Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. No. CCCCXLII. August, 1852. Vol. LXXII.

The great Epic Poets of Antiquity began with invoking superhuman aid to their human powers. They magnified their subject by such a confession, that their unassisted strength was unequal to worthily treating it; and it is perfectly natural for us to believe that they were sincere in these implorations. For their own belief was that Gods presided over, ruled, and directed, not only the motions of the Visible Universe, and the greater and outward events and destinies of nations and individuals, but that the Father of Gods and Men, and peculiar Deities under him, influenced, inspired, and sustained, gave and took away the powers of wisdom, virtue, and genius, in every kind of design and in every kind of action.

They would call down the help, suggestion, and inspiration of heavenly guides, protectors, and monitors;—of Jupiter, to whom even their dim faith looked above themselves and beyond this apparent world, for the incomprehensible causes of things;—of Apollo, the God of Music and of Song;—of those divine Sisters, under whose especial charge that imaginative religion placed Poets and their works, the nine melodious Daughters of Memory;—of those three other gentle deities, of whom Pindar affirms, that if there be amongst men anything fair and admirable, to their gift it is owing, and whose name expresses the accomplishing excellence of Poesy, if all suffrages are to be united in praise: bright Sisters too, adored with altar and temple,—the Graces.

Milton, who had unremittingly studied the classical Art of Poetry, and who brought into the service of his great and solemn undertaking all the resources of poetical Art, which prior ages had placed at his disposal, whose learning, from the literature of the world, gathered spoils to hang up in the vast and glorious temple which he dedicated—He might, without offence to the devout purpose of his own soul, borrow from the devotion of those old pagan worshippers the hint, and partially the form, of those exordial supplications.

He opens the Paradise Lost with Two Invocations. Both implore aid. But the aid asked in one and in the other is different in kind, as the Two Powers, of whom the aid is asked, are also wholly different. Let us look at these two Invocations in the order in which they stand.

The First is taken, hint and form both, from Homer. Homer, girding up his strength to sing the war of confederated Greece against Troy and her confederates, makes over his own overpowering theme to a Spirit able to support the burden—to the Muse.

Even so Milton. After proposing in a few words the great argument of his Poem—that fatal first act of disobedience to the Creator, by which our First Parents, along with His favour, forfeited Innocence, Bliss, Immortality, and Paradise, for themselves and their posterity, until the coming of the Saviour shall redeem the Sin and loss—he devolves his own task upon a Muse, whom he deems far higher than the Muse of his greatest predecessor, and whom he, to mark this superiority, addresses as the Heavenly Muse.

She is the Muse who inspired on the summit now of Horeb, now of Sinai; when for forty years in retreat from his own people, yet under their Egyptian yoke, he kept the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro—the actual Shepherd who, from communing with God and commissioned by God, came down into Egypt again to be the Shepherd of his people and to lead out the flock of Israel.

She is the Muse who, when the Hebrew tribes were at length seated in the promised land—when Zion in the stead of Sinai was the chosen Mountain of God—inspired Psalmists and Prophets.

And the reason is manifest for the distinguishing of Moses. For all critics of the style of the inspired Writers distinguish that of Moses from all the others, as antique, austere, grave, sublime, as if there were in him who conversed personally with God greater sanctity of style, even as his face shone when he came down from the Mount; as the whole character and office of Moses was held by the Hebrews, and is held, perhaps, by us, as lifting him above all other prophetic leaders.

Milton desires for his work, all qualities of style, as the variable subject shall require them. Not only the high rank of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch required that he should be named, but this in particular, that Moses was the historian of the Creation and Fall.

One might for a moment be tempted to confound the inspiration here meant with that highest inspiration which was vouchsafed in those holy places, and which we distinguish by the unequivocal name of revelation. But on reflection we perceive it not possible that Milton should have ascribed such an office to an Impersonation—those awful Communications which distinguished those persons chosen by the Almighty to be the vessels of his Will to the Children of Men. His revelations, we are instructed to believe, are immediately from himself.

Somebody said to me once that Milton’s First Invocation to the Muse is oppressed with Mountains; that it is as if he had shaken out what he had got under the head Mountains, in his Common-Place Book; and—

Somebody had better have held his tongue. No. They occur by natural association. He wants aid of the Muse who inspired Moses—I suppose, who sustained—that is, gave his style—of the other writers in the Old Testament. To suppose her visiting Moses on either peak of the Sacred Hill where he had his divine communions, is obvious and inevitable, and, I hope, solemn and sublime too. To suppose her accompanying the migration of the Israelites, and as she had devoutly affected their Sacred Mountain of the Wilderness, also devoutly affecting their Holy Mountain at the foot of which they built their Metropolis, is a spontaneous and unavoidable process of thought. Sinai and Sion represent, as if they contain embodied, the religion and history blended of the race. And if the divine Muse has two divine Hills, how can Milton help thinking of the quasi-divine Hill on which were gathered the nine quasi-divine Sisters? Doubtless, three distinct Mountains in the first sixteen lines, if absolutely considered, may seem cumbrous and overwhelming. But accept them for what they are in the Invocation; the two first localisings of the one Muse, they are easy. Why should not her wing skim from peak to peak? and Parnassus looms in the distance on the horizon.

A more urgent and trying question is, what does he invoke? We have a sort of biographical information respecting the Address to the Spirit. Milton did believe himself under its especial influences, and the Address is a direct and proper Prayer. But what is this Muse? To us the old Muses—whatever they may have been to the Greeks—are Impersonations, and nothing more, of powers in our own souls. If name attest nature, such is the muse of Milton—a power of his own soul—but one which dwelt also in the soul of the great Hebrew shepherd. Say, for the sake of a determining notion, the power of the austere and simple religious sublime. A human power, but moved by contact of the soul with divine subjects. Perhaps I say too bluntly that those old Muses were mostly but impersonations of human powers. An abstruse, difficult, and solemn part of our existence is touched, implicated. We find when we are deeply moved that powers which slept in us awake;—Powers which have before awaked, and fallen back in sleep;—Powers, too, that have never before awaked.

But what do we know of what is ultimate? If there is a contact of our spirits with the universal Spirit, if there are to us divine communions, influences, how do we know when they begin and end? It seems reverent and circumspect to view poetical inspiration as a human fact only, but we are not sure that it is not even more religious to believe that the unsuspected breath of Deity moves our souls in their higher and happier moments. Be they motions of our own souls, be there inferior influences mingled, those Muses were names for the powers upon this view—for the powers and mingled influences upon another. On the whole, I think that the distinction is here intended generally; and that the heavenly Muse represents the human soul exalted, or its powers ennobled by contact with illuminating and hidden influences—as the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, have each quite the style of their own humanity in writing under the governance of the Spirit.

I consider the free daring with which all Poets of the modern world, at least, have, for the uses of their Art, converted Powers and Agencies into imaginary beings. I consider the respects in which the Poet has need of aid. He wants aid if he is to penetrate into regions inaccessible to mortal foot or eye—if he is to disclose transactions veiled since the foundations of the world; but this aid the Muse cannot afford to the Christian Poet, and we shall presently see that he applies for it to a higher Source. But the Poet who undertakes to sing of Heaven and Earth, of Chaos and of Hell, who comprehends within his unbounded Song all orders of Being, from the Highest and Greatest to the Lowest and Least—all that are Good and all that are Evil, and all that are mixed of Good and Evil—and all transactions from the date, if we may safely so speak, when Time issued from the bosom of Eternity to the still distant date, when Time shall again merge in that Eternity out of which it arose, and be no more:—That Poet, if any, needs implore for a voice equal to his theme, a power of wing measured to the flight which he intends to soar; he needs for the very manner of representation which he is to use—for the very words in which he is to couch stupendous thoughts—for the very music in which his pealing words shall roll—aid, if aid can be had for supplication.

Yes, Seward. We consider these things. We consider the laborious, learned, and solemn studies, by which we are told, by which Milton tells us, that he endeavoured to qualify himself for performing his great work, and I propose this account of this first Invocation, stripped of its Poetical garb. In the first place, that the subject of desire to the Poet—the thing asked—is high, grave, reverend, sublime, fitted Style or Expression. As for the addressing, and the power of the wish, you may remember that, as we hear, employing human means, he assiduously read, or caused to be read, the profane, and his native, and the Sacred Writers—drawing thence his manner of poetical speech.

“Heavenly” Muse is opposed to “Olympian” Muse; as if “Hebraic” to “Hellenic;” as if “Scriptural” to “Classical;” as if “Sacred” to “Profane;” as if Muse of Zion to Muse of Pindus. Therefore we must ask—What “Muse” ordinarily means? We know what it meant in the mouth of a believing Greek. It meant a real person—a divine being of a lower Order. But Milton is a Christian—for whom those deities are no more. They are, in his eye, mere imaginations—air.

We must ask—What does, in ordinary Verse, not in sacred poetry, a Christian poet mean, when He names, and yet more when he invokes, the Muse—the Sacred Sisters nine? And we are thrown upon recognising the widely-spread literary fact—not unattractive or quite unimportant—that Christendom cherished this reminiscence of Heathendom; that, in fact, our poetry seems to rest for a part of its life upon this airy relic of a fled mythology—varied in all ways, Muse, Helicon, Hippocrene, &c. Greatest Poets, not poetasters, the inspired, not the imitative and servile—and at height of occasion.

And the master of good plain sense in verse, Pope, acknowledges the ineradicably rooted expression—

I put these together, because I doubt not but that Milton in choosing and guarding (just like Tasso) the word, looked this practice of Christian, or christened poets, full in the face; and spoke, founding upon it. Muse, to his mind inventing his Invocation, had three senses. Imaginary Deity of a departed belief—An Authoritative Name, thence retained with affection and pride by Poets of the Christian world—Or, something new, which might be made for his own peculiar purpose, or which Tasso had begun to make, undertaking a Poem after a sort sacred.

I cannot believe that the word which has held such fond place in the minds of great poets, and all poets, can have been a dry and bald imitation of antiquity. Doubtless it had, and has, a living meaning; answers to, and is answered by, something in their bosoms—the Name to which Shakspeare and Spenser clung, and which Milton put by the side of the Holy Spirit and transplanted into Heaven.

Our attention is first reflectively directed upon recognised Impersonations in Poetry. But we are very much accustomed to misunderstand the nature of Poetry; for we are much accustomed to look upon Poetry as an art of intellectual recreation, and nothing more. Only as a privileged Art—an Art privileged to think in a way of its own, and to entertain, for the sake of a delicate amusement and gratification, illusory thoughts which have never had belief belonging to them. And meeting with Impersonations in poetry, we set down Impersonations amongst the illusory thoughts thus imagined and entertained for intellectual pleasure, and which have never been believed. It is a mistake altogether. Poetry has its foundation in a transient belief. Impersonations have held very durable belief amongst men. When we reflect and take upon us to become cognisant of our own intellectual acts, we are bound to become cognisant of these illusions—to know that they must have temporary belief—that they must not have permanent belief.

“Sing, Heavenly Muse.” Milton redeems the boldness of adventurously transplanting from a Pagan Mythology into a Christian Poem, and thus imparts a consecration of his own to a Heathen word; but the primitive cast and colouring remain, satisfying us that we must here understand an Imaginary Being.

The Seventh Book again opens with an Invocation for aid, and again to the same person.

We find in the opening verses the personality attributed with increased distinctness, and with much increased boldness. A proper name is given, and a new imaginary person introduced, and a new and extraordinary joint action attributed to the Two.

She is now named—Urania. (The former title given her—“Heavenly Muse”—is equivalent.) But because one of the Nine Muses was named Urania, he distinguishes—

She is described as conversing before the creation of this Universe, and playing with her Sister Wisdom, in the presence of God, who listens, pleased, to her song.

Wisdom is the Thought of God respectively to the connection of Causes and Effects in his Creation, or to the Laws which constitute and uphold its Order: considered as Useful.

Urania is the Thought of God, relatively to the Order and Harmony of his Works:—considered as Beautiful.

When God sees that his Creation upon each day is “good,” (which expression Milton is careful to repeat upon each day,) we must understand that he regards it in both respects.

The Invocation is, therefore, placed with a perfect propriety at the beginning of the Book which is occupied in describing the Creation.

For the meaning here attributed to Urania playing with Wisdom before the pleased Father, compare the passage where the dance of the Angels has been compared to the motions of the stars, and the Speaker, the Archangel Raphael, adds:

Where the audible harmony of the spheres and the song of Urania seem to be as nearly as possible one and the same thing—namely, Music—which is The Beautiful in one of its kinds, used, with extremely profound and bold imagination, for expressing The Beautiful in all its kinds.

Who is it that, in presence of the Everlasting Throne, converses with her sister, Eternal Wisdom; plays with her—singing, the while, so that the awful Ear of Omnipotence bends from the Throne, listening and pleased?

The majestical Invocation opens the Seventh Book of the Paradise Lost; and the Seventh Book of the Paradise Lost is occupied from beginning to end in amplifying, with wonderful plenitude, exactness, beauty, and magnificence of description, the First Chapter in the Book of Genesis. In other words the Seventh Book of Paradise Lost describes the Week of Creation—the six days of God’s working, and the seventh of His rest.

Milton moulds, at the height of poetical power, into poetical form thoughts that are universal to the Spirit of Man. What then, we must ask, are the two Thoughts that rise in the Spirit of Man, looking with its awakened and instructed faculties upon the Universe of God? Assuredly one is, wonder at the adaptation of Means to Ends—that fitness of which all human Science is nothing but the progressive, inexhaustible revelation. This is that Eternal Wisdom, whom the Poet daringly finds a distinct inhabitant of the Empyrean. The other thought, insuppressibly arising upon the same contemplation, is, wonder of the overwhelming beauty that overflows the visible creation. This is the Heavenly Muse, Urania. The purpose of the Divine Mind to create the Useful Order of Things is impersonated as Eternal Wisdom. The purpose of the Divine Mind to create the Beauty of Things is impersonated under a name which the Poet boldly and reverently supplies. Milton’s description of the six days completely displays the two notions: it impresses the notion of Useful Order and Beauty.

These verses, which introduce the Creation of Man on the sixth day, impress the two distinctly—

And when the whole work is finished, the two characters are set side by side, as answering, in the Mind of the Creator, to His antecedent purpose.

The Heavenly Muse descended upon Earth is then the God-given Intelligence, in the Human bosom, of The Beautiful. It is the Faculty, as we are more accustomed to speak, of the Sublime and Beautiful;—a human ability, raised in the sacred writers by divine communions—Milton desires, but can hardly be thought in that first Invocation, or in this, (Book VII.) directly to pray, that the powers of his mortal genius may receive similar exaltation.

The Heavenly Muse, in Heaven, is God’s thought of the Beauty which shall be in the Universe to be created. The heavenly Muse, upon Earth, is the Thought or the Faculty of Beauty, as originally given to the soul of man, as nourished by all human ways, and specifically and finally as attempered and exalted by expressly religious contemplations and communions—in Moses by converse with God face to face, as a man with his friend. You remember Jeremy Taylor, sir—

In Milton, by reading the Scriptures, by prayer and meditation, by the holiest consciousnesses, in which he seems to have apprehended even for himself some afflux vouchsafed of spiritual help, light, and support more than ordinarily has been understood in the Protestant Church, if less than enthusiasts have claimed. In a word, the Heavenly Muse upon Earth is the Human Sense of Beauty fashioned to the uttermost, hallowed by the nearest approaches to the Deity that are permitted to the individual human person who happens to be in question, but who must be understood as one living under the revelation of the true God. In strictness of speech, Heavenly Muse upon Earth is at last, as I said, Scriptural Muse opposed to Classical Muse.

Upon our thoughts, my dear sir, the distinctions, Heavenly Muse in Heaven, upon Earth, visiting Moses, visiting Milton, four different aspects of one thing force themselves. Are they all well comprehended under one Impersonation?

Yes—from the bold nature of Impersonation, which comprehends always a variable thought. For Imagination blends and comprehends rather than it severs and excludes. It delights in conceiving that as another manner of acting in some imaginary being which the analytical understanding would class as a distinct metaphysical faculty. It delights in unity of creation; and, having created, in bestowing power, and in accumulating power on its creature. I have heard people say that Collins, in speaking of Danger—

confounds the Power, Danger, and the endangered Man. But I say he was right in such poetical confusion of one with the other.

Might one word, my dear sir, be dropped in, purporting or reminding, that the Beautiful, or Beauty, is here used, with its most capacious meaning, to comprehend many other qualities distinct from the Beautiful taken in its narrowest acceptation among critics. For example, the solemn, the sublime, and many other qualities are included, that are distinct from the Beautiful, taken in the mere sense that critics have attached to it; all such qualities agreeing in this, that they affect the mind suddenly, and without time given for reflection, and that they appear as a glory poured over objects as over the natural universe. The large sense of the term Beauty belongs to a perfectly legitimate use of language—a use at once high and popular; as every one feels that the beauty of creation includes whatever affects us with irreflective admiration—appears as a glory—stupendous forests—mountains—rivers—the solemn, boundless munificence of the starry firmament. Milton says there is terror in Beauty—and we may say there is a beauty in terror.

The holy Mind of the Poet has been represented from his life; the holy aspirations of his Genius have been shown from the record of his literary purposes; the holy meaning of the Paradise Lost from the Two Invocations. You may go on to examining the Poem well prepared; for you now know in what Spirit of thought it was entered upon and composed, and in what Spirit of thought you must engage in, and carry through, the examination of the Poem. You can understand that Milton, sanctified in Will by a dedicated life—intellectually armed and accomplished by the highest mere human learning, as a Scholar, as a Thinker, as a Master of his own sublime and beautiful Art—enriched by more solemn studies, whether of God’s written word or of its devout and powerful expounders, with all the knowledge, especially claimed by his task, which a Mind, capacious, profound, retentive, indefatigable, could bring to the celebration of this most stupendous theme;—finally, led—as he, in all reverence, believed himself,—upheld, and enlightened by the Spirit of supernal grace, prayed for and vouchsafed;—that He, coming,—by nature and by nurture such and so fitted,—to relate anew and at large—and as if He, the Poet, were himself enfolded with the garb of a Prophet,—as if He were himself commissioned from on High, and charged with a second, a more explicit and copious, an ampler and more unbosoming revelation,—that History, full of creating Love and provoked Wrath,—full of zeal and loyal truth, in pure angelical creatures, and of hateful revolt—full, in the lower creature, Man, at first of gracious and ineffable glory and bliss, and native immortality, then of lamentable dishonour, sin and misery, and death—You can readily conceive that Milton approaching to begin this Work, to which alone the desires, to which alone the labours, to which alone the consecration of his genius looked—that he, indeed, felt in his now near, in his now reached undertaking, a burthen overwhelming to his mortal strength; and that his prayer, put up for support, rose indeed from his lips as men pray who are overtaken with some sharp fear and sore constraint.

Yet, sir, irreverence has been felt, and will be felt, by those who take low and narrow views, in the treating of sacred subjects, as themes of poetry.

Shall we stand back awed into silence, and leave the Scriptures alone, to speak of the things which the Scriptures declare? This is a restraint which the Human Spirit has never felt called upon to impose upon itself. On the contrary, the most religious Minds have always felt themselves required in duty to dedicate their best faculties of reason to the service of religion—by inquiring into, and expounding, the truths of religion. But Reason is not the sole intellectual power that God has given to Man, nor the sole faculty by the use of which he will be glorified. Another power native to the same spirit, granted to it now in more scant and now in overflowing measure, is the faculty of verse and of poetical creation; and it is no more conceivable that we are bound to withhold the efforts of this power from its highest avocations, than that we are under obligation to forbear from carrying our powers of rational investigation to the searching of the Scriptures.

The sanctity of spirit in which Milton wrote hallows the work of Milton. He was driven back by no scruple from applying the best strength of his mind to the highest matters. Holding him justified for attempting the most elevated subjects in verse, we must bear in mind what is the nature of Poetry, and beware that we do not suffer ourselves to be unnecessarily alarmed or offended when we find the Poet, upon the highest occasions, fearlessly but reverently using the manner of representation inseparable from his Art.

It may be said in a word. Poetry represents the Inward and the Invisible by means of the Outward and the Visible.

The First great law of poetical Creation is this: that the Kingdom of Matter and of the bodily senses, transformed by the divine energy of genius, shadows forth and images out the Kingdom of the Mind and of Spirit.

Accordingly, in this great poem, the name Heaven continually meets us as designating the blissful abode where the Omnipresent God is imagined as from eternity locally dwelling in light uncreated—the unapproachable splendour of his own effulgence. There, the Assessor of his throne, the Divine Son, sits “in bliss embosomed.” And there, created inhabitants, are the innumerable host of happy Angels. At first, all—whilst all stand upright—and until the sin of Satan casts out one third part of the number. The Imagination of the poet supposes a resemblance to Earth; for beauty and delight—hills, rocks, vales, rivers and fountains, trees and Elysian flowers. Although he endeavours to dilate the fancy of his reader in speaking of Heaven with conceptions of immense extent, it is a limited, not a boundless, Heaven; for it is conceived as resting upon a base or firmament, and as being enclosed with crystalline walls. Palaces and towers, which the angels have built, are spoken of in Heaven.

The course of the Poem sometimes leads us into Chaos. We are to imagine an infinite abyss of darkness, in which the formless embryons and elements of things toss and war in everlasting uproar. A Ruler and other spirits of darkness will be found dwelling there. Here height, breadth, and time and place are lost. But the tremendous gulf is permeable to the wings of angels. A more important seat of the transaction to which we shall be introduced is, “the place of evil,” made, after the rebellion of the Angels, their habitation and place of punishment—“the house of wo and pain”—Hell. It is described as having various regions—fiery and frozen; hideous mountains, valleys, and caves. Five rivers, named and characterised from those that flow through the Hell of classical antiquity—and, in particular, a boiling Ocean, into which the rebel Angels are supposed to fall. Notwithstanding the flames, a heavy gloom prevails throughout. It is immensely extended, but has a solid ground—“a dungeon horrible,” walled and overvaulted. The whole of the Fallen Angels are at first imprisoned in Hell. But they escape. Hell has Gates kept by Sin and her Son Death. The Fallen Angels build in Hell a palace and city called Pandemonium. Hell is situated in the lowest depth of Chaos, out of which it has been taken.

This Visible Universe is represented as built subsequently to, and consequently upon, the Fall of the Angels. You are to imagine this Earth of ours, the Moon, the Sun, the planets, the fixed stars, and the Milky Way—all that sight can reach—as enclosed in a hollow sphere: that is, firmly compacted. Satan alights upon its outside, and walks about it: and it serves to defend this enclosed visible Universe from the inroads of Chaos and primeval darkness. On the Earth, created in all the variety that we behold in it, excepting that the climates are all happy, our Two first Parents live in the Garden of Paradise, planted by God. The unimaginably vast enclosing Sphere hangs by a golden chain from the battlements of Heaven.

Things of the Mind by Things of the Body—the Spiritual Kingdom by the Kingdom of Matter, or of the Senses.

So the world of metaphors, which express the powers and acts of the mind by organs and actions of the body, or by images from nature.

So, here, Spirits are clothed in visible human form. They walk, they fly with wings. Their disagreeing becomes a War waged with violent weapons. High and Low in space have a moral meaning. So ocular light and darkness. Even the omnipresent God appears as having a local divine residence, and speaks with a voice. The Eternal Eye sees, the Eternal Ear hears. He sits, invisible through brightness, on a Throne.

These modes of thinking, or of representing rather, follow our minds. We may, by a great effort of abstraction, throw them off. It is for a moment. They return, and hold habitual dominion in our thoughts.

Milton has boldly given such determinate Shape, as to constitute a seeming reality, without which he would be without power over us—who know by our senses, feel by our senses—i. e. habitually attach feelings moved by things inward to things outward; as our love, moved by a soul, to a face.

It is remarkable that Poetry, which above all human discourse calls out into our Consciousness the Divinity that stirs within us, at the same time casts itself with delight into the Corporeal Senses, as if the two Extremes met, or that either balanced the others. We see a reason in this. Passion cleaves to the perceptions of the Senses. Upon these impressions Imagination still feeds and lives.

Moreover, Nature herself shows us Man, now half as the Child, now half as the victim, now half as the victor—of his place.

Therefore, great Poetry, that will most potentially represent Man’s innermost spirit, sets out, often, from his uttermost circumstances.

This outward Picturesque, embosoming the Human Pathetic and Sympathetic, is known to the great Father of Poetry.

The predominance given in Verse to the Music over the Sense—the conspicuous power of the Music, perhaps calls the Soul into the Senses.

But there is a more comprehensive view. The Mind in the treatment of its Knowledge ranges between two Extremes. It receives the original givings of Experience, at the utmost particularised and individualised, determined under conditions of time, Place, Individuals. It reduces individuals into Kinds, actions into Laws, finds Principles, unveils Essences. These are the ultimate findings of Reason. The Philosophical Mind tends to these—dwells in these—is at home in these—is impatient of its knowledge whilst unreduced. This is the completed victory of Intelligence over its data. It is by Comprehension and Resolution the Reduction of Multitude into Unity. At the same time, the Mind leaves the turbulent element of Sense, and passes into a serene air, a steadfast and bright and cold sky. Now, then, Poetry dwells or makes a show of dwelling at the other extreme—in the forms as they were given. What semblance, what deception, may be in this, is another question. But this is her ostentation. She imitates to a deception, if she does not copy these original givings. She represents Experience, and this she does for the sake of the Power of Affection which attends the forms of Experience. For the most part these original givings are involved in sensible perceptions, Eye, Ear, Hand, and beating heart. How will you escape from them? Eye, above all, the reigning faculty of communing with Earth and Sky. So as that he who is shut out from the world of sight, seems to us to be shut out from the world; but he who is shut out from the world of Sound: not equally so. Nevertheless, that which Poetry requires is not——

You were going a few minutes ago to say something more about Impersonations, sir.

Nothing new. We are warranted by universal human experience in assuming it as a psychological fact, that we are formed with a disposition irresistibly carrying us to see in things out of ourselves, ourselves reflected—in things that are without life, will, and intelligence, we conceive life, will, and intelligence; and, when the law of a stronger illusion swaying our faculties constrains us to bestow an animated form, we bestow our own. By these two intellectual processes, which in one way or another are familiar to our experience, but which seem strange when we reflect upon them, and try to understand them, we make human-shaped Impersonations of inanimate things, and of abstract notions! If we would know the magnitude of the dominion which this disposition constraining us thus to Impersonate has exercised over the human mind, we must go back into those ages of the world when this disposition exerted itself, uncontrolled by philosophy, and in obedience to religious impulses, when Impersonations of inanimate Objects and Powers, of Moral Powers, and of notions formed by the understanding, filled the Temples of the nations with visible Deities, and were worshipped with altars and incense, hymns and sacrifice.

If we will see how hard this dominion is to eradicate, we must look to the most civilised and enlightened times, when severe Truth has to the utmost cleansed the understanding from illusion, and observe how tenaciously these imaginary beings, with imaginary life, hold their place in our Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Eloquence; nay, and in our quiet and common speech; and if we should venture to expatiate in the walks of the profounder emotions, we shall sometimes be startled with the sudden apparition of boldly-impersonated thoughts, upon occasions that did not seem to promise them, whereof one might have thought that interests of overwhelming moment would have effectively banished the play of imagination!

Impersonation is the highest poetical figure. It is in all degrees and lengths, from a single expression up to the Pilgrim’s Progress and Fairy Queen.

It is, as you say, strongly connected with this disposition in the human mind, to produce—and believe in Power in external nature—Nymphs, Genii, Fairies, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and every belief in mythology. This disposition is, the moment it sees effects which strongly affect it, to embody upon the spot the cause or power which produced them. In doing this in the old unenlightened world, it filled Nature with Deities, and not Nature only, but the human mind and life. Love was a Deity; Fear and Anger were; Remorse was in the Furies; Memory was Mnemosyne; Wisdom was in Pallas; Fortune was, and Ate; and Necessity and Death were Deities.

So much the better. In some of Homer’s descriptions, names that look like Impersonations are mixed with acknowledged Deities—Remorse, for instance, with Fear and Flight, which Virgil copies. Now, I don’t know what he meant. I hope, for the sincerity and simplicity of his poetry, that they are not his own Impersonations for the occasion, walking with Deities of national belief.

The moment you allegorise fabulous poetry—that is, admit it to have been allegorically written, you destroy from it the childlike verity of belief.

Now in whatever way we are to understand these Impersonations, the result as to our question is much the same.

What question? If they are meant as real, though not Impersonations of the Poet, they were Impersonations of the human mind from an earlier and more believing time. Whether they were simply and purely from human feeling, in the bosom of human society, or were framed for the belief of others by the skilful artificers of belief, is not of positive moment as to the evidence to the operations and dispositions of the human mind. Those who presided over the national life of every religion might deliberately contrive, and might deliver over to the credence of their nation, imaginary powers, conceived with inventive imagination, as a Poet conceives them. But the very inventions, and still more the simple faith that received the inventions, show the intellectual disposition to embody in living powers the causes of effects. The faith of the people shows further the disposition and ability of the human mind to attribute reality, and that by force of feeling, to the creations of its own intellect, and particularly its aptitude to cleave to those creations in which it embodies power of which it strongly feels the effects. But I would rather believe that such faith has often formed itself in the bosom of simple societies without devisers—that men have conceived and felt till they believed; that they felt delight and beauty in a gushing fountain till they believed in a presiding spirit as fair—that the sun, the giver of light and warmth, of the day and of the year, could not appear to them a mere star of day, a larger, brighter fire. They felt a gift in his rays, and in their influence, and deified the visible orb. They thought of—they saw the terrors of war, and believed that some Power delighting in blood stirred up the hearts of men to mutual destruction.

If those ancient poets in whom this mythology remains, are to be received sometimes as delivering known and accepted names as beings, sometimes as supplying from their momentary inventions unreceived names, then this view of the case also affords proof of the same disposition we have spoken of. It shows the disposition of men to believe in powers the immediate causes of impressive effects; and the Poet must be conceived as suggesting and delivering the shape and name of Powers which it is already believed must be, though themselves are not known—not as inventing them deliberately and ornamentally, nor as declaring them from an assured and assumed knowledge. This disposition to produce shapes of powers which in early ages is attended with positive belief, afterwards remains in imagination—art, though not extinct in the work of our mind for dealing in realities. Do we, sir, ever divest ourselves of a belief in Death, Chance, Fate, Time? But a strong belief overrules with us all such illusions of fancy, withdrawing all power to the great source of power. Therefore, such a disposition, though it continues, is in real thought much oppressed and stifled, and shows itself almost accidentally, as it were, rather than in any constant opinion, for in deliberate opinion it cannot hold. But in Poetry, even in Eloquence, it remains. There we allow ourselves in illusion; and the mind leaps up with a sort of rejoicing, to recover its old liberty of deceiving itself with splendid fictions.

Which is again an instance of the two different forms in which Imagination is seen in the earlier and later age—in the first, realised in belief—in the last, having its domain in the avowedly ideal world of Poetry.

I confess, my dear friends, it appears to me not easy to explain how the mind is enabled, desire it as much as it will, to pour its own capacities into insensate things. When Lear says, “Nature, hear! dear Goddess, hear!” his passion will not believe but that there is a hearer and executor of its curse; and it imagines nature capable of hearing. “If prayers can pierce the clouds and enter heaven, why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses.” Does not all Passion that addresses itself to inanimate objects throw into them a feeling? Would not the Invocation be idle to the unresponsive and unhearing? This, then, is the nature of human passion, that, when vehement, it cannot conceive that its will is not to be fulfilled. If there are no adequate ministers, inadequate ministers must take their place. Inanimate things must become agents. “Rise, rise, ye wild tempests, and cover his flight.”—“Strike her young bones, ye taking airs, with lameness.” This is one demand, then, of passion, the execution of its purposes. Another demand of passion is sympathy. This, we know, is one of its first and strongest demands. If, then, men will not, or are not present to sympathise, that which surrounds must. The boiling passion finds it easier to believe that winds and rocks feel with it, than that it is sole, and cut off from all participation. Hence the more exuberant passion animates things, our own gladness animates nature.

And how well has Adam Smith said how our sympathy includes the dead! Of all that feel not, it may with the readiest illusion embrace those who once felt; and what do we know that they do not yet feel? Now, if this can be granted as the nature and power of passion, that, without any better ground than its own uncontrollable efflux, it can blend itself into that which is around it—that it believes lightnings and floods will destroy, merely from the intensity of will with which it wills them to destroy—though here the fitness for destruction is a reason; but if it imagines that, undestroying, they will rise to destroy, that peace shall be converted into danger, and sleep into anguish, that food shall not nourish, and winds shall not waft, rather than it shall be left without vengeance, or baffled; then may we say that there is in Passion an absolute power of carrying itself out into other existence, and that no other condition, in such existence, is necessary, save that it shall become obviam to passion in its mood. If so, then, of course, any reason from analogy or causation becomes a very potent one to attract such passion and opinions formed by passion. Let this be established in passion at its fiercest, wildest height, and the principle is obtained. It is then the disposition of the mind under emotion to diffuse its emotion, bending the things around to suit its purposes, or at least filling them with sympathy with itself. In either case, upon this reason, that only so can the will which rises with its emotion ever be satisfied. This principle given, strongest in strongest passion, but accompanying all emotion, is the root of Impersonation. All intellectual analogies, all coincidences of reality with the demands of emotion, will quicken and facilitate this act of the mind; but neither analogies nor coincidences, nor any other inclining reasons, are requisite. The emotion will reconcile and assimilate any object to itself, if it is reduced to them. Here then is a principle sufficient to animate all nature, all being, and to any extent or height. This seems to be the foundation of Impersonation—that it is the nature of man to fill all things with himself. It is plainly a radix for all poetical Impersonation. He makes and reads everywhere reflection of mind; he does this without passion, that is, not without feeling—for in all ordinary thought there is feeling—but without transported passion. His strong passions in their transport show us in plainer evidence how he involves all things with himself, and subjects all things to himself; and his gentler feelings do the same. He is almost the cause of a world of mind revolving round and upon himself—he makes himself such a centre; this is the constant temper and the habitual mode of conceiving and hearing of all minds.

If the act of imagination is the perception of the sublime—of the beautiful, of the wonderful—then pleasure is an element of the product;—for without pleasure, the Sublime, the Beautiful, the poetically wild or solemn, does not exist. All other ingredients, if pleasure be absent, leave the compound imperfect—the thing undone. Therefore Addison says boldly, the pleasure of Imagination, whom Akenside follows. But further, Talboys—I believe that in Imagination poetical, there is always—or almost always—Illusion. I cannot get it out of my head as a main element. In its splendour, this is past doubt—in Impersonation—Apostrophe to the dead, or absent, or unborn—Belief is in the power of your curses—seeing the past or future as present; and in the whole fiction of Epos or Drama, the semi-belief in the life and reality of the feigned personages.

A certain degree of passion, sir, appears to be requisite for supporting Illusion. We well know that in all the history of Passion, to produce illusion is the common operation. Why not in Imagination?

In natural passion, gentlemen, the Illusion reigns unchecked. In the workings of poetical imagination the Illusion is tempered and ruled, subdued under a Law, conformed to conditions and requisitions of art. Men resist the doctrine of Illusion. They dislike to know to what an immense extent they are subject to Illusions. I have no conception of Beauty or Sublimity that does not require, for effecting it, some transfusion of life and spirit from our own soul into the material object—some transmutation of the object. If so, the whole face of the Universe is illuminated to us by Illusion.

If you are asked in what parts of the Iliad Imagination assumes its most powerful sceptre, you cannot help turning to the supernatural. Everything about Gods and Goddesses—Olympus—Jupiter’s nod—Vulcan making armour—all the interpositions. The terrestrial action is an Isle that floats in a sea of the marvellous; but this is for us at least Illusion—fictitious creation—the top of it. So in Shakspeare; for we are obliged to think of the Ghosts, Witches—Caliban—Ariel.

Existences, which we accept in the sheer despite of our knowledge—that is, of reason. The rational king of the Earth, proud of his reason, and ignorant of his Imagination, grows ashamed when the facts of his Imagination are obtruded upon him—denies them—revolts from them. To restore the belief and faith in Imagination, and to demonstrate its worth, is an enterprise obligatory on philosophy. The world seems returning to it, for a while having abhorred it. Our later poets have seen both Cause and Effect. Do you believe that thinking a child like a flower does not increase your tenderness for him or her, and that the innocence of the flower does not quicken and heighten by enshrining its beauty? Child and Flower give and take.

Excellent. We put down, then, as the first stone in all such argument—that the act of Imagination—or the poetical act—be they one or two, is accompanied with belief.

No metaphysician has ever, that I have read, expounded belief. Has Hartley? This quasi-belief, or half-belief, against better knowledge, must be admitted as a sure fact or phenomenon. I don’t care how hard it may be to persuade anybody to believe as the foundation of a philosophy an absurdity, or self-contradictory proposition, “That you believe to be true, that which you know to be false.” There the fact is; and without it you build your house in the air—off the ground. Soften it—explain it. Say that you know for one moment, and in the next know the contrary. Say that you lean to belief—that it is an impression, half-formed—imperfect belief—a state of mind that has partaken of the nature of belief—that it is an impression resembling belief—operating partial effects of belief. But unquestionably, no man, woman, or child has read a romance of Scott or Bulwer or Dickens, without seeing their actions and sufferings with his soul, in a way that, if his soul be honest, and can simply tell its own suffering, must by it be described as a sort of momentary belief. What are the grief, the tears, the joy, the hope, the fear, the love, the admiration, and half-worship—the vexation, the hate, the indignation, the scorn, the gratitude, yea, and the thirst of revenge—if the pageant floats by, and stirs actually to belief? The supposition is an impossibility, and the theory lies on our side, and not on Johnson’s, who has nothing for him but a whim of rationalism. I take novels—because in them it is a common proof, though this species be the less noble. But take Epos from the beginning. Take Tragedy—take Comedy—and what is, was, or will it be, but a half-unsubstantial image of reality, waited upon by a half-substantial image of belief, the fainter echo of airy harps? My drift is, that our entire affection, passion—choose your word—attended with pleasure and pain of heart and imagination—the love, the hate in either, are the sustaining, actuating soul of the belief. Evidence, that as the passion thrills, the belief waxes, and that—

I see in Imagination a power which I can express to my own satisfaction by two terms, of which you, Seward, sometimes look as if you refused me the use, disabling me from defining for you. For myself, I see “Passion moulding or influencing Intellectual Forms.” As the language stands hitherto, I do not see my way of getting out of the two terms. You want, on the lowest steps, a very elementary description—something far below the Poet—something as yet far short of the sublime, the beautiful, and the wonderful. Tell me some one who has felt fear, or anger, or love, or hate—how these have affected for him the objects of simple apprehension or of conception; of sight, for instance—of sound? Has anything through his fear seemed larger—through his hate wickeder, than it is? For that differencing of an object by a passion, I know no name but Imagination. It is the transformation of a reality; that seems to me to be the ground of what we more loftily apprehend under the name Imagination.

The great differences in the different psychological states and facts arising out of the different passions or passionate moments, are various, endless. Such influences from pleasure and pain, from loves of some sort, and from hates of some sort, take effect for us in all the objects with which we have intercourse. They make what it is to us. They make man what he is to us. They are the life of our souls. They are given to all human spirits.

Scene II.—The Van. Time—Midnight.
North—Talboys—Seward.

May the bond of Unity lying at the heart of the Paradise Lost, be said to be the following Ethical Dogma?

“The Good of the created rational Intelligence subsists in the conscious consent of his Will, with the holy Will of the Creator.”

His Good:—i. e. his innocence and original happiness, whilst these last:—his virtue and regained happiness, if he attain virtue and regain happiness:—these and the full excellence of his intellectual and natural powers—

The Innocence and Fall of the Rebel Angels:—The Bliss and Loyalty of the Upright:—(Consider Abdiel:) The Innocence and Fall and Restoration of Man:—are various Illustrations of this great Dogma. The Restoration, as respects Man himself:—and far more eminently as respects the person of the Uncreated Restorer.

This central Thought, radiating in every direction to the circumference, cannot be regarded as a theological notion, coldly selected for learned poetical treatment. The various and wonderful shaping-out, the pervading, animating, actuating, soul-like influence and operation;—direct us to understand that in the Mind of Milton, through his day of life, a vital self-consciousness bound this Truth to his innermost being:—that he loved this Truth;—lived in and by this Truth. Wherefore the Poem springs from his Mind, by a moral necessity.

Four great aspects of Composition, or Four chief moods of Poetry appear in the Paradise Lost. 1. The Sublime of disturbed Powers in the infernal Agents:—fallen and, ere they fall, warring. 2. Heaven in humanity: while Adam and Eve are “yet sinless.”—A celestial Arcadia.—The purer Golden Age. 3. Man, Earthly: when they have eaten.

These Four greatly dissimilar aspects are each amply displayed:—and much as they differ, are wonderfully reconciled.

Milton sets before our eyes in utmost opposition, God and Satan—i. e. Good and Evil, namely—Good, as Holiness and Bliss inseparably united in God—Evil, as Wickedness and Misery united inseparably in Satan.

The Poem represents the necessary eternal War irreconcilable of the Two—throughout the Creation of God—namely, first in Heaven the abode of Angels—next upon Earth the abode of Men.

The Poem represents in Heaven and upon Earth, God as the willing infinite Communicator of Good:—as, in Heaven and upon Earth the perpetual Victor over Evil.

And Evil—in Heaven and upon Earth as necessarily Self-Destructive: videlicet, in this visible shape: that from God’s Heaven and from God’s Earth all reason-gifted Doers of Evil—that is, all doers of moral Evil—are cast out into perdition.

The Poet himself has declared in the outset the purpose of his Poem. It is to establish in the mind of his readers the belief in the Two great Truths:—That the Universe is under the government of Eternal and Omnipotent Wisdom:—and that this Government, as far as it regards Mankind, is holy, just, and merciful. This essential truth, infinitely the most important that can be entertained, since it comprehends all our good, all our evil—all happiness, all misery—temporal—eternal;—all the destinies and conditions of the human race;—was worthy the taking-in-hand of such a Teacher. This truth He might have illustrated, from any part of human history;—and with great power and evidence from a great many parts—both for obedience and for disobedience—in the case of individuals and of communities.

But He found one part of human history, where this truth shines out in its utmost strength—namely, where the Obedience and Disobedience are those of two individuals, and, at the same time, of all Mankind;—and where the illustration of the truth is beyond all comparison convincing, since the conjunction of the Happiness and the Obedience is here promulgated—since the Happiness and the Obedience are here formally bound together—the Disobedience and the Misery—by the promising and the menacing voice of the Almighty.—The Disobedience takes effect;—and first creates human misery.

Milton took then this instance, preferable to all others, because above all others it emblazons, as if in characters written by the finger of Heaven, the Truth which he would teach;—notwithstanding the stupendous difficulties of the attempt into which he plunged;—committing himself, as He thus did, to unfolding before mortal gaze the Courts of Heaven;—to divulging for mortal ears colloquies held upon the celestial everlasting Throne;—to delineating the War of Creatures (i. e. the Angels) against the Creator, &c. &c.

Observe, moreover, that, although Man’s Obedience and Fall from Obedience is the theme undertaken, yet the Truth undertaken has other illustration, in the Poem, and reaches into higher Orders of Being. For instance, in the Order of Angels, there occurs twofold illustration—namely,

2. And, amongst the rebellious Angels themselves, by the unspeakable contrast exhibited of their first happy and their second unhappy state;—their sinless glory and their horrible punishment.

Far higher yet,—immeasurably higher,—in the divine Messiah, the Obedience is the grace, the glory, and the happiness of his Being!

God is the Creator and Upholder—Satan, the Destroyer. God is the rightful Monarch of the Universe, unassailably seated on his everlasting Throne. Satan ever attempts Usurpation, and is ever baffled.

Pride is the inward Self-exaltation of a Creature. Observe that Exaltation is proper raising from a lower degree held to a higher degree, not before held. God is eternally the Highest;—a state which precludes the idea, strictly spoken, of Exaltation.

Therefore, to Satan, as proud, is opposed the Self-humiliation of the Son—whom God thereupon exalts.

Pride, in Satan, considered as undue Self-exaltation, stands (when we follow out the opposition in which he stands to God) opposed to due, legitimate, rightful height, or Supremacy, Sovereignty. Satanic Pride is undue self-exaltation, at the height, in the Creature.

But this, in the Creature, is a self-enthroning, a self-idolising, a self-deifying.

The Creature depends upon the Creator. The Creature is bound to the Creator by a million of distinct relations.

If you ask for One Relation, that shall contain all the others, it is this One, Dependency. That is to say, that, so long as you own your dependency, so long is there no true relation that you can deny. But, if you deny your dependency, therewith and therein you deny all your other true relations. The first motion towards (i. e. in the direction of—i. e. relating to) God, of pride in the proud Creature, is the denial of dependency. Satan denies his dependency. Both in the Past—for he denies his Creation, and avers that he had never heard such a thing mentioned. And in the Present, by renouncing his allegiance, opening war, &c. He denies the Creature’s continual derivation from the Creator, when he says, (as if in the Future,) “our own right hand shall teach us highest deeds.”

If it should appear necessary to vindicate expressly and at length the character which has been affirmed as one main character of the Paradise Lost, namely, that it is an Ethico-didactic Poem, the proofs offer themselves to the hand more thickly than that they can easily be all gathered.

They are Implicit and Explicit. The Implicit or inferential Proofs—Proofs involved in the tenor of the displayed History, and which are by reflection to be drawn out and unfolded—are of several kinds, and, in each, of the highest description.

Thus, the Main Action of the Poem, or the Fall of Man, teaches us that the Goodness and Happiness of the Creature subsists in the inviolable conformity of his Will to the holy Will of the Creator. Thus again:—The great Action is inductive to this Main Action—that is to say, The Fall of the Angels, which, by an easily-springing sequence of Moral Causes and Effects, brings on the Temptation, and, too easily, the Seduction of Man—as loudly inculcates the same sublime and all-comprehending Ethical Truth. And thus again:—That Third highest Action, which is incorporated into the Main action—The Redemption of Man—provided, in the Counsel of God, as remedial to the fatal Catastrophe of the Fall, and, according to the reverently-daring representation of the Poet, as undertaken in Heaven even ere the need that asks for it has befallen in Paradise upon Earth—this awful Mystery of the Divine interposing Grace irresistibly preaches the same solemn doctrine. Hell, and Earth, and Heaven proclaim with One Voice:—“Cleave, Oh Child of dust and Heir of Immortality, cleave and cling inwardly, by thy love—by thine obedience, outwardly—to the all-wise and all-righteous Will, which has called the Worlds and their Inhabitants into Being, and has imposed upon the worlds, and upon those which inhabit them, its bountiful and upholding Laws!—O cleave and immovably cling to that holy and gracious Will, which the Angels forsook and they fell!—which Man deserted, and—He fell!—which the Son of Man fulfilled, and He lifted up fallen and lost, but now restored Man to the peace of God upon this Earth, and to the bosom of God in Heaven.”

Such, explicitly worded, is the admonishment, grave and high, which continually peals amidst the majestic and profound harmonies of this consecrated Poem—the admonishment the most loudly, the most distinctly heard.

Milton represents inordinate Pride, or the temper, in excess, of inward self-exaltation, as the chief element in the personal character of Satan; yet the great Archangel has maintained his Obedience to the Almighty King. The opinion of wrong done to himself, of an imposed humiliation in another’s exaltation exasperating his haughty self-idolatry, first rouses him into active disloyalty and rebellion, and to the desire and endeavour of dispossessing the Monarch of Heaven, and reigning in his stead. The open outward war which Satan is represented as waging with sensible weapons and armoury, with innumerable spirits banded in confederacy upon his part—the setting up his own throne in the north—the march across heaven—the attempt, such as it is described, at invading the very throne of Omnipotence—amongst other lights in which they may be contemplated, may be contemplated in this light, namely, that the Outward expresses, depictures the Inward. The proud Apostate Spirit, in conceiving offence and displeasure at God’s rule and ordinance, has already within his own mind rebelled against God—he has made his own Mind the field of an impious war.—We must conceive within his mind a sovereign throne erected, whereupon,—so long as He remained obedient, loyal, good,—the rightful Monarch sate, in undisputed supremacy.—From that Throne within his mind, as soon as Satan rebels, in will, God is dispossessed:—and on that internal usurped Throne the rebel now sits;—in imagination, his own King, and his own God. That which outwardly he attempts, and in which outwardly he must fail:—that inwardly he has attempted—and in that—attempting it—inwardly He must succeed.

A Spirit created good and great has voluntarily foregone its native inborn goodness, and, in consequence, involuntarily foregoes its native inborn greatness. There is in the Universe but one fountain of all that is holy, divine, good, amiable or pure.—This left, we drink troubled waters. No one can tell the alliances of wrong with wrong. Truth, justice, good-will—alone are magnanimous. He who has been shown at the highest of self-power,—of intellectual strength—of empire over spirits—of their willing idolatry, which extols him equal to the Highest in Heaven,—He is gradually brought down low, lower, lowest—by voluntary and imposed humiliation:—self-incarnate in bestial slime—turned into a monstrous serpent on his belly prone, and hissing amongst hissing. Has Milton in painting the fallen Archangel changed his hand, and checked his pride? He has delineated for our admiration; he has delineated for our scorn—for our pity, also.

One meaning pervades the delineation. The pride which alienates Satan from God, alienates him at last from himself.—He is wicked, and the ways of wickedness are crooked and creeping. The haughtiest of spirits in seeking to revenge his just punishment stoops to the lowest abasement. A great lesson is written on the front of this great revolution. A mind has let go of its only stronghold, and it slips lower and lower. We have seen a Spirit exalted in the favour of the Creator;—high in rank, strong in power, rich in gifts, radiant with glory, seated in bliss;—and the same cast down into misery and into dishonour. The Cause is, that he has deserted Obedience and Love.

This is not a picture removed to a distance from us, to be looked at with wonder. It is a lesson for each of us.

Can we not raise our thoughts, to fancy Milton drawing the moral of his astonishing picture?

“You are Spirits,” he might say to us—“the creation of the same hand. Heavenly gifts are yours, and heavenly favours; and notwithstanding the fall of man, gleams, vestiges are yours of heavenly glory. To you the same choice is offered of adhering, or of separating yourselves. In you is the same ground of temptation, the same difficulty of adhering, a misunderstood self-love. You too are tempted to enthrone self upon the usurped throne of the divine legislator. To obey the law of right—to follow out the law of love, is only difficult because we feel, in every instance of being called upon so to do, that we are called upon to make some sacrifice of ourselves. It is an error—a mistaken feeling. We are called upon to sacrifice not ourselves, but a present inclination, which self suggests. Make the sacrifice—obey, fulfil the law that makes the claim upon you, and you will find that you have relinquished a fallacious, for a real good. Follow the false inclination, and you will find that instead of enthroning yourselves in the despite of Heaven’s King, you have begun to descend steps of endless descent.—Be warned by terrible example.”

We see of mankind some that are lifted up in power and exalted by their native powers—mighty minds holding ascendancy over other minds—Kings—Conquerors—Philosophers—sitting upon the thrones of the Earth, or upon intellectual thrones. To them there is the same hazard. There is the same inward solicitation of pride—the same impulse to self-idolatry. They would usurp—would extend power. Adversaries of God and Man—and knowing themselves for such—the madness of Ambition seizes upon their hearts, and on they go. They seek Exaltation—they find abasement. The false aggrandisement which they have laboured to acquire may or may not be wrested from them. But assuredly the inward abasement will hold on its appointed way.

Their end is high, but their means will be low. Ambition disjoined from good is divorced from true greatness. The consciousness of right aims alone sustains the genuine self-respect of the mind, struggling its way through the obstacles which the strife of human affairs presents. One law—one principle—one rule of action—takes dominion of the spirit which has surrendered itself to the allurement of a selfish ambition:—It has One Motto—one war-cry—“To succeed!”—The character of the means can no longer be a reason for declining them—and the proudest of Men stoop the lowest.

If we read the History of humankind, we see this in the slaves to the lust of earthly empire:—in the slaves to the lust of renown. They suffer a double change from the higher and better nature given them. They have hardened themselves against shame. They harden themselves too against pity.—What does the misery which he strews in his path trouble the famous conqueror?—His chariot-wheels crush under them the gardens of humanity—He rides over human heads.—And what does it concern him who uses the high gifts of intelligence not for extending the useful domains of human knowledge,—but for aggrandising his own name—what does it concern him though, to plant his proud reputation, and multiply the train of his adherents, he must pull down heavenward hopes, in millions of human hearts?—that he must wither in them the flowers of the affections?—that he must crush the sacred virtues, which repose upon received belief?—The hero of Infidelity recoils as little from these consequences of his fame as the hero of a thousand battle-fields.

There is withal a Pride, which, whilst dwelling with the mind, is rebellion. There is a Pride of the Creature, which reluctantly acknowledges, which refuses to acknowledge, benefits derived from the Creator.

Yes; self-contradictory as the mood of mind seems, there is a temper in man, which may be certainly recognised, that throws off the obligation of gratitude and the belief of dependence. Thus, the feeling of Pride in intellectual talents implies that he who is in this way proud, views his talents, in a measure, as originally his own. He refers them to himself, and not beyond. If he looked at them as given, there would be an end of Pride, which would give way to the sense of heavy responsibility.

Upon a day of the heavenly year the Almighty Father, upon his Holy Mount, before the assembled Angels, manifests the Son—proclaims the Son, the head over all Principalities and Powers, and requires to be paid him accordingly the homage and obedience of the whole angelical host. The whole angelical Host pay, as required, their homage. But not all gladly and sincerely. One of the highest Archangels—if not the highest—whose heavenly name is heard no more—but upon Earth and in Hell he is called Satan and Lucifer—envies and revolts in heart at this new vicegerency. He intends rebellion:—beguiles the next Angel in authority under him, and with him, pretending a command from the celestial King, withdraws the legions who are bound in service to his hierarchal standard into the northern quarter of Heaven. With such precision does Milton dare to imagine, even in the highest, the scenes and procedure of his Poem. There the false Archangel proposes to his followers that they shall resist the ordinance imposing a new reign over them. The followers thus addressed are one third part of the whole celestial host. One Seraph resists—refuses to forego his original, proper allegiance, and flies back. The rest march in arms against the Mount of God. They are encountered by an equal number of the faithful Angels. Two days the fight rages in the celestial fields. The second of the two days closes the unequal, hopeless conflict. The Messiah goes forth to war; and the rebellious angelical multitude are precipitated from the verge of Heaven into the fiery pit of Hell, newly created, and yawning to receive the vanquished and cast-out numbers without number from their unimaginable fall.

What, according to Milton, is Pride? Milton’s answer is in one word. Satan aspires to sit upon the Throne of God. Then in angel or in man there is but one meaning of the word Pride. He unseats God, and sets up another—namely, Self—in his place. The comparison of Man’s Sin to Satan’s, is by Milton distinctly affirmed. The Almighty says—

I suppose the meaning to be universally applied to man’s transgression—namely, to break a law is virtually to set aside the Lawgiver, and to legislate for yourself. The act may, indeed, be more or less conscious, wilful, reflective; may more or less intend siege and defiance to Heaven. Proud Sin most intends this; and even the Sin of Pride, simply as constituted in the Will, ere going forth into action. I understand that moral offences, into which impetuous passions hurry, however undeliberated, and although they intend simply the gratification of desires, and cannot well be said to include a proud scorn of the laws that they break—for there is often more rash oblivion of than stiff-necked opposition to the laws broken—yet partake of the character condemned in Satan; and condemned in man also by these words put into the mouth of the Almighty. Every the most thoughtless and reckless breach of a law sets aside the Lawgiver, and usurps legislation to the law-breaker. The law-breaker makes his own law. No doubt, however, there are more heedful offenders. There are those who look the law in the face, and with impious hardness of heart, and wilfully approaching God, break his laws. They are proud Sinners.

This is not so much perceptive or demonstrative as it is enkindling: a dear and near tie—elation by consciousness of a high purpose in his Creation, and gratitude for the love which thus ennobled him in creating him. If he reverences himself he is bound to a Creator, whose designs in him are thus expounded. Related hereto, but distinct, and more incidental, is the Philosophy of Man’s nature, propounded by Raphael, who nevertheless propounds as if upon divine revelation made to himself at the moment. This philosophy, delivered in three words, appears to me exceedingly sublime, and profoundly true.

Here Milton describes Man as being—1. Self-knowing. That is the root. 2. Thence, great souled, and communicating with Heaven. 3. Thence also acknowledges himself as dependent. 4. Still thence grateful for the good. 5. Still thence adoring, praising. 6. From his height of Being—as chief of God’s works here below.

That is to say, he knows the God-like and God-allied and God-tending in his nature.

He knows his Nature as exalted—as capable for divine communions and influences, aspirations, joys, desires.

And knowing this, he boldly cherishes these desires and joys—aspires to these communions.

But knowing himself, he knows himself weak—unable to create—unable to furnish his own good. Hence

I imagine, because self-knowledge includes the distinct intelligence of his own good. But he cannot know his own highest good—cannot really understand his happiness, and be ungrateful. How can you to the Giver of Love be ungrateful for the gift of Love?—if you know truly the happiness of love—i. e., know yourself as a Spirit endowed for loving—and know him for the giver? It would be a self-contradiction in Spirit.

And why do you, the self-knowing, adore and praise? I think that Milton expresses this—

As if the discernment of his own constitution as chief of creation peculiarly summoned him to acknowledge with adoration—i. e., with awful ecstasy of admiring—the Constitutor. Is it not a high, solemn, sublime, true thought, that Man’s discernment of his own exaltedness, immediately and with direct impulse, carries him God-ward—as on the summit of a high hill you are next heaven, or seem to be next it?

And Ovid’s is surprisingly noble—for him—the Sanctius alone is quite enough. That is the heathen contemplation of Man. How many of us know ourselves and our fellows as holy? Nevertheless, Milton makes that which was high and impassioned—logical, comprehensive, and sublime.

Sanctity of Reason is hallowed and hallowing Intelligence. It is implied that in the best and truest actions of our understanding, there is an afflux of Deity, and that, as Bacon says, we are akin to God by our Spirits.

The sublime passage, which describes Man’s creation, besides the moral influence and incitement of its main bearing—that Man is “the end of all yet done”—that he is made in the likeness of God—that here only the Father is distinctly and especially announced as consulting and co-operating with the Son—besides the call that is thus made upon Man to revere and guard the Spirit implanted in him—and besides the formal precept with which it concludes, inculcating compliance with the sole prohibition, is, in the following respect, also remarkable, when we look for testimonies to the frame of mind in which the Poem was written. To wit: The passage appears to embosom, in a very few words—in half-a-dozen verses—an entire system of Ethics in the germ, or general thought. Milton appears to lay as its basis the faculty which Man possesses of Self-Knowledge, which he seems nearly to identify with Reason. Hence, very loftily, but very summarily, he deduces the general moral condition of Man, and his highest, that is to say, his religious obligations. We must understand, no doubt, that the other inferior obligations are to be similarly deduced. But the bare fact, that Milton so places (and so compendiously) this high and comprehensive speculation in a striking manner, attests the temper of thinking in which the whole Poem has been composed. In such a fact we unequivocally read that which has been repeatedly here affirmed upon all kinds of evidence,—that the Paradise Lost was to Milton the depository (within room at once confined and ample) for his lifelong studies; and in particular, that, holding the office of a Poet at the highest—that is to say, seeing in every one upon whom the high faculties of Poetry are bestowed, a solemn and missioned Teacher to Men, Milton hoped, in this great Poem, to acquit himself of this responsibility laid upon his own Spirit.

In the Kingdom of God’s Love, to obey him and to promote happiness is one and the same thing. To disobey him and to destroy happiness is one and the same thing. If it were possible for a finite being to see the consequences of his actions as God sees them, he would perform precisely the same actions, whether he aimed at augmenting to the utmost the welfare of God’s Creation, or endeavoured to the utmost to conform his actions to God’s Will.

Unable to penetrate consequences, should he have access to know God’s Will—he will by this means have a safe rule of effecting that which the right, loving disposition of his Mind desires, but which his imperfect foresight disables him from accomplishing by his own computation of results.

Nor is it unreasonable to say that nations unvisited by God’s Word have access to know, in some imperfect measure, his Will—and to use it for their guidance—and that they have done so;—for all the nobler nations, and perhaps all the nations—or all, with few exceptions—at least those high Gentile nations who have left us their own hearts disclosed and recorded in writings, have witnessed, as follows:—They have regarded the primary Affections by which the family is bound together within itself—and those affections by which a nation is bound as a brotherhood within itself—as Divine Laws speaking in their bosoms. Yet more solemnly they have acknowledged the voice of Conscience, dividing Right from Wrong, in each man’s innermost Thoughts, as a divine oracle, shrined in the human heart.

Yes, Talboys; their Orators, their Historians, their Philosophers, their Poets, their Mythologies, and their Altars, witness to the fact of their having thus apprehended themselves to live under a Divine Legislation.

When, therefore, not idly and presumptuously arrogating to themselves to divine and calculate consequences removed from their faculties, they did, in simplicity of soul, follow out the biddings of these holy charities, and the dictates of this inwardly prophesying monitor, they were so far, in the light and in the eye of Reason—VIRTUOUS. They did so far—if we may dare so highly to pronounce—conform themselves to God’s will. They did this, designing—even in the dim light in which they walked—to do this. And so far conforming themselves, after their imperfect apprehension, to his laws, they were so far producers of happiness. Their conformity—their production of human happiness, and their virtue—flowed in one channel—were one and the same stream.

Even this solemn conviction, which seems to carry its own evidence in itself, derives confirmation from weighing the connection of human happiness with human actions. The feelings which carry us to accept implicitly, and without the suggestion of a doubt, the Will of God as the law of our actions, are in themselves principal sources of Happiness—the Obedience itself is the firmest and only secure foundation of Happiness. He whose will we are to obey is the Sole Giver of Happiness. And if we could begin with searching our own Being into its depths—the laws of Happiness which we should there discover would point out to us, as the effectual and unfailing sources, and the necessary condition of happiness, those qualities of action, which we know as the immutable attributes of the Divine Will—Truth, Justice, Holiness, Love.

The Moral Nature of Man is to be regarded as something which may rise from very low to very high degrees. And what is manifestly true of it in one state may not be as manifestly true of it in another. To understand it, my dear friends, we must regard it in its nearest approaches to perfection. From that observation of it, we must endeavour to establish principles, and deduce Rules, which we may be able afterwards to apply to judging of its inferior states. We cannot equally expect, from observing its inferior states, to find the rule that will enable us to comprehend its highest.

The highest Moral State of the Human Mind is unquestionably that in which it knows Deity, in his perfections; in which his Known Law is adopted as the express and supreme Law of Life;—in which the affections due towards him are strong, pure, full, habitual;—in which all the other affections, under subordination to these, are directed, each in due degree, towards its due object; and in which Conscience is known, as a declarer of the Divine Will, when other testimony is silent, is revered as such, and holds authority sufficient to decide the choice whenever the Will fluctuates in its Obedience to its highest affections.

From this state, which is that to which every human being is bound to aspire, you would deduce grounds of judging of those inferior moral conditions which tend to the attainment of this highest?

I would; and it will be found that these are moral, either because they bear an imperfect and broken resemblance to this state, or because they have a visible tendency towards it.

Believing, then, that the Human Soul only reaches the fulness of its nature, and the exaltation of its powers, when it Knows itself in the presence of God, when it looks up to Him, and endeavours, not in hidden thought merely, but in action and life, to adore His Will, we must not allow as possessing the same excellence, and participating in the same Nature of Morality, any state in which we cannot discern footsteps of the same Deity, where the breath of the same spirit cannot be felt? That, on the other hand, we embrace with affection, and with moral anticipation, whatever seems even remotely to be animated with this influence, and to tend to this result?

Yes. To an observer looking in this spirit upon the affairs of men, there will be no difficulty in approving and condemning those who, in the same light as he himself enjoys, conform to or contemn what he acknowledges as the highest Law. The two extremes of virtue and crime fall distinctly and decisively under the test which he recognises. The nature of the merit, the nature of the Guilt, of those who in the highest degree conform to this Law, and of those who most audaciously trample upon it, cannot be mistaken.

But between these there are infinite degrees, to which it may often be extremely difficult to apply the same rule of Moral Estimation.

Alas! alas! He who looks forth from himself with the views of human perfection which I have described, must regard the world with sorrow and compassion, perceiving how much the great body of mankind are departed from the happiest and fittest condition of their nature—how they are become immersed in passions and pursuits which disguise from their own knowledge the very capacities of their being, and degrade and destroy their powers by withholding from them even the prospect of their original destination!

Such must, indeed, be his melancholy view of mankind at large, comparing them, as he needs must do, with the idea of that excellence of which they are capable, and which they ought to attain.

But when he descends from that height of contemplation, and, mixing with them, makes himself more intimate with their actual condition, he will look on them in some degree in a different light; for, my good Seward, he will then consider, not so much what they want of perfection, as those tendencies towards it, which are still actually undestroyed among them, and which are continually found exerting themselves—with irregular impulses, indeed, and with uncertain and variable direction; but which still do exert themselves, throwing gleams over human nature of its true happiness, and maintaining to Man, in the midst of all his errors, the name and dignity of a Moral Being.

Methinks, sir, what would appear to such a Mind most grateful and consolatory in the midst of the aberrations of the human Soul, and of its darkness as to the knowledge of its Chief Good, must be the sight of those beautiful Affections which fill the hearts of human beings towards one another, and the observations of the workings of that Conscience, which in its mysterious intimations admonishes men of their departure from the Eternal Laws, though they know not whence the voice comes, nor how profound is its significance. In these great and pure affections, and in the rectitude of conduct thus maintained, he would recognise the fulfilling of that Divine Will, in harmony with which is all Good, and in revolt from which is all Evil. To him, then, the Human Will would appear thus far to maintain its conformity with the Divine: and he would witness Obedience to the Universal Law, although those who fulfilled it did but imperfectly understand their own Obedience, or conceive to what authority it was paid.

If the great natural Affections were made at first in perfect harmony with the Affections of Religion, they will still bear that character. And they do so, for they still appear to us in themselves pure and holy. If that is their character, then their very presence in the soul will be in some degree a restoration of its own purity and holiness. And this also is universally felt to be true: to such a degree that, most strongly to describe those feelings, we apply to them terms derived from the language of religion. We call those ties sacred: we call those duties Piety. They re-induce upon the Soul that purer, loftier nature, which the ordinary course of the world has troubled; and in doing so, they not only bring the Mind into a State which is in harmony with the Divine Law, but they do, to a certain degree, begin Religion in the Soul. This intimate connection between the strongest feelings of the heart and its holiest thoughts, discovers itself when the whole heart is wrung by the calamities to which through those feelings it lies open. When the hand of Death has rent in one moment from fond affection the happiness of years, and seems to have left to it no other lot upon Earth than to bleed and mourn, then, in that desolation of the spirit, are discovered what are the secret powers which it bears within itself, out of which it can derive consolation and peace. The Mind, torn by such a stroke from all those inferior human sympathies which, weak and powerless when compared to its own sorrow, can afford it no relief, turns itself to that Sympathy which is without bounds. Ask of the forlorn and widowed heart what is the calm which it finds in those hours of secret thought, which are withdrawn from all eyes?—ask what is that hidden process of Nature, by which Grief has led it on to devotion? That attraction of the Soul in its uttermost earthly distress to a source of consolation remote from Earth, is not to be ascribed to a Disposition to substitute one emotion for another, as if it hoped to find relief in dispelling and blotting out the vain passion with which it laboured before: but, in the very constitution of the Soul, the capacities of human and of divine affection are linked together; and it is the very depth of its passion that leads it over from the one to the other. Nor is its consolation forgetfulness. But that affection which was wounded becomes even more deep and tender in the midst of the calm which it attains.

Assuredly such a spectator of human nature as we have imagined could not be indifferent to such a tendency of these natural emotions. He could not observe with unconcern even the nascent streaks of light, the dawning of a religious mind. He would call that Good which, though it had no distinct and conscious reference to anything above the Earth, did yet, by the very preparation it made in the Soul for the reception of something more holy, vindicate to itself a heavenly origin.

Even the Ancients, contemplating that Power in the Mind which judges so supremely of Right and Wrong, could call it nothing else than a God within us. He then who, in the highest light of knowledge, contemplates the human mind, will be yet more strongly impressed with this Sanctity of the Conscience, which affected even minds lying under much darkness and abasement, and therefore alienated from such perceptions. He undoubtedly will regard this principle as a part of original Religion not yet extinct in the Soul: will, as such, esteem and revere it; and conceiving the highest perfection of human nature to consist in its known and willed Conformity to the Divine Will, will regard with kindred feelings even this imperfect and unconscious conformity to that Law, which is thus maintained by the human spirit, resolutely and proudly struggling, in the midst of its errors, against a yet deeper fall.

And, sir, it must be remembered that, as the degrees of moral goodness are different in the various dispositions and actions of men, though they all fall under the description of one morality; so, too, the feeling of moral approbation exists in very different degrees in different minds, though in all it bears a common name. If the moral sensibility is not enlightened and quickened by those feelings which belong to its most perfect state, its judgments will be proportionally faint and low. As in its virtue there is a lower virtue, which tends merely to a Harmony with the Divine Will, so, in the judgment of virtue, there is a lower judgment, which implies no more than that he who judges has his own mind brought into a state in which there is a tendency to the same sacred and solemn apprehensions.

The Moral judgments of men are vague and undefined; but they are accompanied universally with a solemn feeling: not merely of dislike—not, in the highest degree, of mere detestation and hate—not merely with reproach and resentment for violating the benevolence, and invading the happiness of human nature; but there is a sensation of awe accompanying the sentiment of condemnation, which visibly refers to something more than what is present to our eyes on the face of the smiling or the blasted Earth. Among all nations, the abhorrence and punishment of crime has always reference to some indignation that is conceived of among higher powers. Their Laws are imagined to be under a holier sanction, and in their violated majesty there is apprehended to be something of the anger of offended Deity. Hence the wrath of Punishments, which have been conceived of as fulfilling heavenly displeasure; and those who have inflicted signal retributions have imagined that they avenged their Gods as well as the broken laws of men.

This feeling of a superhuman authority present in the affairs of men shows decisively what is the tendency, in natural minds, of moral feeling, when it is aroused to its greatest height; the season in which it may be expected best to declare its own nature.

Nor did this awe of a superior power present in the consciences of men, and violated there, discover itself solely in the vindications of punishment; but the great acts of virtue also led men to thoughts above humanity; nor did they otherwise conceive of the impulses of the mind, in the noblest actions, than as inspirations from the divinity.

These opinions and views have prevailed in nations ignorant of religion, but in whose powerful nature the native sentiments of the human spirit disclosed themselves in full force; among whom, therefore, its actual tendencies may best be ascertained.

The same truths, deeply buried in human nature, may be recognised in different forms wherever its voice speaks in its strength. If one people have believed that Furies rose from their infernal beds to dog the steps of the murderer, wandering upon the Earth, others, from the same source of preternatural feeling, have believed that the body would bleed afresh at his approach, and that his unappeased ghost would haunt the place where Guilt had driven it out from life. The very conception of such crimes dilates the spirit to conceptions of the unseen powers which reign over human life, which walk unperceived among the paths of men, and which are universally believed to be enemies or punishers of human wickedness. If the history of superstition might be told at large, it would represent to us the conscience of man laid open by his Imagination, and would disclose, in fearful pictures, the reality of that connection which subsists in our nature between the apprehension of Good and Evil in the soul of man, and the apprehensions cognate with it of a world of invisible power, of which it is the eternal law that Good is required, and Evil hated and pursued.

These evidences attest that, even among those who have the least knowledge of Religion, whose judgments are least moulded by its spirit, there is an inseparable connection between Conscience and Religion; that its strong emotions always carry the soul to those conceptions which are most akin to its powers.

If, under the circumstances which produce the strongest feeling, such a tendency shows itself distinctly and in remarkable forms, then, under all circumstances, there will be fainter and more indistinct perception of this tendency?

For this is the nature of the human Mind. Our feelings are not always determined by distinct thought; but there is a sort of presaging faculty in the soul, by which it foresees whither its own conception tends, and feels, in anticipation of those thoughts, into which the imagination would run if it were left free.

Thus certain strains of thought are felt to be joyous or solemn when they are barely touched, and in the ready sensibility, feeling begins to arise, though no ideas are yet distinctly present to which such feeling fitly belongs. The mind shudders or is gladdened at the distant suggestion of what it knows, if pursued, would shake it with horror, or fill the blood with joy.

This is a fact of our nature too well understood by those whose mind labours with any store of fearful or bitter recollection, into which they dread to look. The approach to some place hideous to the memory produces the shivering of horror before it is beheld; and even within the spirit, in like manner, the approach to those dark places of thought where unsoothed sorrows lie buried, startles the mind, and warns it to turn the steps of thought another way.

The feeling that “that way madness lies;” and the recoiling from it, through a forefeeling of the pain which lies in the thoughts that might arise, is common to all strong passion that has held long possession of the mind.

A similar state is known in these imitations of passion, the works of art;—Music has power over us, not by the feelings which it produces distinctly in the mind, but by those many deep and passionate feelings which it barely touches, and of which it raises up, therefore, from moment to moment, obscure and undefined anticipations. In Painting, the Imagination is most powerfully excited often not by what is shown, but by what is dimly indicated. What is shown exhausts and limits the feelings that belong to it; what is indicated merely, opens up an insight into a whole world of feelings inexhaustible and illimitable.

Such, indeed, is the nature of our mind; and these are examples of a general principle of thought and feeling.

This capacity of the Mind to be affected in slighter degree, but in similar manner, by anticipated feeling, is to be noticed in respect to all its more fixed and important emotions. It enters as a great element into all its moral judgments. The judgment of right or wrong is quick and decisive, but is rather unfrequently attended with very strong emotion. Those strongest emotions belong to rare occurrences; for the greater part of life is calm. But they have been felt, nevertheless, at times; so that the soul distinctly knows what is its emotion of moral abhorrence, and what its emotion of moral veneration. When lesser occasions arise, which do not put its feeling to the proof, it still is affected by a half-remembrance of what those feelings have been: a slighter emotion comes over it—an apprehension of that emotion which would be felt in strength, if it could be given way to. Thus even the very name of crimes affects the mind with a dim horror, though the Imagination is still remote from picturing to itself anything of the reality of acting them. Whatever great conceptions, then, are so linked in actual Nature with our moral emotions, that under the passionate strength of these emotions they must arise, some slight shadow of the same conceptions, some touch of the feelings which they are able to call up, will be present to the mind whenever it is morally moved.

Ay, sir, I now see the meaning—of the application—of all your discourse. If there is in the depth of our Nature such a connection between our Moral and our Religious conceptions, that our moral feelings, when exalted or appalled in the highest degree, will assume a decidedly religious character, then even in their slighter affection they will be touched, even from a distance, with that religious temper.

It does appear that the two kinds of feelings are so connected, that in the strongest moral feeling Religion is sensibly present, and that in its weaker emotion there is a slight colouring of the same feeling—faint and indistinct indeed, but such as to give to all our judgments of right and wrong a something of solemnity that is distinct from the ordinary complexion of human affairs, from the ordinary judgment of human interests or passions.

This connection which is perceived in individual Minds may be observed in considering the differences of national character. The different nations of the earth have exhibited the moral nature of man in very different degrees of strength. It will be found that they have also possessed in very different degrees the spirit of Religion; and that the two have risen or declined together. This is true both of the nations of the old world who were enlightened, and of the Christian nations, who have preserved their Religion in various degrees of purity and truth, and whose morals have always borne a corresponding character. If there is a people light and fickle in their moral character, the same unfixedness and levity will be found in their religion. But whatever nation has embraced with deep and solemn feeling the tenets of their faith, will be found to be distinguished in proportion by the depth of their moral spirit. The dignity of their Mind appears not in one without the other, but in the two united.

Thus, then, in those minds in which the two are imperfectly unfolded, they are united, as in those in whom they are most perfectly unfolded. But with this difference:—that where Religion in its most perfect form is known, there it enlightens and exalts the moral feelings. Under its imperfect and erroneous forms, conscience applies to men’s hearts in some degree the defects of religion.

Politics, since the year 1848, have engrossed so unwonted a share of the attention of the reading world, that there can be no doubt that, in more than one European country, books of great literary and scientific interest have been withheld from publication until more tranquil days should give them a better chance of the welcome they merit. Such has avowedly been the case with Dr Wagner’s latest work, the fourth and most important of a series suggested to him by several years of Oriental travel and study. It was, if we rightly remember, in the second book of this series, relating to Armenia,^[2] that he announced his intention of reserving for a final work the more important results of his rambles and observations. Previously to the Armenian volume he had published his account of Caucasus and the Cossacks,^[3] to the general reader more interesting than any of its successors. Third in order of appearance came the Journey to Colchis;^[4] and now, believing that his countrymen’s taste for books of foreign travel and adventure is reviving, he puts forth two copious volumes, containing all that he has to say, and that he has not previously published, concerning his Eastern journeyings and residence.

Dr Wagner is one of the most experienced, indefatigable, and, as we believe, one of the most trustworthy and impartial of foreign literary travellers. On a former occasion we explained how his strong natural bent for travel and scientific research had overcome many and great obstacles, and had conducted him not only through various European countries, but with a French army to Constantina, and afterwards over a great part of Western Asia. His present book is comprehensive and somewhat desultory in its character. It details the author’s residence in the Alpine region of Turkish Armenia, his travels in Persia, and his adventurous visits to certain independent tribes of Kourds, whose country is immediately adjacent to that interesting but unsafe district of Kourdistan, where Schulze, the German antiquarian, and the Englishman Browne (the discoverer of Darfour) met a bloody death, and rest in solitary graves. Dr Wagner is sanguine that, now that the revolutionary fever has abated, many will gladly quit the study of newspapers, and the contemplation of Europe’s misty future, to follow him into distant lands, rarely trodden by European foot, and some of which have hitherto been undescribed “by any German who has actually visited them.” As the most novel portions of his book, he indicates his visits to the mountain district south of Erzroum, and his excursions east, south, and west of the great salt lake of Urumiah, the Dead Sea of Persia. A keen politician, and this book being, as we have already observed, a sort of omnium-gatherum of his Eastern experiences, political, scientific, and miscellaneous, he devotes his first chapter to what he terms “a dispassionate appreciation of Prince Metternich’s Oriental policy,” (chiefly with respect to Servia,) which chapter we shall avail ourselves of his prefatory permission to pass unnoticed, as irrelevant to the main subject of the book. Equally foreign to the objects announced in the title-page are the contents of Chapter the Second, in which, before taking ship for Trebizond, he gives a hundred pages to the Turkish capital, promising, notwithstanding all that has of late years been written concerning it, to tell us something new about Constantinople, and bidding his readers not to fear that he is about to impose upon them a compilation from the innumerable printed accounts of that city, which have issued from female as well as male pens, “from the days of Lady Montague down to Mrs Ida Pfeiffer the far-travelled, and Madame Ida Hahn Hahn the devotee.” He fulfils his promise. His sketches from the Bosphorus are not only amusingly written, but novel and original. Dr Wagner, it must be observed, set out upon his Eastern wanderings well provided with circular letters of recommendation from Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot to the various British and French agents in the countries he anticipated visiting. From the Russian government he also obtained, although with greater difficulty, similar documents. The natural consequence was, that, at Constantinople, and elsewhere, he passed much of his time in diplomatic and consular circles, and to such intercourse was doubtless indebted for much useful information, as his readers unquestionably are for many pungent anecdotes and entertaining reminiscences.

Upon an early day of his stay in Constantinople, Dr Wagner was so fortunate as to enjoy a near and leisurely view of his Highness Abdul Meschid. It was a Friday, upon which day the Grand Seignior is wont to perform his devotions in one of the principal mosques of his capital. In the court of the great Achmet mosque, Dr Wagner saw a crowd assembled round a group of twenty horses, amongst which was a slender, richly-caparisoned, silver-grey Arabian, of extraordinary beauty and gentleness. It was a favourite steed of the Sultan’s. Presently the door of the mosque opened; the grey was led close up to the lowest step; a slender Turk came forth, descended the steps stiffly and rather unsteadily, was assisted into saddle and stirrup by black slaves, and rode silently away through the silent crowd, which gave back respectfully as he passed, whilst every head was bowed and every hand placed upon the left breast. No shout or cheer was heard—Turkish custom forbidding such demonstrations—nor did the sovereign requite by salute or smile his subjects’ mute reverence. At that time Abdul Meschid was but twenty years old. His appearance was that of a sickly man of thirty. Early excesses had prematurely aged him. His cheeks were sunken; lines, rarely seen in youth, were visible at the corners of his eyes and mouth; his gaze was fixed and glassy. Dr Wagner is witty at the expense of another German writer,^[5] who saw the Sultan since he did, and sketched his personal appearance far more favourably.

“It is possible, however,” he says, “that with improved health the Sultan’s figure may have improved and his countenance have acquired nobility, so as to justify the description of the genial author of the ‘Fragments.’ Possible is it that Dr Spitzer’s ^[6] steel pills, combined with the seraglio-cook’s strong chicken broth and baths of Burgundy wine, may have wrought this physical marvel, have given new vigour to the muscles, have braced the nerves, and have imparted to his Highness’s drooping cheeks that firm and healthful look which the learned German declares he noted on the occasion of his audience. Abdul Meschid has still youth on his side; and when such is the case, nature often willingly aids the physician’s inadequate art. At the time I speak of, it is quite certain that the young Sultan looked like a candidate for the hospital. His aspect excited compassion, and corresponded with the description given to us of him by the German sculptor Streichenberg, who certainly contemplated his Highness more closely and minutely than the ‘Fragment’ writer, seeing that his business was to carve the Padisha’s likeness in ivory. As an artist, Mr Streichenberg was not particularly edified by the lean frame and flabby countenance of so young a prince. Not to displease his sublime patron, he was compelled to follow the example of that other German sculptor, who, commissioned by his royal Mæcenas to model his hand and leg for a celebrated dancer, adopted, instead of the meagre reality, the graceful ideal of the Belvidere Apollo, and so earned both praise and guerdon. The person of the Grand Seignior appeared to Streichenberg, as it did to me, emaciated, relaxed, narrow-breasted, and faded. Two years later, when I again saw the Sultan, in the solemn procession of the Kur-ban-Beiram, a renegade, who stood beside me, exclaimed, ‘Were I the Sultan, and looked as he looks, I would never show myself in public.’”

Close behind the Sultan rode the chief of the eunuchs, a fat negro from Sudan, mounted upon a horse as black as himself; and behind him came a young Turk of remarkable beauty, whose thick raven-black beard contrasted with the whiteness of his complexion, as did his whole appearance with that of the sickly sovereign, and with the dingy, monkey-like physiognomy of the Kisslar Aga. Beside such foils, no wonder that the picturesque young Oriental, with his profile like that of some Saracen warrior, and his dreamy thoughtful eyes, found favour with the fair. Riza Pasha was his name; he was then the seraglio-favourite, the lover of Valide, the mother of the Sultan. He alone pulled the strings of Turkish politics, and made the lame old Grand Vizier, Rauf Pasha, dance like a puppet to whatever tune he piped.

The Sultan and his suite were attired in the reformed costume—in blue frocks of Polish cut, red trousers, and the red fez, with its abundant blue tassel drooping over it on all sides. Scarcely had they ridden out of sight when a group of very different character and appearance issued from the chief gate of the mosque, gathering on its way far more demonstrations of popularity than did Abdul Meschid and his Kisslar Aga. It was composed of Turkish priests and doctors—Ulemas, with their Mufti at their head—all in the old Turkish garb, with ample turbans and huge beards. The sympathy of the people with these representatives of the old régime was expressed by far lower bows, by more fervent pressure of hand on heart, than had greeted the Sultan’s passage. The holy men looked kindly upon the crowd, amongst whom the Mufti occasionally threw small coins, which naturally augmented his popularity, and secured him many followers and good wishes. Dr Wagner remarks upon the present contradictory and anomalous state of Turkish dress. At the festival of the Kurban-Beiram he saw the Sultan and all the state officials, from the Grand Vizier downwards, in European uniforms—narrow trousers, gold epaulets, tight-buttoned coats, collars stiff with embroidery. But at the collar the Frank ceased, and the Oriental reappeared. There was the long beard, and the brimless fez. With this last item of costume, the boldest Turkish reformer has not as yet dared to interfere. The covering of the forehead with a peak or brim to the cap is an innovation for which the Turks are not yet ripe. It is considered the outward and visible sign of the Giaour, and a Turk who should walk the streets of Constantinople in a hat, or in a cap with a peak, would be stoned by the mob. The prejudice springs from the duty stringently enjoined upon every true believer, to touch the ground with his forehead when praying. Hence, to wear a vizard over the brow appears to the Turk like contempt of a religious law. A bold European in the service of the Porte advised Sultan Mahmoud to put leathern peaks to his soldiers’ caps. On duty they would keep off the sun; at prayer-time the caps might be turned round upon the head. But Mahmoud, passionate reformer though he was, shrank from offering so deadly an affront to Turkish fanaticism. Neither did he dare, like Peter the Great, to crop his subjects’ beards. The well-intended changes which he did introduce were sufficiently startling, and to many of them, even at the present day, the nation is scarcely reconciled. In a picturesque point of view, the new style of dress, intended as the signal of a general change in Turkish usages and institutions, is anything but an improvement upon the old one. The physical prestige of the Oriental departed with his flowing robe, with his shawls and his rich turban.

“These fat-paunched, crooked-legged pashas,” exclaims Dr Wagner, “what caricatures they appear in their buttoned-up uniforms! Formerly, when the folds of their wide garments concealed bodily imperfections, the Turks were held to be a handsome race. Now, in Constantinople, a handsome man, in the reformed dress, is an exception to the rule. The Turks of the towns are rarely slender and well-built; and the tall, muscular figures which one so commonly finds amongst Arabs, Persians, and Tyrolese, are scarcely ever to be seen in Turkey. Neither do we see in Turkish cities anything to remind us of the fine knightly figures of the Circassians—although, from the female side, so much Circassian blood runs in the veins of the higher classes of Turks. The indolent manner of life, the bringing up of boys in the harem until the age of puberty, too early indulgence in tschibouk-smoking and coffee-drinking, and premature excesses of another kind, have all contributed to enervate and degrade an originally vigorous and handsome race.”

In the whole Beiram procession, Dr Wagner declares, there were, besides Riza Pasha, but two handsome men amongst all the Turks of the higher class there present. Of the numerous array of officers and soldiers, it was but here and there that he saw one tolerably well-made, and athletic figures were still more rarely observable. Worse than any looked the debilitated Sultan, cramped in his tight coat, oppressed by his heavy epaulets and gold lace, his diamonds and his plumes, and leaning languidly forward on his fine charger. What a contrast with the portrait of the Emperor Nicholas, which Dr Wagner saw when visiting the summer seraglio of Kadi-Köi! Opposite to a divan upon which Abdul Meschid was wont to repose—whilst his tympanum was agreeably tickled by the harmony of half-a-dozen musical boxes, playing different tunes at the same time—stood two costly porcelain vases, whereon were painted likenesses of the Emperor and Empress of all the Russias. They were presents from Nicholas to the Sultan. “The Emperor’s gigantic and powerful frame and martial countenance were admirably portrayed. The painter had given him a mien and bearing as though he were in the act of commanding his grenadiers. As a contrast, I pictured to myself the Turkish monarch reposing his feeble frame upon the luxurious velvet divan; the harmless ruler who prefers ease in his harem to a gallop at the head of his troops; the trill of his musical boxes, and the flutes of dancing dervishes, to the clatter of cuirasses and the thunder of twelve-pounders.” Russia and Turkey are well typified by their rulers. On the one hand, vigour, energy, and power; on the other, weakness, decrepitude, and decline. What wonder if, as Dr Wagner relates, the young Archduke Constantine, when visiting the city that bears his name, gazed wistfully and hopefully from the lofty gallery of the Galata tower on the splendid panorama spread before him, as though dreaming that, one day, perhaps, the double eagle might replace the crescent upon the stately pinnacles of Stamboul!

After passing in review several of the most remarkable men in Turkey, Reschid Pasha, Omar Pasha the Renegade, Tahir Pasha, the fierce old admiral who commanded the Turkish fleet at Navarino, and who—never well disposed towards Christians—regarded them, from that disastrous day forward, with inextinguishable hatred, Dr Wagner speaks of the representatives at Constantinople of various European courts, briefly retracing some of the insults and cruelties to which, in former times, the ambassadors of Christian sovereigns were subjected by the arrogant Porte, and noting the energy and success with which Great Britain alone, of all the aggrieved powers, and even before the empire of the seas had become indisputably hers, invariably exacted and obtained satisfaction for such injuries. He remarks with admiration upon the signal reparation extorted by Lord Ponsonby in the Churchill case, and proceeds to speak in the highest terms of that diplomatist’s able successor.

“The most prominent man, by his political influence, as well as by his spirit, character, energy, and nobility of mind, in the diplomatic world of Pera, was and is, to the present day, the Englishman Stratford Canning. With external advantages, also, Nature has endowed this man more richly than any of his colleagues, whether Turks or Franks. He is of a very noble figure, and possesses that innate, calmly dignified majesty which characterises Britannia’s aristocracy. Totally free from affectation or theatrical manner, he has a thoughtful brow, marked with the lines of reflection and labour, and fine deep blue eyes, whose meaning glance seems to reveal a host of great qualities, and to tell, at the same time, that with the highest gifts of a statesman is here combined a warm, a generous, and a sympathetic heart.”

Dr Wagner was presented to Sir Stratford Canning by a German friend, and the ambassador seems completely to have won his heart, partly by the admiration he expressed of Circassia’s heroic struggle against the overwhelming power of the Czar, and by his sympathy with the Nestorian Christians of Djulamerk—at that time persecuted and cruelly handled by Beder Khan—but still more by the general liberality of his views, and by his un-diplomatic frankness of speech and manner. The Doctor pays a warm tribute to his high qualities, and to his success and diplomatic triumphs at Constantinople; and Dr Wagner’s eulogiums are, in this instance, the more to be valued that he does not often bestow them upon our countrymen, but more frequently dwells upon their less amiable qualities. As a philanthropist and man of high honour, he says, Sir Stratford Canning is really a rarity in old Byzantium, where, for so many centuries, tyranny and servility, corruption and lies, have established their seat. And he proceeds to exhibit the less favourable side of the character of the diplomatic corps at Constantinople, bearing with particular severity upon an Austrian envoy, concerning whom he tells some good stories—one, amongst others, of a diamond ornament, which brought great ridicule and discredit upon the internuncio. When Ibrahim Pasha was driven out of Syria, the Sultan, in token of his gratitude, ordered the court jeweller to manufacture costly diamond ornaments for the ladies of the British and Austrian ambassadors. Lady Ponsonby (we abridge from Dr Wagner) duly received hers, but Count Stürmer intimated, on behalf of his lady, that she would prefer ducats to diamonds. The cunning Austrian well knew that upon such occasions the jewellers were wont to take large profits. So he had it mentioned at the seraglio, by one of his dragomans, that the ambassadress was no lover of trinkets, but would willingly receive their value. To this there was no objection, and the pleasant sum of half a million of piastres was transferred from the Sultan’s treasury to the internuncio’s strong box. If the Austrian flattered himself that the transaction would be unknown, he was terribly mistaken. Pera is the Paradise of evil tongues, and next day the ambassadress’s dealings in diamonds were the talk of the town. Count Stürmer had many enemies and no friends; even his attachés had little attachment for him; the story was too piquant to be lost, and it was repeated with a thousand good-natured embellishments and commentaries, until it came round to the ears of the person principally concerned. Thereupon, the wily ambassador devised a plan to outwit the gossips. The finest diamond ornaments in the best jeweller’s shop in the bazaar were ordered to be sent to the Austrian embassy, on approval. An order for diamonds had been received from Vienna. The jeweller, anticipating a prompt sale and good profit, hastened to send the best he had. Meantime a number of the members of the different embassies were asked to dinner. At dessert, Count Stürmer led the conversation to the Sultan’s generosity and gallantry to ladies, and, turning to the Countess, asked her to show their guests the beautiful set of diamonds she had received as a present from his Highness. Great was the company’s admiration of the costly jewels—far greater their astonishment at this ocular refutation of the current tale which had transformed the brilliants into piastres. They had thought the sources of their information so sure! The ambassador noted and enjoyed their confusion. But, clever as the trick was—in political matters its author had never exhibited such ingenuity and inventive talent—its success was but temporary. The sharp noses of the Pera gossips smelled out the truth. Having served their purpose, the jewels were returned to the jeweller, and one may imagine the shout and halloo that resounded through the drawing-rooms, coffee-houses, and barbers’ shops of Pera and Galata, when the real facts of the case were at length verified beyond a doubt.

The admission made by Dr Wagner in another place, that the hotel of the Austrian internuncio was remarkable for its hospitality, and was the chief place of meeting in Constantinople for foreigners and natives of distinction, should perhaps have induced him to take a more indulgent view of Count Stürmer’s dealings in diamonds. Go where you will, says a French proverb, you shall always be welcome if you take with you a fiddle and a frying-pan. Dinners and dances are amongst the most important of diplomatic duties; and the Austrian may have thought he could better dispense with diamonds than with these. At his hotel, during one of Dr Wagner’s visits to Constantinople, that singularly successful soldier of fortune, General Jochmus, was a constant guest. This fortunate adventurer, of insignificant family at Hamburg, who has been indebted, for his remarkable rise, partly to his gallantry and talents, partly to extraordinary good luck, and who has passed through half-a-dozen services, always with more or less distinction, began his career in Greece, afterwards joined the Anglo-Spanish Legion, passed thence into the native Spanish army with the rank of general, quitted it on account of an insult received from a French tailor settled in Spain, and for which the feeble and Afrancesado Christino government dared not give him the satisfaction he justly demanded, and, at the time referred to by Dr Wagner, was Ferik-Pasha in the Turkish service—subsequently to become Imperial minister under the brief rule of the Archduke John. His skill as a chess-player, Dr Wagner informs us, is still more remarkable than his military talent. When in command of the Turkish army in Syria, at the time that Ibrahim Pasha and his Egyptians were about to retreat through the desert, Jochmus, entering Damascus—long a stronghold of chess—challenged the best players in the place to a match, and carried off the victory. From this officer, and from other Europeans of high rank in the Turkish service, Dr Wagner, who loves to speculate on the political future of the East, and on the probable or possible infringements of Russia upon the territories of her weaker neighbours, gathered opinions, valuable although very various, as to the military power of Turkey, and her means of resistance to Muscovite aggression. The Doctor entertains a very high respect for the power of Russia, strikingly illustrated by the recent crisis, when, with one army guarding Poland and another warring in the Caucasus, she was able to lend a third—not far short of two hundred thousand men—to the neighbouring empire, which was on the point of being overturned by an insurgent province. In his second volume he talks ominously of the result of an anticipated conflict between an Anglo-Indian and a Russian army, predicting victory to the latter, even whilst recognising the justice of the high encomiums passed by another German writer on the corps of British officers in India. “An impartial and competent observer and judge of most of the armies of Europe, Leopold von Orlich, who has written a valuable book of travels in India, assures us that that numerous body of officers (eight hundred and twenty staff officers, and five thousand five hundred of inferior rank) has not its equal in the world with respect to military spirit and efficiency, and that he never witnessed in any army so much mutual self-devotion as amongst the officers and soldiers of the British Indian host. Thirst for action, high spirit, self-confidence and practical good sense, are the special characteristics of the English officers.” Than this, nothing can be truer. Dr Wagner proceeds to theorise on the probable defection of the Sepoys, in the event of a Russian army showing itself on our Indian frontier. Theories referring to such remote and improbable contingencies we need hardly be at the pains to combat; and, indeed, were we to take up the argumentative cudgels every time that Dr Wagner’s frequent political digressions hold out temptation so to do, we should get to the end of our paper and have got never a step from Constantinople. Our present object being the general examination of a book of travels, we prefer accompanying the Doctor on board the Austrian steamer Stamboul, bound for Trebizond. Thence his road was by land, south-eastward to Erzroum, travelling with Turkish post-horses—not in a carriage, but in the saddle and with baggage animals—at first through a garden of azaleas and rhododendrons, of geraniums and ranunculuses; afterwards through an Alpine district, over dangerous mountain-paths, unequalled, he declares, for the hazards of the passage, by anything he ever met with in the European Alps. Whilst traversing these bridle-roads, which are often scarcely two feet broad, with precipices of giddy depth now on the right hand and then upon the left, travellers keep their saddles and trust to the good legs, prudence, and experience of their horses. Dr Wagner witnessed more than one accident. A pack-mule fell over a precipice, but escaped with the fright and a few bruises. A Turkish official had a very narrow escape. His horse slipped upon a wet rock, fell, and lay where he fell. The Turk found himself with half his body under the horse, the other half hanging over a gulf which gaped, in frightful profundity, at the edge of the road. “I had passed the dangerous spot,” says the Doctor, “but one minute before him; I heard the fall, looked round, and saw the Turk just below me, in that horrible position. The horse lay with the saddle turned towards the precipice, down which it seemed inevitable that, at the first effort to rise, he and his rider must fall. But the animal’s fine instinct saved both itself and its rider. Snorting, with dilated nostrils and ears erect, the brave horse gazed down into the chasm, but made not the slightest movement. The Turk remained as motionless; he saw the peril and dared not even shout for aid, lest he should scare his horse. The utmost caution was necessary in approaching him. Whilst the Pole and I quickly alighted and descended to his assistance, the Turk’s companions had already got hold of his bridle and coat skirts, and soon horse and man stood in safety upon their six legs.”

The Pole here referred to—John Saremba was his name—accompanied Dr Wagner from Constantinople as a sort of guide or travelling servant, and was his stanch and faithful follower during very long and often dangerous wanderings. He spoke Turkish and Italian, could cook a good pilau, and handled his sabre, upon occasion, with dexterity and effect. The story of his eventful life, which he related to his employer after dinner at Gumysh Haneh, a town between Trebizond and Erzroum, whilst their companions enjoyed the Kef, or Oriental idleness after meat, is unquestionably the most interesting digression of the many in Dr Wagner’s book. Wonderful to relate, Saremba, although a Pole and a refugee, claimed not to be either a count or a colonel. His father had been a glazier in Warsaw, and brought his son up to the same trade. When the Polish revolution broke out, in November 1830, young Saremba entered the service as a volunteer, was present at the battles of Grochow, Praga, Iganie, Ostrolenka, but neither received wounds nor obtained promotion. It is rare to meet a Pole who has not been at least a captain, (the Polish army lists of that period being now out of print.) Saremba admitted that he had never attained even to a corporal’s worsted honours. After the capture of Warsaw, his regiment retreated upon Prussian ground. Their hope was that the Prussian king would permit their passage through his territory, and their emigration to America. This hope was unfulfilled. They were disarmed; for a few weeks they were taken good care of; then they were sent back to Poland, there to be drafted into various Russian regiments, or sent, by troops, to the interior, or to Caucasus. The latter was Saremba’s lot. Incorporated in a Russian regiment of the line, and after many changes of garrison, he found himself stationed at the camp of Manglis, in the neighbourhood of Teflis.

In Saremba’s company there were sixteen Poles besides himself. Seven of them had fought in the revolutionary war; the others were recruits, enlisted since its conclusion. One of the number was married. Their treatment by the Russian officers was something better than that of the other soldiers, Russians by birth. This proceeded from no sympathy with the Polish cause, but from an involuntary feeling of compassion for men superior in breeding and education to the Russian boors, and who were condemned for political offences to the hard life of a private soldier. More dexterous and intelligent than the Russians, the Poles quickly learn their duty, and would monopolise most of the chevrons of non-commissioned officers, had not the colonels of regiments instructions on this head from the Czar, who has little confidence in Polish loyalty. Saremba was tolerably fortunate in his commanding officer; but the latter could not always be at his subaltern’s elbow, and the poor Poles had much to put up with—bad food, frequent beatings, and extra duty, as punishment for imaginary offences. When to these hardships and sufferings was added the constant heimweh—the ardent and passionate longing after home, which has often driven Swiss soldiers, in foreign services, to desertion, and even to suicide—no wonder that every thought of the Poles was fixed upon escape from their worse than Egyptian bondage. There is peculiar and affecting interest in Saremba’s narrative of this portion of his adventures, which Dr Wagner gives in substance, he says, but, as we are disposed to believe, pretty nearly in the Pole’s own words.

“When off duty, we Poles often assembled behind the bushes of the forest that encircles the camp of Manglis; sang, when no Russian was within earshot, our national Polish airs, which we had sung, during the revolution, in the ranks of our national army; spoke of our homes, of days gone by, and of hopes for the future; and often, when we thought of all we had lost, and of our bitter exile in a wild foreign land, we all wept aloud together! Well for us that none of our officers witnessed that. It would have gone hard with us.

“We formed innumerable plans of flight into Turkey, but, lacking any accurate knowledge of the country, we for a long time dared not come to a positive resolution. Meanwhile, we took much trouble to acquire the Tartar tongue, and to extract information from the inhabitants concerning the way to Turkey. One of our comrades helped a Tartar peasant in the neighbourhood of Manglis to cultivate his fields, receiving no payment, in order to make a friend of him, and to question him about the country. The Tartar soon divined his project, and willingly lent himself to facilitate our escape. Flight to Persia would have been easiest; but the Tartar would not hear of that, for he was a Sunnite, and detested the heretic followers of Ali. He advised us to fly to Lasistan, as easier to reach than Turkish Armenia. My comrade was compelled to promise him that, once beyond the Russian frontier, we would adopt Islamism. The Tartar minutely explained to him the bearings of the heavens, taught him the names of all the mountains and rivers we should have to cross, and of the villages in whose vicinity we must cautiously conceal our passage. Should we find ourselves in extreme difficulty or danger, he advised us to appeal to the hospitality and protection of the nearest Mollah, to confide to him our position, and not to forget to assure him of our intention to become good Mussulmans as soon as we were on Turkish territory. After we had quite made up our minds to desert at all risks, we required full three months for preparation. Wretched as was our pay, and scanty and bad our rations, we husbanded both, sold our bread and sought to accustom ourselves to hunger. Some of us were mechanics, and earned a few kopeks daily by work in our leisure hours. I worked as glazier for the Russian officers. Our earnings were cast into a common fund. The summer drew near its end: already the birds of passage assembled and flew away in large flocks over the high mountains of Manglis. We watched their flight with longing and envy. We lacked their wings, their knowledge of the way.

“More than once we faltered in our resolution. Some Russian deserters, who had been captured and brought back to camp by Cossacks, when attempting to desert into Lesghistan, were condemned to run the gauntlet thrice through a thousand men, and we Poles were compelled to assist in flogging the poor wretches almost to death. Deep and painful as was the impression this made upon us, hope and the ardent longing for freedom were yet more powerful. We fixed the day for flight. Only one Pole of our company, who was married to a Cossack’s widow, and had a child by her, detached himself from us and remained behind. With knapsacks packed, and loaded muskets, we met, at nightfall, in the forest. There we all fell upon our knees and prayed aloud to God, and to the blessed Virgin Mary, that they would favour our design, and extend over us their protection. Then we grasped each other’s hands, and swore to defend ourselves to the utmost, and to perish to the last man sooner than submit to be taken back to camp and flogged to death by the Russians.

“We were fourteen men in all. Some had suffered from fever; others were debilitated by bad nourishment. But the burning desire for liberty, and dread of the fate which awaited us in case of failure, gave vigour to our limbs. We marched for thirteen nights without intermission. By day we concealed ourselves in the forests; during the darkness we sometimes risked ourselves in the vicinity of the roads. When the provisions we had in our knapsacks were exhausted, we supported ourselves partly with the berries we found in the woods, and partly with half-raw game. Fortunately, there was no want of deer in the woods. Towards evening we dispersed in quest of them, but ventured to fire at them only when very near, in order not to squander our ammunition and betray our hiding-place to the Cossack piquets. For this latter reason we dared not light a fire at night, preferring to suffer from cold, and to devour the flesh of the slain beasts in a half-raw state.

“After our thirteen nights’ wanderings, we had reached the neighbourhood of the river Arpatschai, but did not rightly know where we were. From the high and barren mountain peaks on which we lay, we beheld, in the far distance, the houses of a large town. We knew not whether it was Russian or Turkish. Without knowledge of the country, without a compass, without intercourse with the inhabitants, whom we anxiously avoided, because we constantly feared discovery and betrayal, we roamed at random in the mountains, ignorant what direction we should take to reach the frontier. Latterly the chase had been unproductive, and we suffered from hunger, as well as from fatigue and severe cold. We saw a herd of wild goats upon the heights, but all our attempts stealthily to approach them were unsuccessful; with extraordinary swiftness they scoured across the fields of snow which covered those lofty mountains, and we lost a whole day in a fruitless pursuit. The sharp mountain air, the toilsome march on foot, increased our hunger. Driven almost to despair, we resolved to run a risk and approach the first village we saw, calling to mind the oath we had taken to defend ourselves to the last drop of our blood, and rather to put each other to death than to fall alive into the hands of the Russians.

“On the upper margin of the forest we discovered the minarets of a Tartar mosque. At dusk we cautiously approached and fell in with two Tartars, cutting bushes. From them we learned that we were about thirty versts from the town of Gumri, where the Russians were building a great fort. The frontier was but a short day’s journey distant, and the long blue line which we had seen from the mountain tops was really the river Arpatschai, whose farther bank is Turkish. We did not conceal from the Tartars our condition and design. The state of our uniforms, all torn by the brambles, and our wild hungry aspect, would hardly have allowed us to be taken for Russian soldiers on service, and they had at once recognised us for what we were. Mindful of the advice of the old Tartar at Manglis, we told them it was our firm resolution to become good Mahometans as soon as we got to Turkey. We adjured them, in the name of Allah and the Prophet, to send us provisions from the village, into which they themselves advised us not to venture. According to their account, there was a Cossack post in the neighbourhood, and the banks of the Arpatschai were, they assured us, so strictly watched by Russian piquets, that there was little hope of our getting across the frontier in that direction.

“At a rapid pace, the Tartars returned to their village. One of our party, well acquainted with the Tartar tongue, followed them, concealing himself behind the bushes, in order to overhear, if possible, their conversation, and to satisfy himself whether they were honest people, in whom we might confide. But the Tartars exchanged not a word upon their way home. In an hour they came to us again, bringing three other men, one of whom wore a white turban. As they passed before some brushwood in which our comrade lay concealed, he heard them in animated conversation. Following them stealthily through the thicket, he caught enough of their discourse to ascertain that they were of different opinions with respect to the line of conduct to be adopted with respect to us. One of them, who, as we subsequently learned, had served at Warsaw in Prince Paskewitch’s Oriental body-guard, would at once have informed the Cossacks of our hiding-place. But the man in the white turban sought to restrain him, and wished first to speak with us.

“The Tartars found us at the appointed place. The White Turban was a Mollah, a fine grey-haired old man with a venerable countenance. To him we frankly confided the history of our sufferings and the object we had in view. After hearing us, he remained for some time buried in thought. To our great surprise one of the Tartars now addressed us in broken Polish, and told us that he had been at Warsaw. At this we were so overjoyed that we were near embracing the man. But the comrade we had sent out to reconnoitre had rejoined us. He seized the Tartar furiously by the beard, upbraided him with the treacherous advice he had given to his countrymen, and threatened to kill him. The old Mollah interfered as peacemaker, and assured us of his assistance and protection, if it were seriously our intention to escape into Turkey and become converts to the creed of Mahomet. We protested that such was our design, although we mentally prayed to our God and to the Virgin to forgive us this necessary lie, for our design was to escape from the Russian hell, but not to become faithless to our holy religion. Before the Mollah departed, he had to swear by his beard and by the Prophet that he would not betray us. We made the others take the same oath. The ex-life-guardsman we proposed keeping as a hostage. But the Mollah begged us not to do so, and to trust to his word, which he pledged for the man’s silence. Above all we wanted provisions. The Tartars had unfortunately come empty-handed. The pangs of hunger almost drove us to accompany them into the village. But the Mollah warned us that we should there find families of Armenian peasants, who would certainly betray us to the Russians. Fluctuating between hope and fear, we saw them depart. The Mollah’s last advice was to be vigilant during the night, since our presence might have been observed by others, who might report it to the Russians.

“Two heavy hours went by. Night had set in, and the stillness was broken only by the occasional howling of the village dogs. As the distance to the village was not great, and as the Mollah had so positively promised to send us food immediately, our suspicions were again aroused, and we mutually reproached each other with having been so foolish as to trust to the oaths of the Tartars and with having suffered them all to depart, instead of keeping the Mollah and the Warsaw man as hostages. Taking our muskets, we stationed ourselves upon the look-out. Our apprehensions were not unfounded. Soon we heard through the darkness the neighing of horses and distant voices. Those of our comrades who were strongest on their legs went out to reconnoitre, and came back with the terrible intelligence that they had plainly distinguished the voices of Russians. Meanwhile the noise of horses’ feet died away; once more all was still as the grave; and even the vigilant dogs seemed sunk in sleep.

“Before the first grey of morning appeared, one of the Tartars whom we had met the day before, in the wood, came to us, with three others whom we had not yet seen. They brought us a great dish of rice, and half a roasted lamb; also bread and fruit. Our presence in the neighbourhood, they said, had been disclosed to the Russians by an Armenian of the village. The Cossack captain had sent for the Mollah and threatened him, but the old man had revealed nothing. The Cossacks did not know our exact hiding-place, and one of the Tartars had led them in a wrong direction. As we were already considered as Mahometans, no Tartar would betray us, unless it were that man who had been in Warsaw, and who was an object of contempt with the people of the village on account of his dissolute and drunken habits.

“Our fierce hunger appeased, our spirits and courage revived, and we decided to continue our march at once. The Tartars advised us not to cross the Arpatschai, which was too closely guarded by the Russian frontier piquets, but to move more northwards, across the mountains of Achalziche, in which direction we should find it far easier to reach Turkish territory. We bade them a grateful farewell. But with the first beam of morning we heard the wild hurra of the Cossacks and saw them in the distance, galloping, accompanied by a number of Tartar horsemen, to cut us off from the valley. We drew back amongst the bushes, and fired a full volley at the nearest group of horsemen, as it tried to force its way into the thicket. Two Cossacks and a Tartar fell, and the rest took to a cowardly flight. We retreated forthwith to the mountain summits whence we had so recently descended, and did not even wait to search the fallen men. Soon a single horseman rode towards us, waving a green branch. We recognised one of the Tartars who had brought us food. He said that the Mollah was at the old place in the wood, and wished to speak with us. We had nothing more to fear from the Cossacks. They took us to be twice as numerous as we really were, had returned to their post and sent to Gumri for reinforcements, which could not arrive before evening. Observing that we harboured mistrust, the man offered to remain as a hostage. I and three of my comrades went to the appointed place. The others remained on the mountain, with the Tartar in custody. The Mollah was really waiting for us, with two of the men who had accompanied him the previous evening. We learned, to our astonishment, that the Tartar whom we had shot was the same old soldier who had been at Warsaw and had spoken Polish to us. We held this to be a judgment of God. For, notwithstanding his oath, the man had betrayed our hiding-place to the Russians, who were already aware of our vicinity. The other villagers had been compelled to mount and follow the Cossacks, but, at the first volley, gladly joined the latter in their flight.”

The Mollah gave the unfortunate Poles directions as to the road, and as to how they should act if they fell into the hands of the Pasha of Kars, who was well disposed towards Russia, and might deliver them up through fear or greed of gain. All that day they toiled over the rude mountain peaks, and next morning they were so lucky as to kill a wild goat; but on those barren heights not a stick of wood was to be found, and they had to eat the flesh raw. After a few hours’ rest they continued their arduous journey. It was bitterly cold, the snow fell in thick flakes, and a cutting wind beat in their faces. Towards evening, guided by a light, they reached the wretched huts of some poor Russian frontier settlers, who were cooking their food over fires of dried cow-dung. From these people they obtained meat and drink, gave them the few kopeks they had left, which they knew would not pass current in Turkey, and departed, their flasks filled with brandy, and bearing with them the best wishes of their poor but hospitable entertainers. Their march next day was through a dense fog, which covered the high ground. They could not see ten paces before them, and risked, at every step, a fall over a precipice. On the other hand, they flattered themselves that they could pass the frontier—there marked by the mountain chain—unseen by the Russian troops. To guard against smuggling and the plague, as well as against military desertion and the flight of the natives into Turkey, the frontier line had latterly been greatly strengthened. But, once on the southern slope of the mountains, the fugitives had been assured, they would meet no more Cossacks and would be on Turkish ground. Accordingly they gave themselves up to unbounded joy at being out of Russia and of danger.

“How great was our horror,” continued Saremba, “when, on descending into the valley, the fog lifted, and we found ourselves close to a post of Cossacks. It was too late to retreat. We marched forward in military order, keeping step as upon parade. The stratagem succeeded. The Cossack sentinel took us for a Russian patrol. We surrounded the house, made prisoners of the sentry and of seven half-drunken Cossacks, and learned from them that in the fog we had missed our way over the frontier. The piquet was thirty men strong, but two and twenty had marched that very day on patrol duty. The report of our flight had been received from Gumri, as well as information that the Cossacks should be reinforced by a detachment of infantry. The sentry had taken us for this expected detachment. We were well pleased with the issue of our adventure. The contents of the Cossacks’ larder revived and strengthened us, and we packed the fragments of the feast in our knapsacks. We also took their horses, and finally, at their own request bound them hand and foot; for, now that they were sober, they trembled for the consequences of having allowed themselves to be surprised and unresistingly overpowered. They anticipated a severe punishment, and consulted together how they should best extenuate their fault. The dense morning fog was a good circumstance to plead, and so was our superiority of numbers, and also the expectation of a Russian infantry piquet from Gumri. But when all was said, the poor fellows were still pretty sure to get the stick. At their request we fastened the door of the piquet-house before marching away with our booty. That afternoon we crossed the mountains, and reached, without further adventure, a Turkish military post.”

The sufferings and disasters of these fourteen hardy Poles were not yet at an end. After their arms had been taken from them, their arrival was reported to the Pasha of Kars, to whom the Russian commandant at Gumri forthwith sent a threatening letter, demanding the bodies of the fugitives. Four days of anxious suspense ensued, during which orderlies rode to and fro, carrying the correspondence between the Pasha and the commandant, and at last the Poles were told that their only chance to avoid being delivered up was instantly to become Mahometans. In this perplexity they accepted the secret offer of the son of a Lasistan bey to aid their flight into the Pashalik of Trebizond. They started in the night with a caravan of armed mountaineers. On the first day they were divided into two parties, which were separated from each other. On the second day, four, out of the six who were with Saremba, disappeared, although they entreated to be left together. Finally, when Saremba awoke upon the third morning, he found himself alone. Thus torn from the true and steadfast friends in whose brave companionship he had faced and surmounted so many perils, his courage deserted him; he wept aloud, and cursed his fate. There was good cause for his grief when he came to know all. The rascally Turk who had facilitated their flight had sold them into slavery. For six months Saremba toiled under a cruel taskmaster, until fever robbed him of his strength; when his owner, Ali Bey, took him to Trebizond, where the Pole had invented the existence of a brother who would pay his ransom. There he obtained the protection of the French consul, was forwarded to Constantinople, married a Greek woman, and managed to eke out an existence. Of the thirteen comrades who had fled with him from Manglis he had never seen or heard anything, and tears fell upon the honest fellow’s weather-beaten moustache as he deplored their probable fate—that of numbers of Polish deserters, who drag out a wretched existence, as slaves to the infidel, in the frontier provinces of Asiatic Turkey.

Dr Wagner found his follower’s narrative so striking, and so illustrative of the characteristics of the inhabitants of the trans-Caucasian frontier, that he at once wrote it down in his journal; and he did quite right, for certainly Saremba’s adventures equal, if they do not exceed, in interest, any of the Doctor’s own.

After Gumysh Haneh, the next town on the road to Erzroum is Baiburt, once noted for its inhabitants’ fanaticism and hatred of all Europeans. Poverty, misery, and the visit of the Russians in 1828, have broken their spirit, and humbled them to the dust. Theirs was the last effort of resistance against Paskewitch, but all their fierce fanaticism did not qualify them to cope with the well-drilled Russian troops. “Is it true,” asked Saremba, with a little irony in his tone, of a white-bearded Turk, in the expression of whose hard and furrowed features something of the old spirit was still plainly to be read—“is it true that the Moskof has come as far as this?” “Geldi!” (he came) was the old man’s laconic but melancholy reply. At Baiburt the traveller has a foretaste of the impoverished, decayed, half-ruined towns which extend thence through the whole of Asiatic Turkey to the Persian frontier, and to whose deplorable condition Erzroum constitutes the sole exception. Journeying south-east from Baiburt to the latter city, the first day’s march brings the traveller, by the usual caravan road, to no regular halting-place for the night. At Baiburt Dr Wagner parted from his Turkish travelling companions, and proceeded with only Saremba and a horse-guide, “a man of most horrible physiognomy, who professed to be a Turk, but whose long distorted visage, great crooked nose, bushy brows, dingy complexion, puffy turban, and ragged clothes, gave him more the look of a Kourd or Yezidee. The fellow spoke a Turkish,” continues the Doctor, “of which I understood nothing, and my servant, although well acquainted with the language of Stamboul, but little. He was very taciturn, and replied to the questions I occasionally put to him by croaking out inarticulate guttural sounds, something between the cry of a screech-owl and the snarl of a jackal. Then he twisted his ugly face so strangely, and grinned and ground his teeth in so hyena-like a fashion, that I was reminded of that horrible Texas Bob, whom Charles Sealsfield, in his Cabin-Book, has so graphically sketched.”

The most unsuspicious and confiding of men, Dr Wagner here remarks, will become mistrustful, and prone to suspect evil, before he has been long a resident or rambler in the East, and will acquire a habit of constant caution and vigilance in a country where all classes, from the Pasha to the horse-keeper, lay themselves out to plunder and overreach Europeans. The Doctor had been for three years wandering in Oriental lands, where he had encountered some perils and innumerable attempts at imposition. He was much upon his guard, and kept a sharp eye upon his hyena-looking guide, especially when the latter, under pretence of conducting him to quarters for the night, struck off from the road, and led him over crag and fell, through rain and darkness, into a wild, cut-throat district, where he every moment expected to be handed over to the gentle mercies of a band of Kourd brigands. Putting a pistol to the fellow’s ugly head, the Doctor swore he would shoot him at the first sign of treachery. The Turk said nothing, but presently—“Here is the village,” he quietly remarked, as he led the drenched travellers round the angle of a mass of rock, whence they perceived the lights of the village of Massat, where Hamilton had passed a night some years previously, and where they soon were comfortably seated by a fire, and supping on a very tolerable pilau; whilst Dr Wagner was fain to atone for his ill-founded suspicions by a double bakshish to his uncouth but trustworthy guide. The next day, the Doctor, whilst riding over the mountains with loaded pistols in his belt, and a double gun across his shoulders, fell over a precipice nearly a hundred feet high. The soil of a narrow ledge, softened by the rain, had given way under his horse’s feet. Man and beast rolled over and over five or six times in the course of the descent. Fortunately there were no rocks in the way—nothing but soft earth. They reached the bottom bruised and bleeding, but without broken bones, and were able to continue their march.

The journey from Erzroum to Persia, through the Alpine district of Armenia, is usually made with a caravan or with post-horses—more rarely in company with a Tartar in the employ of the Turkish government, who rides courier-fashion, changes his horse every four or five leagues, goes at a gallop, never rests for more than an hour, rides many horses to death, and performs the distance from Erzroum to Tabriz (nearly a hundred leagues) in the extraordinarily short time of two days and a half. Dr Wagner had no taste for travelling in such true Tartar fashion. Would he go post? There are no postmasters in Turkey, nor post-horses, nor posting-stables, nor even postilions, properly so called. Posting in the East has nothing in common with European posting. But on presentation of a firman from the Sublime Porte or the Pasha of the province, every town or village is bound to supply the traveller with the needful horses, and with a horse-guide, at moderate charge. The expense is greatly augmented by the necessity of being accompanied by a Turkish cavass. Without such escort the journey from Erzroum to the Persian frontier is unsafe, and, even with it, all danger is not removed; for in the neighbourhood of the Alpine passes of Armenia lurk the lynx-eyed Kourds, watching for prey. Less daring and dangerous than they were, they are still sufficiently audacious. When pursued by the Pashas—who occasionally make expeditions, at the head of bodies of the Nizam soldiery, to chastise them, and to wrench from them their booty—they take refuge upon Persian ground, send a present to the Sardar of Tabriz, and are suffered to pasture their flocks amongst the mountains of Azerbijan, until they again give way to their predatory propensities, and are threatened or pursued by the Persian authorities. Over the rugged summits of the Agri Dagh they then fly to Russian territory, where the gift of a horse to the Cossack officer in command usually procures them tolerance upon the grassy slopes of Ararat. When driven thence, for a repetition of their lawless raids, they have still a last refuge in the high mountains of Kourdistan, where they purchase the protection of a chief, and whose inaccessible fastnesses defy Turkish pursuers.

“Not long before my departure from Erzroum,” says Dr Wagner, “Mr Abbott, the English consul at Teheran, had fallen into the hands of Kourd robbers, and, with his travelling companions, had been stripped to the shirt, inclusively. It was a serio-comic affair. They were attacked near Diadin. Mr Abbott, a man of great personal courage, fired a pistol at the first Kourd who rode at him with his long bamboo lance, and missed—fortunately for him, for had he killed or wounded him, his own life would assuredly have paid the penalty. Two vigorous lance thrusts, which fortunately pierced his burka, not his body, cast the courageous Briton from his horse. His Oriental servants and companions had no portion of his combative spirit, but laid down their arms, terrified by the jackal-like yells and hideous figures of the Kourds. The robbers were tolerably generous, after their manner. They took away horses, baggage, and clothes, stripping their victims stark naked, but they left them their lives. And if Mr Abbott had a taste of lance staves and horse-whip, that was only in requital of the pistol-shot. His Armenian servants, who resisted not, received no injury. Amidst the infernal laughter of the Kourds, the naked travellers set off for the nearest village, where they were scantily provided with clothes by compassionate Armenians. Consul Brant at Teheran made a great noise about this business, and the Pasha had to make compensation. But the Kourds retreated southwards to the high mountains, and there, in inaccessible hiding-places, laughed alike at the British consul’s anger, and at the Turkish Pasha’s threats.”

With such a warning before him, Dr Wagner preferred adopting the safest, and at the same time the most convenient, although the slowest mode of travelling in those regions—namely, per caravan. Almost weekly a commercial caravan starts from Erzroum for Tabriz. It consists of from 300 to 900 horses, laden chiefly with English manufactures, also with Bohemian glass, furs, and cloth from the Leipzig fair, and even with toys from Nuremberg. If the convoy be particularly valuable, the Pasha sends with it a cavass, who rides a head, a horse’s tail at the end of his long lance, as a warning to predatory Kourds not to meddle with that which is under the high protection of the muschir of Erzroum. But the caravan’s own strength is its best protection. There is a man to every three or four horses, armed with a gun, often with sabre and dagger also; and the Armenians, although tame enough in general, will fight fiercely for their goods, or for those intrusted to their care. Of course there is no security against nocturnal theft, at which the Kourds are as skilful as North-American red-skins, or as the Hadjouts of the African Metidja.

A rich Armenian, by name Kara Gos, (Black-eye,) led the caravan to which Dr Wagner annexed himself. Half the 360 horses comprising it were his. A considerable rogue was Kara Gos, who asked the Doctor double the fair price for the use of six horses, a place under the principal tent, and daily rations from his kitchen. When the Doctor pointed out the overcharge, Kara Gos turned away in silence and in dudgeon, and spoke no word to him during the whole journey. Dr Wagner made his bargain with another Armenian, one Karapet Bedochil, and the journey was prosperously accomplished in twenty-seven days from Erzroum to Tabriz. This was rather slow work—scarcely twelve miles a-day on an average; but Dr Wagner was well pleased to have leisure during the long hours of repose—rendered necessary by hot weather and scanty pasturage—to pursue his geological researches, to go shooting, and to collect rare insects and beautiful Alpine plants. He took interest, also, in observing the habits and intelligence of the horses of the caravan. These were as disciplined as any Russian soldiers, and understood their duty almost as well as their human masters. When, at two in the morning, the Karivan-Baschi gave the signal to march, they responded by a general neighing, snorting, and tinkling of the bells hung to their necks. Notwithstanding the thick darkness, every horse found his right place, his owner, and his groom, and stood motionless till pack-saddle and bales were placed upon his back. The load duly balanced, he instantly started off of his own accord. The march was in file, two abreast. The oldest and most experienced horse took the lead, seemingly proud of the distinction, and displaying an instinct almost amounting to reason. No danger was there of his going astray, or shying at some oddly-shaped rock, dimly seen through the twilight, or at a corpse upon the road, or even at the passage of camels, to which horses have a special antipathy. If stream or torrent barred the way, he halted, unbidden, until the nearest horseman had sought out a ford, and then calmly entered the water, his example giving confidence to his followers. These caravan horses love society, soon attach themselves to their companions, whether biped or quadruped, but are very inhospitable, and do not easily admit strange horses to their company. They dislike separation from the caravan, just as cavalry chargers often object to leave the ranks. Karapet Bedochil gave up his best and youngest horse to Dr Wagner for the journey. This was a well-shaped brown mare, of excellent paces, and easy to govern, so long as her habits were respected. But it took some time to accustom her to quit the caravan, and carry Dr Wagner on his rambles off the road.

“To ride in the rank and file of a caravan,” says the Doctor, “is wearisome enough. When morning dawned, and the first sunbeams illumined the green Alpine plateau, I loved to ride up some rising ground by the wayside, to contemplate the landscape, and to enjoy the picturesque aspect of the Kourd camps, and of the long-line of the caravan. My horse did not share my enjoyment. Much spurring did it cost me to habituate him to even a few minutes’ separation from his friends. Love of society, and aversion to solitude, are amongst the most striking and affecting characteristics of these animals. At times I remained behind the caravan, when I found an interesting spot, where the geological formation or the mountain vegetation invited to examination and collection. My horse, well secured near at hand, kept his gaze immovably fixed upon the vanishing caravan. When the last straggler had disappeared, he still pricked up his ears so long as he could hear the bells. When these were no longer audible, he drooped his head, and looked inquiringly and reproachfully at his botanising rider. If it cost me trouble to detach him from the caravan, he needed no urging to rejoin it. Suddenly displaying the fire of the Oriental courser, he galloped with winged swiftness, till the bells were once more heard, and broke into loud and joyous neighings on again joining his friends.”

The gregarious and sociable propensities of Armenian horses are a great obstacle to the designs of the Kourd thieves, who at nightfall prowl around the camp. To lessen the difficulty they come mounted upon stolen caravan horses, which they train to the work. A noose is flung round the neck of a grazing horse, and whilst one thief pulls the animal along, another drives it with a whip. The Armenian horse-keepers fire their guns to give the alarm, and mount their best horses to pursue the marauders. If they overtake them, they at first endeavour to obtain restitution by fair words or by threats. Only at the last extremity do they use their firearms, for they have a not unfounded fear of Kourd vengeance for bloodshed.

Less dreaded, and far less frequent than these depredations, are attacks upon caravans by wolves. These occur scarcely once in ten years, and then only in very severe winters, when long frosts keep the flocks from the pastures. Under such circumstances, the wolves, spurred by extreme hunger, sometimes overcome their natural cowardice, and make a dash at a caravan, breaking suddenly into the column on the march, pulling down horses, and tearing them in pieces, before there is time to drive them away with bullets. But these cases are of extremely rare occurrence. It more often happens that, in summer, a single wolf will sneak down upon the grazing caravan horses, whose instinct, however, soon detects his approach. They form a circle, heads inwards and heels out, and if the wolf does not succeed, at a first spring, in fixing upon one of their throats, his best plan is to decamp, before he gets shot. The attacks of these wolves are always nocturnal. From other beasts of prey the caravans between Erzroum and Tabriz have nothing to fear. The jackals are weak and timid, and content themselves with dead horses; and bears are few in number, and confine their feeding to sheep and goats. Southwards from Tabriz to Teheran, and thence to Ispahan, the danger increases. Kourds are replaced by Turkomans; wolves by panthers and tigers. But even from these, so far as Dr Wagner could gather from repeated conversations with caravan leaders, the peril is trifling, except far south, towards Shiraz, or eastwards in the deserts of Khorassan, where tigers are more numerous and aggressive.

Of other animals accustomed to follow caravans, the Doctor particularly mentions ravens and carrion birds, which in winter consume the excrement, in summer the carcasses, of horses. In Armenia and Persia, he recognised an old friend whom he had often seen hovering over the expeditionary column which he had accompanied to Constantina. The white-headed vulture (Vultur fulvus) floated in the air at a prodigious height above the caravan, and as often as a horse fell dead, dozens of the loathsome birds lowered their powerful pinions, and sank plumb-down upon the carrion. The beasts of the caravan, even the dogs, were pretty good friends with these obscene creatures; or at least, from the force of habit, usually endured their proximity. Dr Wagner speculates on the possibility of some eccentric sympathy between the horse and his future coffin. He often saw the little carrion kite (Cathartes percnopterus,) when it had gorged itself with the flesh of some dead animal, settle down, its feathers all puffed out, upon a horse’s back, there to digest its copious meal—a process which the horse, by his immobility, seemed studiously to avoid disturbing. Grouped together in the great heat, from which they sought to shelter their heads under their neighbours’ bellies, the horses stood, each one with his plumed and impure rider. “Sometimes,” says the Doctor, “I saw ravens sitting in the same confidential manner upon the backs of horses and dromedaries. In North Africa I observed similar intimacy between kites and cows, ravens and swine. Dr Knoblecher relates that in the Nile districts of Central Africa he often saw waterfowl, particularly herons and ibises, sit upon the backs of elephants. Only to one kind of animal has the Armenian caravan-horse a natural hatred and strong aversion—namely, to the camel, who, on his side, detests the horse. Even in caravans composed of both kinds of beasts, long accustomed to each other’s presence, this antipathy endures. Horses and camels, if left in any degree to their own free will, go separately to pasture. Long habit of being together restrains them from hostile outbreaks, but I never witnessed, during the whole period of my Oriental travels, an example of even a tolerably good understanding between them.”

On the 20th of June—so cold a morning, that, in spite of cloak and mackintosh, Dr Wagner was half-frozen—the caravan reached the Kourd village of Yendek, and encamped in a narrow valley, the mountains around which had been reckoned, a few years previously, amongst the most unsafe in Kourdistan, a caravan seldom passing unassailed. Towards evening a Kourd chief came into camp. “He wore no beard, but thick and long moustaches—as formerly the Janissaries—a huge turban, a short burka, very wide trousers. He had his horse shod by one of our Armenians, took a fancy to Karapet-Bedochil’s pocket-knife, and asked him for it as a keepsake. He did not pay for the shoeing, and rode off, with small thanks, amidst the courteous greetings of all the Armenians—even of our haughty Karivan-Baschi. I afterwards laughingly asked the Kadertshi why he had not demanded payment from the Kourd for the shoes and his work. ‘Laugh away!’ was his reply; ‘if ever you meet that fellow alone, you won’t be quite so merry.’ The Kourd, who was armed with pistols, gun, and sabre, certainly looked the very model of a captain of banditti.”

Before reaching Persian territory, where the risk from robbers diminishes, some pack-horses were cleverly stolen by the Kourds; and two men, who were sent, well mounted, to overtake the thieves and negotiate for the restoration of the property, returned to camp despoiled of clothes and steeds. Ultimately, the Pasha of Erzroum extorted the bales from the Kourds, who are too prudent to drive things to extremities. But, for the time, Kara Gos had to pursue his journey minus his merchandise, and greatly cast down at the loss, which he merited for his griping effrontery, and for the poltroonery with which, a few days before, he had deviated from his direct road on the rude demand of some Kourds, who sought to pick a quarrel with him—a sort of wolf-and-lamb business—for riding through their pastures. He forgot his loss, however, when reckoning at Tabriz the full sack of sounding gold tomauns received for carriage of goods; and in the joy of his heart he even condescended to speak to Dr Wagner, and to extend to him his forgiveness for having refused to be imposed upon, so that they parted in amity at last.

Tabriz, in size the second, in population the first city of the Persian empire, was the limit of Dr Wagner’s travels in an easterly direction. Thence he made excursions; and finally, turning his steps southwards, made the circuit of that extremity of Lake Urumia, and so got back to Bayasid in Turkish Armenia; so that he visited, in fact, but a nook of Persia—including, however, one of its most important cities and some rarely-explored districts. His first visit at Tabriz was to Mr Bonham, the English consul-general, with whom he found a Maltese physician, Dr Cassolani—then the only European medical man resident in the place—who offered him, in the kindest manner, an apartment in his house. Here Dr Wagner interpolates a gentle stricture on British hospitality in Asia. Mr Bonham, he says, “was certainly also very obliging, but seemed less hospitable; and although he had a very roomy house and a very small family, he, like his colleague, Mr Brant at Erzroum, was not fond of putting himself out of his way. I confess that I have not formed the most favourable opinion of English hospitality in the East. My letters from Lord Aberdeen and Sir Stratford Canning had not the effect which might have been reasonably expected from the high position of those statesmen. In Russian Asia, less exalted recommendations generally procured me a friendly and truly hospitable reception. On better acquaintance, and after repeated interviews, the dry, thoroughly English reserve and formal manner gave way, in Mr Bonham, to a certain degree of amiability. He took a particularly warm interest in my communications from the Caucasus, and gave me in return valuable information concerning Persian matters. Mr Bonham was married to a niece of Sir Robert Peel’s, a beautiful, amiable, and accomplished lady.”

In Dr Cassolani’s house Dr Wagner made the acquaintance of a great number of Persians, who besieged the learned hekim for advice, and he thus had excellent opportunities of noting the peculiarities of Persian character, manners, and morals. But the most favourable place for the pursuit of such studies, on a large scale, he found to be the Tabriz bazaar, which is composed of a number of bazaars, or spacious halls full of shops. Thither daily repaired Dr Wagner, escorted by one of Dr Cassolani’s Persian servants, a fellow of herculean proportions, whose duty it was to open a passage through the curious crowd which at first thronged round the European. Here were displayed prodigious masses of merchandise, chiefly English, only the coarser kinds of goods coming from Germany and Russia, glass from Austria, amber from Constantinople. Here were children’s watches from Nuremberg, with a locomotive on the dial, and the inscription, “Railway from Nuremberg to Furth;” lithographed likenesses of the Shah of Persia, taken and printed in Germany; snuff-boxes from Astrakan, with the Emperor Nicholas’s portrait; and portraits of Benkendorf, Paskewitch, Neidhard, and other Russian generals distinguished in recent wars. There were shawls and carpets from Hindostan, and sabre-blades, of wonderful temper and finish, from Shiraz. Of these latter Dr Wagner saw some, adorned with beautiful arabesque designs in gold, and inscribed with passages from the Koran, whose price was two hundred tomauns, or Persian ducats. Made of strips of metal, hammered together cold, these excellent blades are the result of prodigious labour, much time, and great skill. The chief value of such weapons is usually in the steel, for the hilt and mounting must be unusually rich to exceed the cost of the blade itself. Hitherto the armourers of Tabriz, Teheran, and Ispahan have vainly endeavoured to rival those of Shiraz.

Dr Wagner soon found himself at home in the European circle at Tabriz, which consists chiefly of the members of the Russian and English consulates, and of the managers of four Greek commercial houses, branches of Constantinople establishments. The English consul-general, as already hinted, lived rather retired, gave a dinner or two each half-year to the Europeans, and took but small share in the pleasures and amusements after which most of them eagerly ran. An old Greek gentleman, named Morfopulo, was the great Lucullus and Amphitryon of the place. Introduced to him by his Maltese friend, Dr Wagner was at once cordially invited to a dinner, which gave him the first idea of the sumptuous manner of living of Europeans in Tabriz. Nothing was spared; Oriental delicacies were embalmed and ennobled by the refinements of Western art. There were fish from the Caspian, game from the forests of Ghilan, grapes and mulberries from Azerbijan, the most exquisite pasties, and the cream of the vineyards of Champagne cooling in abundant ice. The guests were as motley, the talk as various, as the viands. From East to West, from Ispahan to Paris, the conversation rolled. The Russian Consul-general sketched the Persian court at Teheran; Dr Cassolani gave verbal extracts from his life and experience at Erzroum and Tabriz; an Italian quack, who had just arrived, and who had long led a roving existence in Asiatic Turkey—professing alternately to discover gold mines, and to heal all maladies by an infallible elixir—related his adventures amongst the Kourds; whilst a young Greek diplomatist, named Mavrocordato—a relation of the statesman of that name—just transferred, to his no small regret, from Paris to Tabriz, was eloquent concerning the balls, beauties, and delights of the French capital.

The domestic arrangements of the European residents in Tabriz are peculiar, and may possibly account for the limited nature of the intercourse maintained with them by the gentleman who filled the post of British consul-general at the time of Dr Wagner’s visit. Some of the managers of the Greek houses—few of whom remain more than half-a-dozen years, which time, owing to the profitable nature of the trade, and especially of the smuggling traffic with the trans-Caucasian provinces of Russia, usually suffices to make their fortunes—were married, but had left their wives in Constantinople. Most of them, as well as the members of the Russian consulate-general, were bachelors. All, however, whether married or single, had conformed to the custom of the place, by contracting limited matrimony with Nestorian women. This Christian sect, numerous in Azerbijan, entertains a strong partiality for Europeans, and has no scruple, either moral or religious, in marrying its daughters to them for a fixed term of years, and in consideration of a stipulated sum. There is great competition for a new-comer from Europe, especially if he be rich. The queer contract is known in Tabriz as matrimonio alla carta. Very often the whole of the lady’s family take up their abode in the house of the temporary husband, and live at his charges; and this is indeed often a condition of the bargain. The usage is of such long standing amongst Europeans in Persia, and especially in that particular province, that it there scandalises no one. Every European has a part of his house set aside for the women, and calls it his harem: the ladies preserve their Persian garb and manner of life, cover their faces before strangers and in the streets, frequent the bath, and pass their time in dressing themselves, just like the Mahomedan Persians. Handsome, but totally uneducated and unintellectual, they make faithful wives and tender mothers, but poor companions. When the term stipulated in the contract expires, and if it be not renewed, they find no difficulty in contracting permanent marriages with their own countrymen; the less so, that, in such cases, they take a dowry with them, whereas, in general, the Nestorian has to purchase his wife from her parents. The children of the European marriage almost always remain in possession of the mother; and Dr Wagner was assured that she testifies even stronger affection for them than for those of her second and more regular marriage; whilst the stepfather rarely neglects his duty towards them. “Still more remarkable is it,” continues the Doctor, “that the European fathers, when recalled to their own country, abandon their children, without, as it would seem, the slightest scruple of conscience, to a most uncertain fate, and trouble themselves no further concerning them. But a single instance is known to me, when a wealthy European took one of his children away with him. Even in the case of men otherwise of high character and principle, a prolonged residence in the East seems very apt gradually to stifle the voice of nature, of honour, and of conscience.”

Dismissing, with this reflection, the consideration of European society and habits in Persia, Dr Wagner turns his attention to the natives, and to an examination of the curious incidents and vicissitudes of modern Persian history, to which he allots an interesting chapter—based partly on his many conversations with British and Russian diplomatic agents, with French officers who had served in Persia, and with French and American missionaries, partly on the works of various English travellers—and then commences his wanderings and explorations in the mountains of Sahant, and along the shores of Lake Urumiah. In these and other investigations, occupying his second volume, the length to which our notice of his first has insensibly extended forbids our accompanying him, at least for the present. Judging from the great number of books relating to Western Asia that have of late years been published in this country—many of them with marked success—the number of readers who take an interest in that region must be very considerable. By such of them as read German, Dr Wagner’s series of six volumes will be prized as a mine of entertainment and information.

PART II.—CHAPTER VIII.

“Leddy Kilbrachmont! Weel, John, my man, she might have done waur—muckle waur; but I seena very weel how she could have bettered hersel. A young, wiselike, gallant-looking lad, and a very decent lairdship—anither thing frae a doited auld man.”

“Weel, wife,” said John Stewart, ruefully scratching his head—“weel, I say naething against it in itsel; but will ye tell me what I’m to say to the Beelye?”

“Ay, John, that will I,” returned the house-mother. “Tell him to take his daughter’s bairn out of its cradle, puir wee totum, and ask himsel what he has to do wi’ a young wife—a young wife! and a bonnie lass like our Isabell! Man, John, to think, wi’ that muckle body o’ yours, that you should have sae little heart! Nae wonder ye need muckle coats and plaids about ye, you men! for ne’er a spark o’ light is in the hearts of ye, to keep ye warm within.”

“Weel, weel, Isabell; the mair cause ye should gie me a guid dram to keep the chill out,” said the miller; “and ye’ll just mind ye were airt and pairt, and thought mair of the Beelye’s bien dwellin’ and braw family than ever I did; but it’s aye your way—ye put a’ the blame, when there is blame, on me.”

“Haud your peace, guidman,” said Mrs Stewart. “Whiles I am drawn away wi’ your reasonings against my ain judgment, as happens to folk owre easy in their temper, whether they will or no—I’ll no deny that; but nae man can say I ever set my face to onything that would have broken the heart of a bairn of mine. Take your dram, and gang away with your worldly thoughts to your worldly business, John Stewart; if it wasna for you, I’m sure ne’er a thought of pelf would enter my head.”

“Eh, guidwife!” It was all that the miller’s astonishment could utter. He was put down. With humility he took the dram, and softly setting his glass on the table, went out like a lamb, to the mill.

“Leddy Kilbrachmont! and Janet, the glaikit gilpie, taking up with a common man!” said Mrs Stewart, unconsciously pushing aside the pretty wheel, the offering of the “wright” in Arncreoch. “Weel, but what maun I do? If Isabell gangs hame to her ain house, and Janet—Janet’s a guid worker—far mair use about a house like ours than such a genty thing as Bell—Janet married, too—what’s to come o’ me? I’ll hae to bring hame Katie frae the Castle.”

“Muckle guid ye’ll get of Katie, mother,” said Janet, who, just then coming in from the garden, with an armful of cold, curly, brilliant greens, had heard her mother’s soliloquy. “If ye yokit her to the wheel like a powny, she wadna spin the yarn for Isabell’s providing in half-a-dozen years; and no a mortal turn besides could Katie do in a house, if ye gied her a’ the land between this and Kellie Law.”

“And wha asked your counsel?” said the absolute sovereign of Kellie Mill. “If I’m no sair trysted wi’ my family, there never was a woman: first, your faither—and muckle he kens about the rule o’ a household; and syne you, ye taupie—as if Isabell’s providing was yet to spin! To spin, said she? and it lying safe in the oak press up the stair, since ever Bell was a wee smout of a bairn. And yours too, though ye dinna deserve it;—ay, and little Katie’s as weel, as the bonnie grass on the burnside could have tellt ye twal year ago, when it was white wi’ yarn a’ the simmer through, spun on a purpose-like wheel—a thing fit for a woman’s wark—no a toy for a bit bairn. Gae way wi’ you and your vanities. I would just like to see, wi’ a’ your upsetting, ony ane o’ ye bring up a family as creditable as your mother!”

Janet stole in to the table at the further window, and, without a word, began to prepare her greens, which were immediately to be added to the other contents of the great pot, which, suspended by the crook, bubbled and boiled over the fire; for the moods of the house-mother were pretty well known in her dominions, and no one dared to lift up the voice of rebellion.

After an interval of silence, Mrs Stewart proceeded to her own room, and in a short time reappeared, hooded and plaided, testifying with those echoing steps of hers, to all concerned, that she had again put on her high-heeled gala shoes. Isabell was now in the kitchen, quietly going about her share of the household labour, and doing it with a subdued graceful gladness which touched the mother’s heart.

“I’m gaun up to Kellie, Bell, my woman,” said Mrs Stewart. “I wouldna say but we may need Katie at hame; onyway, I’ll gang up to the Castle, and see what they say about it. It’s time she had a while at hame to learn something purpose-like, or it’s my fear she’ll be fit for naething but to hang on about Lady Anne; and nae bairn o’ mine shall do that wi’ my will. Ye’ll set Merran to the muckle wheel, Isabell, as soon as she’s in frae the field; and get that cuttie Janet to do some creditable work. If I catch her out o’ the house when I come hame, it’ll be the waur for hersel.”

“So ye’re aye biding on at the Castle, Bauby,” said Mrs Stewart, as, her long walk over, she rested in the housekeeper’s room, and greeted, with a mixture of familiarity and condescension, the powerful Bauby, who had so long been the faithful friend and attendant of little Katie Stewart. “Ye’re biding on? I thought you were sure to gang with Lady Betty; and vexed I was to think of ye gaun away, that my bairn liket sae weel.”

“I’ll never lee, Mrs Stewart,” said Bauby, confidentially. “If it hadna just been Katie Stewart’s sel, and a thought of Lady Anne, puir thing, left her lee lane in the house, I would as soon have gaen out to the May to live, as bidden still in Kellie Castle. But someway they have grippit my heart atween them—I couldna leave the bairns.”

“Aweel, Bauby, it was kind in ye,” said the miller’s wife; “but I’m in no manner sure that I winna take Katie away.”

“Take Katie away—eh, Mrs Stewart!” And Bauby lifted up her great hands in appeal.

“Ye see her sister Isabell is to be married soon,” said the important mother, rising and smoothing down her skirts. “And now I’m rested, Bauby, I’ll thank ye to take me to Lady Anne’s room.”

The fire burned brightly in the west room, glowing in the dark polished walls, and brightening with its warm flush the clouded daylight which shone through the high window. Again on her high chair, with her shoulders fixed, so that she cannot stoop, Lady Anne sits at her embroidery frame, at some distance from the window, where the slanting light falls full upon her work, patiently and painfully working those dim roses into the canvass which already bears the blossoms of many a laborious hour. Poor Lady Anne! People, all her life, have been doing their duty to her—training her into propriety—into noiseless decorum and high-bred manners. She has read the Spectator to improve her mind—has worked embroidery because it was her duty; and sits resignedly in this steel fixture now, because she feels it a duty too—a duty to the world at large that Lady Anne Erskine should have no curve in her shoulders—no stoop in her tall aristocratic figure. But, in spite of all this, though they make her stiff, and pale, and silent, none of these cares have at all tarnished the gentle lustre of Lady Anne’s good heart; for, to tell truth, embroidery, and prejudices, and steel-collars, though they cramp both body and mind a little, by no means have a bad effect—or, at least, by no means so bad an effect as people ascribe to them in these days—upon the heart; and there lived many a true lady then—lives many a true lady now—to whom devout thoughts have come in those dim hours, and fair fancies budded and blossomed in the silence. It was very true that Lady Anne sat there immovable, holding her head with conscientious firmness, as she had been trained to hold it, and moving her long fingers noiselessly as her needle went out and in through the canvass before her—very true that she thought she was doing her duty, and accomplishing her natural lot; but not any less true, notwithstanding, that the heart which beat softly against her breast was pure and gentle as the summer air, and, like it, touched into quiet brightness by the light from heaven.

Near her, carelessly bending forward from a lower chair, and leaning her whole weight on another embroidery frame, sits Katie Stewart, labouring with a hundred wiles to draw Lady Anne’s attention from her work. One of little Katie’s round white shoulders is gleaming out of her dress, and she is not in the least erect, but bends her head down between her hands, and pushes back the rich golden hair which falls in shining, half-curled tresses over her fingers, and laughs, and pouts, and calls to Lady Anne; but Lady Anne only answers quietly, and goes on with her work—for it is right and needful to work so many hours, and Lady Anne is doing her duty.

But not so Katie Stewart: her needle lies idle on the canvass; her silk hangs over her arm, getting soiled and dim; and Lady Anne blushes to remember how long it is since her wayward favourite began that group of flowers.

For Katie feels no duty—no responsibility in the matter; and having worked a whole dreary hour, and accomplished a whole leaf, inclines to be idle now, and would fain make her companion idle too. But the conscientious Lady Anne shakes her head, and labours on; so Katie, leaning still further over the frame, and still more entirely disregarding her shoulders and deportment, tosses back the overshadowing curls again, and with her cheeks supported in the curved palms of her hands, and her fingers keeping back the hair from her brow, lifts up her voice and sings—

Sweet, clear, and full is little Katie’s voice, and she leans forward, with her bright eyes dwelling kindly on Lady Anne’s face, while, with affectionate pleasure, the good Lady Anne sits still, and works, and listens—the sweet child’s voice, in which there is still scarcely a graver modulation to tell of the coming woman, echoing into the generous gentle heart which scarcely all its life has had a selfish thought to interrupt the simple beautiful admiration of its unenvious love.

“Katie, ye little cuttie!” exclaimed the horror-stricken mother, looking in at the door.

Katie started; but it was only with privileged boldness to look up smilingly into her mother’s face, as she finished the last verse of her song.

“Eh, Lady Anne, what can I say to you?” said Mrs Stewart, coming forward with indignant energetic haste; “or what will your ladyship say to that forward monkey? Katie, have I no admonished ye to get the manners of a serving lassie at your peril, however grand the folk were ye saw; but, nevertheless, to gie honour where honour is due, as it’s commanded. I think shame to look ye in the face, Lady Anne, after hearing a bairn of mine use such a freedom.”

“But you have no need, Mrs Stewart,” said Lady Anne, “for Katie is at home.”

There was the slightest possible tone of authority in the words, gentle as they were; and Mrs Stewart felt herself put down.

“Weel, your ladyship kens best; but I came to speak about Katie, Lady Anne. I’m thinking I’ll need to bring her hame.”

Mrs Stewart had her revenge. Lady Anne’s quiet face grew red and troubled, and she struggled to loose herself from her bondage, and turn round to face the threatening visitor.

“To take Katie home?—away from me? Oh, Mrs Stewart, dinna!” said Lady Anne, forgetting that she was no longer a child.

“Ye see, my lady, our Isabell is to be married. The young man is Philip Landale of Kilbrachmont. Ye may have heard tell of him even in the Castle;—a lad with a guid house and plenty substance to take hame a wife to; and a guid wife he’ll get to them, though maybe I shouldna say it. And so you see, Lady Anne, I’ll be left with only Janet at hame.”

“But, Mrs Stewart, Katie has not been accustomed to it; she could not do you any good,” said the eager, injudicious Lady Anne.

“The very words, my lady—the very thing I said to our guidman and the bairns at hame. ‘It’s time,’ says I, ‘that Katie was learnin’ something fit for her natural place and lot. What kind of a wife will she ever make to a puir man, coming straight out of Kellie Castle, and Lady Anne’s very cha’mer?’ No that I’m meaning it’s needful that she should get a puir man, Lady Anne; but a bien man in the parish is no like ane of your grand lords and earls; and if Katie does as weel as her mother before her, she’ll hae a better portion than she deserves.”

Indignantly Katie tossed her curls from her forehead, bent her little flushed face over the frame, and began to ply her needle as if for a wager.

“But, Mrs Stewart,” urged Lady Anne, “Katie’s birthday is not till May, and she’s only fifteen then. Never mind the man—there’s plenty time; but as long as we’re at Kellie, and not far away from you, Mrs Stewart, why should not Katie live all her life with me?”

“It wouldna be right, my lady. In the first place, you’ll no be aye at Kellie; you’ll get folk you like better than Katie Stewart; and Katie must depend on naebody’s will and pleasure. I’ll have it said of nae bairn of mine that she sorned on a stranger. Na, she must come hame.”

Lady Anne’s eyes filled with tears. The little proud belligerent mother stood triumphant and imperious before the fire. The petulant wilful favourite pouted over her frame; and Lady Anne looked from one to the other with overflowing eyes.

“My sister Betty’s away, and my sister Janet’s away,” said Anne Erskine sadly; “I’ve nobody but Katie now. If you take Katie away, Mrs Stewart, I’ll break my heart.”

Little Katie put away her frame without saying a word, and coming silently to the side of the high chair, knelt down, and looked earnestly into Lady Anne’s drooping face. There was some wonder in the look—a little awe—and then she laid down her soft cheek upon that hand of Lady Anne’s, on which already some tears had fallen, and taking the other hand into her own, continued to look up with a strange, grave, sudden apprehension of the love which had been lavished on her so long. Anne Erskine’s tears fell softly on the earnest uplooking face, and Mrs Stewart’s heart was melted.

“Weel, Lady Anne, it’s no my nature to do a hard thing to onybody. Keep the cuttie; I’ll no seek her as lang as I can do without her. I gie ye my word.”

CHAPTER IX.

The west room is in no respect changed, though three years have passed since we saw it last. In the middle of the room stands a great open chest, already half full of carefully packed dresses. This square flat parcel, sewed up in a linen cover, which Katie Stewart holds in her arms as if she could with all her heart throw it out of the window, instead of depositing it reverently in the chest, is Lady Anne’s embroidery; and Lady Anne herself is collecting stray silks and needle-books into a great satin bag. They are preparing for a journey.

Lady Anne Erskine is twenty—very tall, very erect, and with a most exceptionable carriage. From her placid quiet brow the hair is combed up, leaving not so much as one curl to shelter or shadow a cheek which is very soft and pale indeed, but which no one could call beautiful, or even comely. On her thin arms she wears long black gloves which do not quite reach the elbow, but leave a part of the arm visible under the lace ruffles which terminate her sleeves; and her dress is of dark rustling silk, rich and heavy, though not so spotless and youthful as it once was. Her little apron is black, and frilled with lace; and from its pocket peeps the corner of a bright silken huswife; for Lady Anne is no less industrious now than when she was a girl.

Ah, saucy Katie Stewart! Eighteen years old, and still no change in you! No gloves on the round arms which clasp that covered-up embroidery—no huswife, but a printed broadsheet ballad, the floating light literature of the place and time, in the pocket of your apron—no propriety in your free rebel shoulders. And people say there is not such another pair of merry eyes in sight of Kellie Law.

The golden hair is imprisoned now, but not so closely as Lady Anne’s, for some little curls steal lovingly down at the side, and the fashion of combing it up clears the open white forehead, which, in itself, is not very high, but just in proportion to the other features of the face. Only a little taller is the round active figure—a very little. No one is quite sensible, indeed, that Katie has made any advance in stature at all, except herself; and even herself scarcely hopes, now in the maturity of eighteen, to attain another half inch.

But the little girlish spirit has been growing in those quiet years. It was Spring with her, when Katie saw the tears of Anne Erskine for her threatened removal, and her eyes were opened then in some degree to an appreciation of her beautiful lot. How it was that people loved her, followed her with watchful, solicitous affection—her, simple little Katie Stewart—the consciousness brought a strange thrill into her heart. One may grow vain with much admiration, but much love teaches humility. She wondered at it in her secret heart—smiled over it with tears—and it softened and curbed her, indulged and wilful though she was.

But all this time, in supreme contempt Katie held the rural homage which began to be paid to her. Simple and playful as a child in Kellie, Katie at home, when a young farmer, or sailor, or prosperous country tradesman, or all of them together, as happened not unfrequently, hung shyly about the fire in the Anstruther Milton, to which the family had now removed, watching for opportunities to recommend themselves, was as stately and dignified as any Lady Erskine of them all. For Katie had made up her mind. Still, “a grand gentleman,” handsome, courtly, and accomplished, with titles and honours, wealth and birth, wandered about, a gleaming splendid shadow, through the castles she built every day. To gain some rich and noble wooer, of whatever kind proved attainable, was by no means Katie’s ambition. It was a superb imagination, which walked by her side in her dreams, naturally clothed with the grandeur which was his due; for Katie’s mind was not very greatly developed yet—her graver powers—and the purple of nobility and rank draped her grand figure with natural simplicity—a guileless ideal.

“Is Lady Betty’s house a grand place, Lady Anne?” asked Katie, as she placed the embroidery in the chest.

“It’s in the High Street,” said Lady Anne, with some pride; “not far from the Parliament House, Katie; but it’s not like Kellie, you know; and you that have never been in a town, may think it close, and not like a noble house to be in a street; but the High Street and the Canongate are grand streets; and the house is very fine too—only Betty is alone.”

“Lord Colville’s at the sea—he’s always at the sea—and it’s dreary for Betty to be left alone; but when she sees us, Katie, she’ll think she’s at Kellie again.”

“And would she be glad to think that, I wonder?” said Katie, half under her breath.

But Lady Anne did not answer, for the good Lady Anne was making no speculations at the moment about happiness in the abstract, and so did not properly apprehend the question of her little friend.

The sound of a loud step hastening up stairs startled them. Onward it came thumping through the gallery, and a breathless voice bore it company, singing after a very strange fashion. Voice and step were both undoubtedly Bauby Rodger’s, and the gallery creaked under the one, and the song came forth in gasps from the other, making itself articulate in a stormy gust as she approached the door.

“Bauby!” exclaimed Lady Anne with dignity, as her giant handmaiden threw open the door—“Bauby, you have forgotten yourself. Is that a way to enter a room where I am?”

“Your pardon, my lady—I beg your pardon—I canna help it. Eh, Lady Anne! Eh, Miss Katie! ‘Little wat ye wha’s coming; prince and lord and a’s coming.’ There’s ane in the court—ane frae the North, wi’ the news of a’ the victories!”

“It’s the Prince just, blessin’s on his bonnie face!—they say he’s the gallantest gentleman that ever was seen—making a’ the road frae the Hielands just ae great conquish. The man says there’s thousands o’ the clans after him—a grand army, beginning wi’ the regular sodgers in their uniform, and ending wi’ the braw tartans—or ending wi’ the clouds mair like, for what twa e’en could see the end of them marching, and them thousands aboon thousands; and white cockauds on ilka bonnet of them. Eh, my leddy! I could greet—I could dance—I could sing—

“Hush, Bauby, hush,” said Lady Anne, drawing herself up with a consciousness of indecorum; but her pale cheek flushed, and her face grew animated. She could not pretend to indifference.

“Ye had best get a sword and a gun, and a white cockade yoursel. You’re big enough, Bauby,” said the anti-Jacobite Katie; “for your grand Chevalier will need a’ his friends yet. Maybe if you’re no feared, but keep up with a’ thae wild Hielandmen, he’ll make you a knight, Bauby.”

“Oh! ne’er mind me, my lady; I’m used to argue wi’ her; but if I did fecht for the Chevalier—ay, ye may ca’ him sae!—was it no your ain very sel, Katie Stewart, that tellt me, nae later than yestreen, that chivalry meant the auld grand knights that fought for the distressed lang syne? And if I did fecht for the Prince, what should ail me? And if it was the will of Providence to make me strong and muckle, and you bonnie and wee, whase blame was that? The Chevalier! Ay, and blessings on him!—for isna he just in the way of the auld chivalry—and isna he gaun to deliver the distressed?”

“The way the King did in the persecuting times—him that shot them down like beasts, because they liket the kirk,” said Katie.

“Eh, ye little Whig! that I should say sae! But I have nae call to stand up for the auld kings—they’ve gaen to their place, and rendered their account; but this bonnie lad—for a bonnie lad he is, though he’s born a prince, and will dee a great king, as it’s my hope and desire—has nae blame of thae ill deeds. He’s come for his ain kingdom, and justice, and the rights of the nation, ‘and ilka man shall hae his ain.’”

“Wha’s wronged? Isna the nation wronged wi’ a bit German duke pitten down in the big seat of our native king? Isna a’body wronged that has to suffer that? And isna he coming with his white cockade to set a’thing right again?”

“Bauby, you forget we’re to leave Kellie at twelve,” said Lady Anne, interrupting this conclusive logic, “and the things are not all ready. We’ll hear the true news about the Prince in Edinburgh.”

“We’ll see him, bless him! for he’s marching on Edinburgh, driving a’ thae cowards before him like a wheen sheep,” said Bauby, triumphantly. “I couldna keep the guid news to mysel, my lady; but now I maun awa.”

And Bauby hastened from the room, letting her voice rise as she went through the gallery, enough to convey to Katie’s ear her wish—

After this interruption, the packing went on busily, and for a considerable time in silence. It was the memorable year of Scottish romance—the “forty-five;” and there were few hearts on either side which could keep their usual pace of beating when the news of the wild invasion was told. But like all other times of great events and excitement, the ordinary platitudes of life ran on with wonderfully little change—ran on, and wove themselves about those marvels; so that this journey to Edinburgh, even in Lady Anne Erskine’s eyes, at present bulked as largely, and looked as important, as the threatened revolution; and to little Katie Stewart, her new gown and mantle were greater events than the advent of the Chevalier.

“Are you no feared to go to Edinburgh, Lady Anne, and the Chevalier and a’ his men coming?” asked Katie at length.

Katie’s own eyes sparkled at the idea, for the excitement of being in danger was a more delightful thing than she had ever ventured to anticipate before.

“Afraid? He is the true Prince, whether he wins or fails,” said Lady Anne; “and no lady need fear where a Stuart reigns. It’s his right he comes for. I pray Heaven give the Prince his right.”

Katie looked up with some astonishment. Very few things thus moved the placid Lady Anne.

“It would only be after many a man was killed,” said Katie; “and if the King in London comes from Germany, this Chevalier comes from France; and his forefathers were ill men, Lady Anne.”

“Katie Stewart,” said Lady Anne, hastily, “it’s ignorance you’re speaking. I will not hear it. I’ll hear nothing said against the right. The Prince comes of the true royal blood. He is the son of many good kings; and if they were not all good, that is not his fault. My fathers served his. I will hear nothing said against the Prince’s right.”

Little Katie looked up wonderingly into her friend’s face, and then turned away to conclude her packing. But, quite unconvinced as she was of the claims and rights of the royal adventurer, his young opponent said no more about Prince Charles.

CHAPTER X.

Corn-fields lie under the low green hills, here bending their golden load under the busy reaper’s hand, there shorn and naked, with the gathered sheaves in heaps where yesterday they grew. Pleasant sounds are in the clear rich autumn air—harvest voices, harvest mirth, purified by a little distance from all its coarseness; and through the open cottage doors you see the eldest child, matronly and important in one house, idling with a sense of guilt in the other, who has been left at home in charge, that all elder and abler people might get to the field. Pleasant excitement and haste touch you with a contagious cheer and activity as you pass. Here hath our bountiful mother been rendering riches out of her full breast once more; here, under those broad bright, smiling heavens, the rain and the sun, which God sends upon the just and the unjust, have day by day cherished the seed, and brought it forth in blade and ear; and now there is a thanksgiving in all the air, and quickened steps and cheerful labouring proclaim the unconscious sentiment which animates the whole. Bright, prosperous, wealthy autumn days, wherein the reaper has no less share than his master, and the whole world is enriched with the universal gain.

And now the Firth comes flashing into sight, making the whole horizon a silver line, with one white sail, far off, floating on it like a cloud. Heavily, as if it overhung the water, that dark hill prints its bold outline on the mingled glory of sky and sea; and under its shadow lie quiet houses, musing on the beach, so still that you could fancy them only lingering, meditating there. But little meditation is under those humble roofs, for the fishers of Largo are out on the Firth, as yonder red sails tell you, straying forth at the wide mouth of the bay; and the women at home are weaving nets, and selling fish, and have time for anything but meditation.

But now Largo Law is left behind, and there is a grand scene beyond. The skies are clear and distinct as skies are only in autumn; and yonder couches the lion, who watches our fair Edinburgh night and day; and there she stands herself, his Una, with her grey wimple over her head, and her feet on the sands of her vassal sea. Queenlike attendants these are: they are almost her sole glory now; for her crown is taken from her head, and her new life of genius has scarcely begun; but none can part the forlorn queen and her two faithful henchmen, the Firth and the hill.

There are few other passengers to cross the ferry with our little party; for Lady Anne has only one manservant for escort and protection to herself, Katie Stewart, and their formidable maid. In those days people were easily satisfied with travelling accommodation. The ferryboat was a little dingy sloop, lifting up a huge picturesque red sail to catch the soft wind, which carried them along only very slowly; but Katie Stewart leaned over its grim bulwark, watching the water—so calm, that it seemed to have consistence and shape as the slow keel cut it asunder—softly gliding past the little vessel’s side, and believed she had never been so happy.

It was night when they reached Edinburgh, under the care of a little band of Lady Colville’s servants and hangers-on—all the male force the careful Lady Betty could muster—who had been waiting for them at the water-side. The Chevalier’s forces were rapidly approaching the city, and Katie Stewart’s heart thrilled with a fear which had more delight in it than any previous joy, as slowly in their heavy cumbrous carriage, with their little body of adherents, they moved along through the gloom and rustling sounds of the beautiful night. In danger! not unlike the errant ladies of the old time; and approaching to the grand centre of romance and song—the Edinburgh of dreams.

Lady Colville’s house was in the High Street, opposite the old Cross of Edinburgh; and, with various very audible self-congratulations on the part of their attendants, the visitors entered the narrow dark gateway, and arrived in the paved court within. It was not very large this court; and, illuminated by the fitful light of a torch, which just showed the massy walls frowning down, with all kinds of projections on every side, the dwelling-place of Lady Colville did not look at all unlike one of the mysterious houses of ancient story. Here were twin windows, set in a richly ornamented gable, sending out gleams of fierce reflection as the light flashed into their small dark panes; and yonder, tier above tier, the great mansion closes up darkly to the sky, which fits the deep well of this court like a roof glowing with its “little lot of stars.” Katie had time to observe it all while the good maternal Lady Betty welcomed her young sister at the door. Very dark, high, and narrow was the entrance, more like a cleft in great black rocks, admitting to some secret cavern, than a passage between builded walls; and the dark masses of shadow which lay in those deep corners, and the elfin torchlight throwing wild gleams here and there over the heavy walls, and flashing back from unseen windows, everywhere, made a strange picturesque scene—relieved as it was by the clear, faint stars above, and the warm light from the opened door.

But it was not at that time the most peaceful of residences, this house of Lady Colville’s; for in a day or two Katie began to start in her high chamber at the long boom of the Castle guns; and in these balmy lightsome nights, excited crowds paced up and down, from the Canongate and the Lawnmarket, and gathered in groups about the Cross, discussing the hundred rumours to which the crisis gave birth. At all times this Edinburgh crowd does dearly love to gather like waves in the great street of the old city, and amuse itself with an excitement when the times permit. As they sweep along—knots of old men, slowly deliberating—clusters of young ones, quickening their pace as their conversation and thoughts intensify—all in motion, continually coming and going, the wide street never sufficiently thronged to prevent their passage, but enough so to secure all the animation of a crowd; and women looking on only from the “close mouths” and outer stairs, spectators merely, not actors in the ferment which growls too deeply for them to join—the scene is always interesting, always exciting to a stranger; it loses somehow the natural meanness of a vulgar mob, and you see something historical, which quickens your pulse, and makes your blood warm, in the angry crowd of the High Street, if it be only some frolic of soldiers from the Castle which has roused its wrath.

Out, little Katie! out on the round balcony of that high oriel window—something approaches which eyes of noble ladies around you brighten to see. On the other balcony below this, Lady Anne, with a white ribbon on her breast, leans over the carved balustrade, eagerly looking out for its coming, with a flushed and animated face, to which enthusiasm gives a certain charm. Even now in her excitement she has time to look up, time to smile—though she is almost too anxious to smile—and wave her fluttering handkerchief to you above there, Katie Stewart, to quicken your zeal withal. But there, little stubborn Whig, unmoved except by curiosity, and with not a morsel of white ribbon about her whole person, and her handkerchief thrown away into the inner room, least she should be tempted to wave it, stands the little Hanoverian Katie, firmly planting her feet upon the window-sill, and leaning on the great shoulder of Bauby Rodger, who thrusts her forward from behind. Bauby is standing on a stool within the room, her immense person looming through the oppressed window, and one of her mighty hands, with a handkerchief nearly as large as the main-sail of a sloop, squeezed up within it like a ball, ready to be thrown loose to the winds when he comes, grasping, like Lady Anne, the rail of the balustrade.

There is a brilliant sky overhead, and all the way along, until the street loses itself in its downward slope to the palace, those high-crested coroneted windows are crowded with the noble ladies of Scotland. Below, the crowd thickens every moment—a murmuring, moving mass, with many minds within it like Katie Stewart’s, hostile as fears for future, and remembrance of past injuries can make them, to the hero of the day. And banners float in the air, which high above there is misty with the palpable gold of this exceeding sunshine; and distant music steals along the street, and far-off echoed cheers tell that he is coming—he is coming! Pretender—Prince—Knight-errant—the last of a doomed and hapless race.

Within the little boudoir on the lower story, which this oriel window lights, Lady Colville sits in a great elbow chair apart, where she can see the pageant without, and not herself be seen; for Lady Betty wisely remembers that, though the daughter of a Jacobite earl, she is no less the wife of a Whig lord, whose flag floats over the broad sea far away, in the name of King George. Upon her rich stomacher you can scarcely discern the modest white ribbon which, like an innocent ornament, conceals itself under the folds of lace; but the ribbon, nevertheless, is there; and ladies in no such neutral position as hers—offshoots of the attainted house of Mar, and other gentle cousins, crowd her other windows, though no one has seen herself on the watch to hail the Chevalier.

And now he comes! Ah! fair, high, royal face, in whose beauty lurks this look, like the doubtful marsh, under its mossy, brilliant verdure—this look of wandering imbecile expression, like the passing shadow of an idiot’s face over the face of a manful youth. Only at times you catch it as he passes gracefully along, bowing like a prince to those enthusiastic subjects at the windows, to those not quite so enthusiastic in the street below. A moment, and all eyes are on him; and now the cheer passes on—on—and the crowd follows in a stream, and the spectators reluctantly stray in from the windows—the Prince has past.

But Lady Anne still bends over the balustrade, her strained eyes wandering after him, herself unconscious of the gentle call with which Lady Betty tries to rouse her as she leaves the little room. Quiet Anne Erskine has had no romance in her youth—shall have none in the grave still life which, day by day, comes down to her out of the changeful skies. Gentle affections, for sisters, brethren, friends, are to be her portion, and her heart has never craved another; but for this moment some strange magic has roused her. Within her strained spirit a heroic ode is sounding; no one hears the gradual swell of the stricken chords; no one knows how the excited heart beats to their strange music; but give her a poet’s utterance then, and resolve that inarticulate cadence, to which her very hand beats time, into the words for which unconsciously she struggles, and you should have a song to rouse a nation. Such songs there are; that terrible Marseillaise, for instance—wrung out of a moved heart in its highest climax and agony—the wild essence and inspiration of a mind which was not, by natural right, a poet’s.

Lady Anne’s hand fell passively from its support; her head drooped on her breast; and over her pale cheek came a sudden burst of tears. Quickly she stepped down from the balcony, and throwing herself into Lady Betty’s chair, covered her face and wept.

“He’s no an ill man—I think he’s no an ill man,” said little Katie in doubtful meditation. “I wish Prince Charlie were safe at hame; for what will he do here?”

CHAPTER XI.

In Lady Colville’s great drawing-room a gay party had assembled. It was very shortly after the Prestonpans victory, and the invading party were flushed with high hopes. Something of the ancient romance softened and refined the very manners of the time. By a sudden revulsion those high-spirited noble people had leaped forth from the prosaic modern life to the glowing, brilliant, eventful days of old—as great a change almost as if the warlike barons and earls of their family galleries had stepped out into visible life again. Here is one young gallant, rich in lace and embroidery, describing to a knot of earnest, eager listeners the recent battle. But for this the youth had vegetated on his own acres, a slow, respectable squire—he is a knight now, errant on an enterprise as daring and adventurous as ever engaged a Sir Lancelot or Sir Tristram. The young life, indeed, hangs in the balance—the nation’s warfare is involved; but the dangers which surround and hem them about only brighten those youthful eyes, and make their hearts beat the quicker. All things are possible—the impossible they behold before them a thing accomplished; and the magician exercises over them a power like witchcraft;—their whole thoughts turn upon him—their speech is full of Prince Charles.

Graver are the older people—the men who risk families, households, established rank—and whose mature minds can realise the full risk involved. Men attainted in “the fifteen,” who remember how it went with them then—men whom trustful retainers follow, and on whose heads lies this vast responsibility of life and death. On some faces among them are dark immovable clouds—on some the desperate calmness of hearts strung to any or every loss; and few forget, even in those brief triumphant festivities, that their lives are in their hands.

In one of those deep window-seats, half hidden by the curtain, Katie Stewart sits at her embroidery frame. If she never worked with a will before, she does it now; for the little rural belle is fluttered and excited by the presence and unusual conversation of the brilliant company round her. The embroidery frame just suffices to mark that Katie is Katie, and not a noble Erskine, for Lady Anne has made it very difficult to recognise the distinction by means of the dress. Katie’s, it is true, is plainer than her friend’s;—she has no jewels—wears no white rose; but as much pains have been bestowed on her toilette as on that of any lady in the room; and Lady Anne sits very near the window, lest Katie should think herself neglected. There is little fear—for here he stands, the grand gentleman, at Katie Stewart’s side!

Deep in those massy walls is the recess of the window, and the window itself is not large, and has a frame of strong broad bars, such as might almost resist a siege. The seat is cushioned and draped with velvet, and the heavy crimson curtain throws a flush upon Katie’s face. Quickly move the round arms, gloved with delicate black lace, which does not hide their whiteness; and, escaping from this cover, the little fingers wind themselves among those bright silks, now resting a moment on the canvass, as Katie lifts her eyes to listen to something not quite close at hand which strikes her ear—now impatiently beating on the frame as she droops her head, and cannot choose but hear something very close at hand which touches her heart.

A grand gentleman!—Manlike and gallant the young comely face which, high up there, on the other side of those heavy crimson draperies, bends towards her with smiles and winning looks, and words low-spoken—brave the gay heart which beats under his rich uniform—noble the blood that warms it. A veritable Sir Alexander, not far from the noble house of Mar in descent, and near them in friendship; a brave, poor baronet, young, hopeful, and enthusiastic, already in eager joyous fancies beholding his Prince upon the British throne, himself on the way to fortune. At first only for a hasty moment, now and then, can he linger by Katie’s window; but the moments grow longer and longer, and now he stands still beside her, silently watching this bud grow upon the canvass—silently following the motion of those hands. Little Katie dare not look up for the eyes that rest on her—eyes which are not bold either, but have a certain shyness in them; and as her eyelids droop over her flushed cheeks, she thinks of the hero of her dreams, and asks herself, with innocent wonder thrilling through her heart, if this is he?

The ladies talk beside her, as Katie cannot talk; shrewdly, simply, within herself, she judges what they say—forms other conclusions—pursues quite another style of reasoning—but says nothing; and Sir Alexander leans his high brow on the crimson curtain, and disregards them all for her.

Leaves them all to watch this bud—to establish a supervision, under which Katie at length begins to feel uneasy, over these idling hands of hers. Look him in the face, little Katie Stewart, and see if those are the eyes you saw in your dreams.

But just now she cannot look him in the face. In a strange enchanted mist she reclines in her window-seat, and dallies with her work. Words float in upon her half-dreaming sense, fragments of conversation which she will remember at another time; attitudes, looks, of which she is scarcely aware now, but which will rise on her memory hereafter, when the remembered sunshine of those days begins to trace out the frescoes on the wall. But now the hours float away as the pageant passed through that crowded High Street yesterday. She is scarcely conscious of their progress as they go, but will gaze after them when they are gone.

He speaks low. Strange that he should speak low, when among so many conversations other talkers have to raise their voices—low as Philip Landale used to speak to Isabell.

He bends down further—speaks in a still more subdued tone; while Katie’s fingers play with the silken thread, and she stoops over her frame so closely that he cannot see her face.

“Is it possible that in Kellie one should have lived disloyal? But that is not the greatest marvel. To be young, and fair, and generous—is it not the same as to be a friend of the Prince? But your heart is with the white rose, though you do not wear it on your breast?”

“No.” Look up, little Katie—up with honest eyes, that he may be convinced. “No; his forefathers were ill men; and many a man will die first, if Prince Charles be ever King.”

“Katie, Katie!” said the warning voice of Lady Anne, who has caught the last words of this rebellious speech. And again the mist steals over her in her corner; and as the light wanes and passes away from the evening skies, she only dimly sees the bending figure beside her, only vaguely receives into her dreaming mind the low words he says. It is all a dream—the beautiful dim hours depart—the brilliant groups disperse and go away; and, leaning out alone from that oriel window, Katie Stewart looks forth upon the night.

Now and then passes some late reveller—now and then drowsily paces past a veteran of the City Guard. The street is dark on this side, lying in deep shadow; but the harvest moon throws its full light on the opposite pavement, and the solitary unfrequent figures move along, flooded in the silver radiance, which seems to take substance and tangibility from them, and to bear them along, floating, gliding, as the soft waters of the Firth bore the sloop across the ferry. But here comes a quick footstep of authority, echoing through the silent street—a rustling Highland Chief, with a dark henchman, like a shadow at his hand; and that—what is that lingering figure looking up to the light in Lady Anne Erskine’s window, as he slowly wends his way downward to the Palace? Little Katie’s heart—she had brought it out here to still it—leaps again; for this is the same form which haunts her fancy; and again the wonder thrills through her strangely, if thus she has come in sight of her fate.

Draw your silken mantle closer round you, Katie Stewart; put back the golden curls which this soft breath of night stirs on your cheek, and lean your brow upon your hand which leans upon the sculptured stone. Slowly he passes in the moonlight, looking up at the light which may be yours—which is not yours, little watcher, whom in the gloom he cannot see; let your eyes wander after him, as now the full moonbeams fill up the vacant space where a minute since his gallant figure stood. Yes, it is true; your sunny face shines before his eyes—your soft voice is speaking visionary words to that good simple heart of his; and strange delight is in the thrill of wonder which moves you to ask yourself the question—Is this the hero?

But now the sleep of youth falls on you when your head touches the pillow. No, simple Katie, no; when the hero comes, you will not speculate—will not ask yourself questions; but now it vexes you that your first thoughts in the waking morrow are not of this stranger, and neither has he been in your dreams.

For dreams are perverse—honest—and will not be persuaded into the service of this wandering fancy. Spring up, Katie Stewart, thankfully out of those soft, deep, dreamless slumbers, into the glorious morning air, which fills the street between those lofty houses like some golden fluid in an antique well;—spring up joyously to the fresh lifetime of undiscovered hours which lie in this new day. Grieve not that only tardily, slowly, the remembrance of the last night’s gallant returns to your untroubled mind; soon enough will come this fate of yours, which yet has neither darkened nor brightened your happy skies of youth. Up with your free thoughts, Katie, and bide your time!

A visitor of quite a different class appeared in Lady Colville’s drawing-room that day. It was the Honourable Andrew, whose magnificent manners had awakened Katie’s admiration at his brother’s marriage. Not a youth, but a mature man, this Colville was heir to the lordship; for the good Lady Betty had no children; and while the elder brother spent his prime in the toils of his profession, fighting and enduring upon the sea, the younger indolently dwelt at home, acquiring, by right of a natural inclination towards the beautiful, the character of a refined and elegant patron of the arts. Such art as there was within his reach, he did patronise a little; but his love of the beautiful was by no means the elevating sentiment which we generally conclude it to be. He liked to have fine shapes and colours ministering to his gratification—liked to appropriate and collect around himself, his divinity, the delicate works of genius—liked to have the world observe how fine his eye was, and how correct his taste; and, lounging in his sister-in-law’s drawing-room, surveyed the dark portraits on the walls, and the tall erect Lady Anne in the corner, with the same supercilious polished smile.

Lady Betty sits in a great chair, in a rich dress of black silk, with a lace cap over her tower of elaborate hair. She is just entering the autumnal years; placid, gentle, full of the sunshine of kindness has been her tranquil summer, and it has mellowed and brightened her very face. Less harsh than in her youth are those pale lines—softened, rounded by that kind hand of Time, which deals with her gently, she uses him so well.

The Honourable Andrew, with his keen eyes, does not fail to notice this, and now he begins to compliment his sister on her benign looks; but Lady Anne is not old enough to be benign, and her movements become constrained and awkward—her voice harsh and unmanageable, in presence of the critic. He scans her pale face as if it were a picture—listens when she speaks like one who endures some uncouth sounds—is a Whig. Lady Anne could almost find it in her heart, gentle though that heart be, to hate this supercilious Andrew Colville.

Loop up this heavy drapery—Katie Stewart is not aware of any one looking at her. Her fingers, threaded through these curls, support her cheek—her shoulders are carelessly curved—her other ungloved arm leans upon the frame of her embroidery, and her graceful little head bends forward, looking out with absorbed unconscious eyes. Now there comes a wakening to the dreamy face, a start to the still figure. What is it? Only some one passing below, who lifts his bonnet from his bright young forehead, and bows as he passes. Perhaps the bow is for Lady Anne, faintly visible at another window. Lady Anne thinks so, and quietly returns it as a matter of course; but not so thinks Katie Stewart.

The Honourable Andrew Colville changes his seat: it is to bring himself into a better light for observing that picture in the window, which, with a critic’s delight, he notes and outlines. But Katie all the while is quite unconscious, and now takes two or three meditative stitches, and now leans on the frame, idly musing, without a thought that any one sees or looks at her. By and by Mr Colville rises, to stand by the crimson curtain where Sir Alexander stood on the previous night, and Katie at last becomes conscious of a look of admiration very different from the shy glances of the youthful knight. But Mr Colville is full thirty: the little belle has a kind of compassionate forbearance with him, and is neither angry nor fluttered. She has but indifferent cause to be flattered, it is true, for the Honourable Andrew admires her just as he admires the magnificent lace which droops over his thin white hands; but still he is one of the cognoscenti, and bestows his notice only on the beautiful.

And he talks to her, pleased with the shrewd answers which she sometimes gives; and Katie has to rein in her wandering thoughts, and feels guilty when she finds herself inattentive to this grandest of grand gentlemen; while Lady Betty, looking over at them anxiously from her great chair, thinks that little Katie’s head will be turned.

It is in a fair way; for when Mr Colville, smiling his sweetest smile to her, has bowed himself out, and Katie goes up-stairs to change her dress preparatory to a drive in Lady Betty’s great coach, Bauby approaches her mysteriously with a little cluster of white rosebuds in her hand.

“Muckle fash it has ta’en to get them at this time o’ the year, Miss Katie, ye may depend,” said the oracular Bauby; “and ye ken best yoursel wha they’re frae.”

The white rose—the badge of rebellion! But the little Whig puts it happily in her breast, and, when Bauby leaves her, laughs aloud in wonderment and pleasure; but, alas! only as she laughed, not very long ago, at this new black mantle or these cambric ruffles; for you are only a new plaything, gallant Sir Alexander, with some novelty and excitement about you. You are not the hero.

CHAPTER XII.

The little town of Anstruther stands on the side of the Firth, stretching its lines of grey red-roofed houses closely along the margin of the water. Sailing past its little quiet home-like harbour, you see one or two red sloops peacefully lying at anchor beside the pier. These sloops are always there. If one comes and another goes, the passing spectator knows it not. On that bright clear water, tinged with every tint of the rocky bed below—which, in this glistening autumn day, with only wind enough to ruffle it faintly now and then, looks like some beautiful jasper curiously veined and polished, with streaks of salt sea-green, and sober brown, and brilliant blue, distinct and pure below the sun—these little vessels lie continually, as much a part of the scene as that grey pier itself, or the houses yonder of the twin towns. Twin towns there must be, as you learn from those two churches which elevate their little spires above the congregated roofs. The spires themselves look as if, up to a certain stage of their progress, they had contemplated being towers, but, changing their mind when the square erection had attained the form of a box, suddenly inclined their sides towards each other, and became abrupt little steeples, whispering to you recollections of the Revolution Settlement, and the prosaic days of William and Mary. In one of them—or rather in its predecessor—the gentle James Melvill once preached the Gospel he loved so well; and peacefully for two hundred years have they looked out over the Firth, to hail the boats coming and going to the sea-harvest; peacefully through their small windows the light has fallen on little children, having the name named over them which is above all names; and now with a homely reverence they watch their dead.

A row of houses, straggling here and there into corners, turn their faces to the harbour. This is called the Shore. And when you follow the line of rugged pavement nearly to its end, you come upon boats, in every stage of progress, being mended—here with a great patch in the side—there resplendent in a new coat of pitch, which now is drying in the sun. The boats are well enough, and so are the glistering spoils of the “herring drave;” but quite otherwise is the odour of dried and cured fish which salutes you in modern Anstruther. Let us say no evil of it—it is villanous, but it is the life of the town.

Straggling streets and narrow wynds climb a little brae from the shore. Thrifty are the townsfolk, whose to-morrow, for generations, is but a counterpart of yesterday. Nevertheless, there have been great people here—Maggie Lauder, Professor Tennant, Dr Chalmers. The world has heard of the quiet burghs of East and West Anster.

A mile to the westward, on the same sea-margin, lies Pittenweem, another sister of the family. Turn along the high-road there, though you must very soon retrace your steps. Here is this full magnificent Firth, coming softly in with a friendly ripple, over these low, dark, jutting rocks. Were you out in a boat yonder, you would perceive how the folds of its great garment (for in this calm you cannot call them waves) were marked and shaded. But here that shining vestment of sea-water has one wonderful prevailing tint of blue; and between it and the sky, lingers yonder the full snowy sails of a passing ship;—here some red specks of fishing-boats straying down towards the mouth of the Firth, beyond yon high rock—home of sea-mews—the lighthouse Isle of May. Far over, close upon the opposite shore, lies a mass of something grey and shapeless, resting like a great shell upon the water—that is the Bass; and behind it there is a shadow on the coast, which you can dimly see, but cannot define—that is Tantallon, the stronghold of the stout Douglases; and westward rises the abrupt cone of North Berwick Law, with a great calm bay stretching in from its feet, and a fair green country retreats beyond, from the water-side to the horizon line.

Turn now to the other hand, cross the high-road, and take this footpath through the fields. Gentle Kellie Law yonder stands quietly under the sunshine, watching his peaceful dominions. Yellow stubble-fields stretch, bare and dry, over these slopes; for no late acre now yields a handful of ears to be gleaned or garnered. But in other fields the harvest work goes on. Here is one full of work-people—quieter than the wheat harvest, not less cheery—out of the rich dark fragrant soil gathering the ripe potato, then in a fresh youthful stage of its history, full of health and vigour; and ploughs are pacing through other fields; and on this fresh breeze, slightly chilled with coming winter, although brightened still by a fervent autumnal sun, there comes to you at every corner the odour of the fertile fruitful earth.

Follow this burn;—it is the same important stream which forms the boundary between Anstruther Easter and Wester; and when it has led you a circuit through some half-dozen fields, you come upon a little cluster of buildings gathered on its side. Already, before you reach them, that rustling sound tells you of the mill; and now you have only to cross the wooden bridge, (it is but two planks, though the water foams under it,) and you have reached the miller’s door.

That little humble cot-house, standing respectfully apart, with the miller’s idle cart immediately in front of it, is the dwelling-place of Robert Moulter, the miller’s man; but the miller’s own habitation is more ambitious. In the strip of garden before the door there are some rose-bushes, some “apple-ringie,” and long plumes of gardener’s garters; and there is a pointed window in the roof, bearing witness that this is a two-storied house of superior accommodation: the thatch itself is fresh and new—very different from that mossy dilapidated one of the cottar’s house; and above the porch flourishes a superb “fouat.” The door, as usual, is hospitably open, and you see that within all are prepared for going abroad; for there is a penny wedding in the town, which already has roused all Anster.

Who is this, standing by the window, cloaked and hooded, young, but a matron, and with that beautiful happy light upon her face? Under her hood, young as she is, appears the white edge of lace, which proves her to have assumed already, over the soft brown shining hair which crosses her forehead, the close cap of the wife; but nothing remains of the old shy sad look, to tell you that this is Isabell Stewart. Nor is it. Mrs Stewart there, in her crimson plaid and velvet hood, who is at present delivering a lecture on household economics, to which her daughter listens with a happy smile, would be the first to set you right if you spoke that old name. Not Isabell Stewart—Leddy Kilbrachmont!—a landed woman, head of a plentiful household, and the crown and honour of the thrifty mother, whose training has fitted her for such a lofty destiny, whose counsels help her to fill it so well.

Janet, equipped like the rest, goes about the apartment, busily setting everything “out of the road.” The room is very much like the family room in Kellie Mill: domestic architecture of this homely class is not capable of much variety; and hastily Janet thrusts the same pretty wheel into a corner, and her mother locks the glistening doors of the oak aumrie. Without stands Philip Landale, speaking of his crops to the miller; and a good-looking young sailor, fiancée of the coquettish Janet, lingers at the door, waiting for her.

But there is another person in the background, draping the black lace which adorns her new cloak gracefully over her arm, throwing back her shoulders with a slightly ostentatious, disdainful movement, and holding up her head like Lady Anne. Ah, Katie! simple among the great people, but very anxious to look like a grand lady among the small! Very willing are you in your heart to have the unsophisticated fun of this penny wedding to which you are bound, but with a dignified reluctance are you preparing to go; and though Isabell smiles, and Janet pretends to laugh, Janet’s betrothed is awed, and thinks there is something very magnificent about Lady Anne Erskine’s friend. They make quite a procession as they cross the burn, and wind along the pathway towards the town;—Janet and her companion hurrying on first; young Kilbrachmont following, very proud of the wife who holds his arm, and looking with smiling admiration on the little pretty sister at his other hand; while the miller and his wife bring up the rear.

“Weel, I wouldna be a boaster,” said Mrs Stewart; “it would ill set us, wi’ sae muckle reason as we have to be thankful. But just look at that bairn. It’s my fear she’ll be getting a man o’ anither rank than ours, the little cuttie! I wouldna say but she looks down on Kilbrachmont his ain very sel.”

“And how’s the like o’ you to ken?” retorted his wife. “It’s my ain blame, nae doubt, for speaking to ye. Ye’re a’ very weel with your happer and your meal, John Stewart; but what should you ken about young womenfolk?”

“Weel, weel, sae be it, Isabell,” said John. “It’s a mercy ye think ye understand yoursels, for to simple folk ye’re faddomless, like the auld enemy. I pretend to nae discernment amang ye.”

“There winna be ane like her in the haill Town House,” said Mrs Stewart to herself; “no Isabell even, let alane Janet; and the bit pridefu’ look—the little cuttie!—as if she was ony better than her neighbours.”

The Town House of West Anster is a low-roofed, small-windowed room, looking out to the churchyard on one side, and to a very quiet street on the other; for West Anster is a suburban and rural place, in comparison with its more active brother on the other side of the burn, by whom it is correspondingly despised. Climbing up a narrow staircase, the party entered the room, in which at present there was very little space for locomotion, as two long tables, flanked by a double row of forms, and spread for a dinner, at which it was evident the article guest would be a most plentiful one, occupied almost the whole of the apartment. The company had just begun to assemble; and Katie, now daintily condescending to accept her brother-in-law’s arm, returned with him to the foot of the stair, there to await the return of the marriage procession from the manse, at which just now the ceremony was being performed.

The street is overshadowed by great trees—which, leaning over the churchyard wall on one side, and surrounding the manse, which is only a few yards further down, on the other—darken the little street, and let in the sunshine picturesquely, in bars and streaks, through the thinning yellow foliage. There is a sound of approaching music; a brisk fiddle, performing “Fy let us a’ to the bridal,” in its most animated style; and gradually the procession becomes visible, ascending from the dark gates of the manse. The bridegroom is an Anster fisherman. They have all the breath of salt water about them, these blue-jacketed sturdy fellows who form his retinue, with their white wedding favours. And creditable to the mother town are those manly sons of hers, trained to danger from the cradle. The bride is the daughter of a Kilbrachmont cottar—was a servant in Kilbrachmont’s house; and it is the kindly connection between the employer and the employed which brings the whole family of Landales and Stewarts to the penny wedding. She is pretty and young, this bride; and the sun glances in her hair, as she droops her uncovered head, and fixes her shy eyes on the ground. A long train of attendant maidens follow her; and nothing but the natural tresses, snooded with silken ribbons, adorn the young heads over which these bright lines of sunshine glisten as the procession passes on.

With her little cloak hanging back upon her shoulders, and her small head elevated, looking down, or rather looking up, (for this humble bride is undeniably taller than little Katie Stewart,) and smiling a smile which she intends to be patronising, but which by no means succeeds in being so, Katie stands back to let the bride pass; and the bride does pass, drooping her blushing face lower and lower, as her master wishes her joy, and shakes her bashful reluctant hand. But the bridesmaid, a simple fisherman’s daughter, struck with admiration of the little magnificent Katie, abruptly halts before her, and whispers to the young fisherman who escorts her, that Kilbrachmont and the little belle must enter first. Katie is pleased: the girl’s admiration strikes her more than the gaping glances of ever so many rustic wooers; and with such a little bow as Lady Anne might have given, and a rapid flush mounting to her forehead, in spite of all her pretended self-possession, she stepped into the procession, and entered the room after the bride.

Who is this so busy and popular among the youthful company already assembled? You can see him from the door, though he is at the further end of the room, overtopping all his neighbours like a youthful Saul. And handsomely the sailor’s jacket sits on his active, well-formed figure; and he stoops slightly, as though he had some fear of this low dingy roof. He has a fine face too, browned with warm suns, and gales; for William Morison has sailed in the Mediterranean, and is to be mate, this next voyage, of the gay Levant schooner, which now lies loading in Leith harbour. Willie Morison! Only the brother of Janet’s betrothed, little Katie; so you are prepared to be good to him, and to patronise your future brother-in-law.

His attention was fully occupied just now. But suddenly his popularity fails in that corner, and gibes take the place of approbation. What ails him? What has happened to him? But he does not answer; he only changes his place, creeping gradually nearer, nearer, looking—alas, for human presumption!—at you, little Katie Stewart—magnificent, dignified you!

It is a somewhat rude, plentiful dinner; and there is a perfect crowd of guests. William Wood, the Elie joiner, in the dark corner yonder, counts the heads with an inward chuckle, and congratulates himself that, when all these have paid their half-crowns, he shall carry a heavy pocketful home with him, in payment of the homely furniture he has made; and the young couple have the price of their plenishing cleared at once. But the scene is rather a confused noisy scene, till the dinner is over.

Now clear away these long encumbering tables, and tune your doleful fiddles quickly, ye musical men, that the dancers may not wait. Katie tries to think of the stately minuets which she saw and danced in Edinburgh; but it will not do: it is impossible to resist the magic of those inspiriting reels; and now Willie Morison is bending his high head down to her, and asking her to dance.

Surely—yes—she will dance with him—kindly and condescendingly, as with a connection. No fear palpitates at little Katie’s heart—not a single throb of that tremor with which she saw Sir Alexander approach the window-seat in Lady Colville’s drawing-room; and shy and quiet looks Willie Morison, as she draws on that graceful lace glove of hers, and gives him her hand.

Strangely his great fingers close over it, and Katie, looking up with a little wonder, catches just his retreating, shrinking eye. It makes her curious, and she begins to watch—begins to notice how he looks at her stealthily, and does not meet her eye with frankness as other people do. Katie draws herself up, and again becomes haughty, but again it will not do. Kindly looks meet her on all sides, friendly admiration, approbation, praise; and the mother watching her proudly yonder, and those lingering shy looks at her side. She plays with her glove in the intervals of the dance—draws it up on her white arm, and pulls it down; but it is impossible to fold the wings of her heart and keep it still, and it begins to flutter with vague terror, let her do what she will to calm its beating down.

CHAPTER XIII.

The burn sings under the moon, and you cannot see it; but yonder where it bends round the dark corner of this field, it glimmers like a silver bow. Something of witchcraft and magic is in the place and time. Above, the sky overflooded with the moonbeams; behind, the Firth quivering and trembling under them in an ecstasy of silent light; below, the grass which presses upon the narrow footpath so dark and colourless, with here and there a visible gem of dew shining among its blades like a fallen star. Along that high-road, which stretches its broad white line westward, lads and lasses are trooping home, and their voices strike clearly into the charmed air, but do not blend with it, as does that lingering music which dies away in the distance far on the other side of the town, and the soft voice of this burn near at hand. The homeward procession to the Milton is different from the outward bound. Yonder, steadily at their sober everyday pace, go the miller and his wife. You can see her crimson plaid faintly, through the silvered air which pales its colour; but you cannot mistake the broad outline of John Stewart, or the little active figure of the mistress of the Milton. Young Kilbrachmont and Isabell have gone home by another road, and Janet and her betrothed are “convoying” some of their friends on the way to Pittenweem, and will not turn back till they pass that little eerie house at the Kirk Latch, where people say the Red Slippers delight to promenade; so never look doubtingly over your shoulder, anxious Willie Morison, in fear lest the noisy couple yonder overtake you, and spoil this silent progress home. Now and then Mrs Stewart, rapidly marching on before, turns her head to see that you are in sight; but nothing else—for gradually these voices on the road soften and pass away—comes on your ear or eye unpleasantly to remind you that there is a host of beings in the world, besides yourself and this shy reluctant companion whose hand rests on your arm.

For under the new laced mantle, of which she was so proud this morning, Katie Stewart’s heart is stirring like a bird. She is a step in advance of him, eager to quicken this slow pace; but he lingers—constantly lingers, and some spell is on her, that she cannot bid him hasten. Willie Morison!—only the mate of that pretty Levant schooner which lies in Leith harbour; and the little proud Katie tries to be angry at the presumption which ventures to approach her—her, to whom Sir Alexander did respectful homage—whom the Honourable Andrew signalled out for admiration; but Katie’s pride, only as it melts and struggles, makes the magic greater. He does not speak a great deal; but when he does, she stumbles strangely in her answers; and then Katie feels the blood flush to her face, and again her foot advances quickly on the narrow path, and her hand makes a feint to glide out of that restraining arm. No, think it not, little Katie—once you almost wooed your heart to receive into it, among all the bright dreams which have their natural habitation there, the courtly youthful knight, whose reverent devoirs charmed you into the land of old romance; but, stubborn and honest, the little wayward heart refused. Now let your thoughts, alarmed and anxious, press round their citadel and keep this invader out. Alas! the besieged fortress trembles already, lest its defenders should fail and falter; and angry and petulant grow the resisting thoughts, and they swear to rash vows in the silence. Rash vows—vows in which there lies a hot impatient premonition, that they must be broken very soon.

Under those reeds, low beneath those little overhanging banks, tufted with waving rushes, you scarcely could guess this burn was there, but for the tinkling of its unseen steps; but they walk beside it like listeners entranced by fairy music. The silence does not oppress nor embarrass them now, for that ringing voice fills it up, and is like a third person—a magical elfin third person, whose presence disturbs not their solitude.

“Katie!” cries the house-mother, looking back to mark how far behind those lingerers are; and Katie again impatiently quickens her pace, and draws her companion on. The burn grows louder now, rushing past the idle wheel of the mill, and Mrs Stewart has crossed the little bridge, and they hear, through the still air, the hasty sound with which she turns the great key in the door. Immediately there are visible evidences that the mistress of the house is within it again, for a sudden glow brightens the dark window, and throws a cheerful flickering light from the open door; but the moon gleams in the dark burn, pursuing the foaming water down that descent it hurries over; and the wet stones, which impede its course, glimmer dubiously in the light which throws its splendour over all. Linger, little Katie—slower and slower grow the steps of your companion; linger to make the night beautiful—to feel in your heart as you never felt before, how beautiful it is.

Only Willie Morison! And yet a little curiosity prompts you to look out and watch him from your window in the roof as you lay your cloak aside. He is lingering still by the burn—leaving it with reluctant, slow steps—looking back and back as if he could not make up his mind to go away; and hastily, with a blush which the darkness gently covers, you withdraw from the window, little Katie, knowing that it is quite impossible he could have seen you, yet trembling lest he has.

The miller has the great Bible on the table, and bitter is the reproof which meets the late-returning Janet, as her mother stands at the open door and calls to her across the burn. It is somewhat late, and Janet yawns as she seats herself in the background, out of the vigilant mother’s eye, which, seeing everything, gives no sign of weariness; and Katie meditatively leans her head upon her hand, and places her little Bible in the shadow of her arm, as the family devotion begins. But again and again, before it has ended, Katie feels the guilty blood flush over her forehead; for the sacred words have faded from before her downcast eyes, and she has seen only the retreating figure going slowly away in the moonlight—a blush of indignant shame and self-anger, too, as well as guilt; for this is no Sir Alexander—no hero—but only Willie Morison.

“Send that monkey hame, Isabell,” said John Stewart. He had just returned thanks and taken up his bonnet, as he rose from their homely breakfast-table next morning. “Send that monkey hame, I say; I’ll no hae my house filled wi’ lads again for ony gilpie’s pleasure. Let Katie’s joes gang up to Kellie if they maun make fules o’ themsels. Janet’s ser’d, Gude be thankit; let’s hae nae mair o’t noo.”

“It’s my desire, John Stewart, you would just mind your ain business, and leave the house to me,” answered his wife. “If there’s ae sight in the world I like waur than anither, it’s a man pitting his hand into a house-wifeskep. I ne’er meddle with your meal. Robbie and you may be tooming it a’ down the burn, for ought I ken; but leave the lassies to me, John, my man. I hae a hand that can grip them yet, and that’s what ye ne’er were gifted with.”

The miller shrugged his shoulders, threw on his bonnet, but without any further remonstrance went away.

“I’ll gang up to Kilbrachmont, if ye’re wearying on me, mother,” answered the little belle.

“Haud your peace, ye cuttie. Is that a way to answer your mother, and me slaving for your guid, nicht and day? But hear ye, Katie Stewart, I’ll no hae Willie Morison coming courting here; ae scone’s enow o’ a baking. Janet there is to be cried with Alick—what he could see in her, I canna tell—next Sabbath but twa; and though the Morisons are very decent folk, we’re sib enough wi’ ae wedding. So ye’ll mind what I say, if Willie Morison comes here at e’en.”

“Will ye mind your wark, ye taupie? What’s your business with Katie’s thoughts? And let me never mair see you sit there with a red face, Katie Stewart, and tell a lie under my very e’en. I’ll no thole’t. Janet, redd up that table. Merran, you’re wanted out in the East Park; if Robbie and you canna be done with that pickle taties the day, ye’ll ne’er make saut to your kail; and now I’m gaun in to Anster mysel’—see ye pit some birr in your fingers the time I’m away.”

“Never you heed my mother, Katie,” said Janet benevolently, as Mrs Stewart’s crimson plaid began to disappear over the field. “She says aye a hantle mair than she means; and Willie may come the nicht, for a’ that.”

“Willie may come! And do you think I care if he never crossed Anster Brig again?” exclaimed Katie with burning indignation.

“Weel, I wouldna say. He’s a bonnie lad,” said Janet, as she lifted the shining plates into the lower shelf of the oak aumrie. “And if you dinna care, Katie, what gars ye have such a red face?”

“It’s the fire,” murmured Katie, with sudden humiliation; for her cheeks indeed were burning—alas! as the brave Sir Alexander’s name could never make them burn.

“Weel, he’s to sail in three weeks, and he’ll be a fule if he troubles his head about a disdainfu’ thing that wouldna stand up for him, puir chield. The first night ever Alick came after me, I wouldna have held my tongue and heard onybody speak ill of him; and yesterday’s no the first day—no by mony a Sabbath in the kirk, and mony a night at hame—that Willie Morison has gien weary looks at you.”

“He can keep his looks to himsel,” said Katie angrily, as the wheel birled under her impatient hand. “It was only to please ye a’ that I let him come hame with me last night; and he’s no a bonnie lad, and I dinna care for him, Janet.”

Janet, with the firelight reddening that round, stout, ruddy arm, with which she lifts from the crook the suspended kettle, pauses in the act to look into Katie’s face. The eyelashes tremble on the flushed cheek—the head is drooping—poor little Katie could almost cry with vexation and shame.

Merran is away to the field—the sisters are alone; but Janet only ventures to laugh a little as she goes with some bustle about her work, and records Katie’s blush and Katie’s anger for the encouragement of Willie Morison. Janet, who is experienced in such matters, thinks these are good signs.

And the forenoon glides away, while Katie sits absorbed and silent, turning the pretty wheel, and musing on all these affronts which have been put upon her. Not the first by many days on which Willie Morison has dared to think of her! And she remembers Sir Alexander, and that moonlight night on which she watched him looking up at Lady Anne Erskine’s window, but very faintly, very indifferently, comes before her the dim outline of the youthful knight; whereas most clearly visible in his blue jacket, and with the fair hair blown back from his ruddy, manly face, appears this intruder, this Willie Morison.

The days are growing short. Very soon now the dim clouds of the night droop over these afternoon hours in which Mrs Stewart says, “Naebody can ever settle to wark.” It is just cold enough to make the people out of doors brisk in their pace, and to quicken the blood it exhilarates; and the voices of the field-labourers calling to each other as the women gather up the potato baskets and hoes which they have used in their work, and the men loose their horses from the plough, and lead them home, ring into the air with a clear musical cadence which they have not at any other time. Over the dark Firth, from which now and then you catch a long glistening gleam, which alone in the darkness tells you it is there, now suddenly blazes forth that beacon on the May. Not a sober light, shining under glass cases with the reflectors of science behind, but an immense fire piled high up in that iron cage which crowns the strong grey tower; a fiery, livid, desperate light, reddening the dark waters which welter and plunge below, so that you can fancy it rather the torch of a forlorn hope, fiercely gleaming upon ships dismasted and despairing men, than the soft clear lamp of help and kindness guiding the coming and going passenger through a dangerous way.

The night is dark, and this ruddy window in the Milton is innocent of a curtain. Skilfully the fire has been built, brightly it burns, paling the ineffectual lamp up there, in its cruise on the high mantelpiece. The corners of the room are dark, and Merran, still moving about here and there, like a wandering star, crosses the orbit of this homely domestic sun, and anon mysteriously disappears into the gloom. Here, in an arm-chair, sits the miller, his bonnet laid aside, and in his hand a Caledonian Mercury, not of the most recent date, which he alternately elevates to the lamplight, and depresses to catch the bright glow of the fire; for the miller’s eyes are not so young as they once were, though he scorns spectacles still.

Opposite him, in the best place for the light, sits Mrs Stewart, diligently mending a garment of stout linen, her own spinning, which time has begun slightly to affect. But her employment does not entirely engross her vigilant eyes, which glance perpetually round with quick scrutiny, accompanied by remark, reproof, or bit of pithy advice—advice which no one dares openly refuse to take.

Janet is knitting a grey “rig-and-fur” stocking, a duplicate of these ones which are basking before the fire on John Stewart’s substantial legs. Constantly Janet’s clue is straying on the floor, or Janet’s wires becoming entangled; and when her mother’s eyes are otherwise directed, the hoiden lets her hands fall into her lap, and gives her whole attention to the whispered explosive jokes which Alick Morison is producing behind her chair.

Over there, where the light falls fully on her, though it does not do her so much service as the others, little Katie gravely sits at the wheel, and spins with a downcast face. Her dress is very carefully arranged—much more so than it would have been in Kellie—and the graceful cambric ruffles droop over her gloved arms, and she holds her head, stooping a little forward indeed, but still in a dignified attitude, with conscious pride and involuntary grace. Richly the flickering firelight brings out the golden gloss of that curl upon her cheek, and the cheek itself is a little flushed; but Katie is determinedly grave and dignified, and very rarely is cheated into a momentary smile.

For he is here, this Willie Morison! lingering over her wheel and her, a great shadow, speaking now and then when he can get an opportunity; but Katie looks blank and unconscious—will not hear him—and holds her head stiffly in one position rather than catch a glimpse of him as he sways his tall person behind her. Other lingering figures, half in the gloom, half in the light, encircle the little company by the fireside, and contribute to the talk, which, among them, is kept up merrily—Mrs Stewart herself leading and directing it, and only the dignified Katie quite declining to join in the gossip and rural raillery, which, after all, is quite as witty, and—save that it is a little Fifish—scarcely in any respect less delicate than the badinage of more refined circles.

“It’s no often Anster gets a blink of your daughter. Is Miss Katie to stay lang?” asked a young farmer, whom Katie’s dress and manner had awed into humility, as she intended they should.

“Katie, ye’re no often so mim. Whatfor can ye no answer yoursel?” said Mrs Stewart.

“Lady Anne is away to England with Lady Betty—for Lord Colville’s ship’s come in,” said Katie sedately. “There’s nobody at the Castle but Lady Erskine. Lady Anne is to be back in three weeks. She says that in her letter.”

In her letter! Little Katie Stewart then receives letters from Lady Anne Erskine! The young farmer was put down; visions of seeing her a countess yet crossed his eyes and disenchanted him. “She’ll make a bonnie lady; there’s few of them like her; but she’ll never do for a poor man’s wife,” he muttered to himself as he withdrew a step or two from the vicinity of the unattainable sour plums.

But not so Willie Morison. “I’ll be three weeks of sailing mysel,” said the mate of the schooner, scarcely above his breath; and no one heard him but Katie.

Three weeks! The petulant thoughts rushed round their fortress, and vowed to defend it to the death. But in their very heat, alas! was there not something which betrayed a lurking traitor in the citadel, ready to display the craven white flag from its highest tower?

Before the following pages issue from the press, the contest involved in the Parliamentary Elections will be over. It is useless to speculate, therefore, on what will so soon be determined by a result which, for the time at least, will settle who is to hold the reins of power. Recording our confident hope that the Conservative party will obtain such a majority as may enable them to carry on the Government on those principles which can alone heal the wounds and allay the feuds which the policy of their predecessors have implanted in this country, it is of more importance at this time to inquire into the great and lasting interests of the nation, and the present circumstances in our ever-changing situation which most loudly call for attention, and must ere long force themselves upon the consideration of whatever Government is placed by the people at the head of affairs. The observations we are to offer are chiefly of a practical and remedial kind; for the changes to which they refer are such as are altogether beyond the reach of dispute, and on which all parties, however much divided on other subjects, are agreed.

The first of these subjects, in point of importance, beyond all question, both to the present interests and future destinies of the Empire, is the vast increase in the annual supply of gold for the use of the globe, which the late discoveries in California and Australia have made. Here, fortunately, there is no room for dispute; and, in fact, there is no dispute about the facts. It is conceded on all sides that the annual supply of the precious metals, before the new discoveries, was somewhat below £10,000,000 a-year; of which about £6,000,000 was the annual waste by the wearing of coin, or the absorption of the precious metals in objects of luxury; and that before the end of 1851 this annual supply had risen to £30,000,000. There has been very little addition to the annual waste; so that the quantity annually added to the sum total of the precious metals in this world has been multiplied at least fivefold during the last three years. It has risen from £4,000,000 annually to at least £20,000,000. And the recent accounts from Australia leave no room for doubt that this increase in the supply, how great soever, will be largely added to; for it appears that from 9th October to 9th April the yield of the Australian gold mines was above £3,000,000; and there appears to be no limits to the extent of the auriferous regions. It is quite certain, therefore, that the annual addition to the stock of the precious metals in the globe, will this year, and for a long period to come, be at least SIX TIMES what it was before Providence revealed these hidden treasures to a suffering world.

The effect of this upon the price of gold may be judged of by the fact, that that metal is now selling at Melbourne for £3 an ounce, while the Mint price is £3, 17s. 10½d., which the bank is still obliged to give for all the gold brought to its doors! Sir Robert Peel said that “he could not by any effort of his understanding form any other idea of a pound sterling but a certain determinate weight of gold metal;” and the Times, in the pride of its heart at the vast effect of his monetary system in depressing the price of produce of every soil, and enhancing the value of money, boasted, within the last three years, that that system “had rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns.” We have not observed lately anything said in that able journal about the incomparable steadiness of a standard of value founded on “a determinate weight of gold;” nor do we hear any repetition, by its gifted authors, of its boasts about having rendered “the sovereign worth two sovereigns.” On the contrary, according to their usual system, when they see a change fairly set in, and likely to be lasting, they have gone at once over to the other side, and fairly out-Heroded Herod in their estimate of the prodigious effect upon general prices of the vast additions recently made to the metallic treasures of the world. The journal which was so strong upon Sir Robert Peel’s policy having rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns, has lately issued the following just and striking observations upon the probable effect on prices of all sorts of the entire repeal of that policy by the hand of nature:—

“To arrive at an exact solution, it would be necessary to ascertain the amount of gold and silver in the world, and the present annual consumption for coinage and the arts. This is impossible, and conjectural quantities must consequently be taken. The total of coin has been guessed at £400,000,000. Of this £150,000,000 may be assumed to be gold, and £250,000,000 silver. The annual consumption of gold is believed to be under £6,000,000.

“Starting with these figures, if the demand for gold were likely to continue limited to its ordinary amount, an estimate of the effect of the supplies now pouring upon us could easily be formed. Those supplies within the few years since the discovery of California have probably in the aggregate left us an excess of upwards of £30,000,000 over what has hitherto been found sufficient for current wants, and to maintain an equilibrium in the general relations of property. The increase, therefore, has been equal to 20 per cent on the whole sum in existence; in other words, the measure of value would appear to have been extended one-fifth, (just as if a 25-inch measure were extended to 30 inches,) and hence the effect to be looked for is obvious. Where gold is the standard, the price of every article adjusts itself to the relation it bears to that metal. If sovereigns were twice as numerous, a man would demand two where he now takes one. An increase of 20 per cent in the supply should, therefore, have been followed by a proportionate advance in the nominal value of all things.

“We have now, however, to consider the future. So long as there is any silver, to be supplanted in countries where, owing to the existence of a double standard, it is optional for the debtor to pay either in gold or in silver, the effects of the increased production will continue to be extended to both metals, and consequently, if the surplus of gold this year should be, as has been estimated, £25,000,000, its influence upon prices could be but 6 or 7 per cent. But the period must rapidly approach when the displacement of silver will have ended, and when the changes brought about will be upon gold alone. In France the existing amount of silver is still, doubtless, very large; but this is not the case in the United States, and the proposed law by which the coins below a dollar are to be deteriorated 6.91 per cent will prevent for the present any action upon that portion of the stock. In Germany the debased state of the silver coinage will likewise for a long time preserve it from displacement. In Holland, silver has been already established as the standard, and cannot therefore be driven out. With regard to Eastern nations, it is difficult to form any estimate. On the whole, however, we may infer the possibility of the displacement process still occupying three or four years, and that during that time, therefore, the effects to be produced will be spread, as they have thus far been, over both metals.

“At the end of that period, the consequences will be felt by gold alone, and the relations of property measured by a gold standard will proportionably exhibit a more rapid disturbance. At the same time, it must not be overlooked that the increase of gold each year will have meanwhile diminished the per-centage of alteration which would otherwise take place. For instance, the total amount of gold in the world, which is now assumed at £150,000,000, would then possibly be £250,000,000; and a production which, operating upon the first sum, would cause a rise in prices of 10 per cent, would, under those circumstances, cause only an additional rise of 6 per cent. This is a feature of great importance in the whole question, because it will constantly tend to counteract that increasing ratio of disturbance which might be anticipated if the supply of each succeeding year should prove larger and larger. It is likewise to be borne in mind that, with a diminution in the purchasing power of gold, there will be a proportionate diminution in the inducement to seek it. If the quantity of gold were doubled to-morrow, a man who is at present content to work for one ounce a-week would then not be satisfied with less than two ounces.

“In the face, however, of these qualifying circumstances, and of the uncertainty of all the assumed totals that have been dealt with, it will be plain to most persons that there is enough to suggest some very decided ideas as to the main results that are coming on. A mistake of a hundred millions in the figures one way or the other would only make a difference of three or four years (where the annual supply is at the rate of £30,000,000) in the date of fulfilment. Even if we were to take the whole £400,000,000 of assumed money as liable to be acted upon, it would require little more than fifteen years of the existing production to cause an alteration in the relations of property of 50 per cent.”—Times, June 20, 1852.

These are abundantly curious statements to come from the leading journal in the monied interest, which has so long supported Sir Robert Peel’s monetary policy, which went to make money dear and everything else cheap, and boasted, with smiling complacency, that he had succeeded in making the sovereign worth two sovereigns, and of course doubling the weight of every tax and shilling of debt, public and private, throughout the realm. So great a change makes us despair of nothing; and we even look forward with some confidence to the advent of a period when The Times, as a “State necessity” which can no longer be avoided, will be the first to advocate a return to protection on every species of industry within the realm.

We should greatly err if we measured the effects of this vast addition to the metallic treasures of the globe merely by its effect in raising prices, great and important as that effect undoubtedly is. That it will raise prices, gradually, indeed, but certainly, so that in twenty years they will have reached the level they had attained during the extensive demand and plentiful paper circulation of the war, may be considered certain. No human power can arrest the change any more than it can the rays of summer or the rains of autumn; and, therefore, all concerned—money-lenders, money-borrowers, capitalists, landlords, farmers, and manufacturers—had just as well make up their minds to it as un fait accompli, and regulate their measures and calculations accordingly. But a still more important effect, in reference to our laws and social condition in the mean time, is to be found in its tendency to keep the paper circulation out, and allay the apprehensions of bankers and money-lenders as to the risks of extending their issues, from a dread of an approaching monetary crisis, and a run upon their establishments for a conversion of their notes into gold.

These monetary crises, which have occurred so often, and been attended with such devastation, during the last thirty years, were all of artificial creation. They were never known before the fatal system was introduced of considering paper not as a substitute for, but as a representative of gold, and of course entirely dependent for its extension or contraction upon the retention of, or a drain upon, the reserves of the precious metals. It is to the Bullion Committee of 1810, and the adoption of its doctrines by Sir Robert Peel by the Bill of 1819, that we owe that fatal change which not only deprived us of the chief advantages of credit, but converted it into the source of the most unmeasured evil, by stimulating industry in the most unbounded way at one time, and as suddenly and violently contracting it at another. The true use of a paper circulation, properly based, judiciously issued, and founded upon credit, is just the reverse: it is to supply the circulation, and keep it at the level which the wants of the community require in those periods of necessary periodical recurrence to every mercantile state, when the precious metals are drained away in large quantities by the necessities of war or the demands of a fluctuating commerce; and when, unless its place is supplied by the enlarged issue of paper, nothing but ruin and misery to all persons engaged in industrial occupations can ensue. Supplied by such a succedaneum, the most entire departure of the precious metals is attended, as was proved in 1810, by no sort of distress, either to the nation or the individuals of which it is composed. Without such a reserve to fall back upon—or, what is worse, with the reserve itself rendered dependent on the retention of the precious metals—any considerable drain upon them is the certain forerunner, as was proved in 1825 and 1847, of the most unbounded public and private calamities.

The gold of California and Australia has not entirely obviated these dangers, but it has greatly diminished the chance of their recurrence. It is still true that a sudden drain of gold for exportation, either for the purposes of commerce or the necessities of war, might, as in times past, occasion such a demand for gold on the Bank of England as would render defensive measures on the part of the Bank a matter of necessity. Till the Bank is authorised by law on such an emergence to issue an increased quantity of notes not convertible into gold, absolute security cannot be obtained against such a catastrophe. But when the supply of gold from California and Australia is so great that £1,250,000 is received from the latter, as it has lately been, in three weeks, and the bullion in the vaults of the Bank of England amounts to £22,220,000, nearly a million more than its whole notes in circulation, it is obvious that the chances of any such calamity are very much diminished. An ample supply has been provided by Providence for the necessities in currency, not merely of this country, but of the entire earth, and therefore the chances of any violent contraction being rendered necessary by the sudden and extensive exportation of the precious metals have been greatly diminished.

The people of Great Britain may await in patience the inevitable result of the vast increase in the supply of the precious metals upon the prices of every article of commerce. That effect is undoubtedly, at present, an arrest of the fall which has so long been felt as so distressing by producers and holders of commodities; and this will be followed by a gradual but uninterrupted, and, at length, very great rise of prices. Beyond all doubt, the war prices will be restored before ten years have elapsed; and if the supplies of gold shall go on as they have done for the last two years, before twenty years are over prices will be doubled. Interested parties may complain as they like of this change—the thing is inevitable, and must be submitted to. They might just as well complain of the extension of the day in spring, or its contraction in autumn; the certainty of death, or the liability to disease. It is of more importance to form a clear idea of what the effects of this rise of prices will really be, both upon the producing and consuming classes, and to show the people how they should be on their guard against the attempts which will to a certainty be made to deprive them of the benefits designed for them by Providence.

To the industrial classes, whether in the produce of land, mines, or manufactures, it need hardly be said that this gradual rise of prices will be the greatest of all possible blessings. They may easily prognosticate what these will be: experience has given them a clear mode of estimating them. They have only to figure to themselves the very reverse of the whole seasons of distress which they have experienced during the last thirty-five years, to foresee their destiny. We shall not say that their condition will resemble what it was during the periods of excitement of 1824, 1836, or 1845; because these were artificial periods, when the effects of our monetary laws acted as ruinously in fostering speculation, as they did in the years immediately following in contracting the currency by which it was to be carried on. The change, in this instance, like all those induced by the wisdom of Nature, not occasioned by the folly or precipitation of man, will be gradual in its operation. The rise of prices will be so slow that it will from year to year be scarcely perceptible. From ten years, however, to ten years, it will be very conspicuous, and produce most important effects upon the progress of society. It will be gradual, but ceaseless, and unaccompanied by any of those vacillations which, under our monetary laws for the last thirty years, have produced such frightful devastation.

Nor need the consuming classes be under any apprehension that this rise of prices, which it is altogether beyond their power to prevent, will in the end prove detrimental to their interests. But for the delusions which, for their own purposes, the Free-Trade party have diffused through the world, it would have been superfluous, and in truth ridiculous, to have said anything on this subject. Every consumer stands on some producer: ex nihilo nihil fit. Is any argument required to show that the former cannot be in the long run injured by the bettering of the condition of the latter, by whose industry he is maintained? It is as clear as any proposition in geometry, that if the producing classes are kept in a prosperous condition, there must every year be an addition made to the sum total of the produce, which is divided among, and maintains the fainéants consumers. Those who depend upon fixed money-payments, indeed—as fundholders, annuitants, bondholders, and the like—will, in the first instance, undoubtedly be placed in a worse condition, because the money they receive will not go so far in the purchase of commodities as it once did. But this evil will even to them be in a degree compensated by the superior steadiness in money transactions, which a plentiful circulating medium never fails to induce, and the absence of those periodical monetary crises, the result of faulty legislation, which have so often in the last thirty years swallowed up the investments deemed the most secure.

The great and lasting relief to the nation which this gradual but certain rise in the money price of every species of produce cannot fail to produce, is the sensible diminution it will occasion in the weight of debts and taxes. If prices return, as in all probability they will, to the war level, there will be no greater difficulty in raising an adequate revenue for the State than there was during its continuance. The excuse that we cannot afford to defend ourselves, from our having become so very poor amidst our boasted Free Trade riches, will no longer avail. The taxes of £50,000,000 a-year will be practically reduced to £25,000,000; the debt of £800,000,000 to £400,000,000. The private debts, mortgages, and bonds, of £1,000,000,000, will be virtually reduced to £500,000,000. These are immense blessings, the consequence of Nature having reversed Sir R. Peel’s monetary policy, which, by rendering the sovereign, as the Times boasted, worth two sovereigns, had to all practical purposes doubled those burdens; and they are worth tenfold more, even in a pecuniary point of view, than all that the Liberal party by their cry for economy have effected for the country during the last half-century.

But the very magnitude of these blessings which are in store for the nation, if it is not cheated out of them, renders it the more necessary that the utmost vigilance should be exerted, lest, by cunning on the one side, and supineness on the other, they are lost. Rely upon it, the monied class who have seen their realised capital doubled in value and practical amount, during the last thirty years, by Sir R. Peel’s artificial scarcity of the currency, will do their utmost to prevent the effects of the extension of it by Nature. Possibly they may endeavour to do this by withdrawing a large part, if not the whole, of the five-pound notes from circulation. Possibly they may attempt it by altering the standard, as by increasing the weight and quantity of gold in a pound. There is little danger of their succeeding in the first, because the inconvenience of carrying about large sums in so heavy an article as gold, will soon, as was the case with the abolition of the Sunday delivery of letters, compel their re-issue. But there is much more danger that they will succeed in the last, and, by increasing the quantity of gold in a pound sterling in proportion to the fall in its value, succeed in keeping prices at their present low level, notwithstanding all the addition which California and Australia have made to the circulating medium of the globe. Sir Robert Peel said that he could not, by any effort of his understanding, attach any other idea to a pound sterling, but “a certain determinate weight of gold bullion.” But that was when gold was every day becoming scarcer and more valuable, and therefore the value of all realised fortunes measured by that pound was daily increasing. Now that it is daily diminishing, we venture to predict that his followers will discover they can attach some other idea to a pound than a certain number of pennyweights of gold. Their ideas will become expansive, and the pound will swell out with them. Having doubled their realised fortunes at the expense of the industrious classes when they had made money scarce, they will strive to prevent their wealth being restored to its original dimensions when the precious metals are becoming plentiful. If the standard is changed in proportion to the fall in the value of gold, though it was religiously upheld when it was dear and scarce, the result will be that the weight of debt and taxes will remain just what they were; prices measured by gold will continue nearly at their present level; and all the encouragement to industry, and relief from burdens, which must ensue from the extension of the currency, if the standard is maintained at its present weight, will be lost to the nation.

It is of the utmost moment also that all classes should be made fully aware that the evils of Free Trade to the native industry of this country will not be in any sensible degree alleviated—nay, that they will in all probability in the end be increased—by the increase of the supplies of gold for the use of the world. The reason is, that it is a catholic or universal blessing, extending over all countries, and affecting prices, consequently, in a proportional degree in every quarter of the globe. It will, in consequence, leave the relative disadvantage of the old and rich state, in competing with the young and poor one for the supply of agricultural produce, just where it was. If it raises the price of wheat in the English market from 40s. a quarter to 60s., which in ten years, at the present rate of supply, will probably be the case, it will as certainly raise the price in Dantzic from 18s. to 27s., leaving the English farmer still at the same disadvantage in competing with his poorer neighbour that he is at present. Nay, the disadvantage will rather be increased; for gold, like every other valuable commodity, will be attracted to the richest country and the best market, and from an unusually large portion of it flowing into England, the effect in elevating prices will be more sensibly felt there than elsewhere. Prices will rise more in proportion in the rich than in the poorer states, where much less of it can be purchased or find its resting-place; so that the last state of the industrious classes, so far as competing with foreign nations is concerned, will be worse than the first. In so far, doubtless, as our agriculturists are depressed by the weight of taxes, they will experience relief from the extension of the currency; but they will derive none save in that way from the change of prices in competing with the foreigner.

Notwithstanding this untoward circumstance, there can be no doubt that the condition of the agricultural classes will be sensibly benefited by the rise of prices, and that the depression under which they have so long suffered from the long-continued fall, will be in a great measure arrested. Great and important political benefits will follow from this change. The undue preponderance of the wealthy classes, and the shopkeepers dependent on them, owing to legislation having doubled their fortunes at the expense of the industrial, will be arrested. As it was the scarcity of money, preponderance given to capital, and depression of industry consequent on the monetary bill of 1819, which, beyond all doubt, brought about the Reform Bill, and with it the sway of the shopkeeping interest in the boroughs, which landed us in Free Trade and all its consequences, agricultural, maritime, and colonial; so a series of effects the very converse of all these may be anticipated from the expansion of the currency which has flowed from the bounty of Nature. We do not say that, in consequence of these changes, any man who now has a vote either should or will lose it; but this we do say, that many men and many places, which have now no voice in the Legislature, will be duly represented. In particular, if the monopoly and preponderance of home capital is broken up, and the interests of industry are duly represented in Parliament, it will be impossible to withhold direct seats in the Imperial Legislature from the Colonies, if Free-Trade principles have not previously severed them from the British Empire.

Connected with this subject of the extension of our circulating medium by the discoveries in California and Australia, is another not less startling, and fraught with not less important consequences upon the future destinies of the country. This is the prodigious increase of Emigration which has taken place since Free-Trade principles were carried into practice by Sir Robert Peel in 1846. To show the vast effects of that policy, it is only necessary to reflect on the subjoined Table, showing the progress of emigration for six years before and after Free Trade. By a curious coincidence, while by far the greatest part of the immense increase is to be ascribed to the depression of domestic industry by the contraction of the currency and influx of foreign commodities, a certain portion of the great exodus in the last year is to be ascribed to the newly discovered gold regions of the earth.

The emigration for the first four months of 1852, from the twelve principal harbours of Great Britain, was 103,316; nearly the same as in the corresponding period of last year, when it was 103,280. Since that, in May and June, the emigration, especially to the gold regions of Australia, has greatly increased, and it is now going on at the rate of about 5000 a-week. In all probability the emigration this year will reach 350,000, of which at least 50,000 will be to our distant settlements on the shores of Australia.

TABLE—Showing the Emigration from the British Islands for Six Years before and after Free Trade.
In the years 1840,	90,743	In the years 1846,	129,851
1841,	118,592	1847,	258,270
1842,	128,344	1848,	248,089
1843,	57,212	1849,	299,498
1844,	70,686	1850,	280,896
1845,	93,501	1851,	335,966

	6) 559,078		6) 1,552,570

	Average, 93,179		Average, 258,761

There is enough to make the most inconsiderate pause, and to fill with the most serious reflections every thoughtful mind. From three hundred to three hundred and fifty thousand persons emigrating from a single country in a single year, and this at the close of a period of six years, during which the average exodus has exceeded two hundred and fifty thousand a-year! Such a fact as this would, at any former period of English history, have excited the utmost alarm in the nation; but so habituated have the people become to disaster since the Free-Trade policy began, and so entirely have they got into the habit of looking only to the moment, and disregarding altogether all remote consequences, that it excites no sort of sensation. The annual increase of the population prior to 1845 was usually considered to be 1000 a-day, or 365,000 a-year; and this was for long a subject of congratulation and boast. The population returns of 1851, however, showed that, down to the end of 1846, it was only 230,000 a-year. But now, as 330,000 emigrants leave the British shores every year, there is AN ANNUAL DECREASE UPON THE WHOLE OF 100,000 SOULS; and that not of infants, or worn-out old persons, but chiefly young men and women in the prime of life.

The Free-Trade party, at a loss to explain this prodigious emigration, at a time when legislative principles were adopted, which, according to them, were diffusing universal prosperity, laboured hard to refer it to other causes. In the first instance, they said it was owing to the Irish famine; in the last, to Nature having scattered gold broadcast over the distant regions of the earth. Both excuses are devoid of foundation. The potato famine occurred in 1846; and since that time the harvests have been so good that, twice over, a public thanksgiving has been returned for that blessing. If Free Trade has really enriched the people of Great Britain, it should only have enhanced, except for other competitors, the market for Irish wheat, oats, and cattle, in the British Islands. It is rather too late in 1852, six years after the famine of 1846, to be reverting to that calamity as a cause of the present exodus; the more especially as, in the interim, between death and emigration, two millions of souls have disappeared in the Emerald Isle.^[7]

The pretext of the immense and increasing emigration being owing to the discovery of the Californian and Australian diggings is equally futile and unfounded. Five thousand a-week are now going there, a large proportion of whom may reasonably be considered as having been set in motion by the El Dorado visions connected with those regions. But supposing that sixty thousand emigrants this year land in Australia, of whom forty thousand have been attracted by the diggings, there will still remain three hundred thousand emigrants who have left the British shores, chiefly for the United States, irrespective of the gold mania. What is the cause of this long-continued exodus of our people?—a state of things not only unparalleled in the previous annals of this country, but unexampled in the whole previous history of the world. There is but one explanation can be given of it: the Spectator, in an able article on this subject, has very candidly stated the cause—it is want of employment which drives so many abroad. Go where you will among the middle and working-classes, and you will hear this cause assigned as the real reason why so many are going abroad; and equally universal is the lamentation, that the persons going away are the very élite of our people—the young, the energetic, the industrious; leaving only children, and aged or decrepit paupers to conduct the industry of the country, and furnish recruits to sustain its future fortunes.

However lightly the Free-Traders may treat the annual decrease of one hundred thousand in our population, and the commencement of a retrograde movement in a nation which has increased incessantly for four hundred years, there is here deep subject for lamentation to every lover of his country, and sincerely interested in its welfare. There can be no question that an increase of the numbers of the people, if accompanied by no decline in their circumstances, is the most decisive proof of public prosperity: the Free-Traders themselves acknowledge this, for they uniformly refer with exultation to any increase, however slight, in marriages, and decline in paupers, which has occurred while their system was in operation. It is impossible to conceive that a nation is thriving under a régime which annually sends from three hundred thousand to three hundred and thirty thousand persons into exile. You might as well say that an individual is thriving under a dysentery, which wastes him away at the rate of two pounds a-day. The bonds of country, home, habit, and companionship, are never broken on a great scale, and for a long time together, by any other force but the force of suffering. A golden El Dorado, a passing famine, may for a single season or two augment considerably the number of emigrants; but these causes are ephemeral in their operation, because the first speedily leads to the fortunate region being choked up with entrants, the last to the wasted one being bereft of inhabitants. But want of employment, declining means of obtaining a livelihood, is a chronic disorder, which presses unceasingly upon the people, and may drive them into exile for every year of a century together. It was this cause, induced also by the free admission of foreign grain, which first ruined the agriculture, and at last put a period to the existence, of the Roman Empire.

As the increase of population in a healthy and thriving state of society leads to an additional increase, and constantly adds to the breadth of the basis on which the pyramid of the national prosperity is rested, so a decline in the numbers of the people is attended by a precisely opposite effect. In the first case, the prosperity of every one class reacts upon the prosperity of every other class; in the last case, their suffering communicates itself in an equally decisive way to every class around them. As thus the great trade of every nation is that which goes on between the town and the country, and each finds its chief market in the wants of the other, it is impossible that either can suffer without the other class dependent on the sale of its produce suffering also. Extraneous causes, simultaneously acting on the market, may for a time prevent this effect becoming conspicuous; but in the long run it is sure to make itself felt. If the farmers are suffering, the manufacturers will speedily experience a falling off in the home markets; if the manufacturers, the farmers are as certain of finding a diminution in the consumption of their rude produce.

It is now ascertained by Captain Larcom’s report, that the wheat grown in Ireland is less by 1,500,000 quarters than it was five years ago; and by the reports of the English markets for home grain, that a shortcoming to a similar amount has taken place in the home supplies of grain for the county markets. 3,000,000 quarters less of wheat is raised in England and Ireland than was done before Free Trade began. Supposing that an equal amount of other kinds of grain has gone out of cultivation, which is a most moderate supposition, seeing that 10,000,000 quarters of foreign grain are now annually imported, when there were not 2,000,000 before, we have 6,000,000 less quarters of grain annually raised in Great Britain than was done before Free Trade was introduced! The defalcation has been nearly as great in the supplies of cattle, sheep, and other animals brought to the English market. Beyond all doubt the value of the produce that is raised has sunk a fourth. The total agricultural produce of the two islands has been estimated, before Free Trade began, at £250,000,000. At this rate, the loss the cultivators have experienced from this source alone is above £60,000,000 a-year. The Free-Traders boast that it is £90,000,000; and considering the diminution in the supplies of grain and cattle raised at home, the estimate is not much overcharged. At all events, it is probably £75,000,000. This is the real cause of the prodigious emigration which is going on from every part of the country; and as this cause is permanent and ceaseless in its operation, the decline of our population may be expected to be as continuous and progressive.

This subject has been so well handled by Sir F. Kelly in his late admirable speech at Harwich, that we cannot resist the temptation of giving it publicity in a more durable form than a daily journal.

“Now let us see what is the quantity of wheat which is produced and sold in this country. In 1844, it was 5,456,307 quarters; in 1845, 6,666,240 quarters; and in 1846, 5,958,962 quarters. You will therefore see that the fair average of that production, taking the three years, was about 6,000,000 quarters of wheat produced by the farmers and cultivators of the soil in England. Now, let us see the years that succeeded 1849, for the returns pass over the intermediate years, before the repeal of the corn laws had a fair trial, during which there was only a gradual reduction of duty. In 1849 the Act of Parliament had complete effect. The production of wheat in 1849 was 4,453,983 quarters; in 1850, 4,688,274 quarters; and in 1851, 4,487,041 quarters. Now, taking the fair average, and speaking in round numbers, that would be a production in England of about 4,500,000 quarters of wheat per annum since the repeal of the corn laws. Then what is the difference?—that in the three years before the repeal of the corn laws the British farmers and cultivators of the soil produced and made a profit on 6,000,000 quarters of wheat, while in the three years succeeding, that important class of the people had fallen off in their production to 4,500,000 quarters. Here was a diminution of wheat in the country of 1,500,000 qrs. per annum. I shall not weary you by going into details figure by figure as to the diminution which has taken place in Scotland and Ireland, but I pledge myself that on these returns it will be found that the diminution is still greater in Ireland, though in Scotland it is somewhat less in proportion. The result of the whole is, that 4,500,000 quarters of wheat less was produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland during the three years after Free Trade had a fair trial, than in the three years before the passing of the act. I do not wish to trouble you further with these very painful details, but I will detain you a single moment while I refer to a return with regard to oats. In the years 1845 and 1846, there were about 2,000,000 quarters of oats produced in each year in this country. In the years 1850 and 1851, the production of oats in the country was under 1,000,000 quarters; so that while you find the falling off in the production of wheat in the country amounts to a quarter of the whole quantity, the production of oats is reduced from 2,000,000 to less than 1,000,000 quarters; and this, gentlemen, is the system of Free Trade which some of my friends among the electors say has been so highly beneficial to the people of this country.

And in answer to the common argument that, despite this rapid decline of agricultural production, the general well-being of the people has increased, Sir Fitzroy observes—

“Now, it has been asserted that the amount of poor-rates levied in the kingdom has been less in the three years since the repeal of the corn laws than in the three years before 1846. But let us look at the amount necessarily levied for the poor in England and Wales during the three years ending 1846, and the three years beginning in 1848 and ending in 1850. In 1845, there was raised for the relief of the poor £6,791,006. (“How much did the poor get out of that?”) I hope the whole of it. This I know, that we paid it all. In 1846, the amount raised was £6,800,623; in 1847, £6,964,825; in 1848, £7,817,430; in 1849,£7,674,146; in 1850, £7,270,493; and in 1851, £6,778,914; making, therefore, in round numbers, a million sterling more than was levied for the relief of the poor before the repeal of the corn laws. Now, it is easy for manufacturers, for those well-paid labourers who have not yet felt the dire and terrible effects of this fatal measure of legislation, to point to themselves, and to laud and rejoice at the increased prosperity of the country. I am not taking Manchester, Liverpool, and Stockport, any more than I do the counties of Suffolk or Essex, but I am taking the entire kingdom; and so far from the system of Free Trade having increased the general prosperity of the country, we find that £1,000,000 a-year more has been required for the support of the poor since than before the repeal of the corn laws, and before the entire system of Free Trade had arrived at its completion. But there is one more criterion by which to judge of the effects of Free Trade. No one will deny that the general prosperity of the country, and the amount of deposits in the savings banks, always proportionately increase. It is always important to see, whether what are called the lower, but I would rather say the labouring classes—a most important class, for on their labours depends not merely the well-being but the very existence of the rest of the community—it is always important to see whether, after any great legislative changes, they are really so far benefited as to be able to confer that great advantage on their families of increasing their deposits in the savings banks. Now, in 1844, the amount of deposits was £29,504,861; in 1845, £30,748,868; and in 1846, £31,743,250. Here we arrive at the dividing line, for in 1846 was passed the measure to which I am now beseeching your cool and calm attention. In the same year it began to operate on that numerous class who contribute deposits to the savings banks, and let us see what was the result. In 1847, the amount fell from £31,743,250 to £30,207,180; in the next year it was £28,114,136; in 1849, it was £28,537,010; and in 1850, £27,198,563. This is the last year to which the returns have been corrected.”

We have not observed any answer attempted by the Liberal papers to these convincing facts; they content themselves with abusing the able gentleman who brought them forward.

These considerations reveal the real causes both of the great exports and imports of last year, and the vast losses with which both were accompanied, and the decline in the main articles of our exports which is now going on. It was the failure of the home market, owing to Free Trade, which did the whole. Finding the customary channels of home consumption falling off, our merchants were constrained, at all hazards, to send their goods abroad, and thence the great exportation, amounting in all to £73,000,000 of goods, accompanied by no profit, but by a loss of £19,000,000, as we showed in a former article on the subject, to the exporters.^[8] Finding credit easy, and money easily got from the influence of California, they engaged largely in importations, and swelled our total imports, as Mr Newdegate has proved, to £112,000,000. But the result soon showed them that it is impossible to import profitably into an impoverished country; and as most of these imports were sold at from 15 to 20 per cent below prime cost, implying a loss of not less than £20,000,000 to the importers on our imports, it is easy to say what species of a commerce Free Trade has brought upon the country. It is not surprising in these circumstances that there should now be a great decline in the last quarter, in the exports of our cotton goods, of nearly £500,000, and that the revenue for the year ending July 5, 1852, was above half a million less than in the preceding year.

One thing is very remarkable with reference to this prodigious stream of emigration, that it is all from the land of Free Trade to the land of Protection. We are told that Free Trade is the best, and Protection the worst possible thing for the working-classes; and yet above 300,000 of these very working-classes annually leave the realm where that charming thing Free Trade is in full activity, and 500,000 persons from all Europe, of whom 250,000 are from the British isles, annually land in the United States, where the most stringent system of Protection is established! Men do not sell off their whole effects, pack up their little all, and cross the Atlantic, to render their condition worse. And has the 30 per cent levied by the Americans upon all foreign imports, without exception, no hand in inducing and rendering perpetual this immense stream from the British islands to the Transatlantic realms? If the iron-works of America were exposed to the free competition of the iron-masters of South Wales and Lanarkshire, would our iron-moulders and miners go in crowds, as they are now doing, across the Atlantic? If the cotton factories of America were exposed to the competition of those of Great Britain, would our cotton-spinners and weavers be straining, as they now are, every nerve to reach the land of Protection? Nay, if the cultivators of America were not protected by the enormous import duty on wheat and oats, of which the Canadian farmers so bitterly complain, would not discouragement reach even the agriculturists of that great and growing republic? England, which is governed by shopkeepers, may adopt in her commercial policy the maxim that to buy cheap and sell dear comprises the whole of political wisdom: but America, which is governed by the working-classes, has discovered that high wages and good prices are a much better thing; and it is the practical application of this maxim which is the magnet that is attracting in such multitudes the working-classes from Europe—and, above all, from free-trading England and Ireland—to the protected Transatlantic shores.

It is no wonder that the working-classes, whether in agriculture or manufactures, are hiving off in such multitudes from the land of Free Trade, and settling in that of Protection, for the disasters which have overtaken industry under the action of Free Trade, in those quarters where it has first been fully felt, have been absolutely appalling. Look at the West Indies. Lord Derby has told us in the House of Peers—and every post from those once flourishing and now ruined realms bears witness to the fact—that not only are the estates in Jamaica nearly all going out of cultivation, but the inhabitants themselves, ruined by Free Trade, are either leaving the island in quest of employment, or relapsing into barbarism. It is not surprising that this terrible effect is taking place, for a Parliamentary paper lately published gives us the following astounding return of the refined sugar imported into Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1851:—

	Cwt.
British Colonies,	31,490
Foreign States,	417,051

	448,541

Here is a result worked by Free Trade, in less than four years after its introduction into the colonies, sufficient to make us hold our breath, and far exceeding what the most gloomy Protectionist ever predicted as the result of Free Trade policy upon the best interests of productive industry in the empire. And the Free-Traders think that they will be vindicated in the eyes of God and man for their frightful devastation, by the reflection that, while it is going on, sugar has fallen to 5d. a pound. We say advisedly, “while it is going on;” for can there be a doubt that, when the work of destruction has been completed, and, by having ruined our own colonies, we are left entirely in the hands of the foreign growers, prices will rise again, not merely to their former, but even a far higher level?

Turn again to Ireland. We shall say nothing of its 2,000,000 labourers who have disappeared from the land in the last five years, or its 1,500,000 quarters of wheat, being half the amount of that cereal it produced, which has gone out of cultivation during the same time. We refer to the report of a Parliamentary commission, a favourite measure of Sir R. Peel’s and the Free Trade party, which demonstrates in the most decisive manner the almost incredible amount of devastation which Free Trade has worked in a few years in the Emerald Isle. It appears from the Report of the Encumbered Estates Commissioners that estates have been sold by them charged with

The figures are given from memory, but they are in round numbers correct. Now we do say, that here is a decisive proof of a destruction of property which would be unexampled in history if the simultaneous ruin of the West Indies may not be considered as a parallel instance. Here is property, which must have been worth, when the debt was contracted, at least £30,000,000 (for £2,000,000 is a very small margin to leave for so huge a mass of debt) sold for less than £6,000,000, being A FIFTH PART OF ITS FORMER VALUE. The prices which the land fetched, the commissioners tell us, varied from four to fourteen years’ purchase, the average being ten years. We question if the history of the world prior to 1846 will afford a parallel instance of ruin of property by pacific legislative measures. It is in vain to ascribe this to the Irish famine: that was over six years ago. Equally vain is it to ascribe it to the savage and lawless character of the Irish peasantry. They were as lawless when creditors advanced £28,000,000 on these estates as they are now, and far more formidable, because not weakened by the loss of 2,000,000 of their numbers; and if changed at all, it should have been for the better, because they have, for the last twenty-two years, been under the government of the Liberals and Free-Traders, such decided friends in principle and practice to the interests of labour, and the welfare of the poor. The frightful decline in value can be ascribed to one cause, and only one—Free Trade in grain—which has laid waste the Emerald Isle as completely in many places as Free Trade in sugar has devastated the West Indies.

One very curious result has flowed from the effects of Free Trade, in producing so prodigious a flood of emigration from our shores, and of food supplanting native industry to them, that it has in a great degree concealed the effect of the repeal of the Navigation Laws upon our shipping. Man and his food are, it is well known, with the exception of wood for his dwelling, the most bulky of all articles of commerce. It so happens, by a curious coincidence, that the three articles, wood, corn, and human beings, are precisely the ones which Free Trade has caused to cross the ocean in the greatest quantity. Our emigration has risen, as already shown, from an average of 90,000 souls to above 300,000. Above 2000 vessels are employed from Liverpool alone in this annual exodus. The importation of grain has quadrupled: it has risen from an average of 2,500,000 quarters to one of 10,000,000 quarters. The importation of foreign wood has advanced in nearly a similar proportion. Thus changes destructive to the nation’s industry have for the time given a great impetus to its shipping. What, then, must have been the ruinous effects of Free Trade in shipping on our maritime interests, when, despite this extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance, arising from the profit which great seaport towns sometimes derive in the first instance from the causes which are inducing national ruin, so great a decline in our commercial navy has ensued from Free Trade in shipping, that it was publicly stated on the hustings at Liverpool, by one of the greatest merchants in that city, without opposition, that, in five years more, at the present rate, the foreign shipping employed in conducting its gigantic trade would be equal to the British!

The great and rapid decline in the amount of grain raised in the British islands since Free Trade was introduced, is so serious a matter with reference to our national independence, that we gladly avail ourselves of the following statistics, drawn from authentic sources, driven by an able contemporary, on the subject:—

“We have taken the three years immediately preceding the commercial changes in 1846; because, up to that period, nothing had occurred to induce our agriculturists to raise less wheat than formerly. On comparing their results with those of the three last years, which were years of complete Free Trade, we find a very striking difference. In round numbers, it may be stated that the average difference between the two periods amounts to no less than one million and a-half of quarters. During the first period, in other words, there were sold annually six millions of quarters, and during the last, four millions and a-half.

“Let us next turn to Ireland, where the returns exhibit a much larger proportionate decrease. We only possess authentic accounts from the sister island for four years; but, owing to the great care and diligence bestowed by the Government Commissioners upon the subject, we believe they approach the truth as nearly as the nature of such investigations will admit. The following are the quantities of wheat estimated to have been produced in that country during the under-stated years.

Before Free Trade.	After Free Trade.

	Qrs.		Qrs.
1844	5,456,307	1849	4,453,983
1845	6,666,240	1850	4,688,274
1846	5,958,962	1851	4,487,041

Qrs.

1847	2,926,733
1848	2,945,121
1849	2,167,743
1850	1,550,196

“It will be seen from these returns that the diminished production of wheat in Ireland corresponds very nearly in amount with the falling off exhibited by the returns of the corn-law inspectors in England. The aggregate amount of decrease in the two countries is about three million quarters.”—Morning Post, June 24.

Thus it appears that the falling off in wheat alone, raised in England and Ireland in four years, has been, under the action of Free Trade, about 3,000,000 quarters. The average consumption of wheat in Great Britain, prior to the late changes, was estimated by our best authorities at 14,500,000 quarters, being a quarter a head on the people, excluding infants, and persons, especially in Scotland, who live on oatmeal or potatoes. Thus more than a FIFTH PART OF THE STAPLE FOOD OF OUR PEOPLE has, in four years of Free Trade, come to be furnished from foreign states. If the supplies of oats and Indian corn, which are immense, and amount, with wheat, to about 10,000,000 quarters annually, are taken into account, it may safely be concluded that a fourth of the food of our people has come, in four short years, to be imported! Liverpool has told us that, in five years, half of this immense supply will be brought in in foreign bottoms! Truly we are advancing at railway speed to a state of entire dependence on foreign states for the most necessary supplies; and we shall soon realise in these realms the lamentation of the Roman annalist, that the people have come to depend for their food on the winds and the waves; or, in Claudian’s words—

Three-fourths of these immense supplies come from two countries only—Russia and America. Can we say that we are independent for a year together, when either of these powers, by simply closing their harbours, can reduce us to scarcity—the two together to famine prices? If a fourth of our subsistence is cut off by an ukase of the Autocrat of Russia, or a mandate of the imperial people in the United States, where will be the food of the British people? Both these powers were at war with us at the same time in 1811;—are their dispositions now so very friendly, and our interests and theirs so little at variance, that we can rely upon the like thing not occurring again? And if it does occur, could we hold out three months against a second Non-Importation Act, passed in either country?

We are often told of the great reduction of taxation which has been effected—to the amount, it is said, of £12,000,000 sterling—since Free Trade was introduced; but this statement is grossly exaggerated. The following tables, taken from a late parliamentary paper, shows that the reduction of taxation under Protection has been nearly SEVEN TIMES GREATER than under Free Trade; for in the former period the reduction was £41,000,000, in the latter only £6,500,000:—

1816. Property Tax, £15,500,000.——War Malt, £2,100,000.
Year.	Revenue.	Surplus.	Deficiency.	Taxes repealed.	Taxes imposed.
Before 1822				£17,600,000
1822	£54,135,743	£4,744,518		2,139,101
1823	52,755,564	4,300,747		4,050,250	£18,596
1824	54,416,230	3,888,172		1,704,724	49,605
1825	52,347,674	3,049,150		3,639,551	48,100
1826	50,241,408		£645,920	1,973,812	188,725
1827	50,241,658		826,675	84,038	21,402
1828	52,104,643	3,246,994		51,998	1,966
1829	50,786,682	1,711,550		126,406
1830	50,056,615	2,913,672		4,093,955	696,004
1831	46,424,440		698,858	1,623,536	627,586
1832	46,988,755	614,759		747,264	44,526
1833	46,271,326	1,513,083		1,532,128
1834	46,509,856	1,608,155		2,066,116	199,594
1835	46,043,663	1,620,941		165,877	5,575
1836	48,702,654	2,130,092		1,021,786	3,991
1837	46,475,194		655,760	234	630
1838	47,333,460		345,227	289	8,423
1839	47,844,898		1,512,793	63,418
1840	47,567,565		1,593,971	1,258,959	2,274,240
1841	48,084,359		2,101,370	27,170
1842	46,965,630		3,979,539	1,596,366	5,629,989
1843	52,582,817	1,443,304		411,821
1844	54,003,753	3,356,105		458,810
1845	53,060,354	3,817,642		4,535,561	23,720

				40,963,170	£9,840,768
				9,840,768

Net reduction of taxation before Free Trade,	£30,922,802

Taxes repealed since Free Trade.
Year.	Revenue.	Surplus.	Deficiency.	Taxes repealed.	Taxes imposed.
1846	£53,790,138	£2,846,308		£1,151,790	£2,000
1847	51,546,264		£2,956,684	344,886
1848	53,388,717		796,419	585,968
1849	52,951,749	2,098,126		388,798
1850	52,810,680	2,578,806		1,310,151
1851	52,233,006	2,726,396		2,679,864	600,000

				6,462,457	£602,000
				602,000

Net reduction of taxation since Free Trade,	£5,860,457

Further, how has this reduction of £5,860,457 been effected? Simply by the previous imposition of the income-tax, which produced £5,629,000 before Free Trade began. That is, Sir R. Peel took taxes off the shoulders of the whole community, when it was so generally diffused that it was not felt, and laid it as an exclusive burden upon less than 300,000 individuals in it! This is not reduction of taxation; it is shifting the burden, for the sake of popularity, from one class to another, on whom it falls with crushing severity.

The Free-Traders boast of a surplus of above £2,500,000 annually under the operation of their system. But for the income-tax it would not be a surplus at all, but a deficit of £3,000,000 annually. So oppressive, however, vexatious, and unjust is that tax, and so enormous the severity with which it presses upon agricultural industry compared to commercial, that its continuance cannot much longer be endured. It has been truly described as an “impost on the landed interest, and a contribution by the commercial.” And that really is its character, so flagrant are the frauds and evasions by which the unscrupulous among the trading classes evade its operation. The present high state of the public funds, owing to the long continuance of peace, the destruction of a large part of the trading classes by Sir Robert Peel’s monetary system, and the impulse given to industry by the repeal of that system, by the opening of the great banks of issue by Providence in California and Australia, has now raised the 3 per cents above 100, and gives a fair prospect of the Chancellor of the Exchequer being able to save £1,500,000 to the nation annually, by converting the 3 per cents into a 2½ per cent stock. Should he effect this, and, by the aid of that reduction and the surplus, succeed in taking off the income-tax, he will confer the greatest boon ever bestowed on his country since the former tax of 10 per cent was repealed, and do more to establish the popularity of his administration, than by any other measures that could possibly be devised.

By many who are fond of excitement, and by some who require it, a general election may be considered as rather a pleasant event. It certainly does break in upon the monotony of everyday existence, and gives a strong fillip to the latent energies of the people. The burly energetic patriot, who can spout, and bellow, and declaim, now becomes a man of mark and likelihood—a very Saul among his brethren. The aged plotter of the clique—“Sesina, that old negotiator”—as he shuffles past, with a dodge evidently concealed beneath the grizzly penthouse of his eyebrows, is regarded with mysterious awe as the hierophant of electioneering wiles. Even the veriest noodle finds his value rising in the market; for, if he is fit for nothing else, he can at least call at the electors’ houses, and leave cards for the candidates. Ever open from morning to night are the doors of the committee-rooms, vomiting forth shoals of canvassers, and reabsorbing them on their return with the reports of their daily mission. All this, we allow, may be agreeable to those whose blood, in ordinary times, is wont to stagnate; but, for our part, we do not scruple to confess that such an occasion as the present is exceedingly distracting and inconvenient. Our political principles, we take it, are tolerably well known; nor is it likely that, at the eleventh hour, we should change the tenor of our opinions: yet, in the course of the last two days, we have been waited on by no less than six separate sets of canvassers, “respectfully soliciting,” as they phrase it, our interest and vote in favour of Radicals of every dye, rank Whigs, and rampant Sectarians. In the streets no man is safe. Second votes are esteemed of more value than the first; and every third man you meet is intent upon nailing you for a pledge. Under these circumstances, availing ourselves of the plea that the weather is too sultry to admit of our stirring abroad, we have deserted our study, and emigrated to the attics, from the windows of which we can command a wide view of the distant Highland hills. Safe, therefore, we trust we may consider ourselves, for an hour or so at least, from all interruption, save the twittering of the swallows bringing food to their young in the nest at the upper corner of the window.

Beautiful in their disarray, and recalling many memories of forest, lake, and hill, are the implements of sylvan sport that our silent attic contains. There, in one corner, are our rods, six in number, from Behemoth, with which we slew the giant salmon of the Ness, to Spirling, the liveliest little wand that ever struck midge into the tongue of a Yarrow trout. What would we not give at this moment for a day’s fishing! O for a fairy car to waft us away bodily from the din of cities and hustings to the lovely bosom of Loch Awe! Soft and green wave the beeches in the summer breeze on those islands where the wood-hyacinth is so blue, and the honeysuckle so flush and fragrant; from the dark woods of Innistrynich you hear the doling of the cushat; while, nearer at hand, the mavis breaks out into a burst of melody. But there is a breeze on the loch, and the boat is on the shore, and Dugald opines that it is time to be up and doing. At the first cast, up rises a whopper, visibly yellow about the fin, and weighing, we shall suppose, by the way the line runs out, at least a pound and three quarters. Never did Limerick steel encounter a worthier foeman. At length, in the experienced hands of Dugald, the landing-net does its duty; and there he lies at the bottom of the boat, in all the lustre of his stars. Are the trout not rising to-day? With two pounders simultaneously upon your line, you may confidently answer—Yes; indeed, there would seem to be no end at all to their leaping. Towards evening we shall go down the loch, and try for a salmo ferox in Castle Connal bay; in the mean time, let us keep to the islands. But who is that in the boat contending, if we mistake not, with a salmon? Ha, Dugald! is it so indeed?—the author of the Moor and the Loch!

Hark! there goes the bell, recalling us at once from our day-dream. Who the mischief can have come to trouble us just now? What is this? Fire and faggots! “Your vote and interest are respectfully solicited in favour of Mr Macwheedle.” Why, the man is a rank Radical, and moreover coquetting with the Papists! John, fling this card into the waste-basket, and tell the gentlemen who brought it, with our compliments, that we are particularly engaged at present, but shall not fail to give our earnest attention to the subject. And stay, as the day is hot, you may as well offer them a glass of beer. No one shall say that we were guilty of discourtesy, though we were very nearly on the point of desiring them to go to Jericho. For have they not cost us a long journey, in bringing us back from Loch Awe before our time?

Vain would it be for us to retrace our steps, and conjure up again the eidolon of Mr Colquhoun in desperate battle with the fish. More happy than ourselves, he is doubtless at breezy Sonachan, whilst we are in the city, panting for a mouthful of refreshing air. But though we cannot remember him in person, we have his book beside us; and a better, more useful, or more entertaining companion for a sportsman cannot anywhere be found. Sporting treatises ought, generally speaking, to be received with considerable caution. Let any man, who is either an angler or a shot, reflect seriously on the enormous amount of exaggeration in which he has indulged whilst detailing the particulars of his prowess, and he will, if he has in him any candour at all, understand the force of our observation. Almost every one of us—and we are no exception—are in the habit of viewing our own exploits through the medium of powerful magnifying glasses. In doing so, we merely obey a law of nature which exhorts men to maintain their dignity and reputation; and there is no point whatever upon which people are so touchy as their success in sporting. To doubt, far less contradict, a gentleman who proffers for your acceptance the narrative of an enormous basketful killed a fortnight ago in the Tweed; or that of a red-deer, stopped at full speed in the Athole forest, at a distance of four hundred yards, by the rifle of the historian, and so huge that Crerar absolutely swooned at the sight of it; or of myriads of grouse, brought down right and left, without a single failure, is a hideous breach of manners. If, in your heart, you believe that your informant is a much inferior sportsman to yourself, you must meet him by overpowering statements; and it is very singular that, after having twice told a fabulous Iliad of your exploits, you end by thoroughly believing it. The boundary line between the realm of fact and that of fiction is very indistinct; we ought rather to say that it is nowhere absolutely marked, and that there exists a large tract of debatable land which may be plausibly claimed for either. For example, we are not at this moment certain whether we ever shot a hooper or not. We have, indeed, in our mind, a dream or vision of a star lit loch, with six beautiful white creatures feeding in a bay. We remember how we crept along, behind a dyke, our heart throbbing so hard as almost to choke us; and we can recall the agonising moment when a stick broke beneath the pressure of our knee, before we came within gunshot, and when the sentinel bird looked up as if conscious of the approach of an intruder. We remember how we levelled and fired. We remember also the dash in the water, and the whirr of wings; and if we do not remember having brought down a second swan, as it wheeled in circle, it is simply because we are somewhat dubious as to the real existence of the first. We should cut but a poor figure if we were questioned on oath as to that transaction. Sometimes the vision comes so clear that we have no doubt whatever that we killed both the swans. One lay dead-still in the bay, its wings distended, and its long neck sunk below the surface. The other fluttered a little way out, but we recovered him by means of a retriever. Then the question rises—which retriever was it, for we have had four of them in our day? Was it Neptune, unparalleled among the reeds at the divine season of the flappers? Or was it Grog, who was never known to lose a wounded hare? Or was it Cato, the curly, who could do everything but speak? Or was it Captain, who is at this moment the inheritor of our best affections? We cannot tell. It is impossible for us to say when or where it occurred. Sometimes we think it was in the Highlands, and then we fix upon Loch Sloy. At other times, it seems to us that we slew the swans in Saint Mary’s Loch, just below the Coppercleugh. Occasionally we are inclined to think that we only shot one of them; and, when very much out of spirits, we have seriously asked ourselves, whether we ever saw a wild swan, except stuffed, in a museum. Being in this state of perplexity, our practice is to split the difference of belief, and to maintain, on ordinary occasions, that we have shot one hooper. Of course, after a few tumblers with a sporting friend, we have no hesitation in bringing forward the second bird; but never, in any instance, have we violated our convictions by increasing the number to three. With this example in our mind, we always deal leniently with sportsmen. If a gentleman is so enthusiastic as to go out to Caffraria, Upper Egypt, or the Cordilleras, solely for the purpose of killing rhinoceroses, crocodiles, or condors, why should we doubt the truth of any narrative which he may be pleased to compile? How do you know that he did not shoot fifteen lions in the course of a summer’s evening, or that he did not ride across the Nile on the back of an enormous crocodile. To question his veracity is simply to commit that impertinence which we have seen practised by snobs, who, not content with your statement of the day’s sport, make a point of peering into your pannier, or examining the contents of your game-bag. Such hounds were intended by nature never to rise above the rank of a water-bailiff. They ought to be summarily dealt with, and dismissed to their kennel, with the reverse of a benison on their heads, and perhaps with a hint to their rear.

Mr Colquhoun has this virtue, that he keeps his imagination more entirely in check, as regards matters of fact, than any sportsman with whose writings we are acquainted. He does not make up his bag or fill his creel in a random way; nor does he add to the narrative of one day, quite enough distinguished by its own achievements, the events of another, which perhaps took place a year before. Neither does he commit the error, so common, of representing every day as a triumph. Read the accounts of most modern anglers, and you are led to conclude that they never, in the whole course of their lives, have failed in filling their baskets; whereas every adept with the rod is well aware that the days of disappointment greatly outnumber those of success. The men of the fowling-piece or rifle never miss. If they are in the Highlands, there is always a plethora of grouse and red-deer; if in Central Africa, you would suppose they were practising in a menagerie, and you conclude that there must be prime pluffing in Polito’s. This, of course, is nonsense; and in our humble opinion, it is calculated to act disadvantageously on the character of young sportsmen. Sporting, in all its branches, is an art which requires to be thoroughly studied on principle; and it is very wrong to excite in the youthful mind expectations which cannot be fulfilled. A boy of fourteen should not be told that he is adequate to the capture of a salmon; or that he has only to go to a certain river and throw in his line, in order to secure one. All education is progressive. He should be entered with minnows, and so made acquainted with the science of bait-fishing; he should be furthered with beardies, encouraged with eels, and in due time initiated into the mystery of capturing a trout with the fly. After that, all is plain sailing. But he should be made to feel practically the difficulties which attend even the rudiments of sport—not be impressed with the idea that there exist no difficulties whatever. We have known many a fine young fellow, who might have become a capital sportsman, stopped at the commencement of his career by the disgust engendered by failure. The imagination of the lad has been so excited by flowery narratives that he cannot summon up patience enough to bide his appointed time: he must either succeed at once, or he abandons the pursuit for ever. We regret to observe that the habits of athletic sport, once so common to the youth of Scotland, are rather on the decline; and our regret arises from the conviction that the fine bodily training which is given by field sports contributes very much to the development of a strong and manly mind. It is not difficult to say, after the perusal of any book, whether the writer is or is not a sportsman. If the former, there is a raciness in his style, a familiarity with nature, and a power of illustration, which immediately rivet your attention. Had Scott not been a sportsman, we should have lost one great charm of his novels. He of the back slums, on the contrary, who never wandered by the water-side, or took the hill with the gun upon his shoulder, is always a feeble writer. There is something sickly about his sentiment; he is vapid, dull, and queasy. His ideas of vegetation are drawn from a window-box with some stunted specimens of mignonette, striving, in spite of soot, to struggle into blossom,—or, at best, from a suburban horse-chestnut. He derives his images of animated life from a rabbit-hutch, or an occasional visit to a slaughter-house. He has no taste for the roaring of the seas, the rushing of the blast, or the thunders of a swollen cataract. He seeks repose, maunders about tranquillity, and presents you with the sketch of a lake; which, on examination, you discover to be the accurate portraiture of a horse-pond. Surely the development of ideas is as important a point as the mere acquirement of information. The one is to be gathered in the field, the other in the schools; and we are not sure that, if we were assured that all the boys were trained timeously to fishing, we should not be inclined to vote for a general prolongation of the holidays.

We must really crave pardon of Mr Colquhoun for having left him in this unceremonious manner. Another batch of canvassers, on the Seceding interest, having probably received notice of our imprudent act of hospitality, has just invaded the premises, and we have had great trouble in getting rid of them at a considerable expenditure of liquor. One gentleman in a fustian jacket tried to engage us in a discussion on the subject of education; but, as his grammar was singularly imperfect, we could not accurately comprehend his meaning. We parted, however, good friends, notwithstanding that one acute Diomede tried to make a Glaucus of us in the matter of a bran-new hat which happened to be exposed in the lobby. Nathless we managed to retain our basnet, and the ‘prentice-cup went its way. We have said already that Mr Colquhoun’s book may be relied on for accuracy of fact; but we should by no means wish to impress our readers with the idea that he is at all deficient in imagination, where imagination can be legitimately employed. Some of his descriptions indeed are very beautiful, and recall the picturesque scenery of the Highlands to the mind as vividly as the inspired pencil of Horatio Macculloch can present it to the eye. But he never condescends to make pictures merely for effect; and perhaps it is this absence of exaggeration which gives such a stamp of truthfulness to his volume. Neither does he affect the magnificent in sporting—a fault which is rather conspicuous in some other writers whom we could name. After reading the lucubrations of some sportsmen, and hearing them discourse, you would conclude that they never condescended to expend powder and lead upon a lesser object than a red-deer, and that they would consider it highly derogatory to exert their energies on the capture of trout, in the unavoidable absence of salmon. That is all fudge. Deer-stalking is an excellent thing in its way, and may indeed be considered as the highest branch of the art venatorial as practised in these islands; but there is not one sportsman out of five hundred who ever had the opportunity of levelling his rifle at a stag, and not one out of a thousand who can pursue the sport systematically. Besides this, the habitual deer-stalker must be a person endowed with uncommon stamina. Quickness of vision—accuracy of aim—caution and perseverance—are admirable things; but the stalker of the deer in his native solitudes must moreover possess the inestimable gifts of muscle and wind in larger proportion than is usually allowed to the inhabitants of cities. He must account it nothing to lie half immersed for hours in a bog or burn, without even the trifling excitement of an occasional glimpse of an antler; he must be prepared to crawl up or rush down precipices, as the exigency of the case or the movements of the deer may require; and he must, moreover, make up his mind to return homewards many an evening, after having been on the hills before cock-crow, wet, weary, and famishing, without a single incident to console him for all his great exertion. Now, there are very few people who will willingly submit to this; and we cannot wonder at it, if other sport can be obtained with a less expenditure of labour. We never knew a deer-stalker yet who had lost his rest for grouse-shooting; and we have known several who, from choice, would rather stalk a curlew than a stag. Your “whaup,” indeed, is a most difficult fellow to circumvent. Seated on the sea-beach, he might defy the approach of Sir Tristrem; indeed, to have shot a whaup in the month of October is an exploit of which any man has just reason to be proud. The true sportsman piques himself on the universality of his skill, not in exclusive addiction to one particular pursuit. Therefore, as a general rule, you may set down every writer on sporting subjects who affects to be more magnificent in his views than his neighbours, either as an impostor, who in reality knows little, or as a monomaniac, whose general experiences of the chase are worthless, and who cannot serve as an adequate guide.

No branch of sporting comes amiss to Mr Colquhoun, who is also an accomplished naturalist. Great on the lake and salmon-river, he is knowing at the “lochan” and the burn; and is aware that oftentimes as much dexterity is required for the capture of a half-pounder, as might suffice for the hooking of the lordliest fish that ever threaded the rapids of the Dee. Even the piscatory student who knows Stoddart by heart—and Tom has long been considered as quite at the summit of his craft—may obtain many a valuable wrinkle from Colquhoun, who is fertile in devices little known to the majority of practical anglers. It is the fashion of some of the brethren of the wand to speak superciliously of sea fishing, as if no sport could be obtained except in fresh water. Now we admit at once that finer fishing is required in fresh than in salt water; but there are times when the latter may be resorted to both with profit and amusement. What the haaf or deep-sea fishing may be we know not; but in the lochs which indent the western shores of Scotland excellent sport may be obtained. We take leave to draw the attention of our sporting friends, who about this time of the year repair to the Highlands, to the following extract from the volume before us:—

“The sea loch has a character peculiarly its own—no wooded islands, no green or pebbly margin, like its inland sister, except, perhaps, for a short time at full tide; and the dark mountain more often rises abruptly from its side in craggy and bold relief. It is a novel sight for the traveller, whom the refreshing evening breeze has tempted out of the neighbouring inn, at the landlord’s recommendation, to try his fishing luck with such a clumsy rod and tackle as he had never dreamt of before. The awkward-looking herring ‘skows,’ well matched with their black or red sails, scudding in all directions; the nasal twang of the Gaelic, as they pass the bow or stern of his boat, shooting their nets; the hardy weather-beaten face of the Highlander, always civil in his reply, and courteous in pointing out the most likely ground to the ‘stranger’—reiterating his injunctions (when his stock of English extends no further) ‘to keep on the broo,’ yet plainly showing that he expects the like courtesy in return, and that the least slip on your part would immediately make him change his tone,—all this can hardly fail to impress on the mind of the imaginative, that the spirit of the Highlands, though dormant, is not dead, and to carry back his fancy to the old times of clans, caterans, and claymores.

“The fishing of the sea loch is not nearly so scientific as that of the inland. The great art lies in being thoroughly acquainted with the best state of the tide for commencing operations—in having a perfect knowledge of the fishing-ground, and being able to set your long-line with neatness and despatch. Having lived for a couple of years on the banks of two sea-lochs, I had every opportunity (which I did not neglect) of practising the different kinds of fishing, and making myself master of the most propitious times of the tide for doing so with success.

“Trolling for sea-trout may be ranked at the head of this fishing; but before attempting to describe it, I shall mention two curious facts relative to the sea-trout and salmon, which it is difficult to account for. One is, that the former will take greedily in one loch, while you may troll a whole day in its next neighbour, though full of them, without getting a single bite. This was precisely the case in the two lochs alluded to. The other, that although you may see the huge tails and back-fins of salmon rising all round, I never heard of one taking the bait; and during the whole of my trolling in the salt water, I have only killed one grilse. This is the more strange, as the salmon is not at all shy of the spinning-bait in the fresh-water loch.

“The best time to begin fishing for sea-trout is at the turn of the tide when it begins to ebb: the same rod and tackle as when trolling from a boat in fresh water. The herring-fry, salted, are the most killing bait, (also excellent for large fish in fresh-water lochs,) although minnows are very good; a sand-eel may also do, the black skin pulled over the head so as to show nothing but the white body: this shines very bright, but, as it does not spin, is far less deadly than the others. A boatman who thoroughly knows the fishing-ground is indispensable, as it is much more difficult to find out than in the fresh water. Strong eddies formed by the tide are often good places; also any bays, especially if mountain-burns run into them. The largest size of sea-trout are caught in this way; and, when hooked, from the depth and strength of the water, make capital play. Large lythe also are frequently taken; these are like passionate boxers—fight furiously for a short time, after which they are quite helpless.

“If there is a good pool at the mouth of any mountain-burn, by going down with your fly-rod during a ‘spate,’ or coming down of the water after heavy rain, and when the tide is at the full, you may have excellent sport. The trout are all floundering about, ready to take your fly the moment it touches the water. This only lasts for a short time, as they all leave the pool at the receding of the tide. I say nothing of sea-trout or salmon flies, which vary so much in the different lochs, rivers, and streams, that every angler should be able to dress them for himself. Any fishing-tackle maker will be happy to teach him for a consideration. He has then only to learn from an approved hand near, what flies are best for the loch or stream he intends to fish, and tie them accordingly.”

These latter remarks savour too much of the old school. It may be useful in the case of emergency to be able to busk a fly; but we are free to confess that it is upwards of twenty years since we attempted such an operation. In the days of our youth we were accounted rather a good hand at dressing, and could turn out, on occasion, an excellent fac-simile of a bumbee. But we discovered anon, that to busk our own flies was a frightful loss of time, and necessitated the collection of an infinite quantity of feather, fud, floss, carpet, and twistings, which very soon, without any manipulation on our part, produced abundance of insect life in the shape of moths. Therefore, one fine morning we pitched the whole contents of our poke out of the window, and have since had recourse for our supplies to the regular professional artists. Every man who knows anything at all about fishing is competent to the selection of his own flies; and notwithstanding all that has been written to the contrary, we assert, from our own experience, that it is not necessary to carry with you a very diversified stock. For trouting, eight or ten of the most approved sorts of flies are amply sufficient: of course you must take care to have them of different sizes. There is more variety in salmon flies; but if you attend properly to colour, you may easily, at a moderate expense, furnish such a pocket-book as will enable you to fish with success in every river in the kingdom, provided you know how to handle your rod. We by no means undervalue local information. If you can pick up an intelligent poacher, or in default of him a gamekeeper, you can readily, for the matter of a mutchkin, ascertain what colour is considered most killing on the particular river which he depopulates; and you will find something in your book which will correspond accurately enough. If you are short of flies, the same free-tacksman of the stream will, for a shilling or two, tie you as many as you may require. And do not be afraid that he will lack the material. The feathers of the bubbly-jock make admirable wings—a red cock, adorned with a ruff of hackles, sounds his trumpet upon every midden; and your unlicensed acquaintance usually contrives to put by various sylvan furs and plumage, during the season when game fetches a good price in the metropolitan market. Trust to him for having retained sundry souvenirs of grouse, blackcock, mallard, and plover—besides a hare’s lug, in affectionate remembrance of some departed maukin. And do not, unless you are a justice of the peace, be hard upon the poor fellow for obeying, in a moderate way, the impulses of his nature. He is not by any means to be confounded with those brutal bludgeoneers who harbour in towns, and go out methodically in gangs to poach. He is simply an Indian in disposition, very kind to his colley and affectionate to his child, passionately fond of tobacco, whether in the shape of snuff or pigtail, and on the best possible terms with a brother Celt, whose dwelling is supposed to be subterraneous, and impregnable to the curiosity of the exciseman. We say, do not be hard with him, for were he merely a clodhopper, he could not busk a fly.

There is also another kind of fishing to be had in the salt-water lochs, which is not without its attraction, although, as Mr Colquhoun observes, it is not the daintiest in the world. We mean the fishing with the long-line which we have seen practised with great success both in Loch Long and Loch Fine, and which is worth the attention of the sportsman. Let us hear our author upon it.

“The eel-line, already noticed, is precisely the long-line in miniature with the exception of the hooks, which are such coarse, blunt-looking weapons, that the wonder is how they catch at all. They are sold for a mere trifle at any of the shops in the seaport towns, and tied on with a wax end, but sometimes only with a knot of the twine itself: a turn of the wire on the shank enables you to do this. A baiting-basket is required, one end for the line, the other for the baited hooks, which are placed in regular rows. My line had only three hundred hooks, but some have double that number. Herring, cut into small pieces, are the best bait: I required about a dozen for one setting, provided I eked out with mussels, but eighteen or twenty were necessary if the line was baited exclusively with herring. Mussels, however, drop off the hook so easily, that when herring can be procured they are seldom used. Seeing the long-line baited, set, and drawn, will thoroughly teach any one who has an idea of fishing—writing how to do so, never will. It generally took me about an hour and a half to bait mine; so I taught a boy, who, after two or three lessons, could bait as well as myself.

“The best time to set the long-line is after low water, when the tide has flowed a little, and brought the fish with it. To know the different ‘hauls’ is most important, as your success in a great measure depends upon the selection of a good one. After the line is set, it should be left exactly one hour; and, if you have hit upon a shoal, you will most likely half fill the boat. I have several times killed about a dozen, from twenty to fifty pounds’ weight, besides quantities of smaller. The fish for the most part taken are cod, ling, haddock, skate, large flounders, and enormous conger-eels—some of the latter more than half the length of your boat, and as thick as a man’s leg. These would generally be thrown back again, were it not for the havoc they make among the other fish, and the damage they do to the set lines. Their throats, therefore, are cut as soon as they are pulled up, after which operation they will live for hours. The skate is also very tenacious of life; and nothing can be more absurd than the grotesque pompous faces it will continue to exhibit for some time after being deposited in the boat.”

Here Mr Colquhoun becomes slightly libellous—comparing the countenances of the unhappy skate to those of functionaries on the bench. Now we happen to have seen a moribund skate or two, but we never were impressed with such resemblance. We admit, however, that we have seen countenances under wigs look exceeding dolorous and fish-like when their party was going out of office.

But enough of this kind of fishing, which is, after all, too strictly professional for our taste. We prefer the rod and fly; and even in the salt water the angler may use such implements, though in a coarser form than that to which he is accustomed.

“Of all apologies for a fly, this (the white feather) is the clumsiest. It is only a swan’s or goose’s feather tied round a large and very coarse bait-hook, without the least pretence to art: any man who had never dressed a fly in his life would be as successful in the attempt as the most finished performer. The rod and line are in perfect keeping with the fly; a bamboo cane, or young hazel tree, with ten or twelve yards of oiled cord, and a length or two of double or triple gut next the hook: no reel is used.

“The fish generally caught in this way are lythe and seithe, although mackarel will rise freely also. When fishing for the former, good double gut may be strong enough; but if large fish are expected, I should always recommend triple. Seithe take best in the morning and evening, and a light breeze is rather an advantage: although the fly is sometimes sunk a little with lead, it is more often fished with at the top. You may begin at any state of the tide, and row over all the sunk banks and places where the fish frequent, at a slow rate, with three or four rods placed regularly in the stern of the boat. When a small seithe is hooked, pull it in at once, and out with the rod again as fast as possible; sometimes nearly all the rods have a fish at the same time. In lythe fishing, you need not launch your boat until lowwater; sink the fly with a couple of buckshot, and troll on the brow where it descends perpendicularly; this is easily seen at that state of the tide. When you hook a large fish, try to prevent it getting down, or you may be obliged to throw the rod overboard, in case the lythe should break away; but, if you can manage to swing it about at the top for a short time, it will soon be unable to offer any resistance.

“Trolling with the white feather has this recommendation, that it may be enjoyed by an invalid or party of ladies—and, certainly, a more delightful way of spending the cool of a summer evening cannot be imagined; rowing slowly along those romantic shores—hearing the distant gurgle of the dwindled mountain-brook in its steep descent, and ever and anon passing the blue curling smoke of a shepherd’s or fisherman’s grass-topped hut upon the banks.”

Four times has that detestable door-bell rung; and on each occasion we have heard the murmur of voices below, the shuffling of feet, and the tinkling of tumblers. Our hospitality, we begin to fear, has been grossly abused—all the canvassers in the neighbourhood are flocking to our tap—and we are not without some misgivings that we may have incurred the statutory penalties for treating. There goes the bell again! Who the deuce can it be now? Surely we have liquored impartially every Trojan and Tyrian in the district. Well—who is it?

Tell the Chairman of Mr Macwheedle’s Committee that we are at this moment slightly delirious, and practising with pistols in the attics. Hint to him, moreover, that we have an unfortunate habit of firing down into the lobby whenever we hear a noise, and that we may possibly mistake him for a rhinoceros. And give no more beer, on any account, to any human being. We trust, now, we may be permitted to remain undisturbed, and finish our article in peace.

On glancing round the attic, we observe that our rifle, and double-barrelled Dickson, have lain untouched since November last. We must look to this gear speedily; for time is stealing on, and the twelfth of August will be upon us before we have recovered from the heat of these elections. We intend, weather permitting, to knock down on that day as many brace as may correspond with Lord Derby’s majority—and the news of the result of the first contested election in England should arrive about this time. Indeed, we suppose it has arrived, for there is an unusual sound in the street, and a bawling as of triumphant partisans. We open the window, peer over, and behold a frantic Constitutionalist gesticulating like a windmill. What is the row down there? “The two Conservative candidates returned for Liverpool by an immense majority!” Heaven be praised! Mr Cardwell has got his gruel at last. Go home, our fine fellow, and try, if possible, to keep sober. At the same time, we consider it necessary to dedicate a special bumper in honour of this event, for first blood is always a great point in a battle. With three cheers, which startle the swallows from their equanimity, we drink to the health of the electors of Liverpool, who have so nobly done their duty; and to that of Messrs Turner and Forbes Mackenzie, their staunch and worthy representatives.

If this sort of thing goes on, we shall have work before us on the Twelfth. On that day, many an unfledged sportsman will take the hillside for the first time; and for their benefit we transcribe a few sentences, by way of precept, from Mr Colquhoun’s book. Let them, however, read diligently the whole of his chapter upon grouse and black game shooting, and we promise them that, by adopting his suggestions, they will bring home a heavier bag than they could secure by following the advice of any other mentor.

“Most young shots are not content unless they are upon the moor by peep of day, on the long-anticipated 12th of August. And what is the result? They have found and disturbed most of the packs before they have well fed, and one half will rise out of distance, and fly away unbroken. Had the moor been left quiet till eight or nine o’clock, four double shots might have been obtained at almost every pack, and many would have been scattered for the evening shooting. It will generally be found that if two equal shots, upon equal moors, uncouple their dogs, one at five o’clock and the other at eight, and compare notes at two in the afternoon, the lazy man will have the heaviest game-bag, and his ground will be in best order for the deadly time of the day, to say nothing of his competitor’s disadvantage from having fruitlessly wasted his own strength and that of his dogs, when many of the packs would not allow him to come within reach. My advice, therefore, to the young grouse-shooter, is always to wait till the dew is dry on the heather. If he starts at eight o’clock, and travels the moors as he ought, there is time enough before dark to put his powers to the proof, however he may pique himself upon them. I do not mean to say he must run over the ground, but keep up a steady, determined walk, up hill and down hill, without flagging for an instant, unless the dogs come upon the scent of game. Of all sports, grouse-shooting is the most laborious. None can stand a comparison with it except deer-stalking; and yet the veriest “soft,” puffing and blowing at every step, may put off a whole day upon the moors—travelling them, I will not call it—and boast after dinner that “he wonders how people can find grouse-shooting so toilsome and fatiguing—fox-hunting is much more so.””

This, however, with all deference to Mr Colquhoun, requires to be received with qualification. One man may work himself very nearly to death at grouse-shooting with no more success than another who takes it leisurely. If you go out with numerous relays of dogs, letting loose a couple, or perhaps three high-bred and far-ranging pointers at a time, you will undoubtedly, on any average moor, get exercise enough to knock you up long before the day is over. You must necessarily walk up to every point, whether it be a real one or not; and great is your travel accordingly. Our method is different. We never let out more than one dog at a time. The very best of dogs are not improved by emulation, especially at the beginning of the season. They stand upon the honour of their noses; and, rather than not make points, will take up the faintest scent out of sheer jealousy of each other; whereas a single dog knows that he is in a situation of trust, and will not willingly betray you. Contrary to the popular dogma, we prefer a setter to a pointer. The former is a more intelligent and docile animal than the latter, and, if you take proper pains with him, will always understand you better, and accommodate himself accordingly. The only disadvantage of setters is that they require water, and are liable to be much distressed when the moor is particularly dry. Still we give them the preference over the other; and, if you have your dog fully under command, you will kill as many birds over him, with infinitely less fatigue to yourself, as if you were to let out three. Of course you must take care not to let him be overworked; for there are limits to the endurance of every living creature, however willing he may be. A really good dog will not give in readily, for he enjoys the sport as much as you do yourself. And here we would entreat our young friends to beware how they are harsh to their dogs. Be kind to your dog, and he will love you more sincerely and less selfishly than almost any human being. Do not be in a hurry to conclude that he is stupid. Nature has gifted him with a nose in many respects superior to your own; and he is far more likely to be in the right than you are. Some faults there are undoubtedly which you must check, but never with unnecessary harshness. No more hideously brutal picture can be conceived than that of a hulking fellow in fustian, with a flushed face and angry voice, belabouring a prostrate pointer.

Mr Colquhoun has some very sensible observations on the instinct of dogs, which we transcribe for the benefit of those who think that a pointer or a setter can display no sagacity except in the field.

“It is often amusing to hear those who know little about the subject describing the ‘almost reason’ of the St Bernard’s dog, and not unfrequently of the Scotch ‘colley.’ It appears to me that the instinct of these animals is more prominently forced upon their notice, and they do not take the trouble to watch and discover it in the other species. Sagacity is more equally distributed among the different varieties of the dog than such casual observers are aware of; but it, of course, takes different directions, according to the temper, habits, and treatment of the animal. It would be a waste of time so far to control the keen tempers of sporting-dogs (by which I mean setters and pointers) as to make them perform the duties of a well broke phlegmatic retriever. The instinctive power may therefore appear greater in one than the other; but from the quiet, easy temper of the retriever, it is much less difficult to develop and make use of his instinct in that particular way: while the setter and pointer, owing to their more active life and hunting propensities, may often pass unnoticed, even by their masters, though every time they are in the field displaying as much tact as the most cautious retriever. Their sagacity is never thought of; and the only praise they get is that they are ‘excellent dogs;’ which means that they find plenty of game.

“There is another reason why sporting-dogs appear more deficient in sense than some others, and that is their mode of life. Confined always in the kennel unless when seeking game, all their powers are employed to this end. There are, however, abundant proofs that, when made companions, and suffered to occupy a place upon the hearth-rug, they are capable of the same attachment, and would equal in sagacity the much-lauded dogs of St Bernard. Indeed, the usual mode of imprisoning sporting-dogs is so great a disadvantage, that I have seen some, with excellent noses, and every requisite for the moors, grow sulky, and refuse to hunt with their usual freeness, unless left in a great measure to themselves. This, I know, arose partly from a want of proper management, and not keeping the medium between encouraging kindness and merited correction; for too much lenity is nearly as injurious to a dog as over-severity: sulkiness will often be the effect in the one case, shyness in the other. Still, if the dog were allowed to be the companion of his master, he would both acquire sense and tact in half the time, and would not give half the trouble either by shyness or sulkiness; whereas it will generally be found that a kennel-dog is long past his best before he excels in that sagacity on the moor which so greatly assists him in finding game.”

In short, the dog who knows his master, and is familiar with his ways, will always do his work more satisfactorily than the poor beast who has passed the greater number of his days in the monotony of the kennel, and who never has had the advantage of being introduced to human society.

We have not, however, adverted to the points raised by Mr Colquhoun as to taking the moors early. There can be no doubt that he is right, in the advice which he tenders to young sportsmen. Early-rising we believe to be a virtue, though one which we do not practise with sufficient exactitude; and we have heard it stated, on credible authority, that nature looks lovely at sunrise. But for all that, there is no occasion whatever for awakening the echoes by a premature discharge of musketry. Grouse must breakfast like other living creatures, and it is but fair to allow them, on this the day of their annual massacre, the privilege of a matutinal picking. As to your own breakfast, we certainly should not recommend you to victual yourself as if you were stowing away provisions to last you for a couple of days; but, on the other hand, go not forth famished. Mr Colquhoun recommends you to forego the companionship of a flask. We dissent. If the weather is boiling, and if you are not accustomed to violent exercise, you must necessarily drink something; and the safest beverage is water slightly tinctured with spirits. Beer blows you up, and porter makes you sleepy. Cold tea is trash. Of course you will take care not to increase your hereditary thirst by cramming yourself at luncheon with ham, or any of those high-spiced delicacies which Italian warehousemen especially recommend for the moors. Eat anchovies, and in a quarter of an hour after you have resumed your beat, you will find that you had better have tasted of the apples of the Dead Sea. And here we shall remark that the proceedings of the previous evening have often much to do with these distressing symptoms of thirst. Of all days in the year we regard the eleventh of August as that which should be most soberly observed; and we earnestly counsel our young friends, if they have any regard for their own comfort, to resist on that evening the most pressing hospitality which may be offered them by a seasoned Thane. Besides this, young sportsmen are commonly nervous enough on their first field-day, without doing anything additional to make their hand unsteady; and it is well known to authorities, that, whereas the man who begins by shooting well in the morning commonly continues to do so throughout the day, the unfortunate lad who signalises himself by a series of misses at the commencement very rarely regains coolness enough to enable him to do any execution. He becomes flurried and anxious, takes no deliberate aim, fires at any kind of distance, and, not unfrequently, puts the life of Ponto into jeopardy extreme.

Black-cock shooting is a much tamer sport than that afforded by the quest of the grouse. Nevertheless, as an old cock is a handsome bird to look at, and withal heavy, though he makes but an indifferent addition to the table, the young sportsman is usually desirous to bring him to bag. On this subject we have a word or two to say. Great care should be taken not to disturb the young broods before the twentieth of August—indeed, in our opinion, the twentieth of August is quite early enough to begin. The places where black game hatch, and in which the young broods continue until they are well grown, are quite distinct from those frequented by the grouse. You may expect to find the former in tracts of rushy ground, in little glens where the fern grows abundantly, or in low brushwood; whereas the latter are always to be sought for among the heather. Young black game lie so close that it is sometimes easy to take them with the hand just under the nose of the pointer—indeed the pointer is often tempted to break rules, and make a grab at the living simpleton who will not flutter up. At the commencement of the season it is always best to keep the higher ground, so that the dogs may not interfere with the black in their quest for the red game; and afterwards, in every case where the birds are not fully grown, we supplicate for mercy for the maternal grey hen. Indeed, the sportsman will find it to his advantage to give her a reprieve; for young black game are very helpless creatures, and, if deprived of their mother’s superintendence before they are well fledged, are apt to fall victims to some of their natural enemies, who are perpetually on the prowl. As for the old cocks, down with them whenever you can. They are quite able to look after themselves, are exceedingly wary, and, if you happen to find them in the bracken or brushwood, will afford you a charming right and left. Towards the close of the season, stalking blackcock is a very exciting sport. It requires great caution and skill—for our sable acquaintances are knowing strategists, and always appoint a sentinel. Driving blackcock is another method which we have practised with considerable success, both in Argyllshire and on the Border, where this species of game especially abounds; and we can answer for the excellence of the sport. These remarks apply to the circumventing of the old birds—the pursuit of young black game is very tame work. They always rise within easy distance, and fly so steadily that the merest tyro can bring them down; whereas the acuter grouse, after he has been once or twice disturbed, seems to form a very accurate estimate of the nature and purposes of a gun, and endeavours to get out of your way without cultivating a nearer acquaintance.

We are bound to confess that we never shot a ptarmigan; and, judging from Mr Colquhoun’s account of two expeditions which he made in search of that Alpine bird, we have little inclination to follow his example. The ptarmigan, or white grouse, is only found near the summits of the loftiest mountains in Scotland; and, when roused, he has a playful habit of crossing from one peak to another, so that, if you wish to follow him up, you must ascend a second Jungfrau. Now, we have no idea of this kind of elevation; for one would require to be a sort of Giant of the Hartz, able to stride from mountain to mountain, in order to pursue such erratic game. Alpine hares are more to the purpose; and as we believe English sportsmen are not well acquainted with the habits of this animal, which, of late years, has been greatly on the increase in some districts of Scotland, we may perhaps transcribe with advantage the remarks of Mr Colquhoun.

“The white hare inhabits many of our mountains. It is not confined, like the ptarmigan, to the tops of the highest and most inaccessible, but, on the contrary, is often met with on grouse-shooting ranges, where there are few crags or rocks to be seen. I have frequently shot it on flats, between the hills, where it had made its form like the common hare; and, though I have more often moved it in rocky places—where it sometimes has its seat a considerable way under a stone—I do not think it ever burrows among them, as some suppose; for, although hard pressed, I have never seen it attempt to shelter itself, like a rabbit, in that way. Indeed there would be little occasion for this, as its speed is scarcely inferior to the hares of the wood or plain, and it evidently possesses more cunning. When first started, instead of running heedlessly forward, it makes a few corky bounds, then stops to listen, moving its ears about; and, if the danger is urgent, darts off at full speed, always with the settled purpose of reaching some high hill or craggy ravine. If not pressed, it springs along as if for amusement; but takes care never to give its enemy an advantage by loitering.

“I put up one on the 16th March 1840, when inspecting the heather-burning on my moor, at Leny in Perthshire, which (contrary to their usual practice) kept watching, and allowed me several times to come within a hundred yards. I was at first surprised, but the explanation soon occurred to me that it had young ones in the heather. I had thus a good opportunity of noticing the commencement of its change of colour. The head was quite grey, and the back nearly so; which parts are the last to lose, as well as the first to put on, the summer dress. I shot one nearly in the same stage, on the 22d November 1839. The only difference was that the whole coat of the former appeared less pure. This is easily accounted for, as in winter the creature, though recovering a fresh accession of hair, loses none of the old, which also becomes white; whereas in spring it casts it all, like other animals. Thus, by a merciful provision, its winter covering is doubly thick; while, at the same time, being the colour of snow, (with which our hills are generally whitened at that time of year,) it can more easily elude its numerous foes. The same remark applies to the ptarmigan.

“During a mild winter, when the ground is free from snow, the white hare invariably chooses the thickest patch of heather it can find, as if aware of its conspicuous appearance; and to beat all the bushy tufts on the side and at the foot of rocky hills at such a time affords the best chance of a shot. The purity or dinginess of its colour is a true criterion of the severity or mildness of the season. If the winter is open, I have always remarked that the back and lower part of the ears retain a shade of the fawn-colour; if, on the contrary, there is much frost and snow, the whole fur of the hare is very bright and silvery, with scarcely a tint of brown. When started from its form, I have constantly observed that it never returns, evidently knowing that its refuge has been discovered. It will sometimes burrow in the snow, in order to scrape for food and avoid the cold wind, as well as for security. These burrows are not easily discovered by an unaccustomed eye; the hare runs round the place several times, which completely puzzles an observer, and then makes a bound over, without leaving any footmark to detect her retreat. It is hollowed out, like a mine, by the hare’s scraping and breath, and the herbage beneath nibbled bare.

“When deer-stalking in Glenartney last autumn, I was quite amazed at the multitude of Alpine hares. They kept starting up on all sides—some as light-coloured as rabbits, and others so dark as to resemble little moving pieces of granite. I could only account for their numbers from the abundance of fine green food, and the absence of sheep; which are as much avoided by hares as by deer, from their dirting the ground with their tarry fleeces.

“An eye-witness, on whom I can depend, gave me a curious account of the tactics of a hill-hare, which completely baffled the tyrant of the rocks. Puss, as is her wont when chased by an eagle, sheltered herself under a stone. The eagle took post at a little distance, and watched long, exactly like a cat waiting for a mouse. Although her fierce foe was out of sight, the hare seemed to have a mesmeric knowledge of his vicinity, for she never would move so far from her hiding-place as to be taken by surprise. Several times she came out to feed, but the moment the eagle rose she was safe again. At last her pursuer got tired, and flew away. The white hare has always a refuge of this kind where eagles haunt.”

We may add that the Alpine hare is now most abundant in some districts of Perthshire, and that it is easily shot, by the sportsman taking post at the outlet of one of the large enclosures of hill pasture, while the ground within is beat. This, of course, is inglorious shooting; but fellows who are not up to the ready use of firearms like it; and we should be inclined to bet that even Mr John Bright would, once out of twenty-five trials, contrive to hit a hare. We shall not rashly predicate the like of his friend Mr Welford, unless the hares were taken sitting; and, even in that case, we have great doubts whether the arch-enemy and would-be extirpator of game would succeed; for we have an idea that he entertains a vague notion that the recoil of a fowling-piece is something absolutely terrific.

By the way, what has become of Welford? It is now several years since we had occasion to notice his work on the game-laws with marked amenity; but, since then, we have lost sight of that Pleiad. Is it possible that he can have been converted to our views, in consequence of his having been graciously permitted by the member for the West Riding to sport over his extensive estates? We hope so, and do not despair to see him ere long upon the mountains with a philabeg girt round his loins. Having begun such a crusade against the feræ naturæ, he ought to consummate it with his own hand. Theseus was supposed to have rid the Peloponnesus of ravening beasts—why should not Welford exterminate the objects of his wrath, and put an end to the ornithology of Great Britain?

So long as moor and loch remain—and it will be a considerable time before the one is thoroughly reclaimed, and the other thoroughly drained, in Scotland—there is little probability that any of the animals native to our country will utterly perish before the exertions of the Manchester gentry. Indeed it is worth while remarking that modern improvement, by replacing the woods, has again brought back to districts the game which for centuries had disappeared. Within our recollection, a roe-deer had never been seen by a living man south of Forth; now they are not uncommon within twelve miles of Edinburgh, and probably will soon spread to the Border, and beyond it. The roe is no great delicacy for the table—though the Germans think otherwise, and dress it with considerable skill—nor might it satisfy the requirements of an aldermanic appetite; but no one who has seen those elegant creatures bounding through a Highland wood, or stealing out at evening to feed beyond the coppice, can deny the charm which they add to the beauties of our northern landscape. We fairly confess that we never, even in the heyday and excitement of our youth, have shot a roe without experiencing a pang of regret. But roes, according to the views of Welford, must not be allowed to multiply indefinitely; and therefore we have endeavoured at times, when they became too thick, and would persevere in barking the trees, to do our duty. We shall not extract anything from Mr Colquhoun’s chapter upon roe-hunting, which we recommend to the attention of those who may shortly have occasion to try that sport; but we cannot pass over a little Highland picture in which the roe is a prominent figure.

“Day was just breaking when I crossed the river Tulla, on my way to Peter Robertson’s cottage. He was standing before his door, consoling himself for his early start by a pipe of very strong tobacco. The morning was all we could wish—calm, grey, and mild. As we passed the banks of the loch, roe-deer were quietly cropping the greensward, which sloped to the water’s edge, and now and then a fine buck would raise his head, and look listlessly over his shoulder, as if wondering what business we had to be so early astir. The blackcock, surrounded by his hens, was crooning his antics on the tops of the knolls, and was answered by the redcock, with many a cheery but eccentric call, from the more distant heights. A male hen-harrier was flitting stealthily above the heather, seeking his breakfast where it could easily be found, with small chance of human company at his morning meal. Now and then an Alpine hare would canter lazily away, or raise herself upon her hind-legs to listen, moving about her inquisitive ears.”

To the naturalist, the most puzzling of all questions is to define accurately the limits between instinct and reason, as the terms are commonly understood. We have long ago given up the attempt in absolute despair. Take, for example, the case of the rooks. They can distinguish Sunday from the rest of the week as accurately as any precentor, and are perfectly aware that, on that day, no gun will be levelled at them. You may make demonstrations with a stick if you please, but the rooks will not fly away. They merely retort with a caw of utter scorn. But on Monday morning the Lord of Rookwood is a changed being. He will not on any account let you within a hundred yards of him; and so excessively acute is he, that you would almost swear he scents the powder in your pocket. So is it with the roes. When wandering unarmed through a Highland wood, you are almost certain to fall in with several of these beautiful creatures, who regard you almost without alarm, and glide slowly into the shaw. They know quite well that you are not there with any murderous design, and they neither fear nor avoid you. Not so if you carry a gun. In that case, you may look long enough about you before you will descry the white spot, which is the distinguishing mark of the roe-deer. They whom you seek are lying close in the brackens, perhaps but a very few yards from you, but they will not stir till you are gone.

Beating for roe is stupid work. We do not see the fun of standing for half the day in a pass waiting for a chance shot, with no other regalement for the ear than the hoarse braying of the beaters, and their everlasting shouts of “Shoo!” A much better method is that of stirring the roe with a foxhound, when he glides from thicket to thicket, in advance of his pursuer, whose clear note indicates his approach, and gives you sufficient warning. But enough on this head.

We have already, in former articles, while reviewing the works of Mr St John and the Stuarts, had occasion to enter pretty fully into the subject of deer-stalking. Therefore we shall not again go over that ground, although tempted to do so by Mr Colquhoun’s admirable chapter devoted to that noble sport, in which he lays down, with great perspicuity, all the rules which ought to be observed by the stalker. To such of our readers as aspire to have their exploits chronicled in the columns of the Inverness Courier, (the best sporting register in Scotland,) we recommend Mr Colquhoun’s book, advising them to study it well before they venture forth into the mountains. It is true that no theory can supply the lack of practice; still, deer-stalking is eminently an art; and there are distinct rules for following it, which must not be disregarded. Mr Colquhoun is more concise than any former writer, and we prefer him, as a guide, to Mr Scrope.

There is a very curious chapter devoted to the chase of the wild goat, which may now be considered among the feræ naturæ of Scotland. They exist in some of the islands of Loch Lomond, and, if we mistake not, on the hills of Ross-shire, near Loch Luichart. Some years ago, there were several wild goats on the tremendous precipices at the entrance of the Bay of Cromarty; but they were assailed in their fastnesses both from sea and land, and, for aught we know, may have been exterminated. We beg, however, to caution our English friends against firing at every goat they may chance to fall in with in their rambles among the hills. In many parts of the Highlands goats are kept as stock—indeed, it is probable that the kind now considered as wild were originally stragglers from some flock. In the course of two or three generations they have lost all trace of a domestic character, and can neither be claimed nor reclaimed. But it is not safe for sportsmen to exercise their judgment upon this point, without distinct local information, lest, perchance, they should happen to smite down an appropriated Billy in his pride. We have known some awkward mistakes occurring with regard to geese, who had somewhat imprudently exhibited themselves on the bosom of a mountain tarn.

We cannot read the chapter entitled “Crap-na-Gower,” containing an account of an exterminating warfare against the goats on one of the Loch Lomond islands, without wishing that they had been allowed to remain, at whatever injury to the trees. Mr Colquhoun, who always writes as a humane gentleman ought to do, virtually admits that he does not plume himself on the share which he took in that crusade; and there is something very melancholy in the picture which he draws of the death-scene of the last Billy. We can fully understand the feeling which prompts men of an exceedingly tender and sensitive disposition to abstain from field sports altogether. The idea of giving pain to any living creature is to them intolerable; and we believe there are few sportsmen who have not in their own minds experienced occasional misgivings. Abhorring, as we do, all manner of cruelty, it does seem at first sight strange and unnatural, that a person feeling thus, should seek amusement or recreation in depriving living creatures of their existence. But we altogether deny that there is any ferocity in the chase. We are led to it by a natural instinct, powerful in the savage, but which civilisation has no power to obliterate; and that instinct was doubtless given to us, as were the brute creation to man, for wise and useful purposes. Those who argue that there is inhumanity in field sports, seldom reflect on their own inconsistency. Either they must maintain—which none of them do—that wild animals should be allowed to multiply indefinitely, in which case foxes, foumarts, and stoats, would share in the general amnesty, not to mention such an increase in the number of hares as would annihilate agriculture; or they must, as some of them certainly do, assert their right to cut off a branch of creation from the earth. The argument for field sports lies midway between unrestricted multiplicity and total extermination. Now, surely it is better that a grouse should have its lease of life and enjoyment, and afterwards be swiftly shot down for the use of man, than that there should be no grouse at all. Your modern advocate for total clearance is, in fact, as gross a barbarian as the brute who deliberately sets his foot upon a nest of eggs, for the avowed purpose of preventing so much development of animal existence. He is, in heart at least, a chick-murderer. He opposes himself to the economy of creation; and would, on his own responsibility, make a new arrangement of the zoology of the globe, on principles entirely his own.

It would be a great relief to us if those Homeridæ, who have been screaming satirical panegyrics on Macwheedle beneath our window, for the last hour or two, would withdraw themselves and their minstrelsy. Such canorous vagabonds do a great deal of mischief. The satirified individual, who is, in reality, a very poor creature, suddenly finds himself swelled into importance, by being chaunted ironically in the streets; and is apt to imbibe the notion that he is, after all, a fit and proper person to be returned to Parliament. So far as we have been able to gather the meaning of the words, these effusions seem to be couched in the veriest doggrel; but, for all that, they are emanations from the popular mind, symptomatic of the coming result of the poll, and we so receive them. Against Macwheedle we are ready to lay any manner of odds, for no minstrel’s throat, as yet, has vibrated decidedly in his praise. We hope, however, that the shilling, which we willingly tender, may procure us immunity, for an hour or two, from this hideous irruption of song.

Hitherto we have adverted mainly, for the benefit of those who are untried in the ways of the Moor and the Loch, to the earlier sports of the season; because we are in favour of what Dandie Dinmont termed a “regular entering,” and have no idea of dispensing with principles at the commencement of the sportsman’s career. Old hands know perfectly well what is before them. Such a work as this, which we are reviewing, may possibly confirm some of their theories, or it may reveal to them the cause—especially in winter shooting—of some errors into which they may have inadvertently fallen from too slight notice of the habits and peculiar sensitiveness of their game. Mr Colquhoun’s observations on this point are peculiarly valuable; for, dwelling on the banks of one of the most beautiful of our Scottish lochs, he has had ample opportunity to study the movements of the aquatic birds which congregate there in the winter season. The reader must not expect to find such narratives of wholesale slaughter among ducks and widgeon as embellish the pages of Colonel Hawker. Punt-shooting is limited to the sea-shores and harbours; and we can readily conceive it to be an exciting occupation for those who are hardy enough to take the mud at midnight, regardless of the state of the thermometer. But duck-shooting, on a Highland loch, partakes more of the nature of stalking, and calls forth in an eminent degree the skill and resources of the hunter.

“Having now equipped our wildfowl shooter, we will again bring him to the shore. His first object should be to see his game without being seen himself, even if they are at too great a distance to show signs of alarm. To effect this he must creep cautiously forward to the first point that will command a view of the shore for some distance; then, taking out his glass, he must reconnoitre it by inches, noticing every tuft of grass or stone, to which wildfowl asleep often bear so close a resemblance, that, except to a very quick eye, assisted by a glass, the difference is not perceptible. If the loch be well-frequented, he will most likely first discover a flock of divers, but must not be in a hurry to pocket his glass, until he has thoroughly inspected the shore, in case some more desirable fowl may be feeding or asleep upon it. I will suppose that he sees some objects that may be wildfowl. Let him then immediately direct his glass to the very margin of the loch, to see if anything is moving there. Should he find it so, he may conclude that it is a flock of either duck, widgeon, or teal; those first perceived resting on the shore, and the others feeding at the water’s edge—of course not nearly so conspicuous. If there is no motion at the margin of the loch he must keep his glass fixed, and narrowly watch for some time, when, if what arrested his attention be wildfowl asleep, they will, in all probability, betray themselves by raising a head or flapping a wing.

“He must now take one or two large marks, that he will be sure to know again, as close to the birds as possible; and also another, about two or three hundred yards immediately above, further inland. Having done this, let him take a very wide circle and come round upon his inland mark. He must now walk as if treading upon glass; the least rustle of a bough, or crack of a piece of rotten wood under his feet, may spoil all, especially if the weather be calm. Having got to about one hundred yards from where he supposes the birds to be, he will tell his retriever to lie down; the dog, if well trained, will at once do so, and never move. His master will then crawl forward, until he gets the advantage of a bush or tuft of reeds, and then raise his head by inches to look through it for his other marks. Having seen them, he has got an idea where the birds are, and will, with the utmost caution, endeavour to catch sight of them. I will suppose him fortunate enough to do so, and that they are perfectly unconscious of his near approach. He must lower his head in the same cautious manner, and look for some refuge at a fair distance from the birds, through which he may fire the deadly sitting shot. After creeping serpent-like to this, he will again raise his head by hair-breadths, and, peeping through the bush or tuft, select the greatest number of birds in line; then drawing back a little, in order that his gun may be just clear of the bush for the second barrel, after having fired the first through it, will take sure aim at his selected victims. Should he unfortunately not find an opening to fire through, the only other alternative is by almost imperceptible degrees to raise his gun to the right of the bush, and close to it; but in doing this the birds are much more likely to see him, and take wing. Never fire over the bush, as you are almost certain to be perceived whenever you raise your head: more good shots are lost to an experienced hand by a rapid jerk, not keeping a sufficient watch for stragglers, and over-anxiety to fire, than in any other way. Having succeeded in getting the sitting shot, the fowl, especially if they have not seen from whence it comes, will rise perpendicularly in the air, and you are not unlikely to have a chance of knocking down a couple more with your second barrel; but if they rise wide, you must select the finest old mallard among them, or whatever suits your fancy. Directly upon hearing the report, your retriever will run to your assistance, and, having secured your cripples, you will reload, and, taking out your glass, reconnoitre again; for though ducks, widgeon, &c., should fly out upon the loch at the report of your gun, yet the diver tribe, if there are only one or two together, are perhaps more likely to be under water than above when you fire: but more of them by and by.

“Another invariable rule, in crawling upon ducks, is always, if possible, to get to leeward of them; for although I am firmly of opinion that they do not wind you like deer, as some suppose, yet their hearing is most acute. I have seen instances of this that I could hardly otherwise have credited. One day I got within about sixty yards of three ducks asleep upon the shore; the wind was blowing very strong, direct from me to them, a thick hedge forming my ambuscade. The ground was quite bare beyond this hedge, so I was obliged to take the distant shot through it. In making the attempt, I rustled one of the twigs—up went the three heads to the full stretch; but when I had remained quiet for about five minutes, they again placed their bills under their wings. Upon a second trial, the slight noise was unfortunately repeated—again the birds raised their heads; but this time they were much longer upon the stretch, and seemed more uneasy. Nothing now remained but to try again: my utmost caution, however, was unavailing—the birds rose like rockets. I never hesitate concealing myself to windward of the spot where I expect ducks to pitch, feeling confident that, unless I move, they will not find me out. I have often had them swimming within twenty-five yards of me, when I was waiting for three or four in line, the wind blowing direct from me to them, without perceiving, by any signs, their consciousness of an enemy’s vicinity.”

Macwheedle himself, by all that’s impudent! Nay, then, it is full time for us to take our farewell of Mr Colquhoun, and address ourselves to our public duty. We shall meet the honourable candidate in that style of diplomacy which was imparted to us by old Talleyrand, and in which, we flatter ourselves, we have no equal, with the exception, perhaps, of the accomplished Dunshunner. That gay individual is, doubtless, at this moment wooing some bashful constituency—we trust with prospects of better success than attended his last adventure. When the elections are over, we shall lose not a moment in hastening to the Highlands—there, by glen and river, loch, moor, and mountain, to obliterate all memory of the heat and hurry of the hustings; and we hope, before the year is over, to hear from the lips of many of our friends, who are now looking forward with anxiety to their first sporting season, an acknowledgment of the benefit which they have derived from the practical lessons of our author. Now, then, for an interview with the too insinuating Macwheedle.

BOOK XI. CONTINUED—CHAPTER XVII.

When the scenes in some long diorama pass solemnly before us, there is sometimes one solitary object, contrasting, perhaps, the view of stately cities or the march of a mighty river, that halts on the eye for a moment, and then glides away, leaving on the mind a strange, comfortless, undefined impression.

Why was the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant. It may have been but a broken column—a lonely pool with a star-beam on its quiet surface—yet it awes us. We remember it when phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids—of bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst the sands of Araby—have sated the wondering gaze. Why were we detained in the shadowy procession by a thing that would have been so commonplace had it not been so lone? Some latent interest must attach to it. Was it there that a vision of woe had lifted the wild hair of a Prophet?—there where some Hagar had stilled the wail of her child on her indignant breast? We would fain call back the pageantry procession—fain see again the solitary thing that seemed so little worth the hand of the artist—and ask, “Why art thou here, and wherefore dost thou haunt us?”

Rise up—rise up once more—by the broad great thoroughfare that stretches onward and onward to the remorseless London——Rise up—rise up—O solitary tree with the green leaves on thy bough, and the deep rents in thy heart; and the ravens, dark birds of omen and sorrow, that built their nest amidst the leaves of the bough, and drop with noiseless plumes down through the hollow rents of the heart—or are heard, it may be, in the growing shadows of twilight, calling out to their young!

Under the old pollard tree, by the side of John Avenel’s house, there cowered, breathless and listening, John Avenel’s daughter Nora. Now, when that fatal newspaper paragraph, which lied so like truth, met her eyes, she obeyed the first impulse of her passionate heart—she tore the wedding ring from her finger—she enclosed it, with the paragraph itself, in a letter to Audley—a letter that she designed to convey scorn and pride—alas! it expressed only jealousy and love. She could not rest till she had put this letter into the post with her own hand, addressed to Audley at Lord Lansmere’s. Scarce was it gone ere she repented. What had she done?—resigned the birthright of the child she was so soon to bring into the world—resigned her last hope in her lover’s honour—given up her life of life—and from belief in what?—a report in a newspaper! No, no; she would go herself to Lansmere; to her father’s home—she could contrive to see Audley before that letter reached his hand. The thought was scarcely conceived before obeyed. She found a vacant place in a coach that started from London some hours before the mail, and went within a few miles of Lansmere; those last miles she travelled on foot. Exhausted—fainting—she gained at last the sight of home, and there halted, for in the little garden in front she saw her parents seated. She heard the murmur of their voices, and suddenly she remembered her altered shape, her terrible secret. How answer the question, “Daughter, where and who is thy husband?” Her heart failed her; she crept under the old pollard tree, to gather up resolve, to watch and to listen. She saw the rigid face of the thrifty prudent mother, with the deep lines that told of the cares of an anxious life, and the chafe of excitable temper and warm affections against the restraint of decorous sanctimony and resolute pride. The dear stern face never seemed to her more dear and more stern. She saw the comely, easy, indolent, good-humoured father; not then the poor, paralytic sufferer, who could yet recognise Nora’s eyes under the lids of Leonard, but stalwart and jovial—first bat in the Cricket Club, first voice in the Glee Society, the most popular canvasser of the Lansmere Constitutional True Blue Party, and the pride and idol of the Calvinistical prim wife. Never from those pinched lips of hers had come forth even one pious rebuke to the careless social man. As he sate, one hand in his vest, his profile turned to the road, the light smoke curling playfully up from the pipe, over which lips, accustomed to bland smile and hearty laughter, closed as if reluctant to be closed at all, he was the very model of the respectable retired trader in easy circumstances, and released from the toil of making money while life could yet enjoy the delight of spending it.

“Well, old woman,” said John Avenel, “I must be off presently to see to those three shaky voters in Fish Lane; they will have done their work soon, and I shall catch ’em at home. They do say as how we may have an opposition; and I know that old Smikes has gone to Lonnon in search of a candidate. We can’t have the Lansmere Constitutional Blues beat by a Lonnoner! Ha, ha, ha!”

“But you will be home before Jane and her husband Mark come? How ever she could marry a common carpenter!”

“Yes,” said John, “he is a carpenter; but he has a vote, and that strengthens the family interest. If Dick was not gone to Amerikay, there would be three on us. But Mark is a real good Blue! A Lonnoner, indeed!—a Yellow from Lonnon beat my Lord and the Blues! Ha, ha!”

“You don’t understand things, talking such nonsense. Mr Egerton is the Blue candidate, and the Blues are the Country Party; therefore how can he be a Lonnoner? An uncommon clever, well grown, handsome young man, eh! and my young lord’s particular friend.”

“How he did love her!” said Mrs Avenel thoughtfully. “I am sure he did; and no wonder, for she looks every inch a lady; and why should not she be my lady, after all?”

“He? Who? Oh, that foolish fancy of yours about my young lord? A prudent woman like you!—stuff! I am glad my little beauty is gone to Lonnon, out of harm’s way.”

“John—John—John! No harm could ever come to my Nora. She’s too pure and too good, and has too proper a pride in her, to”—

“To listen to any young lords, I hope,” said John; “though,” he added, after a pause, “she might well be a lady too. My lord, the young one, took me by the hand so kindly the other day, and said, ‘Have not you heard from her—I mean Miss Avenel—lately?’ and those bright eyes of his were as full of tears as—as—as yours are now.”

“That is all. My lady came up, and took me away to talk about the election; and just as I was going, she whispered, ‘Don’t let my wild boy talk to you about that sweet girl of yours. We must both see that she does not come to disgrace.’ ‘Disgrace!’ that word made me very angry for the moment. But my lady has such a way with her, that she soon put me right again. Yet, I do think Nora must have loved my young lord, only she was too good to show it. What do you say?” And the father’s voice was thoughtful.

“I hope she’ll never love any man till she’s married to him; it is not proper, John,” said Mrs Avenel, somewhat starchly, though very mildly.

“Ha! ha!” laughed John, chucking his prim wife under the chin, “you did not say that to me when I stole your first kiss under that very pollard tree—no house near it then!”

“Pooh,” continued John merrily, “I don’t see why we plain folks should pretend to be more saintly and prudish-like than our betters. There’s that handsome Miss Leslie, who is to marry Mr Egerton—easy enough to see how much she is in love with him—could not keep her eyes off from him even in church, old girl? Ha, ha! What the deuce is the matter with the ravens?”

“They’ll be a comely couple, John. And I hear tell she has a power of money. When is the marriage to be?”

“Oh, they say as soon as the election is over. A fine wedding we shall have of it! I dare say my young lord will be bridesman. We’ll send for our little Nora to see the gay doings!”

Out from the boughs of the old tree came the shriek of a lost spirit—one of those strange appalling sounds of human agony, which, once heard, are never forgotten. It is as the wail of Hope, when She, too, rushes forth from the coffer of woes, and vanishes into viewless space;—it is the dread cry of Reason parting from clay—and of Soul, that would wrench itself from life! For a moment all was still—and then a dull, dumb, heavy fall!

The parents gazed on each other, speechless: they stole close to the pales, and looked over. Under the boughs, at the gnarled roots of the oak, they saw—grey and indistinct—a prostrate form. John opened the gate, and went round; the mother crept to the roadside, and there stood still.

“Oh, wife, wife!” cried John Avenel, from under the green boughs, “it is our child Nora! Our child—our child!”

And, as he spoke, out from the green boughs started the dark ravens, wheeling round and around, and calling to their young!

And when they had laid her on the bed, Mrs Avenel whispered John to withdraw for a moment; and, with set lips but trembling hands, began to unlace the dress, under the pressure of which Nora’s heart heaved convulsively. And John went out of the room bewildered, and sate himself down on the landing-place, and wondered whether he was awake or sleeping; and a cold numbness crept over one side of him, and his head felt very heavy, with a loud booming noise in his ears. Suddenly his wife stood by his side, and said in a very low voice—

“John, run for Mr Morgan—make haste. But mind—don’t speak to any one on the way. Quick, quick!”

“I don’t know. Why not die before?” said Mrs Avenel between her teeth. “But Mr Morgan is a discreet, friendly man.”

“A true Blue!” muttered poor John, as if his mind wandered; and rising with difficulty, he stared at his wife a moment, shook his head, and was gone.

An hour or two later, a little covered taxed-cart stopped at Mr Avenel’s cottage, out of which stepped a young man with pale face and spare form, dressed in the Sunday suit of a rustic craftsman; then a homely, but pleasant, honest face, bent down to him smilingly; and two arms, emerging from under covert of a red cloak, extended an infant, which the young man took tenderly. The baby was cross and very sickly; it began to cry. The father hushed, and rocked, and tossed it, with the air of one to whom such a charge was familiar.

“He’ll be good when we get in, Mark,” said the young woman, as she extracted from the depths of the cart a large basket containing poultry and home-made bread.

“Don’t forget the flowers that the Squire’s gardener gave us,” said Mark the Poet.

Without aid from her husband, the wife took down basket and nosegay, settled her cloak, smoothed her gown, and said, “Very odd!—they don’t seem to expect us, Mark. How still the house is! Go and knock; they can’t ha’ gone to bed yet.”

Mark knocked at the door—no answer. A light passed rapidly across the windows on the upper floor, but still no one came to his summons. Mark knocked again. A gentleman dressed in clerical costume, now coming from Lansmere Park, on the opposite side of the road, paused at the sound of Mark’s second and more impatient knock, and said civilly—

“Are you not the young folks my friend John Avenel told me this morning he expected to visit him?”

“Yes, please, Mr Dale,” said Mrs Fairfield, dropping her curtsey. “You remember me! and this is my dear good man!”

“What! Mark the poet?” said the curate of Lansmere, with a smile. “Come to write squibs for the election?”

This time, a man, whose face, even seen by the starlight, was much flushed, presented himself at the threshold.

“Mr Morgan!” exclaimed the curate, in benevolent alarm; “no illness here, I hope?”

“Cott! it is you, Mr Dale! Come in, come in; I want a word with you. But who the teuce are these people?”

“Sir,” said Mark, pushing through the doorway, “my name is Fairfield, and my wife is Mr Avenel’s daughter!”

“Oh, Jane—and her baby too! Cood—cood! Come in; but be quiet, can’t you? Still, still—still as death!”

The party entered, the door closed; the moon rose, and shone calmly on the pale silent house, on the sleeping flowers of the little garden, on the old pollard with its hollow core. The horse in the taxed-cart dozed, unheeded; the light still at times flitted across the upper windows. These were the only signs of life, except when a bat, now and then attracted by the light that passed across the windows, brushed against the panes, and then, dipping downwards, struck up against the nose of the slumbering horse, and darted merrily after the moth that fluttered round the raven’s nest in the old pollard.

CHAPTER XVIII.

All that day Harley L’Estrange had been more than usually mournful and dejected. Indeed the return to scenes associated with Nora’s presence increased the gloom that had settled on his mind since he had lost sight and trace of her. Audley, in the remorseful tenderness he felt for his injured friend, had induced L’Estrange towards evening to leave the Park, and go into a district some miles off, on pretence that he required Harley’s aid there to canvass certain important outvoters: the change of scene might rouse him from his reveries. Harley himself was glad to escape from the guests at Lansmere. He readily consented to go. He would not return that night. The outvoters lay remote and scattered—he might be absent for a day or two. When Harley was gone, Egerton himself sank into deep thought. There was rumour of some unexpected opposition. His partisans were alarmed and anxious. It was clear that the Lansmere interest, if attacked, was weaker than the Earl would believe; Egerton might lose his election. If so, what would become of him? How support his wife, whose return to him he always counted on, and whom it would then become him at all hazards to acknowledge? It was that day that he had spoken to William Hazeldean as to the family living. “Peace, at least,” thought the ambitious man—“I shall have peace!” And the Squire had promised him the rectory if needed; not without a secret pang, for his Carry was already using her conjugal influence in favour of her old school friend’s husband, Mr Dale; and the Squire thought Audley would be but a poor country parson, and Dale—if he would only grow a little plumper than his curacy could permit him to be—would be a parson in ten thousand. But while Audley thus prepared for the worst, he still brought his energies to bear on the more brilliant option; and sate with his committee, looking into canvass-books, and discussing the characters, politics, and local interests of every elector, until the night was wellnigh gone. When he gained his room, the shutters were unclosed, and he stood a few moments at the window gazing on the moon. At that sight, the thought of Nora, lost and afar, stole over him. The man, as we know, had in his nature little of romance and sentiment. Seldom was it his wont to gaze upon moon or stars. But whenever some whisper of romance did soften his hard, strong mind, or whenever moon or stars did charm his gaze from earth, Nora’s bright muse-like face—Nora’s sweet loving eyes, were seen in moon and star beam—Nora’s low tender voice, heard in the whisper of that which we call romance, and which is but the sound of the mysterious poetry that is ever in the air, could we but deign to hear it! He turned with a sigh, undressed, threw himself on his bed, and extinguished his light. But the light of the moon would fill the room. It kept him awake for a little time; he turned his face from the calm, heavenly beam, resolutely towards the dull blind wall, and fell asleep. And, in the sleep, he was with Nora;—again in the humble bridal-home. Never in his dreams had she seemed to him so distinct and life-like—her eyes upturned to his—her hands clasped together, and resting on his shoulder, as had been her graceful wont—her voice murmuring meekly, “Has it, then, been my fault that we parted?—forgive, forgive me!”

And the sleeper imagined that he answered, “Never part from me again—never, never!” and that he bent down to kiss the chaste lips that so tenderly sought his own. And suddenly he heard a knocking sound, as of a hammer—regular, but soft, low, subdued. Did you ever, O reader, hear the sound of the hammer on the lid of a coffin in a house of woe,—when the undertaker’s decorous hireling fears that the living may hear how he parts them from the dead? Such seemed the sound to Audley—the dream vanished abruptly. He woke, and again heard the knock; it was at his door. He sate up wistfully—the moon was gone—it was morning. “Who is there?” he cried peevishly.

A low voice from without answered, “Hush, it is I; dress quick; let me see you.”

Egerton recognised Lady Lansmere’s voice. Alarmed and surprised, he rose, dressed in haste, and went to the door. Lady Lansmere was standing without, extremely pale. She put her finger to her lip and beckoned him to follow her. He obeyed mechanically. They entered her dressing-room, a few doors from his own chamber, and the Countess closed the door.

Then laying her slight firm hand on his shoulder, she said in suppressed and passionate excitement—

“Oh, Mr Egerton, you must serve me, and at once—Harley—Harley—save my Harley—go to him—prevent his coming back here—stay with him—give up the election—it is but a year or two lost in your life—you will have other opportunities—make that sacrifice to your friend.”

“Thanks—I was sure of it. Go then, I say, at once to Harley; keep him away from Lansmere on any excuse you can invent, until you can break the sad news to him—gently, gently. Oh, how will he bear it—how recover the shock? My boy, my boy!”

“True—you do not know—you have not heard. Nora Avenel lies yonder, in her father’s house—dead—dead!”

Audley staggered back, clapping his hand to his heart, and then dropping on his knee as if bowed down by the stroke of heaven.

Lady Lansmere was so startled at this exclamation, so stunned by a confession wholly unexpected, that she remained unable to soothe—to explain, and utterly unprepared for the fierce agony that burst from the man she had ever seen so dignified and cold—when he sprang to his feet, and all the sense of his eternal loss rushed upon his heart.

At length he crushed back his emotions, and listened in apparent calm, and in a silence broken but by quick gasps for breath, to Lady Lansmere’s account.

One of the guests in the house, a female relation of Lady Lansmere’s, had been taken suddenly ill about an hour or two before;—the house had been disturbed, the Countess herself aroused, and Mr Morgan summoned as the family medical practitioner. From him she had learned that Nora Avenel had returned to her father’s house late on the previous evening; had been seized with brain fever, and died in a few hours.

Lady Lansmere caught him by the arm—“Where are you going? Ah, can I now ask you to save my son from the awful news, you yourself the sufferer? And yet—yet—you know his haste, his vehemence, if he learn that you were his rival—her husband; you whom he so trusted! What, what would be the result?—I tremble!”

“Tremble not—I do not tremble! Let me go—I will be back soon—and then—(his lips writhed)—then we will talk of Harley.”

Egerton went forth, stunned and dizzy. Mechanically he took his way across the park to John Avenel’s house. He had been forced to enter that house, formally, a day or two before, in the course of his canvass; and his worldly pride had received a shock when the home, the birth, and the manners of his bride’s parents had been brought before him. He had even said to himself, “And is it the child of these persons that I, Audley Egerton, must announce to the world as wife!” Now, if she had been the child of a beggar—nay, of a felon—now, if he could but recall her to life, how small and mean would all that dreaded world have seemed to him! Too late—too late! The dews were glistening in the sun—the birds were singing over head—life waking all around him—and his own heart felt like a charnel-house. Nothing but death and the dead there—nothing! He arrived at the door; it was open: he called; no one answered: he walked up the narrow stairs, undisturbed, unseen; he came into the chamber of death. At the opposite side of the bed was seated John Avenel; but he seemed in a heavy sleep. In fact, paralysis had smitten him; but he knew it not; neither did any one. Who could heed the strong hearty man in such a moment? Not even the poor anxious wife! He had been left there to guard the house, and watch the dead—an unconscious man; numbed, himself, by the invisible icy hand! Audley stole to the bedside; he lifted the coverlid thrown over the pale still face. What passed within him, during the minute he staid there, who shall say? But when he left the room, and slowly descended the stairs, he left behind him love and youth, all the sweet hopes and joys of the household human life—for ever and ever!

He returned to Lady Lansmere, who awaited his coming with the most nervous anxiety.

“Now,” said he drily, “I will go to Harley, and I will prevent his returning hither.”

“Silence!” echoed Lady Lansmere; and her burning hand rested in Audley’s, and Audley’s hand was as ice.

It is necessary now to explain the absence of all the Avenel family, except the poor stricken father.

Nora had died in giving birth to a child—died delirious. In her delirium she had spoken of shame—of disgrace; there was no holy nuptial ring on her finger! Through all her grief, the first thought of Mrs Avenel was to save the good name of her lost daughter—the unblemished honour of all the living Avenels. No matron, long descended from knights or kings, had keener pride in name and character than the poor, punctilious Calvinistic trader’s wife. “Sorrow later, honour now!” With hard dry eyes she mused and mused, and made out her plan. Jane Fairfield should take away the infant at once, before the day dawned, and nurse it with her own. Mark should go with her, for Mrs Avenel dreaded the indiscretion of his wild grief. She would go with them herself part of the way, in order to command or reason them into guarded silence. But they could not go back to Hazeldean with another infant; Jane must go where none knew her; the two infants might pass as twins. And Mrs Avenel, though naturally a humane, kindly woman, and with a mother’s heart to infants, looked with almost a glad sternness at Jane’s puny babe, and thought to herself, “All difficulty will be over if there be only one! Nora’s child could thus pass throughout life for Jane’s!”

Fortunately for the preservation of the secret, the Avenels kept no servant—only an occasional drudge, who came a few hours in the day, and went home to sleep. Mrs Avenel could count on Mr Morgan’s silence as to the true cause of Nora’s death. And, Mr Dale, why should he reveal the dishonour of a family? That very day, or the next at farthest, she could induce her husband to absent himself lest he should blab out the tale while his sorrow was greater than his pride. She alone would then stay in the house of death until she could feel assured that all else were hushed into prudence. Ay, she felt, that with due precautions, the name was still safe. And so she awed and hurried Mark and his wife away, and went with them in the covered cart—that hid the faces of all three—leaving for an hour or two the house and the dead to her husband’s charge, with many an admonition, to which he nodded his head, and which he did not hear! Do you think this woman was unfeeling and inhuman? Had Nora looked from heaven into her mother’s heart, Nora would not have thought so. A good name, when the burial stone closes over dust, is still a possession upon the earth; on earth it is indeed our only one! Better for our friends to guard for us that treasure than to sit down and weep over perishable clay. And weep—Oh! stern mother, long years were left to thee for weeping! No tears shed for Nora made such deep furrows on the cheeks as thine did! Yet who ever saw them flow?

Harley was in great surprise to see Egerton; more surprised when Egerton told him that he found he was to be opposed—that he had no chance of success at Lansmere, and had, therefore, resolved to retire from the contest. He wrote to the Earl to that effect; but the Countess knew the true cause, and hinted it to the Earl; so that, as we saw at the commencement of this history, Egerton’s cause did not suffer when Captain Dashmore appeared in the borough; and, thanks to Mr Hazeldean’s exertions and oratory, Audley came in by two votes—the votes of John Avenel and Mark Fairfield. For though the former had been removed a little way from the town, and by medical advice—and though, on other matters, the disease that had smitten him left him docile as a child—yet he still would hear how the Blues went on, and would get out of bed to keep his word; and even his wife said, “He is right; better die of it than break his promise!” The crowd gave way as the broken man they had seen a few days before so jovial and healthful was brought up on a chair to the poll, and said with his tremulous quavering voice, “I’m a true Blue—Blue for ever!”

Elections are wondrous things! No one who has not seen, can guess how the zeal in them triumphs over sickness, sorrow, the ordinary private life of us!

There was forwarded to Audley, from Lansmere Park, Nora’s last letter. The postman had left it there an hour or two after he himself had gone. The wedding-ring fell on the ground, and rolled under his feet. And those burning passionate reproaches—all that anger of the wounded dove—they explained to him the mystery of her return—her unjust suspicions—the cause of her sudden death, which he still ascribed to brain fever, brought on by excitement and fatigue. For Nora did not speak of the child about to be born; she had not remembered it when she wrote, or she would not have written. On the receipt of this letter, Egerton could not remain in the dull village district—alone, too, with Harley. He said, abruptly, that he must go to London—prevailed on L’Estrange to accompany him; and there, when he heard from Lady Lansmere that the funeral was over, he broke to Harley, with lips as white as the dead, and his hand pressed to his heart, on which his hereditary disease was fastening quick and fierce, the dread truth that Nora was no more. The effect upon the boy’s health and spirits was even more crushing than Audley could anticipate. He only woke from grief to feel remorse. “For,” said the noble Harley, “had it not been for my mad passion—my rash pursuit—would she ever have left her safe asylum—ever even have left her native town? And then—and then—the struggle between her sense of duty and her love to me! I see it all—all! But for me, she were living still!”

“Oh, no!” cried Egerton—his confession now rushing to his lips. “Believe me, she never loved you as you think. Nay—nay—hear me! Rather suppose that she loved another—fled with him—was perhaps married to him, and—”

“Hold!” exclaimed Harley, with a terrible burst of passion—“you kill her twice to me, if you say that! I can still feel that she lives—lives here, in my heart—while I dream that she loved me—or, at least, that no other lip ever knew the kiss that was denied to mine! But if you tell me to doubt that;—you—you”——The boy’s anguish was too great for his frame; he fell suddenly back into Audley’s arms; he had broken a blood-vessel. For several days he was in great danger, but his eyes were constantly fixed on Audley’s, with wistful, intense gaze. “Tell me,” he muttered, at the risk of reopening the ruptured veins, and of the instant loss of life—“tell me—you did not mean that! Tell me you have no cause to think she loved another—was another’s!”

“Hush, hush—no cause—none—none. I meant but to comfort you, as I thought—fool that I was—that is all!” cried the miserable friend. And from that hour Audley gave up the idea of righting himself in his own eyes, and submitted still to be the living lie—he, the haughty gentleman!

Now, while Harley was still very weak and suffering, Mr Dale came to London, and called on Egerton. The curate, in promising secresy to Mr Avenel, had made one condition, that it should not be to the positive injury of Nora’s living son. What if she were married, after all? And would it not be right, at least, to learn the name of the child’s father? Some day he might need a father. Mrs Avenel was obliged to content herself with these reservations. However, she implored Mr Dale not to make inquiries. What good could they do? If Nora were married, her husband would naturally, of his own accord, declare himself; if seduced and forsaken, it would but disgrace her memory (now saved from stain) to discover the father to a child of whose very existence the world as yet knew nothing. These arguments perplexed the good curate. But Jane Fairfield had a sanguine belief in her sister’s innocence; and all her suspicions naturally pointed to Lord L’Estrange. So, indeed, perhaps, did Mrs Avenel’s, though she never owned them. Of the correctness of these suspicions Mr Dale was fully convinced;—the young lord’s admiration, Lady Lansmere’s fears, had been too evident to one who had often visited at the Park—Harley’s abrupt departure just before Nora’s return home—Egerton’s sudden resignation of the borough before even opposition was declared, in order to rejoin his friend, the very day of Nora’s death—all confirmed his ideas that Harley was the betrayer or the husband. Perhaps there might have been a secret marriage—possibly abroad—since Harley wanted some years of his majority. He would, at least, try to see and to sound Lord L’Estrange. Prevented this interview by Harley’s illness, the curate resolved to ascertain how far he could penetrate into the mystery by a conversation with Egerton. There was much in the grave repute which the latter had acquired, and the singular and pre-eminent character for truth and honour with which it was accompanied, that made the curate resolve upon this step. Accordingly, he saw Egerton, meaning only diplomatically to extract from the new member for Lansmere what might benefit the family of the voters who had given him his majority of two.

He began by mentioning, as a touching fact, how poor John Avenel, bowed down by the loss of his child, and the malady which had crippled his limbs and enfeebled his mind, had still risen from his bed to keep his word. And Audley’s emotions seemed to him so earnest and genuine, to show so good a heart, that out by little and little came more; first, his suspicions that poor Nora had been betrayed; then his hopes that there might have been private marriage; and as Audley, with his iron self-command, showed just the proper degree of interest, and no more, he went on, till Audley knew that he had a child!

“Inquire no further!” said the man of the world. “Respect Mrs Avenel’s feelings and wishes, I entreat you; they are the right ones. Leave the rest to me. In my position—I mean as a resident of London—I can quietly and easily ascertain more than you could, and provoke no scandal! If I could right this—this—poor—poor—(his voice trembled)—right the lost mother, or the living child—sooner or later you will hear from me; if not, bury this secret where it now rests, in a grave which slander has not reached. But the child—give me the address where it is to be found—in case I succeed in finding the father, and touching his heart.”

“Do not be angry; and, after all, I cannot ask you to betray any confidence which a friend may have placed in you. I know what you men of high honour are to each other—even in sin. No, no—I beg pardon; I leave all in your hands. I shall hear from you, then?”

“Or, if not—why, then, believe that all search is hopeless. My friend! if you mean Lord L’Estrange, he is innocent. I—I—I—(the voice faltered)—am convinced of it.”

The curate sighed, but made no answer. “Oh, ye men of the world!” thought he. He gave the address which the member for Lansmere had asked for, and went his way, and never heard again from Audley Egerton. He was convinced that the man who had showed such deep feeling had failed in his appeal to Harley’s conscience, or had judged it best to leave Nora’s name in peace, and her child to her own relations and the care of heaven.

Harley L’Estrange, scarcely yet recovered, hastened to join our armies on the Continent, and seek the Death which, like its half-brother, rarely comes when we call it.

As soon as Harley was gone, Egerton went to the village to which Mr Dale had directed him, to seek for Nora’s child. But here he was led into a mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and Leonard’s future destinies. Mrs Fairfield had been naturally ordered by her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone with the two infants, so that her connexion with the Avenel family might not be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief and excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment in her breast. She put Nora’s child out to nurse at the house of a small farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of another. She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away and died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby’s grave; they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.

When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days—the day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton staid to inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage seemed to him now removed. Nora’s name had escaped reproach. Even had his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to preserve his secret, there was every motive to the World’s wise and haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now that none lived whom concealment could wrong.

Audley mechanically resumed his former life,—sought to resettle his thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy, of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held over him the power that the money-lender never loses over the man that has owed, owes, or may owe again. Levy was ever urging him to propose to the rich Miss Leslie;—Lady Lansmere, willing to atone, as she thought, for his domestic loss, urged the same;—Harley, influenced by his mother, wrote from the Continent to the same effect.

“Manage it as you will,” at last said Egerton to Levy, “so that I am not a wife’s pensioner.”

“Propose for me if you will,” he said to Lady Lansmere—“I cannot woo—I cannot talk of love.”

Somehow or other the marriage, with all its rich advantages to the ruined gentleman, was thus made up. And Egerton, as we have seen, was the polite and dignified husband before the world—married to a woman who adored him. It is the common fate of men like him to be loved too well!

On her deathbed his heart was touched by his wife’s melancholy reproach—“Nothing I could do has ever made you love me!” “It is true,” answered Audley, with tears in his voice and eyes—“Nature gave me but a small fund of what women like you call ‘love,’ and I lavished it all away.” And he then told her, though with reserve, some portion of his former history;—and that soothed her; for when she saw that he had loved, and could grieve, she caught a glimpse of the human heart she had not seen before. She died, forgiving him, and blessing.

Audley’s spirits were much affected by this new loss. He inly resolved never to marry again. He had a vague thought at first of retrenching his expenditure, and making young Randal Leslie his heir. But when he first saw the clever Eton boy, his feelings did not warm to him, though his intellect appreciated Randal’s quick keen talents. He contented himself with resolving to push the boy;—to do what was merely just to the distant kinsman of his late wife. Always careless and lavish in money matters, generous and princely, not from the delight of serving others, but from a grand Seigneur’s sentiment of what was due to himself and his station, Audley had a mournful excuse for the lordly waste of the large fortune at his control. The morbid functions of the heart had become organic disease. True, he might live many years, and die at last of some other complaint in the course of nature; but the progress of the disease would quicken with all emotional excitement; he might die suddenly—any day—in the very prime, and, seemingly, in the full vigour, of his life. And the only physician in whom he confided what he wished to keep concealed from the world, (for ambitious men would fain be thought immortal,) told him frankly that it was improbable that, with the wear and tear of political strife and action, he could advance far into middle age. Therefore, no son of his succeeding—his nearest relations all wealthy—Egerton resigned himself to his constitutional disdain of money; he could look into no affairs, provided the balance in his banker’s hands were such as became the munificent commoner. All else he left to his steward and to Levy. Levy grew rapidly rich—very, very rich—and the steward thrived.

The usurer continued to possess a determined hold over the imperious great man. He knew Audley’s secret; he could reveal that secret to Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman’s nature—the sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic life, which so renders man invulnerable to affection—was his remorseful love for the school friend whom he still deceived.

Here then you have the key to the locked chambers of Audley Egerton’s character, the fortified castle of his mind. The envied minister—the joyless man—the oracle on the economics of an empire—the prodigal in a usurer’s hands—the august, high-crested gentleman, to whom princes would refer for the casuistry of honour—the culprit trembling lest the friend he best loved on earth should detect his lie! Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the Arts or the Graces weave for thee, O Human Nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!

Of the narrative just placed before the reader, it is clear that Leonard could gather only desultory fragments. He could but see that his ill-fated mother had been united to a man she had loved with surpassing tenderness; had been led to suspect that the marriage was fraudulent; had gone abroad in despair, returned repentant and hopeful; had gleaned some intelligence that her lover was about to be married to another, and there the manuscript closed with the blisters left on the page by agonising tears. The mournful end of Nora—her lonely return to die under the roof of her parents—this he had learned before from the narrative of Dr Morgan.

But even the name of her supposed husband was not revealed. Of him Leonard could form no conjecture, except that he was evidently of higher rank than Nora. Harley L’Estrange seemed clearly indicated in the early boy-lover. If so, he must know all that was left dark to Leonard, and to him Leonard resolved to confide the MS. With this resolution he left the cottage, resolving to return and attend the funeral obsequies of his departed friend. Mrs Goodyer willingly permitted him to take away the papers she had lent to him, and added to them the packet which had been addressed to Mrs Bertram from the Continent.

Musing in anxious gloom over the record he had read, Leonard entered London on foot, and bent his way towards Harley’s hotel; when, just as he had crossed into Bond Street, a gentleman in company with Baron Levy, and who seemed, by the flush on his brow and the sullen tone of his voice, to have had rather an irritating colloquy with the fashionable usurer, suddenly caught sight of Leonard, and, abruptly quitting Levy, seized the young man by the arm.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the gentleman, looking hard into Leonard’s face; “but unless these sharp eyes of mine are mistaken, which they seldom are, I see a nephew whom, perhaps, I behaved to rather too harshly, but who still has no right to forget Richard Avenel.”

“My dear uncle,” exclaimed Leonard, “this is indeed a joyful surprise; at a time, too, when I needed joy! No; I have never forgotten your kindness, and always regretted our estrangement.”

“That is well said; give us your fist again. Let me look at you—quite the gentleman I declare!—still so good-looking too. We Avenels always were. Good bye, Baron Levy. Need not wait for me; I am not going to run away. I shall see you again.”

“But,” whispered Levy, who had followed Avenel across the street, and eyed Leonard with a quick curious searching glance—“but it must be as I say with regard to the borough; or (to be plain) you must cash the bills on the day they are due.”

“Very well, sir—very well. So you think to put the screw upon me, as if I were a poor ten-pound householder. I understand—my money or my borough?”

“You shall hear from me—you shall hear from me. (Aside, as Levy strolled away)—D——d tarnation rascal!”

Dick Avenel then linked his arm in his nephew’s, and strove for some minutes to forget his own troubles, in the indulgence of that curiosity in the affairs of another which was natural to him, and, in this instance, increased by the real affection which he had felt for Leonard. But still his curiosity remained unsatisfied; for long before Leonard could overcome his habitual reluctance to speak of his success in letters, Dick’s mind wandered back to his rival at Screwstown, and the curse of “over-competition”—to the bills which Levy had discounted, in order to enable Dick to meet the crushing force of a capitalist larger than himself—and the “tarnation rascal” who now wished to obtain two seats at Lansmere, one for Randal Leslie, one for a rich Nabob whom Levy had just caught as a client; and Dick, though willing to aid Leslie, had a mind to the other seat for himself. Therefore Dick soon broke in upon the hesitating confessions of Leonard, with exclamations far from pertinent to the subject, and rather for the sake of venting his own griefs and resentment than with any idea that the sympathy or advice of his nephew could serve him.

“Well, well,” said Dick, “another time for your history. I see you have thrived, and that is enough for the present. Very odd; but just now I can only think of myself. I’m in a regular fix, sir. Screwstown is not the respectable Screwstown that you remember it—all demoralised and turned topsy-turvy by a demoniacal monster capitalist, with steam-engines that might bring the falls of Niagara into your back parlour, sir! And, as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into almighty shivers a decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he is just in treaty for some patent infernal invention that will make his engines do twice as much work with half as many hands! That’s the way those unfeeling ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I’ll get up a riot against him—I will! Don’t talk to me of the law! What the devil is the good of the law if it don’t protect a man’s industry—a liberal man, too, like me!” Here Dick burst into a storm of vituperation against the rotten old country in general, and the monster capitalist of Screwstown in particular.

Leonard started; for Dick now named, in that monster capitalist, the very person who was in treaty for Leonard’s own mechanical improvement on the steam-engine.

“Stop, uncle—stop! Why, then, if this man were to buy the contrivance you speak of, it would injure you?”

“Injure me, sir! I should be a bankrupt—that is, if it succeeded; but I daresay it is all a humbug.”

“Serpent’s tooth!” he said, falteringly, “so it is you, whom I warmed at my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?”

“No—but to save him! Come into the city and look at my model. If you like it, the patent shall be yours!”

“Cab—cab—cab,” cried Dick Avenel, stopping a “Hansom;” “jump in, Leonard—jump in. I’ll buy your patent—that is, if it is worth a straw; and as for payment—”

“Well, I won’t,” said Dick, mildly; “for ’tis not the topic of conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that black-whiskered alligator, the Baron, let me first get out of those rambustious unchristian filbert-shaped claws of his, and then—But jump in—jump in—and tell the man where to drive!”

A very brief inspection of Leonard’s invention sufficed to show Richard Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on the war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into partnership some other monster capitalist—What then? Any partner better than Levy. A bright idea struck him.

“If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own ground, for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into partnership—make the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination, and then we shall flog the world.”

His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the offer, exclaimed, “Well, then, any friend of yours; you have only to say the word at the last hour, for I am sure of both seats. I’m all for Reform against those high and mighty right honourable boroughmongers; and what with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of “free and easies,” with the independent Freemen, I carry the town of Lansmere in my breeches pocket.” Dick then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his lawyer’s, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he declared “should be honourable to both parties,” hurried off, to search amongst his friends in the city for some monster capitalist, who might be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy, and the engines of his rival at Screwstown. “Mullins is the man, if I can but catch him,” said Dick. “You have heard of Mullins?—A wonderful great man; you should see his nails; he never cuts them! Three millions, at least, he has scraped together with those nails of his, sir. And in this rotten old country, a man must have nails a yard long to fight with a devil like Levy! Good bye—good bye—GOOD bye, my DEAR nephew!”

CHAPTER XX.

Harley L’Estrange was seated alone in his apartments. He had just put down a volume of some favourite classic author, and he was resting his hand firmly clenched upon the book. Ever since Harley’s return to England, there had been a perceptible change in the expression of his countenance, even in the very bearing and attitudes of his elastic youthful figure. But this change had been more marked since that last interview with Helen which has been recorded. There was a compressed resolute firmness in the lips—a decided character in the brow. To the indolent careless grace of his movements had succeeded a certain indescribable energy, as quiet and self-collected as that which distinguished the determined air of Audley Egerton himself. In fact, if you could have looked into his heart, you would have seen that Harley was, for the first time, making a strong effort over his passions and his humours; that the whole man was nerving himself to a sense of duty. “No,” he muttered—“no—I will think only of Helen; I will think only of real life! And what (were I not engaged to another) would that dark-eyed Italian girl be to me?—What a mere fool’s fancy is this! I love again—I who, through all the fair spring of my life, have clung with such faith to a memory and a grave! Come, come, come, Harley L’Estrange, act thy part as man amongst men, at last! Accept regard; dream no more of passion. Abandon false ideals. Thou art no poet—why deem that life itself can be a poem?”

The door opened, and the Austrian Prince, whom Harley had interested in the cause of Violante’s father, entered with the familiar step of a friend.

“Have you discovered those documents yet?” said the Prince. “I must now return to Vienna within a few days. And unless you can arm me with some tangible proof of Peschiera’s ancient treachery, or some more unanswerable excuse for his noble kinsman, I fear that there is no other hope for the exile’s recall to his country than what lies in the hateful option of giving his daughter to his perfidious foe.”

“Alas!” said Harley, “as yet, all researches have been in vain; and I know not what other steps to take, without arousing Peschiera’s vigilance, and setting his crafty brains at work to counteract us. My poor friend, then, must rest contented with exile. To give Violante to the Count were dishonour. But I shall soon be married; soon have a home, not quite unworthy of their due rank, to offer both to father and to child.”

“Would the future Lady L’Estrange feel no jealousy of a guest so fair as you tell me this young signorina is? And would you be in no danger yourself, my poor friend?”

“Pooh!” said Harley, colouring. “My fair guest would have two fathers; that is all. Pray do not jest on a thing so grave as honour.”

“Welcome,” cried Harley, pleased to be no longer alone under the Prince’s penetrating eye—“welcome. This is the noble friend who shares our interest for Riccabocca, and who could serve him so well, if we could but discover the document of which I have spoken to you.”

Harley eagerly grasped at the packet, which had been sent from Italy to the supposed Mrs Bertram, and, leaning his face on his hand, rapidly hurried through the contents.

“Hurrah!” he cried at last, with his face lighted up, and a boyish toss of his right hand. “Look, look, Prince, here are Peschiera’s own letters to his kinsman’s wife; his avowal of what he calls his ‘patriotic designs;’ his entreaties to her to induce her husband to share them. Look, look, how he wields his influence over the woman he had once wooed; look how artfully he combats her objections; see how reluctant our friend was to stir, till wife and kinsman both united to urge him.”

“It is enough,—quite enough,” exclaimed the Prince, looking at the passages in Peschiera’s letters which Harley pointed out to him.

“No, it is not enough,” shouted Harley as he continued to read the letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. “More still! O villain, doubly damned! Here, after our friend’s flight, here, is his avowal of guilty passion; here he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah! see how she answers; thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she scorned him before she died. She was innocent! I said so. Violante’s mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your Emperor the heart of a man?”

“I know enough of our Emperor,” answered the Prince warmly, “to know that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to whom you would have given a child’s place at your hearth, the wealthiest heiress of Italy—the bride of some noble lover, with rank only below the supremacy of kings!”

“Ah!” said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale—“ah, I shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!—never see her more—never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares and formal duties—never, never!” He turned his head for a moment, and then came with quick step to Leonard. “But you, O happy poet! No ideal can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would I were a poet!” He smiled sadly.

“You would not say so, perhaps, my dear lord,” answered Leonard with equal sadness, “if you knew how little what you call ‘the ideal’ replaces to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world. Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when you have read, answer if you would still be a poet!”

“Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own life—much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!”

“I!” exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards the secrétaire, in a drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.

“Oh, my lord, my lord!” cried Giacomo, in Italian, “the signorina! the signorina!—Violante!”

“Left! No, no!” cried Giacomo, “She must have been deceived or forced away. The Count! the Count! Oh, my good lord, save her, as you once saved her father!”

“Hold!” cried Harley. “Give me your arm, mother. A second such blow in life is beyond the strength of man—at least of mine. So, so!—I am better now! Thank you, mother. Stand back, all of you—give me air. So the Count has triumphed, and Violante has fled with him! Explain all—I can bear it!”

When we addressed our readers, in the month of June last,^[10] in a very earnest, and perhaps a somewhat apprehensive spirit, we declared that we did so “on the eve of a tremendous conflict, the results of which, in our deliberately formed opinion, shared by every thinking and experienced politician in the kingdom, affect the welfare of the Empire to an extent almost unprecedented, and also, at present, utterly incalculable.” That conflict has now taken place, or rather it is yet—while we are writing, very far on in this memorable month of July (the 24th inst.)—not quite over. It has been, indeed, a signal conflict: but between whom? And what is the issue? Has there been a victory, and consequently a defeat? Is it the Earl of Derby, sitting dismayed in his cabinet, from whose lips these sad words are at this moment falling, as he surveys the results of the general election of 1852, on which he had staked so much?—or is it his rival and opponent? But who is he?—or is his name legion? Is it Lord John Russell?—or Sir James Graham?—or the Duke of Newcastle?—or Lord Palmerston?—or, dropping for a moment to the dii minores, is it—Mr Cobden?

One fact is certain, that the Earl of Derby, on the 1st of July 1852, upon which day the writs were issued for a new election, deliberately gave battle to them all; having four months previously declared that he would do so. And on the occasion of making that declaration, he furthermore declared, in terms which no one could mistake, that he intended to do battle for the Constitution in Church and State—for the Protestant Constitution; and against those who were secretly or openly advancing to assail its integrity, under the baleful flag of Democracy and Popery. He and his advisers had been calm and quicksighted enough to see that such was the true nature of the great electoral struggle ordained to take place in the month of July 1852; and they had also sufficient sagacity and resolution to foresee and defeat the cunning and desperate attempts which would be made by their opponents, to disguise the true nature and real objects of the contest, and shift the scene of it to a disadvantageous and deceptive locality. Those, indeed, who made this attempt, were wise in their generation, and did the very best thing that the nature of things admitted. Conscious of occupying a discreditable and desperate position, through their own imbecility and recklessness, the only chance of regaining lost ground, and making a tolerated appearance before the country, lay in attempting to enlist popular sympathies; and the felicitous device was, to persuade the millions that their bread was in danger;—but this was to be done, if at all successfully, so very suddenly, that the falsehood should not be found out before it had gained its object. The Earl of Derby was to be exhibited before women and children as a vampyre, but only for a moment, lest the false colours should dissolve away while they were being looked at, and a wise and benevolent statesman appear in his true figure and colours. Hence the convulsive effort that was made, the moment it was announced that his gracious Mistress had summoned him in a critical emergency to her counsels, to precipitate him into a contest before he had had a moment’s time to survey his new position, to summon his advisers about him—to tell friends from foes—and see what were the precise objects which they had to keep in view. “If,” said they, “Lord Derby be allowed to go to the country at his own time, and in his own way, the country will welcome him as a deliverer from mischievous misrule. Let us, therefore, force him to select our time, and our place, for fighting the battle. If we hesitate, we are lost; for he is strong and skilful, and the country acute and honest.” In vain the Earl said to his eager opponents, “By your leave, gentlemen; for a moment, by your leave. What is the meaning of all this feverish fidget? What are you afraid of?” “That you will take away the people’s bread; reverse a wise and beneficent policy; and not only bid the sun of commercial prosperity stand still, but go back, and so plunge us all into confusion and despair.” “I assure you,” quoth the Earl, “I am not going to attempt any of these things. I love the people as much as yourselves, and, with you, am one of them. My interests, like your own, are identical with theirs: I wish only to secure the safety of our institutions, the common interests of the Queen and the people, against certain perils which I see distinctly, though you may not. And as to the corn question, in which you would tie up, and hide, and crush all others, I will have none of it. I have opinions of my own on the subject of corn laws, thinking it would be infinitely to the benefit of the community if I could at once derive a revenue for it from foreigners, and enable our own corn-growers to supply us with bread at a reasonable price, and foster and stimulate the energies of producers, and provide a safe, quick-paying home-market for them: thus protecting the interests of both the great classes of the community—producers and consumers. If, however, your long-continued and systematic agitation and misrepresentations have succeeded in persuading the masses of society that my own views on that subject are at variance with theirs, and that theirs they are resolved shall prevail, be it so; I will do all I can, less than which I should desert my duty in doing;—I will take care to submit that particular question, in order to dissipate all doubt, to the deliberate decision of the country; and whatever that decision may be, I will cordially carry it out. But do you seriously suppose that this question is the only one by which I must stand or fall?—the only one for which the Queen called me to her counsels? O no, gentlemen. Whichever way the pleasure of the country may lie upon this question, it is but one, and that a subordinate one, of several—nay, of many; it is but one, and a subordinate interest among several intrusted to my consideration and my keeping. Suppose the corn question totally set aside, and at rest, and yourselves called to advise the Sovereign, and carry on the government of the country, what would you do, then? You may pause; but I know well what you would do. Judging from your own repeated declarations, you would, under the pretence of liberalising our institutions, intrust power to incompetent hands, to be used only for the furtherance of your own selfish purposes; they would nominally, and you as demagogues practically,^[11] be the depositaries of power. Your avowed principles are inconsistent with the maintenance of our national independence; of the connection between Church and State; of the Protestant character of our institutions: the Queen’s throne would be shaken, and her crown quiver upon her sacred brow, if you were intrusted with the power for which you are so anxious. I see distinctly before me the crimsoned darkness of anarchy, and through it the fabric of a republic crumbling under a military despotism. Now, gentlemen, I fear God and honour the Queen; I am heart and soul a Protestant; I am satisfied with our institutions, civil and religious, and believe that so are the people; but let them speak out for themselves on all these subjects, which I will submit to them with deliberate distinctness, despising your efforts to misrepresent my objects and principles, and await the decision with composure.” “Well, but, my Lord, how is this? Be so good as to tell us in detail what you are going to do if you should be continued in power; do not set us running about in search of shadows; do not amuse us with a series of dissolving views; give us something visible and tangible, in order that we may deal with it in our own way before the people.” “That is, in order that you may misrepresent it. No, my friends: you would have me do exactly what I will not do. It was by your own voluntary act that I am where I am. You should have considered consequences. I did, and have formed my purposes, and organised my plans. My character and principles are before the country, so are those of my colleagues. These principles I will reassert as emphatically as you please; and I pledge myself to carry them out in practice, if I have the opportunity.” “But you will delude the country: you will set them scampering in every direction after will-o’-the-wisps, while you and your myrmidons are quietly stealing their bread, and forging chains and dungeons for them.” “Well, gentlemen, tell the country as much: see whether they will believe you. It is a fair question between us. You say that yourselves, and your doings are thoroughly well known to them. Well, if that be so, go and prosper with the constituencies, for they will give you their confidence if they think that you deserve it. But observe, my good friends: if, thus knowing you and your doings, those constituencies should decide against you, and in favour of me, my friends, and our principles, even though I expressly withhold a distinct declaration of the way in which I purpose to act upon them, what will you then say? That those whom they knew they reject, and have chosen others?” It is an ugly dilemma! “But, my Lord, you impute to us principles and purposes which we repudiate: we are not wolves in sheep’s clothing; we are good, honest folk, the best friends the people ever had—in fact, their true, as you their false friends.” “Well, gentlemen, what is easier than to tell them so? You are only losing time yourselves, and making me lose precious time myself; for all our hands are full, having the Queen’s business to do in every quarter of the globe. Good morning, my friends, away to the constituencies.” On this, one may conceive that the colloquy ended, and the people’s imaginary deputation withdrew, with flushed faces, anxious brows, and disconcerted looks, to their council-chamber in Chesham Place. After a troubled silence, one lean flippant fellow among them possibly rose up, with his arms stuck a-kimbo, and said—“Lord Derby shall dissolve instanter: we will kick his people out of the House of Commons the very first day we meet, and so force him to dissolve; and I will bring out our trusty fellows of the League, subscribe a hundred thousand pounds, and in one month’s time annihilate the crazy Cabinet, and then there is an end of him!” But these wild counsels did not altogether prevail. The more steadily that matters were looked at by long-headed people, the more embarrassing was found the position which had been occupied. If the Earl of Derby should succeed in presenting himself to the people in his own way, and if they should think fit to say, “We will have no return to protective duties, but we feel that there is a great derangement of financial affairs which we believe you capable of rectifying; and, above all, we believe you a man of honour, and agree with you as to the existence of a dangerous conspiracy between Popery and Democracy:” where would then be those who had themselves driven him to appeal to the country? And as time wore on, it saw Faction baffled and crushed, and the new Ministers developing extraordinary aptitude for business; exhibiting uniform tact, temper, and firmness; overcoming obstacle after obstacle, formerly deemed insuperable; winning majorities in division after division, forced on them by their opponents; while no amount of newspaper stimulus could succeed in flurrying the spirits of the country into distrust or alarm. Not an opportunity was lost in either House of Parliament for gibing, taunting, misrepresenting, sedulously echoed by the Radical press out of doors, both metropolitan and provincial. In four months’ time, a skilfully-slandered Ministry succeeded in conducting to a satisfactory conclusion such a splendid amount of legislation as will ever render those four months memorable; and at the close of that eventful period, the Earl of Derby saw that the proper moment for appealing to the country had at length arrived: at the voice of the Queen, her Parliament dissolved away; and her people were free to choose another.

Now had arrived indeed the tug of war. Now was to be seen the fruit of those seeds which all parties had been sowing during the interval, with a view to propitiating the people. Those seeds had been scattered by many hands, and were of various kinds. A large proportion of that seed consisted solely of distrust of Lord Derby, because he was Lord Derby, without principles or a policy; and this seed was deemed the most attractive and hopeful of any, by its venerable and volatile sower, who scattered it freely everywhere, watching its growth with deep solicitude, for he had laid out all the little he had left, of political capital, in order to purchase that seed. Said he to himself, with sometimes a sigh, and sometimes a smile, this will grow up, if at all, flexible and chameleon-hued, according to the condition of the political atmosphere; and the vast extent to which it is sown must, at all events, show the spirit and resources of the sower, and keep that personage prominently before the public eye. Another class of seeds had fallen from a desponding and anxious sower, who had been deposed by former followers and supporters from a proud position, and accused of having rendered necessary the sowing of any seed at all, at that particular conjuncture. He moved tremulously along, scattering his little seed, the growth of which, he evidently hoped, might be suitable for all purposes, and alarm no one prematurely. He was rudely jostled, however, by surly impudent fellows, who furiously stamped on what he had sown, and flung down thickly large crimson-coloured seed, which should by and by choke and overpower the other by its baleful and glaring crop. A few timid hands scattered seeds stealthily, those of parasitical plants, following in the wake of a burly sower in scarlet, full of deceit and insolence, dropping, as he went, dark and deadly seed, heedless of the alarm, the scorn, and the hatred which he by turns provoked. That seed was destined, in the sower’s expectation, to produce ere long a forest, overshadowing the land, with all manner of obscene birds lodging in its gloomy branches.

To drop metaphor, however, the appeal to the constituencies was undoubtedly made under circumstances calculated to occasion much anxiety to the Queen’s Ministers, under whose auspices that appeal was made. They were in a great minority in the House of Commons, and had been thrown into that minority by reason of their having been opposed to a measure which, by whatever means, had brought popularity to their opponents, the majority. The latter had astutely identified themselves with the most palatable topic that can ever be urged to the masses of the community—cheap food, without reference to all those deep and extensive political arrangements, necessarily involved in the discussion concerning the import of foreign corn. Mr Cobden, for instance, was aware of being a mere cipher, disconnected with that question, the agitation of which had alone given him political importance, and an independent fortune, securing him leisure for all kinds of mischief; and it was his interest, and that of all those who were, with him, opposed to the Government, to interweave that popular topic with all other political topics, giving them, and those urging them, the hue of its popularity. Thus was the constituency carefully familiarised with a contrast between the friends of free and fettered trade, with all their respective advantages and disadvantages, and the applause or odium which either entailed. A second source of anxiety to the well-wishers of the Government, and unquestionably a great one, was that Government’s steady adherence to the expressed determination of its chief, on first assuming the reins of power, that he would indicate only the general PRINCIPLES on which his policy was founded, reserving all measures and details, till the period when he should be able to carry his plans and measures into effect. This was a severe test to be borne by any class whatever of aspirants to popular confidence and favour. It was saying, “We stand on character and principle; if you distrust either, withhold your support.” And this furnished such endless topics of effective ridicule and invective to the opponents of the Government, as required no small amount of moral courage in its supporters to encounter. These topics were used with systematic energy by a bitterly hostile press for several months previously to, as well as during, the momentous contest with which we are dealing; and it were idle to disguise that these efforts were made with great ability, and a very great measure of success. When, therefore, the struggle commenced, we ourselves said, It is a very critical one, entered upon under circumstances most unfavourable to the Government: and if, in spite of those immense disadvantages, the Government should be victorious, it will be a triumph indeed, and calculated to secure them both strength and permanence. A calm observer, however, of the position of parties and the course of events, could not fail to detect, on the other hand, certain disturbing forces inevitably affecting the tactics of the opponents of Ministers. The rashness of Lord John Russell in resigning the Government as he did; immediately recommending his gracious Mistress to summon Lord Derby to her counsels; and, instantly afterwards, suddenly repenting of what he had done, and, stung by the keen reproaches of his supporters, organising an opposition to Lord Derby, simply because he had obeyed the royal command—alienated from him a great amount of that secret support on which he had so long been borne buoyant, and averted from him the countenance of men, though professing Liberal principles, yet characterised by independence and moderation. To attempt a coalition with such a man as Mr Cobden, and at the particular moment selected for the experiment, was one of the maddest tricks of modern politicians on record; alienating for ever a steady support, in the vain attempt to conciliate a contemptuous and distrustful patronage! If Lord John Russell were honest, and Mr Cobden honest, and both firm, what would be the inference?

Again, when the late members of the House of Commons were reduced to the rank of private citizens, they had belonged to various sects and parties, as the representatives of opinions not over easy to define and distinguish for practical electioneering purposes. There were fervent and lukewarm Conservatives, with corresponding Liberals; high church, low church, dissenters, Protestants, Roman Catholics, both in reality, and in name only. All these were now to present themselves to the country as worthy of its confidence, a considerable majority of them, however, being unable to state what public man they owned as leader, or to what party they professedly attached themselves. And many, indeed, wished themselves to be thenceforth regarded as leaders and founders of parties! And each individual’s ambition would suggest to him the necessity of considering how he intended hereafter, if elected into Parliament, practically to carry out his views, with reference to a sphere of action where unfortunately all could not be leaders. How, then, were all these to “go to the country?” And that country, too, a somewhat shrewd one!

The last Session of the Parliament of 1852 closed very quietly. Neither Lord Derby in the House of Lords, nor any of his colleagues or friends in the House of Commons, seized an opportunity for making, as with their power they could have made, a dazzling ad captandum appeal to the country. Very many of their supporters expected that this would have been done; but we are of opinion that, in not doing so, they acted with a dignity and self-reliance entitling them to the highest respect. They might, indeed, have pointed to a glittering catalogue of their doings during the Session—afforded their supporters many rallying points, and secured among them a conspicuous consistency of means and objects; but these advantages appeared to be deliberately foregone. Never before, in our memory, did a Ministry, especially one so critically situated, and professedly on its trial, go to the country with less apparent effort to secure a favourable verdict. It amounted to an apparently indolent over-confidence, susceptible of being resolved by their enemies into a conscious unworthiness, and distrust alike of themselves, of their cause, and of the issue.

The Earl of Derby having distinctly announced, in the month of February, that he should be guided by the legitimately expressed voice of the country, in reimposing, or abstaining from reimposing, duties on corn; and, moreover, that he would not attempt to do so, unless the country should decide in favour of such a policy by an unequivocal and even a great majority, some two months afterwards made another announcement, in answer to one of the many interpellations with which he was perseveringly harassed by his opponents in the House of Lords. He said that, if it would afford them any satisfaction, he already distinctly saw that the voice of the country would be pronounced against the reimposition of duties on corn, whether for purposes of protection or revenue. Forthwith there arose a cry among his opponents and their advocates, “Then at once retire, as avowedly vanquished Protectionists!” and nothing could exceed the rancorous reiteration of the demand. Lord Derby, however, remained unmoved; and his enemies, beginning to fear that they had to deal with one of thoroughly settled purpose, anxiously cast about for other topics of disparagement against the coming elections. The public themselves, however, seemed so provokingly indifferent to their efforts, that it was deemed unsafe to attempt an open organisation of opposition, or to inaugurate it by formal appeals to the country, in the shape of public meetings. Not one was called throughout the length and breadth of the land! although it was occasionally whispered that a great staff of agitators at Manchester, amply officered, and largely supplied with the sinews of war, were ready to start into action at a moment’s notice. But in defence of what? Lord Derby had already declared that the corn laws were out of his reach, and his supporters were almost everywhere using the same language; many of them accompanying it, however, with avowals that their opinions were unchanged, though the temper of the masses of society rendered it impossible to act up to those opinions. Then—said his enemies—is not this monstrous? The cause of Free Trade is now in the keeping of false friends, or rather of its enemies, who are only apparently surrendering their opinions and intentions, in order subtlely and indirectly to effectuate them by and by! and there arose the cry that this was to be done by the juggle of readjusting taxation. On this point the Ministers and their friends avowed that they were concentrating their attention with a view to redress glaring injustice; but beyond that general declaration they could be induced to say nothing. In the mean time, the nation began to speak out for itself unequivocally on another great subject of its anxiety—the safety of our Protestant institutions, threatened by Dr Wiseman and his allies in Ireland, in a spirit of deadly hatred and unwavering resolution. They did not condescend to conceal or disguise their intention of securing a large accession of force in the new House of Commons—a course of procedure, however, calculated directly to strengthen the hands of the Government, who were at all events known to be thoroughly in earnest upon the subject of Protestantism. Concurrently with this, there existed another subject of anxiety among moderate men of all parties—the sweeping changes, of a democratic tendency, proposed by Lord John Russell and his new friends to be effected in our political institutions. The Earl of Derby took several opportunities of declaring publicly and unequivocally his determination to resist all attempts of this kind, come in whatever shape, and from whatever quarter, they might; and the practical result of all this was, that he stood, on the eve of the all-important appeal to the country, in the character of a Protestant Conservative Minister. That appeal, it was declared by his opponents, would at once annihilate him and his Government. But the assertion was always accompanied by a certain small difficulty in suggesting who was to succeed him, and what was the exact combination of parties by which that successor was to be made, and to be kept, Minister. At all events, it was said, get rid of Lord Derby. Strip off his disguises, and expose him and his friends to the country as charlatans and impostors; and, when the proper time comes, it will be sure to find the proper man. The organs of the Peel party began now to make themselves heard a little; we were told that that was the quarter in which the coming man was to be looked for; and it was whispered at Clubs, and intimated in the papers, that the Duke of Newcastle had the list of his Cabinet complete!—Thus, then, stood matters when the writs were delivered into the hands of the returning officers throughout the kingdom; and when the vital struggle commenced, the attitude of Ministers was at once firm and modest.

The Times of Wednesday the 7th July thus announced, in its leading article, the commencement of the grand struggle:—“So far as regards the disputed seats, the general election begins this morning, and a few hours will place beyond doubt our probable masters for the next five or six years”—words very exciting to all ardent politicians, and fraught with no little truth. That the editor, when he wrote them, expected the result to be a defeat of Ministers, no one who has read what had been said before, and has been said subsequently, and with increasing bitterness, in the eloquent leading columns of the Times, can doubt. The first week was devoted to the English borough elections; and here the opponents of the Government expected a long series of triumphs. It is not consistent with our space or purpose to present a detailed retrospect of the general elections. We shall content ourselves with indicating a few salient points, fraught with great political significance in respect of both persons and places—the sayings and doings of the chief electors and elected.

A calm voice from Calne first caught the attentive ear. The Earl of Shelburne, the son and heir of the Marquis of Lansdowne, was re-elected without opposition on Tuesday the 6th July. What said he, on returning thanks for his re-election? That he had “thought it desirable to try the experiment of Free Trade; saw nothing to shake his faith in it—much to confirm it; but had always thought that the change had been very abrupt. There were persons who had been seriously affected by the rapidity of the change, and he should therefore be ready to give his attention to any proposed remedy for their distress.” “He was not a supporter of the present Government, but should offer no factious opposition to them; and although there were other men quite competent to conduct the government of the country, to whom he could more readily give assistance, yet, until those men were established in power, he by no means said, that if the present Government brought forward measures of which he could approve, he would not give them his support. He felt that it was his duty, as their representative, to abstain from all factious opposition to the present Government, until some other Government became possible.” If the Earl of Derby had been one of Lord Shelburne’s auditors, he ought to have been perfectly satisfied with these declarations; yet the speaker has been ever since set down in the daily lists given, in both the Conservative and Liberal newspapers, amongst the opponents of the Government, as though he were one of those certain of being found among the “ayes” on that “want of confidence” motion which a whisper from Sheffield was at the same time telling us would be the first step taken by the triumphant Liberal majority in the new Parliament. Weighing the political considerations likely to sway such a man as Lord Shelburne, can it be doubted that his tendencies are Conservative, though moderate, and that his public utterance of his sentiments was designed to be regarded as timely and significant? Lord Shelburne was in the late Parliament, and consequently aware of all that had been said by, on behalf of, and against Ministers; and he was also, when he thus spoke, aware of what would be the consequence of an instant, blind, unscrupulous act of opposition—one shameful in itself, as factious, and calculated to be attended by consequences most serious to the State. He therefore gave public notice that those inclined to act thus are to look for no countenance from him. Thus much for what fell from the Earl of Shelburne, and which, as in full accordance with the temperate, dignified, and friendly course adopted by his noble father in the House of Lords, since the accession of Lord Derby, is by no means unworthy of attention. But the very temperate tone of the member for Calne has distinguished many others of the re-elected or newly-elected members for both boroughs and counties; who have in express terms repudiated factious opposition to the Government, recognising the necessity of carefully reconsidering our fiscal policy, in consequence of the suddenness with which the late changes were effected, and the severe sufferings they have entailed upon particular classes. Yet all such members duly take their places in the aforesaid “lists”—gentlemen of fortune, of position, of attainments, of high personal character, with a large stake in the welfare of the country—as though they were “safe cards” for an unscrupulous Opposition, and always at the beck and bidding of such statesmen as a Cobden or a Bright! These are, indeed, fond but fallacious calculations, as the result will very shortly show.

Turn we now to Tiverton, where, on the ensuing day, (Wednesday the 7th July,) a very distinguished person was re-elected for Parliament—we mean Lord Palmerston. The noble lord declared his political opinions in considerable detail; and no one can read what fell from him without admiring the fascinating ease and playfulness which adorned the manifestation of intellectual power and great political knowledge. Not one syllable was uttered by Lord Palmerston of a hostile, disparaging, or offensive character, with reference to Lord Derby or his Government. He did not stoop to borrow those vulgar and degrading terms of opprobrium in which so many of his co-aspirants for political power suffered themselves to indulge, thereby disentitling themselves to the consideration of gentlemen. He undoubtedly spoke of Protection as “a question long since settled,” admitting that he himself had been in favour of such “a small duty as would not have raised in any perceptible degree the price of food, but which would never be again submitted to the choice of the agriculturists.” He deprecated hasty reforms, earnestly advocating “steady progressive improvement of our institutions, going slowly and deliberately about them,” and deprecating “rashly and hastily overturning those ancient institutions under which this country has long flourished and prospered.” He utterly repudiated vote by ballot and triennial Parliaments, justified his support of the ministerial Militia Bill, and spoke with extreme caution on the subject of the Maynooth grant. He made no allusion to any political leaders, nor indicated any possible situation or combination of parties in the new Parliament, nor what was the course which he himself might feel bound or disposed to pursue. Thus much for this eminent person, who said nothing which might not also have been said by any even decided supporter of the Ministry. The indignity which had been inflicted upon himself by Lord Derby’s predecessor, he passed over in dignified silence. Lord Palmerston, again, is claimed by the Liberal journals as an undoubted opponent of the Ministry, whatever measures they may or may not propose!

On the ensuing day Lord John Russell was declared re-elected, after a suddenly-announced contest. He said that he relied on his past career as the best guarantee of his probable future career; spoke of the question of Free Trade as finally disposed of; and added, that “that contest being removed out of the way, questions of religious liberty—of Parliamentary reform—reform of our courts of law and equity—of sanitary reform—and others of vast and deep importance to the people at large, will have due attention bestowed upon them, and time given for their consideration.” When challenged on the subject of Papal Aggression, he answered coldly and drily, in a single sentence—“I never will allow any interference with the supremacy and independence of the Crown and of the nation; but, on the other hand, I will never punish any man for his religious opinions.” Into this shrivelled sentence had shrunk the lusty letter to the Bishop of Durham! He declared himself determined to remove “all religious disabilities,” especially those alleged to affect the Jews; and that “one simple oath, the same for persons of all religious faiths,” should be substituted for the existing oaths—of course including every class of heathens and pagans! He declared himself opposed to vote by ballot; and when pressed on the subject of extending the franchise and shortening the duration of Parliament, spoke with marked guardedness, thus:—“With regard to these two questions, I must ask the indulgence of the electors. With regard to any measure I may bring forward, or may support, in Parliament, I have to consider, first, what is best for the country; and next, what other men will support, and what I have a chance of carrying. If fit to be your representative, I am fit to be intrusted with discretion on those subjects.” It is worthy of notice, that whereas Lord John Russell, in 1847, had 7137 votes, he polled in 1852 only 5537 votes—i. e., 1660 votes fewer than in 1847; while Mr Masterman was returned at the head of the poll by 6195 votes—i. e., a majority of 658 votes over Lord John Russell—Mr Rothschild having gravitated to the bottom of the poll, where he lay pressed down by a majority over him, by Sir James Duke, of 522 votes. In 1847, Mr Rothschild had 6792—in 1852, only 4748 votes. All these are highly significant facts, not to be accounted for by the mere suddenness of the struggle. In noticing these facts, and also recording the triumphant return, at the head of the poll, of the Government candidate at Greenwich, the Times observed—“Thus far the changes, such as they are, are in favour of Lord Derby.” On that day, however, the Times had unexpectedly to record, in letters of mourning, a very splendid triumph for Lord Derby, in the result of a contest on which, as if by common consent, the eyes of the whole kingdom had for many weeks been fixed with intense anxiety. It was the deliberately-selected battle-field between the Earl of Derby and his combined Peelite and ultra-liberal opponents. This was, indeed, a pitched battle between parties; and the field was Liverpool. Lord Derby sent one of his own lieutenants to fight it, and in conjunction with an eminent, and very able, and highly-respected resident supporter at Liverpool; the opponents being an equally honourable Liverpool resident, and Mr Cardwell, the late member, and favourite lieutenant of the late Sir Robert Peel. All parties admitted that the issue of this contest, especially if of a decisive character, would be of immense political importance; and the general impression undoubtedly was, that the Ministerial candidates had undertaken too much for their strength. All other elections were thrown into the shade while this was pending; the result of which was conveyed hourly to London, during the London election, by the electric telegraph. The result dismayed our opponents. Lord Derby’s candidate headed Mr Cardwell by 1130 votes, and his other opponent by 1467 votes; while the other Ministerial candidate, Mr Turner, headed Mr Cardwell by 1446 votes, and Mr Cardwell’s comrade by 1783 votes! Such was the decision deliberately pronounced by the great and enlightened constituency of Liverpool; and it has been, and will be, attended by consequences of magnitude.

Mr Cardwell’s defeat at Liverpool has been followed by the signal discomfiture of that small party in the late House of Commons, of which he had been a distinguished member—Mr Green, Mr Smythe, Mr Roundell Palmer, (an amiable and most accomplished man, who, after an arduous canvass, fled without a struggle,) Mr Pusey, Mr Townley, Mr Tollemache, Mr Mackinnon, Lord Mahon, Lord Norreys, Sir C. Douglas, Sir George Clerk, and others—as though there had been a sort of political murrain among them; and the Morning Chronicle has had to gnash its little teeth, day after day, in despair, as its friends disappeared; declaring, at length,^[12] in a solemn, funereal strain—“A competent Ministry might be formed from the candidates who, at the present election, have been rejected principally in consequence of their political honesty and intellectual superiority!”

On the same day on which Lord John Russell expounded his political opinions, on having been declared re-elected for London, Sir James Graham presented himself to the constituency of Carlisle, and made a very remarkable appearance. At that period not a few regarded him as most likely to be fixed upon as the leader of the combined forces of the Opposition—and, on defeating Lord Derby—as his successor; and what might fall from him on the present occasion was regarded with some curiosity. Respect for the private personal character of the right honourable baronet would incline one to speak with forbearance of his chequered and erratic public career; but it must be owned that he has by turns belonged to, aided, and damaged, almost every party in the State—adopting and abandoning political principles, whenever a candidate for office, with a levity that is lamentable to all interested in the public character of statesmen. His habit of replying with a sort of jaunty jocularity, to taunts on the score of his having boxed the political compass, tells heavily against him in the estimation of a sincere and staid people like ourselves, especially when he himself comes forward, at the eleventh hour, to level elaborate sarcasms at those whom he may deem obnoxious to similar imputations. He has of late been peculiarly bitter in his reproaches against the present Ministers, on the subject of their imputed inconsistencies on the subject of Protection. If Sir James were to cast his eyes over pp. 669–695, of the 46th volume of Hansard,^[13] where stands recorded a lengthened, elaborate, and most able speech of his, in opposition to Mr Villiers’ motion to consider the question of repealing the corn laws, we cannot but think that it would, for a moment, bring the colour into his cheek, and make him indeed doubtful as to his political, if not even personal, identity. He is there seen sternly vindicating the landlords against false imputations of cowardice and selfishness. “If the advocates of Free Trade expected them to yield to fear, he mistook their character greatly, if he could not confidently pronounce, that from such motives as these they ought not, so they never would act;” and he reprobated agitation on the subject of the corn laws, as productive of disastrous consequences. “Commerce, credit, floating capital, were exotics which flourished in the sunshine of national tranquillity; and if a struggle, such as was contemplated on the other side, were pushed to extremities, the very manufactures which they sought to encourage would take to themselves wings, and fly away to lands where they might hope that national peace would be preserved, and life and society be secured.” He heard “with astonishment, the President of the Board of Trade declare that he had encouraged agitation; a declaration well worthy of the member for Manchester, but utterly unworthy of a Minister of the Crown.” “If they endeavoured by force of law to establish, that in a year of comparative scarcity the home-corn grower should not have a price which would cover the cost of production, they aimed a deadly blow at British native agriculture, which, after all, depend upon it, was the foundation of national power and prosperity, and the mainstay of national greatness.”

The peroration of his speech consisted of a touching and beautiful picture of the corn lands of this country thrown out of cultivation, and agricultural labour superseded. “After the best reflection which he could bestow upon the subject [!] and viewing it in every possible light [!] he did not hesitate to declare his conviction, that a free importation of corn must produce the same effect in England that the law of agistment had produced in Ireland.... Let them but once diminish the consumption of British-grown corn, and from that moment the consumption of iron, of hardware, of cotton, and of woollens must decline. Then would come a fresh displacement of labour, and a fresh lowering of wages; and discontent, disturbance, and misery would prove its inevitable consequences.... Little could they estimate the wretchedness which sprung from change of habit, of house, of manners, of the mode of life itself. What change more cruel could despotism itself inflict, than a change from ‘the breezy call of incense-breathing morn,’ to a painful and grievous obedience to the sad sound of the factory bell—the relinquishment of the thatched cottage, the blooming garden, and the village green, for the foul garret or the dark cellar of the crowded city—the enjoyment of the rural walk of the innocent rustic Sabbath, for the debauchery, the temptations, the pestilence, the sorrows, and the sins of a congregated multitude? Where were their moralists, that their voices were not raised against the fearful consequences which the proposed change brought in its train? Talk to him of sending the Poles to Siberia, or the hill coolies from the Coromandel to the Mauritius! the authors of the intended change contemplated the perpetration, within the limits of their native land, of a cruelty far more atrocious. It was the first step towards making England, the workshop of the world, dependent for its daily food upon Continental supplies. He hoped that the proposition would not be successful. Were it to succeed, he should say with his friend Lord Ashburton, that this was the last country which he should wish to inhabit.”^[14] And for these reasons he concluded by “not hesitating to give his cordial and decided opposition to the motion.”

Was this the Sir James Graham who, only thirteen years afterwards, could venture to scatter sarcasms over the Earl of Derby and his supporters?

When Sir James presented himself, shortly after the accession of the present Government, before his present constituents, he declared himself a convert, at length, to vote by ballot; or, at all events, as in a situation to become an immediate convert! Both in and out of the House, he has ever since been one of the most sedulous and skilful of those who have striven to lower the Government and their friends in the estimation of the country, timing his appearance with great exactness, so as to seize the moment for most effective action; striving to disguise his earnestness and anxiety beneath the mask of a jocular contempt, but ever studiously keeping himself in the foreground. When before the constituency of Carlisle on the 8th of July, he appeared to feel the necessity of diverting attention from the political wanderings of his whole life, by taking the lion’s share of credit for almost all the great measures of modern times. He had, however, transparently another object—to paint his own portraiture upon the eyes of the country, as THE practical statesman of the age, of enlightened sagacity and extended experience, with both the will and the power to do whatever might be expected of one aspiring to lead the motley throng combined against Lord Derby. We suspect, however, that the portrait, though finished off by the sitter’s own masterly hand, with a loving warmth of colouring, has only been eyed askance by those whom it had been intended to charm; while the Times criticised it severely. “After perambulating England,” said Sir James, “I have come home at last, and once more appear before the Carlisle constituency. I have no personal object to gratify. I see a great public interest at stake; and I think it of the last importance that this capital of the Borders should send no doubtful voice to the approaching Parliament.... If the electors of this city shall be of opinion that the time has arrived when, with reference to the public interest, I should withdraw from the public service, I will respectfully retire. If, on the other hand, they be of opinion that my labour may still be useful to the public, I am content, for a short time longer, to give to the public my best exertions. I cannot promise you that they will be more zealous, more energetic than they have been; nor am I vain enough to expect that my exertions can be attended with greater success than has crowned my past efforts.” We regard this as neat, and unequalled. Such a cool bidding for power was probably never before made by a man of Sir James Graham’s mark in this country.—A certain Dr Lonsdale then assumed the functions of catechist of Sir James Graham, whose ears he first soothed with the dulcet assurance that “Sir James Graham was sure to hold the highest place in the next Administration!” and the venerable catechumen answered the courteous catechist very smoothly on the subject of foreign politics; but the latter concluded by saying—“The right honourable gentleman has shown that he is neither a Derby-ite nor a Russell-ite. Then what ite are you?” Sir James replied, “It is true I am not a Derby-ite, nor a Russell-ite: Dr Lonsdale asks what ‘ite’ I now am. I have been a Peelite; but am now resolved not to bind myself in the fetters of any party, but will do my best as a private member of Parliament, or in any situation which it may be in the pleasure of the Crown to call upon me to fill.” We ask again, when was this equalled? Had Sir James and the Doctor arranged this little scene beforehand? Sir James said not a word, having been kindly not asked a word, on the subject uppermost in the mind of the country—the insolent and dangerous machinations of Popery against our civil and religious liberties; but on the subject of Reform, he declared stoutly that he had been dissatisfied “with the new Reform Bill introduced by the late Whig Government;” that the Reform Act of 1832 (for which he claimed a large share of credit) “was marked by great imperfections,” and “a revision of the measure was indispensable.” The new Reform Bill ought “to disfranchise decayed boroughs, and extend the franchise to large communities not at present enjoying it.” And, “with respect to cities and boroughs, it appeared to him that residence and rating should be the legitimate foundation of any future extension of the suffrage.” Sir James then bade high for popular favour; but, as we showed in our April number,^[15] he is necessarily opposed, in his attempts to unsettle the Reform Act, to some of the greatest Whig supporters of the late Government; one of whom, Earl Fitzwilliam, declared in his place in Parliament, since the accession of Lord Derby, his strong disapproval of Lord John Russell’s recent Reform Bill—adding, “It will not do for the Government to be thus continually tampering with constitutional rights.” As the English borough elections went on, notwithstanding the Ministers succeeded in a great number of instances in which they attacked Liberal seats, they appeared to have suffered no inconsiderable losses; but they displaced numerous staunch and able supporters of the late Government, as well as several of the Radical members. One of the Liberal papers (the Daily News) of the day on which we are writing, following the tristful example of the Morning Chronicle in respect of its Peelite friends, mourns over the following victims:—Mr Bernal, Mr Greene, Mr Horsman, Sir Edward Buxton, Mr Hardcastle, Lord Ebrington, Lord Duncan, Mr W. J. Fox, Mr Anstey, Sir John Romilly, Sir William Somerville, Colonel Thompson, Mr D’Eyncourt, Mr George Thompson—to which he might have added a long catalogue of others; and may now greatly increase the list—Sir George Grey being a host in himself! and thus concludes: “Still, even with these losses, our ranks are crowded; and we shall give Lord Derby battle, with no fear as to where will be the victory.” This, however, was said on the 21st July, after the ranks of Lord Derby had been swollen with reinforcements from the English counties and from Ireland, without, at the same time, losing ground in Scotland. So long as the English borough returns, which came in almost all at once, or within two or three days of each other, showed a considerable numerical superiority for the opponents of Lord Derby, notwithstanding his gains, the Liberal papers, as if agreeing to close their eyes against the distant but inevitable county returns! were loud in their exultations, occasionally slipping into even truculent expressions. “Thus ends,” says one, “somewhat prematurely too, the farce of a Derby Ministry.” “Will Lord Derby venture to meet the new Parliament?” asked another. “The Derbyites begin now to feel the absurd appearance they make before the country which they have so long striven in vain to mystify and amuse.” “How do you like the returns, my Lord Derby?”—And so forth. On the other hand, the friends of the Ministry began also to quake, and go about with downcast looks, uttering despondency; and one of their own ablest organs was forced to “remind its friends that they were not to run away disheartened by the idea that they had suffered a loss on every occasion on which they had simply failed to wrest a seat from their opponents;” and its readers were assured “that, all things considered, matters wore by no means an unpromising aspect.” Another able journal concluded by the solemn assurance, that, “great as were Lord Derby’s difficulties, those of the leaders, whoever they might be, of the heterogeneous opposition, were at least as great”—a passage quoted the next day by a triumphant Liberal contemporary, with the words “cold comfort!” prefixed. A week’s time, however, began to tell startling tidings for the opponents of the Ministry. Unexpected success in Ireland, notwithstanding almost unprecedented difficulties and obstacles arising out of the demoniacal conduct of the Papal emissaries, to whom we shall presently again allude; and the counties, pouring in their contingents by threes and twos at a time, soon gave a totally different aspect to the field of battle. In almost every instance, moreover, where Lord Derby’s county friends were assailed, they triumphantly maintained their ground; and in nearly every case where they were assailants, they were successful. It was amusing to note how suddenly Lord Derby’s opponents in the press drew in their horns; and after the “boldest” had “held their breath for a time,” they began to comfort one another by fearful tales of intimidation; of divers gross irregularities pervading the whole proceedings; of divisions among the Liberal party, letting in the common enemy; the defective state of the registries; and the still more defective and unsatisfactory condition of the franchise!

Having, however, heard what Lord Shelburne, Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and Sir James Graham thought proper to address, concerning their opinions and purposes, to their respective constituencies, let us hasten on to a very eager, bustling, and ambitious personage, making his appearance much later in the field as a candidate for re-election for a county—we mean Mr Richard Cobden; who, on Saturday the 17th July, presented himself on the hustings at Wakefield, to go through the pleasant ceremony of an unopposed re-election. He was accompanied by—Sir Charles Wood, Lord John Russell’s late Chancellor of the Exchequer, and then chairman of Mr Cobden’s committee, of which he had taken pains to show himself a conspicuous and active member. Several points of the former gentleman’s appearance on this occasion challenge particular observation; chiefly as indicative of his intense vanity and egotism; his virulent hatred of the Ministerial party, especially of the brilliant Chancellor of the Exchequer, under whose knout he had so frequently writhed; his absorbed one-ideadness; his consciousness of the palsied condition of the “Liberal” party, and the necessity of powerful stimulants to revive it; and the absence of any, even the slightest indication of triumph at the state of the elections. Before the electors, at the hustings, he was content to appear in his capacity as a Free-Trader only, reserving the other more special matters for a subsequent occasion, when sure of a safe and favourable reception from his own supporters only, under the auspices of Sir Charles Wood. On the former occasion he deliberately glorified himself on account of “his name being so prominently connected with Free Trade,” and “having the honour, privilege, and glory to see himself individualising, as it were, a great and permanent principle!” He proceeded to charge the Ministerial party with “undisguised selfishness in advocating a change of taxation for the benefit of particular interests;” “transferring the taxation now paid by the land, to the shoulders of those who have no land at all”—which was “protection in a new form, ten thousand times less tenable than in its former aspect.” He hoped “that forty-eight hours would not elapse after the meeting of Parliament before the present Government, and the party that belongs to it, are brought fairly to issue upon the question of Free Trade or Protection.” This sort of worn-out dreary drivel was all that he thought it prudent to say upon the hustings before the electors of the West Riding; but it was far otherwise afterwards, at the “luncheon” at the Corn Exchange, presided over by Sir Charles Wood, and given to Mr Cobden by his “friends and supporters.” He there ventured to launch out into general politics; “and as Parliament was likely to meet in November,” he said it “would be as well to calculate beforehand what the state of parties would be.” He immediately betrayed his fears of returning to the condition of a political cipher, in the absence of Free Trade agitation. “The subject of Free Trade being disposed of, the state of parties would be found exceedingly embarrassing to the old political leaders! The House would not answer the helm; and the question was, how they should take a new tack!”—“I do not think there is anything in the temper of the country which should precipitate any decision on the point”—he had seen the then rapidly-altered aspect of the election returns!—“for with the exception of the feeling as regards [sic] Free Trade, I do not think there is much political feeling in the country on any question! There will be, in the House of Commons, no party so strong as to be able to form a Government which can be bargained [!] to stand for three months, if the old rule is to be acted on as to Government majorities. The question then is, how are parties to be reconstituted? Consequently our friends of the statesman and functionary class must take counsel to themselves, and see what is to be done in order to inspire some fresh enthusiasm, by and by, in the country, on behalf of the old Liberal party!” This was the same gentleman who, on attempting to reorganise the League, upon Lord Derby’s accession to power, unwittingly acknowledged, in terms, the extreme difficulty of “keeping up the excitement of the people, on the subject of Free Trade, for more than a few weeks!” Mr Cobden then favoured his company with a few of his luminous notions on the subject of “Parliamentary Reform;” being pleased to intimate that “as far as the suffrage was concerned, Lord John Russell had proposed a five-pound rating claim;” but Mr Cobden “would rather have a five-pound renting clause—a franchise which would go, he thought, almost as far as any gentleman in that room practically expected or probably wished—at present.” Mr Cobden concluded with coarse and insolent invective against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. “If there is a man in this country—a politician who has suddenly jumped to an elevation which I predict he will not sustain—who may be called a dangerous revolutionist, if he have the opportunity—it is he! The strangest revolution I have seen, was when I found the great territorial party declaring intellectual bankruptcy and proclaiming political suicide, by naming Mr Benjamin Disraeli as their chief! And if it were not for the steadying, ballasting principle of the Manchester school, which would prevent jugglers, and mountebanks, and unscrupulous incendiary adventurers from playing tricks in this country, [!] there is no man so dangerous, because none who seemed less unwilling, at all times, to bend anything like the profession of principle to his own personal and sinister objects, than the present Chancellor of the Exchequer!”^[16] Without condescending to characterise the tone and style of this attack upon an absent gentleman, let us see how he was being spoken of elsewhere, at the very same moment, by a gentleman—one of the most able, accomplished, and high-minded members of the House of Commons, Mr Drummond, the member for West Surrey. “It appears to me that our taxes have been laid on upon no general principle, as money was wanted, and that they are not in the satisfactory state they ought to be. Let the Minister be who he may, this must be put in a better state; and I believe that Mr Disraeli is more likely, and the persons now in office are more likely, to do this than others.—I must be permitted to say, that I think Mr Disraeli a man of very great genius. He has risen by his own merits alone; and never having been tried in office, he is not a man who ought to be sneered at by persons who pretend that they wish ‘to extend the basis of the Administration!’” This dignified rebuke might have been uttered by the speaker on listening to Mr Cobden’s gross vituperation on the occasion to which we are referring. Such was Mr Cobden—in Yorkshire; such will not be Mr Cobden—in the House of Commons, when standing face to face before that same formidable Chancellor of Exchequer, behind whose back he has spoken offensively with such virulent vulgarity and presumption. Passing over these smaller matters, however, it is impossible not to note the recently lowered tone of Mr Cobden, whilom so loud and confident on the subject of a “Protectionist Ministry” as a thing to be only “laughed at,” and which would “fly like chaff before the wind before a General Election.” On the ensuing day, the Times, in commenting on Mr Cobden’s speech, pronounced to be “not wholly worthy of his theme”—and in a “tone hardly elevated enough for the occasion”—“recommended to the consideration of the future Parliament the advice of Mr Cobden with reference to the manner in which Ministers should be dealt with.”—“It is only fair and wise to hear from them the principles on which they intend to act, and the measures which they mean to bring forward.... By precipitating matters, we are quite sure either to prevent the Ministry from showing conclusively the hollowness of their abandonment of Free Trade, or from bestowing upon us a great public benefit. It is much easier to turn out a Government than to form its successor; and the besetting sin to which heterogeneous Oppositions are liable is, that they are apt to place themselves in a situation in which they may be called upon to act in concert, when concert, except against the common enemy, is impossible; and thus, by the exertion of their strength, to render their weakness more apparent and more fatal.” These were prudent counsels, and probably influenced by the same causes which had emboldened the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a few days previously,^[17] thus to speak out concerning the position and prospects of the Government: “It is my firm conviction that the Government of Lord Derby will meet Parliament in the autumn with an absolute majority. To me that is not a subject of doubt.” Two days afterwards—the election returns, during the brief interval, abundantly justifying him—Mr Disraeli thus deliberately and confidently addressed the constituency of Buckinghamshire from the hustings: “I express my firm and solemn conviction, in the face of the county of Buckingham, after witnessing the present temper of the public mind, and scanning—I am sure with no prejudice—the results of the general election, that the Ministry will be permitted to bring forward their measures; that no manœuvres of faction will terminate their career; and that those measures will obtain the assent, and I will even say the enthusiastic approbation, of the great body of the people.” On the ensuing day, the Spectator observed—“The elections have not yet decided the question of the majority; and it is still possible that Lord Derby may have the balance of numbers.” In the “Postscript” to the same number of his paper, the editor, in recounting additional gains, observed—“Lord Derby is steadily gaining in the elections.”

Before these pages meet the reader’s eye, all the elections will have been completed; but up to the day on which we are writing, it would appear that nearly six hundred are decided, and the results are thus classified in the five morning papers of this day.^[18] It is curious to see how the various organs of political opinion deal with the same facts, viewed through the disturbing medium of their own hopes and wishes.

The Times distinguishes between “Ministerialists” and “Liberal Conservatives,” giving 252 as the former, and 63 as the latter—together, 315; Liberals, 271;—placing the latter in a minority of 44. The

Doubtless all these are intended to be, or to be deemed, fair approximations towards the real numerical relations existing between those who will be found generally opposed to each other in the House of Commons; but it is obvious that such calculations are, to a very great extent, purely conjectural, and deeply tinctured by the political predilections of those who make them; and indeed it is impossible for any calm and well-informed observer to cast his eyes over the columns on which these calculations are based, without seeing abundant reason for doubting the propriety of even the Conservative classifications. The gentlemen whose political opinions and intentions are thus confidently dealt with, must often smile at the position thus assigned to them. In the Liberal journals of this day,^[19] for instance, two members, Mr Duncuft, for Oldham, and Mr Sandars, for Wakefield, are set down as “Non-Ministerialists,” “Liberals,” and “Oppositionists;” while, on the preceding day, Mr Duncuft is reported as returning thanks for the toast of “The Conservatives of Lancashire;” and proposing “The Conservative Press,” at a dinner given by “The Conservatives of Wakefield,” to Mr Sandars! And very many other names might be mentioned, which the slightest consideration must show to be referred to the wrong category. There are undoubtedly many, and will be more, gentlemen returned to Parliament, so far unpledged to particular measures, and having indicated, in such general terms, the tendency of their political opinions, as to render it doubtful on which side of the Speaker’s chair they will sit, or on which side they would vote on the leading political questions of the day. But we would warn those who have been so loudly proclaiming their confident opinions on the subject, to pause before coming to a conclusion on the course which will be adopted by the majority, on the first fair and avowed trial of strength between Ministers and their opponents. In our opinion, on a calculation of the probable character of the members, upwards of 70, yet unreturned—but all of whose names are known, and their general political opinions ascertained—whoever shall propose a direct motion of want of confidence in Ministers, or any motion having that tendency, will find himself in a very considerable, if not, indeed, in a large minority. The consequences of such a successfully taken step, all must see, would be exceedingly serious; and a forced resignation under such circumstances would greatly dissatisfy the country, and still further confuse the present perplexed party relations of those opposed to the Government. Long before Parliament meets, which will be probably towards the close of October, each member will have asked himself frequently and anxiously the grave question—Who is to succeed Lord Derby? And how is the compact and formidable phalanx of his present supporters to be practically dealt with? Without such a sacrifice of principle as would shock the morality of the whole country, how could a Ministry be formed which would combine in opposition to the present occupants of the Treasury Bench—those publicly pledged persons who would insist on being included in the new Government? And by whom are they to be led? What are the measures which they would propose, and be likely to carry? Will Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Sir James Graham, Mr Gladstone, go into the same lobby with Mr Hume, Mr Cobden, and Mr Bright, on a motion in favour of a great extension of the suffrage, vote by ballot, triennial parliaments, or the destruction of the Irish Church?—or on a motion of simple want of confidence in Ministers? And if Mr Villiers, or any other member, should propose a resolution expressive of the determination of the House not to sanction any measures calculated to interfere with or reverse the policy of the year 1846, who shall tell the fate of it in the then existing complication and character of the House of Commons, with such various shades of opinion on fiscal and economical questions? Who shall expect a majority to agree on what will constitute a prejudicial or unjustifiable interference with that policy? And suppose Ministers should distinctly avow that it was not their intention to propose measures directly or indirectly aimed at such interference or reversal? Suppose a considerable number of members should be found concurring generally in the Free Trade policy, but also believing that the manner in which it was introduced and established was unjust, and injurious to great interests in the country, and anxious to repair such injustice, and mitigate the admitted sufferings of the agriculturists? This is the opinion of Lord Shelburne, and doubtless of many men of moderate opinions, though formally opposed to the present Government. Suppose, on the other hand, the Minister, in answer to such a motion, should be prepared to intimate generally a policy likely to be received with favour in the House of Commons and out of doors; and either move the previous question, or boldly meet the motion with a direct negative, and successfully? Their hands would have been immensely strengthened by their opponents, for the remainder of the Session—perhaps for many succeeding Sessions. All these, and many other cognate considerations, will be taken calmly into account by the more astute tacticians of the Liberal party; and, in our opinion, shrewder counsels will prevail than those which would herald in an immediately aggressive policy on the part of her Majesty’s motley opposition. With the very best hostile intentions, they would lack arms and opportunity. We concur in every word of the following passage, which fell from the lips of Mr Disraeli at Aylesbury, so long ago as the 14th instant. “We shall carry out our views with more efficiency, and, I believe, with more success, in the new Parliament—when the Ministry will no longer have to meet a hostile Parliament, or be restrained in its policy by an overpowering Opposition. We shall meet Parliament prepared to do our duty, under a firm conviction that the country will steadily support us. I will not conceive the alternative position of the Government’s failing to succeed; but at the same time, no one can be blind to the fact, that the Opposition will create its organisation upon revolutionary principles. The Whigs have shown us their character. Their policy has been received with universal scouting by the country, and they cannot attain to power again, except by calling to their councils the Jacobin clubs of Lancashire. I feel that the present Government is necessary for the preservation of the English Constitution; but the future institution of the Opposition already peeps from its shell, and developes its horns; and from that shell the Opposition cannot emerge, except enveloped in the slime of sedition. A change in the institutions of the country will be the condition of its success; and Englishmen must indeed be false to all their professions—false to that high spirit which Englishmen have ever shown—false to the traditionary associations of their country, if they suffer an Opposition, founded on such principles, to govern this nation.

“Will you,” concluded the right honourable gentleman, “be prepared to say, we will have justice done to the soil—we will have our legislation conceived in the spirit of the age, which is the spirit of justice? We will have the Protestant Constitution of this country preserved, not with the sectarianism of bigots, but with those who believe that Protestantism is the only safeguard of English liberty?”

In our opinion, the country has answered these questions decidedly in the affirmative, and thereby placed firmly in power an able, united, Protestant Conservative Government. It is easy for newspapers, day after day, and week after week, to repeat the cuckoo cry that Ministers are impostors, and that their policy is, in the vulgar phraseology of the hour, “a sham.” The progress and the result of the general election of 1852 demonstrate that these paper pellets cannot batter down the rock of national firmness and good sense. Had it been otherwise, Ministers must have fallen ignominiously within the first week of their presuming to take office; for the wordy batteries of the “Liberal” press have been blazing upon them, double-shotted, from morning to night ever since. Yet the Funds have never gone down, and Ministers remain in their places, not with downcast looks and desponding hearts, but with cheerful confidence and resolution, satisfied that the voice of the nation has pronounced in their favour, and has also declared that it will regard their acts with indulgence and forbearance, and will not tolerate faction or intrigue. There is now a fair prospect that a united and powerful Government may do incalculable good to the country and the Sovereign which has called that Government into existence. Its mission is to act, where its predecessor could only talk; to consolidate and strengthen, where that predecessor could only disturb and unsettle; to terminate the wretched strife of classes, by a just, cautious, firm, and comprehensive policy. Its mission is, further, to repel the insolent advances of Democracy and Popery, which will now find that the day of vacillation and vicious concession has passed away. We say it with pain, that we believe the interests of Protestantism are no longer safe in the keeping of Lord John Russell, though individually he may be true at heart in his abhorrence of the wicked and tyrannical spirit of Popery; but his political exigencies have fettered his will, and chilled his spirit. His fondness of power inclines him to compromises and sacrifices, which very often look only too like sacrifice of principle and conviction. In like manner we fear him in his dalliance with Democracy. In tampering with the great political adjustment of 1832, he is seen standing irresolutely with his foot upon the steep inclined plane which leads to confusion and anarchy, surrounded by those who are incessantly goading and jogging him into commencing the descent. We believe that in his heart he despises the clique of Cobden, Bright, &c.; he has in fact contemptuously told them so to their very faces;^[20] yet are we grievously apprehensive that he is now prepared to join them, faintly protesting, but suffering them to impel him infinitely further than he himself thinks it safe or wise to go. That he has lost the confidence of the country, few will question; and is that confidence now extended to Sir James Graham? His recent career, especially his undisguised sympathy with Popery, would at once irritate and alarm the country, if it saw his advent to power a probable event; and, indeed, he must have gazed with dismay on the successive disappearance from Parliament of so many of those to whom he had recently allied himself, in reliance on their efforts to consolidate and work his influence. A very few months, perhaps a few weeks, will see the erratic baronet the close ally of the Manchester School—at once its leader and follower; he will declare for a perilous extension of the suffrage, and support it with powerful and plausible arguments, but, at the same time, with that semblance of dignified candour and moderation, which he has been latterly showing such anxiety to assume, and acquire credit for. He will co-operate with Mr Cobden, very quietly at first, to reorganise the Liberal party; and if their efforts obtain any considerable share of popularity, Sir James will be seen one of the most eager and swift in the race towards the goal of revolution. Both he, Mr Cobden, and Sir Charles Wood, at present know well that they have grievously lost ground in the country, and that what they have so lost is now in the possession of Lord Derby and his Government.

Of one thing we are quite certain, that Ministers will not meet the new Parliament unprepared to carry into vigorous operation a well-considered and determinate policy, which will abundantly satisfy any degree of reasonable expectation. Nor shall we be surprised to see them disposed to bring matters to a speedy issue, if encountered by factious opposition, come from what quarter it may, and disguised under never so specious an aspect. Those interests which have suffered so severely from precipitate legislation, will be well represented in the new House of Commons, and have to deal with a friendly Ministry, which it will be at once their interest and their duty to support steadily, against all hostile and sinister combinations. The cause of law reform will be safe in their hands; nay, the first four months of their existence have shown that it cannot be in better hands, and we venture to deny that it can be in any other hands so good as theirs. They have indeed shown a thorough heartiness in the sacred cause of law and justice; and what they have already done in this great department, of itself is sufficient for ever to signalise their hitherto brief tenure of power. We shall not concern ourselves, nor amuse our readers, by speculations as to the precise number of supporters with whom the election returns are rapidly surrounding Lord Derby and his Government. It is now, as we have already stated, upwards of a week ago since the present Chancellor of the Exchequer distinctly declared in public, that the Government “would meet Parliament, in the autumn, with an absolute majority;” and we are not aware of a single journal that has ventured to contradict the statement. Every day’s returns tend to corroborate more and more strongly the truth of that statement, which was one calculated to challenge vehement contradiction, could it have been given consistently with fact. There was a will, but no way, to do so. Our own over-zealous friends may have been too sanguine in their expectations, and hasty in their calculations; but those of our opponents, at least of the more eager and unscrupulous, are preposterous, impeaching their good faith, or their capacity as political observers. We entertain no misgivings as to the position and reception of Ministers in the new Parliament. Their majority, on vexed questions, may not be large, but it will be sufficient; and against faction, it will be decisive.

What, then, was the question which has been put to the constituencies, and answered? It was not that of Free Trade or Protection. The question was one of a far wider description. Lord Derby, in February last, stated in terms the question which he sought to have answered; a question not of details, but of principles, relying on the estimate formed of his character by the country, for its allowing him to carry these principles into operation.

“These are the PRINCIPLES on which I shall make my appeal on behalf of myself and colleagues. We are threatened with far more serious difficulties than opposition to a five shilling, six shilling, or seven shilling duty on corn. It is a QUESTION, whether the Government of this country can be carried on, and on what principles, and through what medium. Will you support a Government which is against hostile attacks; which will maintain the peace of the world; which will uphold the Protestant institutions of the country; which will give strength and increased power to religious and moral education throughout the land; and which will exert itself, moreover, I will not hesitate to say, to oppose some barrier against the current, continually encroaching, of democratic influence, which would throw power nominally into the hands of the masses, practically into those of the demagogues who lead them?”

This was, indeed, a Great Question, and it has been Answered satisfactorily to all lovers of constitutional freedom.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 72, NO. 442, AUGUST, 1852 ***

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Dies Boreales. No IX. Christopher under Canvass,	133
From Stamboul to Tabriz,	163
Katie Stewart. A True Story. Part II.,	182
Gold—Emigration—Foreign Dependence—Taxation,	203
The Moor and the Loch,	218
My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life. Part XXIII.,	235
The Earl of Derby’s Appeal to the Country,	249

Debts amounting to	£28,000,000
The price received for the lands burdened is only	5,400,000
Of which has been paid to the creditors	3,400,000

Morning Herald	gives—Ministerialists,	311	Opposition,	269	Majority for Ministerialists,	42
Morning Post	„ do.	289	Liberals,	275	do.	14
Daily News	„ Derbyites,	285	do.	293	do. Liberals,	9
Morning Chronicle	„ Ministerialists,	250	Non-Ministerialists,	326	Majority for Non-Ministerialists,	76!

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 72, No. 442, August, 1852

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCXLII. AUGUST, 1852. Vol. LXXII.

CONTENTS.

Dies Boreales.

No. IX.
CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

Scene II.—The Van. Time—Midnight.
North—Talboys—Seward.

FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ.^[1]

KATIE STEWART.
A TRUE STORY.

PART II.—CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

GOLD—EMIGRATION—FOREIGN DEPENDENCE—TAXATION.

THE MOOR AND THE LOCH.^[9]

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BOOK XI. CONTINUED—CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

THE EARL OF DERBY’S APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 72, No. 442, August, 1852

BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCCXLII. AUGUST, 1852. Vol. LXXII.

CONTENTS.

Dies Boreales.

No. IX. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

Scene II.—The Van. Time—Midnight. North—Talboys—Seward.

FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ.[1]

KATIE STEWART. A TRUE STORY.

PART II.—CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

GOLD—EMIGRATION—FOREIGN DEPENDENCE—TAXATION.

THE MOOR AND THE LOCH.[9]

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BOOK XI. CONTINUED—CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

THE EARL OF DERBY’S APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCXLII. AUGUST, 1852. Vol. LXXII.

No. IX.
CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

Scene II.—The Van. Time—Midnight.
North—Talboys—Seward.

FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ.^[1]

KATIE STEWART.
A TRUE STORY.

THE MOOR AND THE LOCH.^[9]