and glued against his back; it seemed as though he considered it as making part of himself. None of these weary and serious faces bore witness to any despair; under the sullen cupola of the sky, their feet plunging into the dust of a soil as desolate as that sky, they went their way with the resigned countenances of those who have condemned themselves to hope forever. The procession passed by me and sank into the horizon's atmosphere, where the rounded surface of the planet slips from the curiosity of human sight, and for a few moments I obstinately persisted in wishing to fathom the mystery; but soon an irresistible indifference fell upon me, and I felt more heavily oppressed by it than even they were by their crushing Chimeras. HUMANITY At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those artificial fools, those voluntary buffoons whose duty was to make kings laugh when Remorse or Ennui possessed their souls, muffled in a glaring ridiculous costume, crowned with horns and bells, and crouched against the pedestal, raised his eyes full of tears toward the immortal goddess. And his eyes said:--"I am the least and the most solitary of human beings, deprived of love and of friendship, and therefore far below the most imperfect of the animals. Nevertheless, I am made, even I, to feel and comprehend the immortal Beauty! Ah, goddess! have pity on my sorrow and my despair!" But the implacable Venus gazed into the distance, at I know not what, with her marble eyes. WINDOWS He who looks from without through an open window never sees as many things as he who looks at a closed window. There is no object more profound, more mysterious, more rich, more shadowy, more dazzling than a window lighted by a candle. What one can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than what takes place behind a blind. In that dark or luminous hole life lives, dreams, suffers. Over the sea of roofs I see a woman, mature, already wrinkled, always bent over something, never going out. From her clothes, her movement, from almost nothing, I have reconstructed the history of this woman, or rather her legend, and sometimes I tell it over to myself in tears. If it had been a poor old man I could have reconstructed his story as easily. And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in lives not my own. Perhaps you may say, "Are you sure that this story is the true one?" What difference does it make what is the reality outside of me, if it has helped me to live, to know who I am and what I am? DRINK One should be always drunk. That is all, the whole question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time, which is breaking your shoulders and bearing you to earth, you must be drunk without cease. But drunk on what? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose. But get drunk. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the wave, the star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings, talks, what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer, "It is the hour to get drunk!" Not to be the martyred slave of Time, get drunk; get drunk unceasingly. Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose. FROM A JOURNAL I swear to myself henceforth to adopt the following rules as the everlasting rules of my life.... To pray every morning to God, the Fountain of all strength and of all justice; to my father, to Mariette, and to Poe. To pray to them to give me necessary strength to accomplish all my tasks, and to grant my mother a life long enough to enjoy my reformation. To work all day, or at least as long as my strength lasts. To trust to God--that is to say, to Justice itself--for the success of my projects. To pray again every evening to God to ask Him for life and strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my earnings into four parts--one for my daily expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother. To keep to principles of strict sobriety, and to banish all and every stimulant. LORD BEACONSFIELD (1804-1881) BY ISA CARRINGTON CABELL Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, born in London, December, 1804; died there April 19th, 1881. His paternal ancestors were of the house of Lara, and held high rank among Hebrew-Spanish nobles till the tribunal of Torquemada drove them from Spain to Venice. There, proud of their race and origin, they styled themselves, "Sons of Israel," and became merchant princes. But the city's commerce failing, the grandfather of Benjamin Disraeli removed to London with a diminished but comfortable fortune. His son, Isaac Disraeli, was a well-known literary man, and the author of 'The Curiosities of Literature.' On account of the political and social ostracism of the Jews in England, he had all his family baptized into the Church of England; but with Benjamin Disraeli especially, Christianity was never more than Judaism developed. His belief and his affections were in his own race. [Illustration: Lord Beaconsfield] Benjamin, like most Jewish youths, was educated in private schools, and at seventeen entered a solicitor's office. At twenty-two he published 'Vivian Grey' (London, 1826), which readable and amusing take-off of London society gave him great and instantaneous notoriety. Its minute descriptions of the great world, its caricatures of well-known social and political personages, its magnificent diction,--too magnificent to be taken quite seriously,--excited inquiry; and the great world was amazed to discover that the impertinent observer was not one of themselves, but a boy in a lawyer's office. To add to the audacity, he had conceived himself the hero of these diverting situations, and by his cleverness had outwitted age, beauty, rank, diplomacy itself. Statesmen, poets, fine ladies, were all genuinely amused; and the author bade fair to become a lion, when he fell ill, and was compelled to leave England for a year or more, which he spent in travel on the Continent and in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. His visit to the birthplace of his race made an impression on him that lasted through his life and literature. It is embodied in his 'Letters to His Sister' (London, 1843), and the autobiographical novel 'Contarini Fleming' (1833), in which he turned his adventures into fervid English, at a guinea a volume. But although the spirit of poesy, in the form of a Childe Harold, stalks rampant through the romance, there is both feeling and fidelity to nature whenever he describes the Orient and its people. Then the bizarre, brilliant _poseur_ forgets his rôle, and reveals his highest aspirations. When Disraeli returned to London he became the fashion. Everybody, from the prime minister to Count D'Orsay, had read his clever novels. The poets praised them, Lady Blessington invited him to dine, Sir Robert Peel was "most gracious." But literary success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat in Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself a radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and like his own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself endowed with an insight only possible to, an outsider, an observer without inherited prepossessions. Several contemporary sketches of Disraeli at this time have been preserved. His dress was purposed affectation; it led the beholder to look for folly only: and when the brilliant flash came, it was the more startling as unexpected from such a figure. Lady Dufferin told Mr. Motley that when she met Disraeli at dinner, he wore a black-velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves with several rings outside, and long black ringlets rippling down his shoulders. She told him he had made a fool of himself by appearing in such a dress, but she did not guess why it had been adopted. Another contemporary says of him, "When duly excited, his command of language was wonderful, his power of sarcasm unsurpassed." He was busy making speeches and writing political squibs for the next two years; for Parliament was before his eyes. "He knew," says Froude, "he had a devil of a tongue, and was unincumbered by the foolish form of vanity called modesty." 'Ixion in Heaven,' 'The Infernal Marriage,' and 'Popanilla' were attempts to rival both Lucian and Swift on their own ground. It is doubtful, however, whether he would have risked writing 'Henrietta Temple' (1837) and 'Venetia' (1837), two ardent love stories, had he not been in debt; for notoriety as a novelist is not always a recommendation to a constituency. In 'Henrietta' he found an opportunity to write the biography of a lover oppressed by duns. It is a most entertaining novel even to a reader who does not read for a new light on the great statesman, and is remarkable as the beginning of what is now known as the "natural" manner; a revolt, his admirers tell us, from the stilted fashion of making love that then prevailed in novels. 'Venetia' is founded on the characters of Byron and Shelley, and is amusing reading. The high-flown language incrusted with the gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor, and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face at an unguarded moment. Mr. Disraeli laughs in his sleeve at many things, but first of all at the reader. He failed in his canvass for his seat at High Wycombe, but he turned his failure to good account, and established a reputation for pluck and influence. "A mighty independent personage," observed Charles Greville, and his famous quarrel with O'Connell did him so little harm that in 1837 he was returned for Maidstone. His first speech was a failure. The word had gone out that he was to be put down. At last, finding it useless to persist, he said he was not surprised at the reception he had experienced. He had begun several things many times and had succeeded at last. Then pausing, and looking indignantly across the house, he exclaimed in a loud and remarkable tone, "I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me." He married the widow of his patron, Wyndham Lewis, in 1838. This put him in possession of a fortune, and gave him the power to continue his political career. His radicalism was a thing of the past. He had drifted from Conservatism, with Peel for a leader, to aristocratic socialism; and in 1844, 1845, and 1847 appeared the Trilogy, as he styled the novels 'Coningsby,' 'Tancred,' and 'Sibyl.' Of the three, 'Coningsby' will prove the most entertaining to the modern reader. The hero is a gentleman, and in this respect is an improvement on Vivian Grey, for his audacity is tempered by good breeding. The plot is slight, but the scenes are entertaining. The famous Sidonia, the Jew financier, is a favorite with the author, and betrays his affection and respect for race. Lord Monmouth, the wild peer, is a rival of the "Marquis of Steyne" and worthy of a place in 'Vanity Fair'; the political intriguers are photographed from life, the pictures of fashionable London tickle both the vanity and the fancy of the reader. 'Sibyl' is too clearly a novel with a motive to give so much pleasure. It is a study of the contrasts between the lives of the very rich and the hopelessly poor, and an attempt to show the superior condition of the latter when the Catholic Church was all-powerful in England and the king an absolute monarch. 'Tancred' was composed when Disraeli was under "the illusion of a possibly regenerated aristocracy." He sends Tancred, the hero, the heir of a ducal house, to Palestine to find the inspiration to a true religious belief, and details his adventures with a power of sarcasm that is seldom equaled. In certain scenes in this novel the author rises from a mere mocker to a genuine satirist. Tancred's interview with the bishop, in which he takes that dignitary's religious tenets seriously; that with Lady Constance, when she explains the "Mystery of Chaos" and shows how "the stars are formed out of the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese churned into light" the vision of the angels on Mt. Sinai, and the celestial Sidonia who talks about the "Sublime and Solacing Doctrine of Theocratic Equality,"--all these are passages where we wonder whether the author sneered or blushed when he wrote. Certainly what has since been known as the Disraelian irony stings as we turn each page. Meanwhile Disraeli had become a power in Parliament, and the bitter opponent of Peel, under whom Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and the abrogation of the commercial system, had been carried without conditions and almost without mitigations. Disraeli's assaults on his leader delighted the Liberals; the country members felt indignant satisfaction at the deserved chastisement of their betrayer. With malicious skill, Disraeli touched one after another the weak points in a character that was superficially vulnerable. Finally the point before the House became Peel's general conduct. He was beaten by an overwhelming majority, and to the hand that dethroned him descended the task of building up the ruins of the Conservative party. Disraeli's best friends felt this a welcome necessity. There is no example of a rise so sudden under such conditions. His politics were as much distrusted as his serious literary passages. But Disraeli was the single person equal to the task. For the next twenty-five years he led the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons, varied by short intervals of power. He was three times Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1853, 1858, and 1859; and on Lord Derby's retirement in 1868 he became Prime Minister. In 1870, having laid aside novel-writing for twenty years, he published 'Lothair.' It is a politico-religious romance aimed at the Jesuits, the Fenians, and the Communists. It had an instantaneous success, for its author was the most conspicuous figure in Europe, but its popularity is also due to its own merits. We are all of us snobs after a fashion and love high society. The glory of entering the splendid portals of the real English dukes and duchesses seems to be ours when Disraeli throws open the magic door and ushers the reader in. The decorations do not seem tawdry, nor the tinsel other than real. We move with pleasurable excitement with Lothair from palace to castle, and thence to battle-field and scenes of dark intrigue. The hint of the love affair with the Olympian Theodora appeals to our romance; the circumventing of the wily Cardinal and his accomplices is agreeable to the Anglo-Saxon Protestant mind; their discomfiture, and the crowning of virtue in the shape of a rescued Lothair married to the English Duke's daughter with the fixed Church of England views, is what the reader expects and prays for, and is the last privilege of the real story-teller. That the author has thrown aside his proclivities for Romanism as he showed them in 'Sibyl,' no more disturbs us than the eccentricities of his politics. We do not quite give him our faith when he is most in earnest, talking Semitic Arianism on Mt. Sinai. A peerage was offered to him in 1868. He refused it for himself, but asked Queen Victoria to grant the honor to his wife, who became the Countess of Beaconsfield. But in 1876 he accepted the rank and title of Earl of Beaconsfield. The author of 'Vivian Grey' received the title that Burke had refused. His last novel, 'Endymion,' was written for the £10,000 its publishers paid for it. It adds nothing to his fame, but is an agreeable picture of fashionable London life and the struggles of a youth to gain power and place. Lord Beaconsfield put more dukes, earls, lords and ladies, more gold and jewels, more splendor and wealth into his books than any one else ever tried to do. But beside his Oriental delight in the display of luxury, it is interesting to see the effect of that Orientalism when he describes the people from whom he sprang. His rare tenderness and genuine respect are for those of the race "that is the aristocracy of nature, the purest race, the chosen people." He sends all his heroes to Palestine for inspiration; wisdom dwells in her gates. Another aristocracy, that of talent, he recognizes and applauds. No dullard ever succeeds, no genius goes unrewarded. It is the part of the story-teller to make his story a probable one to the listener, no matter how impossible both character and situation. Mr. Disraeli was accredited with the faculty of persuading himself to believe or disbelieve whatever he liked; and did he possess the same power over his readers, these entertaining volumes would lift him to the highest rank the novelist attains. As it is, he does not quite succeed in creating an illusion, and we are conscious of two lobes in the author's brain; in one sits a sentimentalist, in the other a mocking devil. [Illustration: Signature: Isa Carrington Cabell.] A DAY AT EMS From 'Vivian Grey' "I think we'd better take a little coffee now; and then, if you like, we'll just stroll into the REDOUTE" [continued Baron de Konigstein]. In a brilliantly illuminated saloon, adorned with Corinthian columns, and casts from some of the most famous antique statues, assembled between nine and ten o'clock in the evening many of the visitors at Ems. On each side of the room was placed a long, narrow table, one of which was covered with green baize, and unattended, while the variously colored leather surface of the other was very closely surrounded by an interested crowd. Behind this table stood two individuals of very different appearance. The first was a short, thick man, whose only business was dealing certain portions of playing cards with quick succession, one after the other; and as the fate of the table was decided by this process, did his companion, an extremely tall, thin man, throw various pieces of money upon certain stakes, which were deposited by the bystanders on different parts of the table; or, which was more often the case, with a silver rake with a long ebony handle, sweep into a large inclosure near him the scattered sums. This inclosure was called the bank, and the mysterious ceremony in which these persons were assisting was the celebrated game of _rouge-et-noir._ A deep silence was strictly observed by those who immediately surrounded the table; no voice was heard save that of the little, short, stout dealer, when, without an expression of the least interest, he seemed mechanically to announce the fate of the different colors. No other sound was heard save the jingle of the dollars and napoleons, and the ominous rake of the tall, thin banker. The countenances of those who were hazarding their money were grave and gloomy their eyes were fixed, their brows contracted, and their lips projected; and yet there was an evident effort visible to show that they were both easy and unconcerned. Each player held in his hand a small piece of pasteboard, on which, with a steel pricker, he marked the run of the cards, in order, from his observations, to regulate his own play: the _rouge-et-noir_ player imagines that chance is not capricious. Those who were not interested in the game promenaded in two lines within the tables; or, seated in recesses between the pillars, formed small parties for conversation. As Vivian and the baron entered, Lady Madeleine Trevor, leaning on the arm of an elderly man, left the room; but as she was in earnest conversation, she did not observe them. "I suppose we must throw away a dollar or two, Grey!" said the baron, as he walked up to the table. "My dear De Konigstein--one pinch--one pinch!" "Ah! marquis, what fortune to-night?" "Bad--bad! I have lost my napoleon: I never risk further. There's that cursed crusty old De Trumpetson, persisting, as usual, in his run of bad luck, because he will never give in. Trust me, my dear De Konigstein, it'll end in his ruin; and then, if there's a sale of his effects, I shall perhaps get the snuff-box--a-a-h!" "Come, Grey; shall I throw down a couple of napoleons on joint account? I don't care much for play myself; but I suppose at Ems we must make up our minds to lose a few louis. Here! now for the red--joint account, mind!" "Done." "There's the archduke! Let us go and make our bow; we needn't stick at the table as if our whole soul were staked with our crown pieces--we'll make our bow, and then return in time to know our fate." So saying, the gentlemen walked up to the top of the room. "Why, Grey!--surely no--it cannot be--and yet it is. De Boeffleurs, how d'ye do?" said the baron, with a face beaming with joy, and a hearty shake of the hand. "My dear, dear fellow, how the devil did you manage to get off so soon? I thought you were not to be here for a fortnight: we only arrived ourselves to-day." "Yes--but I've made an arrangement which I did not anticipate; and so I posted after you immediately. Whom do you think I have brought with me?" "Who?" "Salvinski." "Ah! And the count?" "Follows immediately. I expect him to-morrow or next day. Salvinski is talking to the archduke; and see, he beckons to me. I suppose I am going to be presented." The chevalier moved forward, followed by the baron and Vivian. "Any friend of Prince Salvinski I shall always have great pleasure in having presented to me. Chevalier, I feel great pleasure in having you presented to me! Chevalier, you ought to be proud of the name of Frenchman. Chevalier, the French are a grand nation. Chevalier, I have the highest respect for the French nation." "The most subtle diplomatist," thought Vivian, as he recalled to mind his own introduction, "would be puzzled to decide to which interest his imperial highness leans." The archduke now entered into conversation with the prince, and most of the circle who surrounded him. As his highness was addressing Vivian, the baron let slip our hero's arm, and seizing hold of the Chevalier de Boeffleurs, began walking up and down the room with him, and was soon engaged in very animated conversation. In a few minutes the archduke, bowing to his circle, made a move and regained the side of a Saxon lady, from whose interesting company he had been disturbed by the arrival of Prince Salvinski--an individual of whose long stories and dull romances the archduke had, from experience, a particular dread; but his highness was always very courteous to the Poles. "Grey, I've dispatched De Boeffleurs to the house to instruct the servant and Ernstorff to do the impossible, in order that our rooms may be all together. You'll be delighted with De Boeffleurs when you know him, and I expect you to be great friends. Oh! by the by, his unexpected arrival has quite made us forget our venture at _rouge-et-noir._ Of course we're too late now for anything; even if we had been fortunate, our doubled stake, remaining on the table, is of course lost; we may as well, however, walk up." So saying, the baron reached the table. "That is your excellency's stake!--that is your excellency's stake!" exclaimed many voices as he came up. "What's the matter, my friends? what's the matter?" asked the baron, very calmly. "There's been a run on the red! there's been a run on the red! and your excellency's stake has doubled each time. It has been 4--8--16--32--64--128--256; and now it's 512!" quickly rattled a little thin man in spectacles, pointing at the same time to his unparalleled line of punctures. This was one of those officious, noisy little men, who are always ready to give you unasked information on every possible subject, and who are never so happy as when they are watching over the interest of some stranger, who never thanks them for their unnecessary solicitude. Vivian, in spite of his philosophy, felt the excitement and wonder of the moment. He looked very earnestly at the baron, whose countenance, however, remained perfectly unmoved. "Grey," said he, very coolly, "it seems we're in luck." "The stake's then not all your own?" very eagerly asked the little man in spectacles. "No, part of it is yours, sir," answered the baron, very dryly. "I'm going to deal," said the short, thick man behind. "Is the board cleared?" "Your excellency then allows the stake to remain?" inquired the tall, thin banker, with affected nonchalance. "Oh! certainly," said the baron, with real nonchalance. "Three--eight--fourteen--twenty-four--thirty-four, Rouge 34--" All crowded nearer; the table was surrounded five or six deep, for the wonderful run of luck had got wind, and nearly the whole room were round the table. Indeed, the archduke and Saxon lady, and of course the silent suite, were left alone at the upper part of the room. The tall banker did not conceal his agitation. Even the short, stout dealer ceased to be a machine. All looked anxious except the baron. Vivian looked at the table; his excellency watched, with a keen eye, the little dealer. No one even breathed as the cards descended. "Ten--twenty--" here the countenance of the banker brightened--"twenty-two--twenty-five-- twenty-eight--thirty-one'--Noir 31. The bank's broke; no more play to-night. The roulette table opens immediately." In spite of the great interest which had been excited, nearly the whole crowd, without waiting to congratulate the baron, rushed to the opposite side of the room in order to secure places at the roulette table. "Put these five hundred and twelve Napoleons into a bag," said the baron; "Grey, this is your share, and I congratulate you. With regard to the other half, Mr. Hermann, what bills have you got?" "Two on Gogel's house of Frankfort--accepted of course--for two hundred and fifty each, and these twelve napoleons will make it right," said the tall banker, as he opened a large black pocket-book, from which he took out two small bits of paper. The baron examined them, and after having seen them indorsed, put them calmly into his pocket, not forgetting the twelve napoleons; and then taking Vivian's arm, and regretting extremely that he should have the trouble of carrying such a weight, he wished Mr. Hermann a very good-night and success at his roulette, and walked with his companion quietly home. Thus passed a day at Ems! THE FESTA IN THE "ALHAMBRA" From 'The Young Duke' You entered the Alhambra by a Saracenic cloister, from the ceiling of which an occasional lamp threw a gleam upon some Eastern arms hung up against the wall. This passage led to the armory, a room of moderate dimensions, but hung with rich contents. Many an inlaid breastplate--many a Mameluke scimitar and Damascus blade--many a gemmed pistol and pearl embroided saddle might there be seen, though viewed in a subdued and quiet light. All seemed hushed and still, and shrouded in what had the reputation of being a palace of pleasure. In this chamber assembled the expected guests. His Grace and the Bird of Paradise arrived first, with their foreign friends. Lord Squib and Lord Darrell, Sir Lucius Grafton, Mr. Annesley, and Mr. Peacock Piggott followed, but not alone. There were two ladies who, by courtesy if no other right, bore the titles of Lady Squib and Mrs. Annesley. There was also a pseudo Lady Aphrodite Grafton. There was Mrs. Montfort, the famous _blonde_, of a beauty which was quite ravishing, and dignified as beautiful. Some said (but really people say such things) that there was a talk (I never believe anything I hear) that had not the Bird of Paradise flown in (these foreigners pick up everything), Mrs. Montfort would have been the Duchess of St. James. How this may be I know not; certain, however, this superb and stately donna did not openly evince any spleen at her more fortunate rival. Although she found herself a guest at the Alhambra instead of being the mistress of the palace, probably, like many other ladies, she looked upon this affair of the singing-bird as a freak that must end--and then perhaps his Grace, who was a charming young man, would return to his senses. There also was her sister, a long, fair girl, who looked sentimental, but was only silly. There was a little French actress, like a highly finished miniature; and a Spanish _danseuse_, tall, dusky, and lithe, glancing like a lynx, and graceful as a jennet. Having all arrived, they proceeded down a small gallery to the banqueting-room. The doors were thrown open. Pardon me if for a moment I do not describe the chamber; but really, the blaze affects my sight. The room was large and lofty. It was fitted up as an Eastern tent. The walls were hung with scarlet cloth tied up with ropes of gold. Round the room crouched recumbent lions richly gilt, who grasped in their paw a lance, the top of which was a colored lamp. The ceiling was emblazoned with the Hauteville arms, and was radiant with burnished gold. A cresset lamp was suspended from the centre of the shield, and not only emitted an equable flow of soft though brilliant light, but also, as the aromatic oil wasted away, distilled an exquisite perfume. The table blazed with golden plate, for the Bird of Paradise loved splendor. At the end of the room, under a canopy and upon a throne, the shield and vases lately executed for his Grace now appeared. Everything was gorgeous, costly, and imposing; but there was no pretense, save in the original outline, at maintaining the Oriental character. The furniture was French; and opposite the throne Canova's Hebe, by Bertolini, bounded with a golden cup from a pedestal of _ormolu_. The guests are seated; but after a few minutes the servants withdraw. Small tables of ebony and silver, and dumb-waiters of ivory and gold, conveniently stored, are at hand, and Spiridion never leaves the room. The repast was most refined, most exquisite, and most various. It was one of those meetings where all eat. When a few persons, easy and unconstrained, unincumbered with cares, and of dispositions addicted to enjoyment, get together at past midnight, it is extraordinary what an appetite they evince. Singers also are proverbially prone to gormandize; and though the Bird of Paradise unfortunately possessed the smallest mouth in all Singingland, it is astonishing how she pecked! But they talked as well as feasted, and were really gay. It was amusing to observe--that is to say, if you had been a dumb-waiter, and had time for observation--how characteristic was the affectation of the women. Lady Squib was witty, Mrs. Annesley refined, and the pseudo Lady Afy fashionable. As for Mrs. Montfort, she was, as her wont, somewhat silent but excessively sublime. The Spaniard said nothing, but no doubt indicated the possession of Cervantic humor by the sly calmness with which she exhausted her own waiter and pillaged her neighbors. The little Frenchwoman scarcely ate anything, but drank champagne and chatted, with equal rapidity and equal composure. "Prince," said the duke, "I hope Madame de Harestein approves of your trip to England?" The prince only smiled, for he was of a silent disposition, and therefore wonderfully well suited his traveling companion. "Poor Madame de Harestein!" exclaimed Count Frill. "What despair she was in when you left Vienna, my dear duke. Ah! _mon Dieu!_ I did what I could to amuse her. I used to take my guitar, and sing to her morning and night, but without the least effect. She certainly would have died of a broken heart, if it had not been for the dancing-dogs." "The dancing-dogs!" minced the pseudo Lady Aphrodite. "How shocking!" "Did they bite her?" asked Lady Squib, "and so inoculate her with gayety?" "Oh! the dancing-dogs, my dear ladies! everybody was mad about the dancing-dogs. They came from Peru, and danced the mazurka in green jackets with a _jabot!_ Oh! what a _jabot!_" "I dislike animals excessively," remarked Mrs. Annesley. "Dislike the dancing-dogs!" said Count Frill. "Ah, my good lady, you would have been enchanted. Even the kaiser fed them with pistachio nuts. Oh, so pretty! delicate leetle things, soft shining little legs, and pretty little faces! so sensible, and with such _jabots!_" "I assure you, they were excessively amusing," said the prince, in a soft, confidential undertone to his neighbor, Mrs. Montfort, who, admiring his silence, which she took for state, smiled and bowed with fascinating condescension. "And what else has happened very remarkable, count, since I left you?" asked Lord Darrell. "Nothing, nothing, my dear Darrell. This _bêtise_ of a war has made us all serious. If old Clamstandt had not married that gipsy little Dugiria, I really think I should have taken a turn to Belgrade." "You should not eat so much, poppet," drawled Charles Annesley to the Spaniard. "Why not?" said the little French lady, with great animation, always ready to fight anybody's battle, provided she could get an opportunity to talk. "Why not, Mr. Annesley? You never will let anybody eat--I never eat myself, because every night, having to talk so much, I am dry, dry, dry--so I drink, drink, drink. It is an extraordinary thing that there is no language which makes you so thirsty as French. I always have heard that all the southern languages, Spanish and Italian, make you hungry." "What can be the reason?" seriously asked the pseudo Lady Afy. "Because there is so much salt in it," said Lord Squib. "Delia," drawled Mr. Annesley, "you look very pretty to-night!" "I am charmed to charm you, Mr. Annesley. Shall I tell you what Lord Bon Mot said of you?" "No, _ma mignonne_! I never wish to hear my own good things." "_Spoiled_, you should add," said Lady Squib, "if Bon Mot be in the case." "Lord Bon Mot is a most gentlemanly man," said Delia, indignant at an admirer being attacked. "He always wants to be amusing. Whenever he dines out, he comes and sits with me half an hour to catch the air of Parisian badinage." "And you tell him a variety of little things?" asked Lord Squib, insidiously drawing out the secret tactics of Bon Mot. "_Beaucoup, beaucoup_," said Delia, extending two little white hands sparkling with gems. "If he come in ever so--how do you call it? heavy--not that--in the domps--ah! it is that--if ever he come in the domps, he goes out always like a _soufflée._" "As empty, I have no doubt," said Lady Squib. "And as sweet, I have no doubt," said Lord Squib; "for Delcroix complains sadly of your excesses, Delia." "Mr. Delcroix complain of me! That, indeed, is too bad. Just because I recommended Montmorency de Versailles to him for an excellent customer, ever since he abuses me, merely because Montmorency has forgot, in the hurry of going off, to pay his little account." "But he says you have got all the things," said Lord Squib, whose great amusement was to put Delia in a passion. "What of that?" screamed the little lady. "Montmorency gave them to me." "Don't make such a noise," said the Bird of Paradise. "I never can eat when there is a noise. St. James," continued she, in a fretful tone, "they make such a noise!" "Annesley, keep Squib quiet." "Delia, leave that young man alone. If Isidora would talk a little more, and you eat a little more, I think you would be the most agreeable little ladies I know. Poppet! put those _bonbons_ in your pocket. You should never eat sugar-plums in company." Thus talking agreeable nonsense, tasting agreeable dishes, and sipping agreeable wines, an hour ran on. Sweetest music from an unseen source ever and anon sounded, and Spiridion swung a censer full of perfumes around the chamber. At length the duke requested Count Frill to give them a song. The Bird of Paradise would never sing for pleasure, only for fame and a slight check. The count begged to decline, and at the same time asked for a guitar. The signora sent for hers; and his Excellency, preluding with a beautiful simper, gave them some slight thing to this effect:-- Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a gay little girl is charming Bignetta! She dances, she prattles, She rides and she rattles; But she always is charming--that charming Bignetta! Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a wild little witch is charming Bignetta! When she smiles I'm all madness; When she frowns I'm all sadness; But she always is smiling--that charming Bignetta! Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a wicked young rogue is charming Bignetta! She laughs at my shyness, And flirts with his highness; Yet still she is charming--that charming Bignetta! Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a dear little girl is charming Bignetta! "Think me only a sister," Said she trembling; I kissed her. What a charming young sister is--charming Bignetta! He ceased; and although "--the Ferrarese To choicer music chimed his gay guitar In Este's halls," as Casti himself, or rather Mr. Rose, choicely sings, yet still his song served its purpose, for it raised a smile. "I wrote that for Madame Sapiepha, at the Congress of Verona," said Count Frill. "It has been thought amusing." "Madame Sapiepha!" exclaimed the Bird of Paradise. "What! that pretty little woman who has such pretty caps?" "The same! Ah! what caps! _Mon Dieu!_ what taste! what taste!" "You like caps, then?" asked the Bird of Paradise, with a sparkling eye. "Oh! if there be anything more than other that I know most, it is the cap. Here, _voici!_" said he, rather oddly unbuttoning his waistcoat, "you see what lace I have got. _Voici! voici!_" "Ah! me! what lace! what lace!" exclaimed the Bird in rapture. "St. James, look at his lace. Come here, come here, sit next me. Let me look at that lace." She examined it with great attention, then turned up her beautiful eyes with a fascinating smile. "_Ah! c'est jolie, n'est-ce pas?_ But you like caps. I tell you what, you shall see my caps. Spiridion, go, _mon cher,_ and tell ma'amselle to bring my caps--all my caps, one of each set." In due time entered the Swiss, with the caps--all the caps--one of each set. As she handed them in turn to her mistress, the Bird chirped a panegyric upon each. "That is pretty, is it not--and this also? but this is my favorite. What do you think of this border? _c'est belle, cette garniture? et ce jabot, c'est tres séduisant, n'est-ce pas? Mais voici,_ the cap of Princess Lichtenstein. _C'est superb, c'est mon favori._ But I also love very much this of the Duchesse de Berri. She gave me the pattern herself. And after all, this _cornette à petite santé_ of Lady Blaze is a dear little thing; then, again, this _coiffe à dentelle_ of Lady Macaroni is quite a pet." "Pass them down," said Lord Squib, "we want to look at them." Accordingly they were passed down. Lord Squib put one on. "Do I look superb, sentimental, or only pretty?" asked his lordship. The example was contagious, and most of the caps were appropriated. No one laughed more than their mistress, who, not having the slightest idea of the value of money, would have given them all away on the spot; not from any good-natured feeling, but from the remembrance that to-morrow she might amuse half an hour buying others. While some were stealing, and she remonstrating, the duke clapped his hands like a caliph. The curtain at the end of the apartment was immediately withdrawn and the ball-room stood revealed. It was of the same size as the banqueting-hall. Its walls exhibited a long perspective of gilt pilasters, the frequent piers of which were entirely of plate looking-glass, save where occasionally a picture had been, as it were, inlaid in its rich frame. Here was the Titian Venus of the Tribune, deliciously copied by a French artist; there, the Roman Fornarina, with her delicate grace, beamed like the personification of Raphael's genius. Here Zuleikha, living in the light and shade of that magician Guercino, in vain summoned the passions of the blooming Hebrew; and there Cleopatra, preparing for her last immortal hour, proved by what we saw that Guido had been a lover. The ceiling of this apartment was richly painted and richly gilt; from it were suspended three lustres by golden cords, which threw a softened light upon the floor of polished and curiously inlaid woods. At the end of the apartment was an orchestra, and here the pages, under the direction of Carlstein, offered a very efficient domestic band. Round the room waltzed the elegant revelers. Softly and slowly, led by their host, they glided along like spirits of air; but each time that the duke passed the musicians, the music became livelier, and the motion more brisk, till at length you might have mistaken them for a college of spinning dervishes. One by one, an exhausted couple slunk away. Some threw themselves on a sofa, some monopolized an easy-chair; but in twenty minutes all the dancers had disappeared. At length Peacock Piggott gave a groan, which denoted returning energy, and raised a stretching leg in air, bringing up, though most unwittingly, on his foot one of the Bird's sublime and beautiful caps. "Halloo! Piggott, armed _cap au pied_, I see," said Lord Squib. This joke was a signal for general resuscitation.... Here they lounged in different parties, 'talking on such subjects as idlers ever fall upon; now and then plucking a flower--now and then listening to the fountain--now and then lingering over the distant music--and now and then strolling through a small apartment which opened to their walks, and which bore the title of the Temple of Gnidus. Here Canova's Venus breathed an atmosphere of perfume and of light--that wonderful statue whose full-charged eye is not very classical, to be sure--but then, how true! Lord Squib proposed a visit to the theatre, which he had ordered to be lit up. To the theatre they repaired. They rambled over every part of the house, amused themselves, to the horror of Mr. Annesley, with a visit to the gallery, and then collected behind the scenes. They were excessively amused with the properties; and Lord Squib proposed they should dress themselves. Enough champagne had been quaffed to render any proposition palatable, and in a few minutes they were all in costume. A crowd of queens and chambermaids, Jews and chimney-sweeps, lawyers and charleys, Spanish dons and Irish officers, rushed upon the stage. The little Spaniard was Almaviva, and fell into magnificent attitudes, with her sword and plume. Lord Squib was the old woman of Brentford, and very funny. Sir Lucius Grafton, Harlequin; and Darrell, Grimaldi. The prince and the count, without knowing it, figured as watchmen. Squib whispered Annesley that Sir Lucius O'Trigger might appear in character, but was prudent enough to suppress the joke. The band was summoned, and they danced quadrilles with infinite spirit, and finished the night, at the suggestion of Lord Squib, by breakfasting on the stage. By the time this meal was dispatched, the purple light of morn had broken into the building, and the ladies proposed an immediate departure. Mrs. Montfort and her sister were sent home in one of the duke's carriages; and the foreign guests were requested by him to be their escort. The respective parties drove off. Two cabriolets lingered to the last, and finally carried away the French actress and the Spanish dancer, Lord Darrell, and Peacock Piggott; but whether the two gentlemen went in one and two ladies in the other I cannot aver. I hope not. There was at length a dead silence, and the young duke was left to solitude and the signora! SQUIBS PROM 'THE YOUNG DUKE' CHARLES ANNESLEY Dandy has been voted vulgar, and beau is now the word. I doubt whether the revival will stand; and as for the exploded title, though it had its faults at first, the muse or Byron has made it not only English, but classical. However, I dare say I can do without either of these words at present. Charles Annesley could hardly be called a dandy or a beau. There was nothing in his dress, though some mysterious arrangement in his costume--some rare simplicity--some curious happiness--always made it distinguished; there was nothing, however, in his dress which could account for the influence which he exercised over the manners of his contemporaries. Charles Annesley was about thirty. He had inherited from his father, a younger brother, a small estate; and though heir to a wealthy earldom, he had never abused what the world called "his prospects." Yet his establishments--his little house in Mayfair--his horses--his moderate stud at Melton--were all unique, and everything connected with him was unparalleled for its elegance, its invention, and its refinement. But his manner was his magic. His natural and subdued nonchalance, so different from the assumed non-emotion of a mere dandy; his coldness of heart, which was hereditary, not acquired; his cautious courage, and his unadulterated self-love, had permitted him to mingle much with mankind without being too deeply involved in the play of their passions; while his exquisite sense of the ridiculous quickly revealed those weaknesses to him which his delicate satire did not spare, even while it refrained from wounding. All feared, many admired, and none hated him. He was too powerful not to dread, too dexterous not to admire, too superior to hate. Perhaps the great secret of his manner was his exquisite superciliousness; a quality which, of all, is the most difficult to manage. Even with his intimates he was never confidential, and perpetually assumed his public character with the private coterie which he loved to rule. On the whole, he was unlike any of the leading men of modern days, and rather reminded one of the fine gentlemen of our old brilliant comedy--the Dorimants, the Bellairs, and the Mirabels. THE FUSSY HOSTESS Men shrink from a fussy woman. And few can aspire to regulate the destinies of their species, even in so slight a point as an hour's amusement, without rare powers. There is no greater sin than to be _trop prononcée_. A want of tact is worse than a want of virtue. Some women, it is said, work on pretty well against the tide without the last. I never knew one who did not sink who ever dared to sail without the first. Loud when they should be low, quoting the wrong person, talking on the wrong subject, teasing with notice, excruciating with attentions, disturbing a _tête-à-tête_ in order to make up a dance; wasting eloquence in persuading a man to participate in amusement whose reputation depends on his social sullenness; exacting homage with a restless eye, and not permitting the least worthy knot to be untwined without their divinityships' interference; patronizing the meek, anticipating the slow, intoxicating with compliment, plastering with praise that you in return may gild with flattery; in short, energetic without elegance, active without grace, and loquacious without wit; mistaking bustle for style, raillery for badinage, and noise for gayety--these are the characters who mar the very career they think they are creating, and who exercise a fatal influence on the destinies of all those who have the misfortune to be connected with them. PUBLIC SPEAKING Eloquence is the child of Knowledge. When a mind is full, like a wholesome river, it is also clear. Confusion and obscurity are much oftener the results of ignorance than of inefficiency. Few are the men who cannot express their meaning when the occasion demands the energy; as the lowest will defend their lives with acuteness, and sometimes even with eloquence. They are masters of their subject. Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own mind. To make others feel, we must feel ourselves; and to feel ourselves, we must be natural. This we can never be when we are vomiting forth the dogmas of the schools. Knowledge is not a mere collection of words; and it is a delusion to suppose that thought can be obtained by the aid of any other intellect than our own. What is repetition, by a curious mystery, ceases to be truth, even if it were truth when it was first heard; as the shadow in a mirror, though it move and mimic all the actions of vitality, is not life. When a man is not speaking or writing from his own mind, he is as insipid company as a looking-glass. Before a man can address a popular assembly with command, he must know something of mankind, and he can know nothing of mankind without he knows something of himself. Self-knowledge is the property of that man whose passions have their play, but who ponders over their results. Such a man sympathizes by inspiration with his kind. He has a key to every heart. He can divine, in the flash of a single thought, all that they require, all that they wish. Such a man speaks to their very core. All feel that a master hand tears off the veil of cant, with which, from necessity, they have enveloped their souls; for cant is nothing more than the sophistry which results from attempting to account for what is unintelligible, or to defend what is improper. FEMALE BEAUTY There are some sorts of beauty which defy description, and almost scrutiny. Some faces rise upon us in the tumult of life, like stars from out the sea, or as if they had moved out of a picture. Our first impression is anything but fleshly. We are struck dumb--we gasp for breath--our limbs quiver--a faintness glides over our frame--we are awed; instead of gazing upon the apparition, we avert the eyes, which yet will feed upon its beauty. A strange sort of unearthly pain mixes with the intense pleasure. And not till, with a struggle, we call back to our memory the commonplaces of existence, can we recover our commonplace demeanor. These, indeed, are rare visions--these, indeed, are early feelings, when our young existence leaps with its mountain torrents; but as the river of our life rolls on, our eyes grow dimmer, or our blood more cold. LOTHAIR IN PALESTINE From 'Lothair' A person approached Lothair by the pathway from Bethany. It was the Syrian gentleman whom he had met at the consulate. As he was passing Lothair, he saluted him with the grace which had been before remarked; and Lothair, who was by nature courteous, and even inclined a little to ceremony in his manners, especially with those with whom he was not intimate, immediately rose, as he would not receive such a salutation in a reclining posture. "Let me not disturb you," said the stranger; "or, if we must be on equal terms, let me also be seated, for this is a view that never palls." "It is perhaps familiar to you," said Lothair; "but with me, only a pilgrim, its effect is fascinating, almost overwhelming." "The view of Jerusalem never becomes familiar," said the Syrian; "for its associations are so transcendent, so various, so inexhaustible, that the mind can never anticipate its course of thought and feeling, when one sits, as we do now, on this immortal mount." ... "I have often wished to visit the Sea of Galilee," said Lothair. "Well, you have now an opportunity," said the Syrian: "the north of Palestine, though it has no tropical splendor, has much variety and a peculiar natural charm. The burst and brightness of spring have not yet quite vanished; you would find our plains radiant with wild-flowers, and our hills green with young crops, and though we cannot rival Lebanon, we have forest glades among our famous hills that when once seen are remembered." "But there is something to me more interesting than the splendor of tropical scenery," said Lothair, "even if Galilee could offer it. I wish to visit the cradle of my faith." "And you would do wisely," said the Syrian, "for there is no doubt the spiritual nature of man is developed in this land." "And yet there are persons at the present day who doubt--even deny--the spiritual nature of man," said Lothair. "I do not, I could not--there are reasons why I could not." "There are some things I know, and some things I believe," said the Syrian. "I know that I have a soul, and I believe that it is immortal." "It is science that, by demonstrating the insignificance of this globe in the vast scale of creation, has led to this infidelity," said Lothair. "Science may prove the insignificance of this globe in the scale of creation," said the stranger, "but it cannot prove the insignificance of man. What is the earth compared with the sun? a molehill by a mountain; yet the inhabitants of this earth can discover the elements of which the great orb consists, and will probably ere long ascertain all the conditions of its being. Nay, the human mind can penetrate far beyond the sun. There is no relation, therefore, between the faculties of man and the scale in creation of the planet which he inhabits." "I was glad to hear you assert the other night the spiritual nature of man in opposition to Mr. Phoebus." "Ah, Mr. Phoebus!" said the stranger, with a smile. "He is an old acquaintance of mine. And I must say he is very consistent--except in paying a visit to Jerusalem. That does surprise me. He said to me the other night the same things as he said to me at Rome many years ago. He would revive the worship of Nature. The deities whom he so eloquently describes and so exquisitely delineates are the ideal personifications of the most eminent human qualities, and chiefly the physical. Physical beauty is his standard of excellence, and he has a fanciful theory that moral order would be the consequence of the worship of physical beauty; for without moral order he holds physical beauty cannot be maintained. But the answer to Mr. Phoebus is, that his system has been tried and has failed, and under conditions more favorable than are likely to exist again; the worship of Nature ended in the degradation of the human race." "But Mr. Phoebus cannot really believe in Apollo and Venus," said Lothair. "These are phrases. He is, I suppose, what is called a Pantheist." "No doubt the Olympus of Mr. Phoebus is the creation of his easel," replied the Syrian. "I should not, however, describe him as a Pantheist, whose creed requires more abstraction than Mr. Phoebus, the worshiper of Nature, would tolerate. His school never care to pursue any investigation which cannot be followed by the eye--and the worship of the beautiful always ends in an orgy. As for Pantheism, it is Atheism in domino. The belief in a Creator who is unconscious of creating is more monstrous than any dogma of any of the churches in this city, and we have them all here." "But there are people now who tell you that there never was any creation, and therefore there never could have been a Creator," said Lothair. "And which is now advanced with the confidence of novelty," said the Syrian, "though all of it has been urged, and vainly urged, thousands of years ago. There must be design, or all we see would be without sense, and I do not believe in the unmeaning. As for the natural forces to which all creation is now attributed, we know they are unconscious, while consciousness is as inevitable a portion of our existence as the eye or the hand. The conscious cannot be derived from the unconscious. Man is divine." "I wish I could assure myself of the personality of the Creator," said Lothair. "I cling to that, but they say it is unphilosophical." "In what sense?" asked the Syrian. "Is it more unphilosophical to believe in a personal God, omnipotent and omniscient, than in natural forces unconscious and irresistible? Is it unphilosophical to combine power with intelligence? Goethe, a Spinozist who did not believe in Spinoza, said that he could bring his mind to the conception that in the centre of space we might meet with a monad of pure intelligence. What may be the centre of space I leave to the dædal imagination of the author of 'Faust'; but a monad of pure intelligence--is that more philosophical than the truth first revealed to man amid these everlasting hills," said the Syrian, "that God made man in his own image?" "I have often found in that assurance a source of sublime consolation," said Lothair. "It is the charter of the nobility of man," said the Syrian, "one of the divine dogmas revealed in this land; not the invention of councils, not one of which was held on this sacred soil, confused assemblies first got together by the Greeks, and then by barbarous nations in barbarous times." "Yet the divine land no longer tells us divine things," said Lothair. "It may or may not have fulfilled its destiny," said the Syrian. "'In my Father's house are many mansions,' and by the various families of nations the designs of the Creator are accomplished. God works by races, and one was appointed in due season and after many developments to reveal and expound in this land the spiritual nature of man. The Aryan and the Semite are of the same blood and origin, but when they quitted their central land they were ordained to follow opposite courses. Each division of the great race has developed one portion of the double nature of humanity, till, after all their wanderings, they met again, and, represented by their two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews, brought together the treasures of their accumulated wisdom, and secured the civilization of man." "Those among whom I have lived of late," said Lothair, "have taught me to trust much in councils, and to believe that without them there could be no foundation for the Church. I observe you do not speak in that vein, though, like myself, you find solace in those dogmas which recognize the relations between the created and the Creator." "There can be no religion without that recognition," said the Syrian, "and no creed can possibly be devised without such a recognition that would satisfy man. Why we are here, whence we come, whither we go--these are questions which man is organically framed and forced to ask himself, and that would not be the case if they could not be answered. As for churches depending on councils, the first council was held more than three centuries after the Sermon on the Mount. We Syrians had churches in the interval; no one can deny that. I bow before the divine decree that swept them away from Antioch to Jerusalem, but I am not yet prepared to transfer my spiritual allegiance to Italian popes and Greek patriarchs. We believe that our family were among the first followers of Jesus, and that we then held lands in Bashan which we hold now. We had a gospel once in our district where there was some allusion to this, and being written by neighbors, and probably at the time, I dare say it was accurate; but the Western Churches declared our gospel was not authentic, though why I cannot tell, and they succeeded in extirpating it. It was not an additional reason why we should enter into their fold. So I am content to dwell in Galilee and trace the footsteps of my Divine Master, musing over his life and pregnant sayings amid the mounts he sanctified and the waters he loved so well." BEAUMARCHAIS (1732-1799) BY BRANDER MATTHEWS Pierre Augustin Caron was born in Paris, January 24th, 1732. He was the son of a watchmaker, and learned his father's trade. He invented a new escapement, and was allowed to call himself "Clockmaker to the King"--Louis XV. At twenty-four he married a widow, and took the name of Beaumarchais from a small fief belonging to her. Within a year his wife died. Being a fine musician, he was appointed instructor of the King's daughters; and he was quick to turn to good account the influence thus acquired. In 1764 he made a sudden trip to Spain to vindicate a sister of his, who had been betrothed to a man called Clavijo and whom this Spaniard had refused to marry. He succeeded in his mission, and his own brilliant account of this characteristic episode in his career suggested to Goethe the play of 'Clavigo.' Beaumarchais himself brought back from Madrid a liking for things Spanish and a knowledge of Iberian customs and character. [Illustration: Beaumarchais] He had been a watchmaker, a musician, a court official, a speculator, and it was only when he was thirty-five that he turned dramatist. Various French authors, Diderot especially, weary of confinement to tragedy and comedy, the only two forms then admitted on the French stage, were seeking a new dramatic formula in which they might treat pathetic situations of modern life; and it is due largely to their efforts that the modern "play" or "drama," the story of every-day existence, has been evolved. The first dramatic attempt of Beaumarchais was a drama called 'Eugénie,' acted at the Théâtre Français in 1767, and succeeding just enough to encourage him to try again. The second, 'The Two Friends,' acted in 1770, was a frank failure. For the pathetic, Beaumarchais had little aptitude; and these two serious efforts were of use to him only so far as their performance may have helped him to master the many technical difficulties of the theatre. Beaumarchais had married a second time in 1768, and he had been engaged in various speculations with the financier Pâris-Duverney. In 1770 his wife died, and so did his associate; and he found himself soon involved in lawsuits, into the details of which it is needless to go, but in the course of which he published a series of memoirs, or statements of his case for the public at large. These memoirs are among the most vigorous of all polemical writings; they were very clever and very witty; they were vivacious and audacious; they were unfailingly interesting; and they were read as eagerly as the 'Letters of Junius.' Personal at first, the suits soon became political; and part of the public approval given to the attack of Beaumarchais on judicial injustice was due no doubt to the general discontent with the existing order in France. His daring conduct of his own cause made him a personality. He was intrusted with one secret mission by Louis XV; and when Louis XVI came to the throne, he managed to get him again employed confidentially. Not long after his two attempts at the serious drama, he had tried to turn to account his musical faculty by writing both the book and the score of a comic opera, which had, however, been rejected by the Comédie-Italienne (the predecessor of the present Opéra Comique). After a while Beaumarchais cut out his music and worked over his plot into a five-act comedy in prose, 'The Barber of Seville.' It was produced by the Théâtre Français in 1775, and like the contemporary 'Rivals' of Sheridan,--the one English author with whom Beaumarchais must always be compared,--it was a failure on the first night and a lasting success after the author had reduced it and rearranged it. 'The Barber of Seville' was like the 'Gil Blas' of Lesage in that, while it was seemingly Spanish in its scenes, it was in reality essentially French. It contained one of the strongest characters in literature,--Figaro, a reincarnation of the intriguing servant of Menander and Plautus and Molière. Simple in plot, ingenious in incident, brisk in dialogue, broadly effective in character-drawing, 'The Barber of Seville' is the most famous French comedy of the eighteenth century, with the single exception of its successor from the same pen, which appeared nine years later. During those years Beaumarchais was not idle. Like Defoe, he was always devising projects for money-making. A few months after 'The Barber of Seville' had been acted, the American Revolution began, and Beaumarchais was a chief agent in supplying the Americans with arms, ammunition, and supplies. He had a cruiser of his own, Le Fier Roderigue, which was in D'Estaing's fleet. When the independence of the United States was recognized at last, Beaumarchais had a pecuniary claim against the young nation which long remained unsettled. Not content with making war on his own account almost, Beaumarchais also undertook the immense task of publishing a complete edition of Voltaire. He also prepared a sequel to the 'Barber,' in which Figaro should be even more important, and should serve as a mouthpiece for declamatory criticism of the social order. But his 'Marriage of Figaro' was so full of the revolutionary ferment that its performance was forbidden. Following the example of Molière under the similar interdiction of 'Tartuffe,' Beaumarchais was untiring in arousing interest in his unacted play, reading it himself in the houses of the great. Finally it was authorized, and when the first performance took place at the Théâtre Français in 1784, the crush to see it was so great that three persons were stifled to death. The new comedy was as amusing and as adroit as its predecessor, and the hits at the times were sharper and swifter and more frequent. How demoralized society was then may be gauged by the fact that this disintegrating satire was soon acted by the amateurs of the court, a chief character being impersonated by Marie Antoinette herself. The career of Beaumarchais reached its climax with the production of the second of the Figaro plays. Afterward he wrote the libretto for an opera, 'Tarare,' produced with Salieri's music in 1787; the year before he had married for the third time. In a heavy play called 'The Guilty Mother,' acted with slight success in 1790, he brought in Figaro yet once more. During the Terror he emigrated to Holland, returning to Paris in 1796 to find his sumptuous mansion despoiled. May 18th, 1799, he died, leaving a fortune of $200,000, besides numerous claims against the French nation and the United States. An interesting parallel could be drawn between 'The Rivals' and the 'School for Scandal' on the one side, and on the other 'The Barber of Seville' and 'The Marriage of Figaro'; and there are also piquant points of likeness between Sheridan and Beaumarchais. But Sheridan, with all his failings, was of sterner stuff than Beaumarchais. He had a loftier political morality, and he served the State more loyally. Yet the two comedies of Beaumarchais are like the two comedies of Sheridan in their incessant wit, in their dramaturgic effectiveness, and in the histrionic opportunities they afford. Indeed, the French comedies have had a wider audience than the English, thanks to an Italian and a German,--to Rossini who set 'The Barber of Seville' to music, and to Mozart who did a like service for 'The Marriage of Figaro.' [Illustration: Signature: Brander Matthews] FROM 'THE BARBER OF SEVILLE' OUTWITTING A GUARDIAN [Rosina's lover, Count Almaviva, attempts to meet and converse with her by hoodwinking Dr. Bartolo, her zealous guardian. He comes in disguise to Bartolo's dwelling, in a room of which the scene is laid.] [_Enter Count Almaviva, dressed as a student_.] _Count [solemnly]_--May peace and joy abide here evermore! _Bartolo [brusquely]_--Never, young sir, was wish more àpropos! What do you want? _Count_--Sir, I am one Alonzo, a bachelor of arts-- _Bartolo_--Sir, I need no instructor. _Count_---- ---- a pupil of Don Basilio, the organist of the convent, who teaches music to Madame your-- _Bartolo [suspiciously]_--Basilio! Organist! Yes, I know him. Well? _Count [aside]_--What a man! _[Aloud.]_ He's confined to his bed with a sudden illness. _Bartolo_--Confined to his bed! Basilio! He's very good to send word, for I've just seen him. _Count [aside]_--Oh, the devil! [_Aloud._] When I say to his bed, sir, it's--I mean to his room. _Bartolo_--Whatever's the matter with him, go, if you please. _Count [embarrassed]_--Sir, I was asked--Can no one hear us? _Bartolo [aside]_--It's some rogue! _[Aloud.]_ What's that? No, Monsieur Mysterious, no one can hear! Speak frankly--if you can. _Count [aside]_--Plague take the old rascal! _[Aloud.]_ Don Basilio asked me to tell you-- _Bartolo_--Speak louder. I'm deaf in one ear. _Count [raising his voice_]--Ah! quite right: he asks me to say to you that one Count Almaviva, who was lodging on the great square-- _Bartolo [frightened]_--Speak low, speak low. _Count [louder]_----moved away from there this morning. As it was I who told him that this Count Almaviva-- _Bartolo_--Low, speak lower, I beg of you. _Count [in the same tone_]--Was in this city, and as I have discovered that Señorita Rosina has been writing to him-- _Bartolo_--Has been writing to him? My dear friend, I implore you, _do_ speak low! Come, let's sit down, let's have a friendly chat. You have discovered, you say, that Rosina-- _Count_ [_angrily_]--Certainly. Basilio, anxious about this correspondence on your account, asked me to show you her letter; but the way you take things-- _Bartolo_--Good Lord! I take them well enough. But can't you possibly speak a little lower? _Count_--You told me you were deaf in one ear. _Bartolo_--I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, if I've been surly and suspicious, Signor Alonzo: I'm surrounded with spies--and then your figure, your age, your whole air--I beg your pardon. Well? Have you the letter? _Count_--I'm glad you're barely civil at last, sir. But are you quite sure no one can overhear us? _Bartolo_--Not a soul. My servants are all tired out. Señorita Rosina has shut herself up in a rage! The very devil's to pay in this house. Still I'll go and make sure. [_He goes to peep into Rosina's room_.] _Count_ [_aside_]--Well, I've caught myself now in my own trap. Now what shall I do about the letter? If I were to run off?--but then I might just as well not have come. Shall I show it to him? If I could only warn Rosina beforehand! To show it would be a master-stroke. _Bartolo_ [_returning on tiptoe_]--She's sitting by the window with her back to the door, and re-reading a cousin's letter which I opened. Now, now--let me see hers. _Count_ [_handing him Rosina's letter_]--Here it is. [_Aside._] She's re-reading _my_ letter. _Bartolo_ [_reads quickly_]--"Since you have told me your name and estate--" Ah, the little traitress! Yes, it's her writing. _Count_ [_frightened_]--Speak low yourself, won't you? _Bartolo_--What for, if you please? _Count_--When we've finished, you can do as you choose. But after all, Don Basilio's negotiation with a lawyer-- _Bartolo_--With a lawyer? About my marriage? _Count_--Would I have stopped you for anything else? He told me to say that all can be ready to-morrow. Then, if she resists-- _Bartolo_--She will. _Count_ [_wants to take back the letter; Bartolo clutches it_]--I'll tell you what we'll do. We will show her her letter; and then, if necessary, [_more mysteriously_] I'll even tell her that it was given to me by a woman--to whom the Count is sacrificing her. Shame and rage may bring her to terms on the spot. _Bartolo_ [_laughing_]--Calumny, eh? My dear fellow, I see very well now that you come from Basilio. But lest we should seem to have planned this together, don't you think it would be better if she'd met you before? _Count_ [_repressing a start of joy_]--Don Basilio thought so, I know. But how can we manage it? It is late already. There's not much time left. _Bartolo_--I will tell her you've come in his place. Couldn't you give her a lesson? _Count_--I'll do anything you like. But take care she doesn't suspect. All these dodges of pretended masters are rather old and theatrical. _Bartolo_--She won't suspect if I introduce you. But how you do look! You've much more the air of a disguised lover than of a zealous student-friend. _Count_--Really? Don't you think I can hoodwink her all the better for that? _Bartolo_--She'll never guess. She's in a horrible temper this evening. But if she'll only see you--Her harpsichord is in this room. Amuse yourself while you're waiting. I'll do all I can to bring her here. _Count_--Don't say a word about the letter. _Bartolo_--Before the right moment? It would lose all effect if I did. It's not necessary to tell me things twice; it's not necessary to tell me things twice. [_He goes._] _Count_ [_alone, soliloquizes_]--At last I've won! Ouf! What a difficult little old imp he is! Figaro understands him. I found myself lying, and that made me awkward; and he has eyes for everything! On my honor, if the letter hadn't inspired me he'd have thought me a fool!--Ah, how they are disputing in there!--What if she refuses to come? Listen--If she won't, my coming is all thrown away. There she is: I won't show myself at first. [_Rosina enters_.] _Rosina_ [_angrily_]--There's no use talking about it, sir. I've made up my mind. I don't want to hear anything more about music. _Bartolo_--But, my child, do listen! It is Señor Alonzo, the friend and pupil of Don Basilio, whom he has chosen as one of our marriage witnesses. I'm sure that music will calm you. _Rosina_--Oh! you needn't concern yourself about that; and as for singing this evening--Where is this master you're so afraid of dismissing? I'll settle him in a minute--and Señor Basilio too. [_She sees her lover and exclaims_:] Ah! _Bartolo_--Eh, eh, what is the matter? _Rosina_ [_pressing her hands to her heart_]--Ah, sir! Ah, sir! _Bartolo_--She is ill again! Señor Alonzo! _Rosina_--No, I am not ill--but as I was turning--ah! _Count_--Did you sprain your foot, Madame? _Rosina_--Yes, yes, I sprained my foot! I--hurt myself dreadfully. _Count_--So I perceived. _Rosina_ [_looking at the Count_]--The pain really makes me feel faint. _Bartolo_--A chair--a chair there! And not a single chair here! [_He goes to get one_.] _Count_--Ah, Rosina! _Rosina_--What imprudence! _Count_--There are a hundred things I must say to you. _Rosina_--He won't leave us alone. _Count_--Figaro will help us. _Bartolo_ [_bringing an arm-chair_]--Wait a minute, my child. Sit down here. She can't take a lesson this evening, Señor: you must postpone it. Good-by. _Rosina_ [_to the Count_]--No, wait; my pain is better. [_To Bartolo_.] I feel that I've acted foolishly! I'll imitate you, and atone at once by taking my lesson. _Bartolo_--Oh! Such a kind little woman at heart! But after so much excitement, my child, I can't let you make any exertion. So good-bye, Señor, good-bye. _Rosina_ [_to the Count_]--Do wait a minute! [_To Bartolo_.] I shall think that you don't care to please me if you won't let me show my regret by taking my lesson. _Count_ [_aside to Bartolo_]--I wouldn't oppose her, if I were you. _Bartolo_--That settles it, my love: I am so anxious to please you that I shall stay here all the time you are practicing. _Rosina_--No, don't. I know you don't care for music. _Bartolo_--It _will_ charm me this evening, I'm sure. _Rosina [aside to the Count_]--I'm tormented to death! _Count [taking a sheet of music from the stand_]--Will you sing this, Madame? _Rosina_--Yes, indeed--it's a very pretty thing out of the opera 'The Useless Precaution.' _Bartolo_--Why do you _always_ sing from 'The Useless Precaution'? _Count_--There is nothing newer! It's a picture of spring in a very bright style. So if Madame wants to try it-- _Rosina [looking at the Count_]--With pleasure. A picture of spring is delightful! It is the youth of nature. It seems as if the heart always feels more when winter's just over. It's like a slave who finds liberty all the more charming after a long confinement. _Bartolo [to the Count_]--Always romantic ideas in her head! _Count [in a low tone_]--Did you notice the application? _Bartolo_--Zounds! _[He sits down in the chair which Rosina has been occupying. Rosina sings, during which Bartolo goes to sleep. Under cover of the refrain the Count seizes Rosina's hand and covers it with kisses. In her emotion she sings brokenly, and finally breaks off altogether. The sudden silence awakens Bartolo. The Count starts up, and Rosina quickly resumes her song_.] * * * * * _[Don Basilio enters. Figaro in background_.] _Rosina [startled, to herself_]--Don Basilio! _Count [aside]_--Good Heaven! _Figaro_--The devil! _Bartolo [going to meet him_]--Ah! welcome, Basilio. So your accident was not very serious? Alonzo quite alarmed me about you. He will tell you that I was just going to see you, and if he had not detained me-- _Basilio [in astonishment_]--Señor Alonzo? _Figaro [stamping his foot_]--Well, well! How long must I wait? Two hours wasted already over your beard--Miserable business! _Basilio [looking at every one in amazement_]--But, gentlemen, will you please tell me-- _Figaro_--You can talk to him after I've gone. _Basilio_--But still, would-- _Count_--You'd better be quiet, Basilio. Do you think you can inform him of anything new? I've told him that you sent me for the music lesson instead of coming himself. _Basilio [still more astonished]_--The music lesson! Alonzo! _Rosina [aside to Basilio]--Do_ hold your tongue, can't you? _Basilio_--She, too! _Count [to Bartolo]_--Let him know what you and I have agreed upon. _Bartolo [aside to Basilio]_--Don't contradict, and say that he is not your pupil, or you will spoil everything. _Basilio_--Ah! Ah! _Bartolo [aloud]_--Indeed, Basilio, your pupil has a great deal of talent. _Basilio [stupefied]_--My pupil! [_In a low tone_.] I came to tell you that the Count has moved. _Bartolo [low]_--I know it. Hush. _Basilio [low]_--Who told you? _Bartolo [low]_--He did, of course. _Count [low]_--It was I, naturally. Just listen, won't you? _Rosina [low to Basilio]_--Is it so hard to keep still? _Figaro [low to Basilio]_--Hum! The sharper! He is deaf! _Basilio [aside]_--Who the devil are they trying to deceive here? Everybody seems to be in it! _Bartolo [aloud]_--Well, Basilio--about your lawyer--? _Figaro_--You have the whole evening to talk about the lawyer. _Bartolo [to Basilio]_--One word; only tell me if you are satisfied with the lawyer. _Basilio [startled]_--With the lawyer? _Count [smiling]_--Haven't you seen the lawyer? _Basilio [impatient]_--Eh? No, I haven't seen the lawyer. _Count [aside to Bartolo]_--Do you want him to explain matters before her? Send him away. _Bartolo [low to the Count]_--You are right. [_To Basilio_.] But what made you ill, all of a sudden? _Basilio [angrily]_--I don't understand you. _Count [secretly slipping a purse into his hands]_--Yes: he wants to know what you are doing here, when you are so far from well? _Figaro_--He's as pale as a ghost! _Basilio_--Ah! I understand. _Count_--Go to bed, dear Basilio. You are not at all well, and you make us all anxious. Go to bed. _Figaro_--He looks quite upset. Go to bed. _Bartolo_--I'm sure he seems feverish. Go to bed. _Rosina_--Why did you come out? They say that it's catching. Go to bed. _Basilio [in the greatest amazement]_--I'm to go to bed! _All the others together_--Yes, you must. _Basilio [looking at them all]_--Indeed, I think I will have to withdraw. I don't feel quite as well as usual. _Bartolo_--We'll look for you to-morrow, if you are better. _Count_--I'll see you soon, Basilio. _Basilio [aside]_--Devil take it if I understand all this! And if it weren't for this purse-- _All_--Good-night, Basilio, good-night. _Basilio [going]_--Very well, then; good-night, _good-night_. [_The others, all laughing, push him civilly out of the room_.] FROM 'THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO' OUTWITTING A HUSBAND [The scene is the boudoir of young Countess Almaviva, the Rosina of the previous selection. She is seated alone, when her clever maid Susanna ushers in the young page Cherubino, just banished from the house because obnoxious to the jealous Count.] _Susanna_--Here's our young Captain, Madame. _Cherubino [timidly]_--The title is a sad reminder that--that I must leave this delightful home and the godmother who has been so kind-- _Susanna--And_ so beautiful! _Cherubino [sighing]_--Ah, yes! _Susanna [mocking his sigh]_--Ah, yes! Just look at his hypocritical eyelids! Madame, make him sing his new song. [_She gives it to him_.] Come now, my beautiful bluebird, sing away. _Countess_--Does the manuscript say who wrote this--song? _Susanna_--The blushes of guilt betray him. _Cherubino_--Madame, I--I--tremble so. _Susanna_--Ta, ta, ta, ta--! Come, modest author--since you are so commanded. Madame, I'll accompany him. _Countess [to Susanna]_--Take my guitar. _[Cherubino sings his ballad to the air of 'Malbrouck.' The Countess reads the words of it from his manuscript, with an occasional glance at him; he sometimes looks at her and sometimes lowers his eyes as he sings. Susanna, accompanying him, watches them both, laughing.]_ _Countess [folding the song]_--Enough, my boy. Thank you. It is very good--full of feeling-- _Susanna_--Ah! as for feeling--this is a young man who--well! _[Cherubino tries to stop her by catching hold of her dress. Susanna whispers to him]_--Ah, you good-for-nothing! I'm going to tell her. _[Aloud.]_ Well--Captain! We'll amuse ourselves by seeing how you look in one of my dresses! _Countess_--Susanna, how _can_ you go on so? _Susanna [going up to Cherubino and measuring herself with him]_--He's just the right height. Off with your coat. _[She draws it off.]_ _Countess_--But what if some one should come? _Susanna_--What if they do? We're doing no wrong. But I'll lock the door, just the same. _[Locks it.]_ I want to see him in a woman's head-dress! _Countess_--Well, you'll find my little cap in my dressing-room on the toilet table. _[Susanna gets the cap, and then, sitting down on a stool, she makes Cherubino kneel before her and arranges it on his hair.]_ _Susanna_--Goodness, isn't he a pretty girl? I'm jealous. Cherubino, you're altogether _too_ pretty. _Countess_--Undo his collar a little; that will give a more feminine air. [_Susanna loosens his collar so as to show his neck_.] Now push up his sleeves, so that the under ones show more. [_While Susanna rolls up Cherubino's sleeves, the Countess notices her lost ribbon around his wrist_.] What is that? My ribbon? _Susanna_--Ah! I'm very glad you've seen it, for I told him I should tell. I should certainly have taken it away from him if the Count hadn't come just then; for I am almost as strong as he is. _Countess [with surprise, unrolling the ribbon]_--There's blood on it! _Cherubino_--Yes, I was tightening the curb of my horse this morning, he curvetted and gave me a push with his head, and the bridle stud grazed my arm. _Countess_--I never saw a ribbon used as a bandage before. _Susanna_--Especially a _stolen_ ribbon. What may all those things be--the curb, the curvetting, the bridle stud? [_Glances at his arms_.] What white arms he has! just like a woman's. Madame, they are whiter than mine. _Countess_--Never mind that, but run and find me some oiled silk. [_Susanna goes out, after humorously pushing Cherubino over so that he falls forward on his hands. He and the Countess look at each other for some time; then she breaks the silence_.] _Countess_--I hope you are plucky enough. Don't show yourself before the Count again to-day. We'll tell him to hurry up your commission in his regiment. _Cherubino_--I already have it, Madame. Basilio brought it to me. [_He draws the commission from his pocket and hands it to her_.] _Countess_--Already! They haven't lost any time. [_She opens it._] Oh, in their hurry they've forgotten to add the seal to it. _Susanna [returning with the oiled silk]_--Seal what? _Countess_--His commission in the regiment. _Susanna_--Already? _Countess_--That's what I said. _Susanna_--And the bandage? _Countess_--Oh, when you are getting my things, take a ribbon from one of _your_ caps. [_Susanna goes out again_] _Countess_--This ribbon is of my favorite color. I must tell you I was greatly displeased at your taking it. _Cherubino_--That one would heal me quickest. _Countess_--And--why so? _Cherubino_--When a ribbon--has pressed the head, and--touched the skin of one-- _Countess [hastily]_--Very strange--then it can cure wounds? I never heard that before. I shall certainly try it on the first wound of any of--my maids-- _Cherubino [sadly]_--I must go away from here! _Countess_--But not for always? [_Cherubino begins to weep._] And now you are crying! At that prediction of Figaro? _Cherubino_--I'm just where he said I'd be. [_Some one knocks on the door_]. _Countess_--Who can be knocking like that? _The Count [outside]_--Open the door! _Countess_--Heavens! It's my husband. Where can you hide? _The Count [outside]_--Open the door, I say. _Countess_--There's no one here, you see. _The Count_--But who are you talking to then? _Countess_--To you, I suppose. [_To Cherubino._] Hide yourself, quick--in the dressing-room! _Cherubino_--Ah, after this morning, he'd kill me if he found me _here_. [_He runs into the dressing-room on the right, which is also Susanna's room; the Countess, after locking him in and taking the key, admits the Count._] _Count_--You don't usually lock yourself in, Madame. _Countess_--I--I--was gossiping with Susanna. She's gone. [_Pointing to her maid's room._] _Count_--And you seem very much agitated, Madame. _Countess_--Not at all, I assure you! We were talking about you. She's just gone--as I told you. _Count_--I must say, Madame, you and I seem to be surrounded by spiteful people. Just as I'm starting for a ride, I'm handed a note which informs me that a certain person whom I suppose far enough away is to visit you this evening. _Countess_--The bold fellow, whoever he is, will have to come here, then; for I don't intend to leave my room to-day. [_Something falls heavily in the dressing-room where Cherubino is._] _Count_--Ah, Madame, something dropped just then! _Countess_--I didn't hear anything. _Count_--You must be very absent-minded, then. Somebody is in that room! _Countess_--Who do you think could be there? _Count_--Madame, that is what I'm asking _you_. I have just come in. _Countess_--Probably it's Susanna wandering about. _Count [pointing]_--But you just told me that she went that way. _Countess_--This way or that--I don't know which. _Count_--Very well, Madame, I must see her.--Come here, Susanna. _Countess_--She cannot. Pray wait! She's but half dressed. She's trying on things that I've given her for her wedding. _Count_--Dressed or not, I wish to see her at once. _Countess_--I can't prevent your doing so anywhere else, but here-- _Count_--You may say what you choose--I _will_ see her. _Countess_--I thoroughly believe you'd like to see her in that state! but-- _Count_--Very well, Madame. If Susanna can't come out, at least she can talk. [_Turning toward the dressing-room._] Susanna, are you there? Answer, I command you. _Countess_ [_peremptorily_]--Don't answer, Susanna! I forbid you! Sir, how can you be such a petty tyrant? Fine suspicions, indeed! [_Susanna slips by and hides behind the Countess's bed without being noticed either by her or by the Count._] _Count_--They are all the easier to dispel. I can see that it would be useless to ask you for the key, but it's easy enough to break in the door. Here, somebody! _Countess_--Will you really make yourself the laughing-stock of the chateau for such a silly suspicion? _Count_--- You are quite right. I shall simply force the door myself. I am going for tools. _Countess_--Sir, if your conduct were prompted by love, I'd forgive your jealousy for the sake of the motive. But its cause is only your vanity. _Count_--Love _or_ vanity, Madame, I mean to know who is in that room! And to guard against any tricks, I am going to lock the door to your maid's room. You, Madame, will kindly come with me, and without any noise, if you please. [_He leads her away._] As for the Susanna in the dressing-room, she will please wait a few minutes. _Countess_ [_going out with him_]--Sir, I assure you-- _Susanna_ [_coming out from behind the bed and running to the dressing-room_]--Cherubino! Open quick! It's Susanna. [_Cherubino hurries out of the dressing-room._] Escape--you haven't a minute to lose! _Cherubino_--Where can I go? _Susanna_--I don't know, I don't know at all! but do go somewhere! _Cherubino_ [_running to the window, then coming back_]--The window isn't so very high. _Susanna_ [_frightened and holding him back_]--He'll kill himself! _Cherubino_--Ah, Susie, I'd rather jump into a gulf than put the Countess in danger. [_He snatches a kiss, then runs to the window, hesitates, and finally jumps down into the garden._] _Susanna_--Ah! [_She falls fainting into an arm-chair. Recovering slowly, she rises, and seeing Cherubino running through the garden she comes forward panting._] He's far away already! ... Little scamp! as nimble as he is handsome! [_She next runs to the dressing-room._] Now, Count Almaviva, knock as hard as you like, break down the door. Plague take me if I answer you. [_Goes into the dressing-room and shuts the door._] [_Count and Countess return._] _Count_--Now, Madame, consider well before you drive me to extremes. _Countess_--I--I beg of you--! _Count_ [_preparing to burst open the door_]--You can't cajole me now. _Countess_ [_throwing herself on her knees_]--Then I will open it! Here is the key. _Count_--So it is _not_ Susanna? _Countess_--No, but it's no one who should offend you. _Count_--If it's a man I kill him! Unworthy wife! You wish to stay shut up in your room--you shall stay in it long enough, I promise you. _Now_ I understand the note--my suspicions are justified! _Countess_--Will you listen to me one minute? _Count_--Who is in that room? _Countess_--Your page. _Count_--Cherubino! The little scoundrel!--just let me catch him! I don't wonder you were so agitated. _Countess_--I--I assure you we were only planning an innocent joke. [_The Count snatches the key, and goes to the dressing-room door; the Countess throws herself at his feet._] _Countess_--Have mercy, Count! Spare this poor child; and although the disorder in which you will find him-- _Count_--What, Madame? What do you mean? What disorder? _Countess_--He was just changing his coat--his neck and arms are bare-- [_The Countess throws herself into a chair and turns away her head._] _Count_ [_running to the dressing-room_]--Come out here, you young villain! _Count_ [_seeing Susanna come out of the dressing-room_]--Eh! Why, it _is_ Susanna! [_Aside._] What, a lesson! _Susanna_ [_mocking him_]--"I will kill him! I will kill him!" Well, then, why don't you kill this mischievous page? _Count_ [_to the Countess, who at the sight of Susanna shows the greatest surprise_]--So _you_ also play astonishment, Madame? _Countess_--Why shouldn't I? _Count_--But perhaps she wasn't alone in there. I'll find out. [_He goes into the dressing-room._] _Countess_--- Susanna, I'm nearly dead. _Count_ [_aside, as he returns_]--No one there! So this time I really am wrong. [_To the Countess, coldly._] You excel at comedy, Madame. _Susanna_--And what about me, sir? _Count_--And so do you. _Countess_--Aren't you glad you found her instead of Cherubino? [_Meaningly._] You are generally pleased to come across her. _Susanna_--Madame ought to have let you break in the doors, call the servants-- _Count_--Yes, it's quite true--I'm at fault--I'm humiliated enough! But why didn't you answer, you cruel girl, when I called you? _Susanna_--I was dressing as well as I could--with the aid of pins, and Madame knew why she forbade me to answer. She had her lessons. _Count_--Why don't you help me get pardon, instead of making me out as bad as you can? _Countess_--Did I marry you to be eternally subjected to jealousy and neglect? I mean to join the Ursulines, and-- _Count_--But, Rosina! _Countess_--I am no longer the Rosina whom you loved so well. I am only poor Countess Almaviva, deserted wife of a madly jealous husband. _Count_--I assure you, Rosina, this man, this letter, had excited me so-- _Countess_--I never gave my consent. _Count_--What, you knew about it? _Countess_--This rattlepate Figaro, without my sanction-- _Count_--He did it, eh! and Basilio pretended that a peasant brought it. Crafty wag, ready to impose on everybody! _Countess_--You beg pardon, but you never grant pardon. If I grant it, it shall only be on condition of a general amnesty. _Count_--Well, then, so be it. I agree. But I don't understand how your sex can adapt itself to circumstances so quickly and so nicely. You were certainly much agitated; and for that matter, you are yet. _Countess_--Men aren't sharp enough to distinguish between honest indignation at unjust suspicion, and the confusion of guilt. _Count_--We men think we know something of politics, but we are only children. Madame, the King ought to name you his ambassador to London.--And now pray forget this unfortunate business, so humiliating for me. _Countess_--For us both. _Count_--Won't you tell me again that you forgive me? _Countess_--Have I said _that_, Susanna? _Count_--Ah, say it now. _Countess_--Do you deserve it, culprit? _Count_--Yes, honestly, for my repentance. _Countess [giving him her hand_]--How weak I am! What an example I set you, Susanna! He'll never believe in a woman's anger. _Susanna_--You are prisoner on parole; and you shall see we are honorable. FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER (1584-1616) (1579-1625) "The names of Beaumont and Fletcher," says Lowell, in his lectures on 'Old English Dramatists,' "are as inseparably linked together as those of Castor and Pollux. They are the double star of our poetical firmament, and their beams are so indissolubly mingled that it is vain to attempt any division of them that shall assign to each his rightful share." Theirs was not that dramatic collaboration all too common among the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, at a time when managers, eager to satisfy a restless public incessantly clamoring for novelty, parceled out single acts or even scenes of a play among two or three playwrights, to put together a more or less congruous piece of work. Beaumont and Fletcher joined partnership, not from any outward necessity, but inspired by a common love of their art and true congeniality of mind. Unlike many of their brother dramatists, whom the necessities of a lowly origin drove to seek a livelihood in writing for the theatres, Beaumont and Fletcher were of gentle birth, and sprung from families eminent at the bar and in the Church. [Illustration: Francis Beaumont] Beaumont was born at Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire, 1584, the son of a chief justice. His name is first mentioned as a gentleman commoner at Broadgate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford. At sixteen he was entered a member of the Inner Temple, but the dry facts of the law did not appeal to his romantic imagination. Nowhere in his work does he draw upon his barrister's experience to the extent that makes the plays of Middleton, who also knew the Inner Temple at first hand, a storehouse of information in things legal. His feet soon strayed, therefore, into the more congenial fields of dramatic invention. Fletcher was born in Rye, Sussex, the son of a minister who later became Bishop of London. Giles Fletcher the Younger, and Phineas Fletcher, both well-known poets in their day, were his cousins. His early life is as little known as that of Beaumont, and indeed as the lives of most of the other Elizabethan dramatists. He was a pensioner at Benet College, now Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in 1591, and in 1593 he was "Bible-clerk" there. Then we hear nothing of him until 'The Woman Hater' was brought out in 1607. The play has been ascribed to Beaumont alone, to Fletcher alone, and to the two jointly. Whoever may be the author, it is the firstling of his dramatic muse, and worth merely a passing mention. How or when their literary friendship began is not known; but since both were friends of Jonson, both prefixing commendatory verses to the great realist's play of 'The Fox,' it is fair to assume that through him they were brought together, and that both belonged to that brilliant circle of wits, poets, and dramatists who made famous the gatherings at the Mermaid Inn. They lived in the closest intimacy on the Bankside, near the Globe Theatre in Southwark, sharing everything in common, even the bed, and some say their clothing,--which is likely enough, as it can be paralleled without going back three centuries. It is certain that the more affluent circumstances of Beaumont tided his less fortunate friend over many a difficulty; and the astonishing dramatic productivity of Fletcher's later period was probably due to Beaumont's untimely death, making it necessary for Fletcher to rely on his pen for support. In 1613 Beaumont's marriage to a Kentish heiress put an end to the communistic bachelor establishment. He died March 6th, 1616, not quite six weeks before Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Fletcher survived him nine years, dying of the plague in 1625. He was buried, not by the side of the poet with whose name his own is forever linked, but at St. Saviour's, Southwark. "A student of physiognomy," says Swinburne, "will not fail to mark the points of likeness and of difference between the faces of the two friends; both models of noble manhood.... Beaumont the statelier and serener of the two, with clear, thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and strong aquiline nose, with a little cleft at the tip; a grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely curved lips; the form of face a very pure oval, and the imperial head, with its 'fair large front' and clustering hair, set firm and carried high with an aspect of quiet command and knightly observation. Fletcher with more keen and fervid face, sharper in outline every way, with an air of bright ardor and glad, fiery impatience; sanguine and nervous, suiting the complexion and color of hair; the expression of the eager eyes and lips almost rivaling that of a noble hound in act to break the leash it strains at;--two heads as lordly of feature and as expressive of aspect as any gallery of great men can show." It may not be altogether fanciful to transfer this description of their physical bearing to their mental equipment, and draw some conclusions as to their several endowments and their respective share in the work that goes under their common name. Of course it is impossible to draw hard and fast lines of demarkation, and assign to each poet his own words. They, above all others, would probably have resented so dogmatic a procedure, and affirmed the dramas to be their joint offspring,--even as