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                     CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

  CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
  INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.


  No. 457. NEW SERIES.   SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1852.   PRICE 1-1/2_d._




ROBINSON-CRUSOEISM OF COMMON LIFE.


It is wonderfully exciting to read the adventures of a shipwrecked
mariner; to find him cast away on a desert island, destitute of
everything that before seemed necessary to his very existence; to see
him settling himself down in a strange and untried form of life,
substituting one thing for another, doing altogether without some
other thing, turning constantly from expedient to expedient, bending
to his will the circumstances that seemed his fate, and at length
naturalising himself to the place, and living bravely on, truly and
literally the Monarch of all he surveys. The avidity with which we
drink in such details, seems to depend upon some principle in our
nature; for a feeling of the same kind is excited by all other
narrations of vicissitude. The picture of calamity would be merely
tiresome, were it not for the rebound we expect: we want to see what
the unfortunate whose story we follow will _do_; by what steps he will
try to reascend, or by what expedients he will make for himself a new
world in the depths to which he has fallen. This principle is known to
the skilful novelist, and he is the most successful who knows it best.
It is to the complete gratification afforded to the mystical sympathy
referred to--the sympathy, not with calamity, but with struggle--that
Robinson Crusoe owes its distinction as the most universally popular
of all works of fiction; for although the facts of the narrative had
probably never any actual existence, they are so rendered as to be
instinctively received as the component parts of a thing eternally
true in nature.

But in actual life the Robinson Crusoes are few, and the shipwrecked
mariners many. The mass of castaways, when they find themselves
separated from their kind, their comforts, their necessaries, yield,
after a few feeble efforts, or without effort at all, to what is
called their fate, and die of cold, or hunger, or despair. These
multitudes we take no note of. They pass away from the earth like
shadows; or, if our eye follows them for a moment till the view is
lost in the crowding incidents of life, we look upon them as the
victims of unavoidable and irresistible circumstances, and so turn
calmly away. But it would be well to examine this notion; to contrast
the victims with the vanquishers; to inquire whether the train of
circumstances really differed in their several cases; and so to
ascertain the share individual character may have had in the result.
Let us, by all means, continue to pity the victims, whether we find
their bones bleaching in the desert, or stirred on the shore by the
tide; but it may be suspected that we ought to pity them less for the
hardness of their fate than for the weakness which could not withstand
it. A French writer has finely said, that history is the struggle of
the human race with destiny. Even so, we think, is the history of
individuals.

Look abroad into ordinary life, and examine the condition of its
castaways. One finds himself alone in the crowd of mankind, with wind
and tide against him, surrounded by influences like evil spirits, the
earth dry and famished under his foot, and the heavens black with
thunder above his head. He has no experience, little physical
strength, only ordinary talent; but he has nerve and will: he can plod
when necessary; he can stoop or climb as the time demands; he can cut
a new path when he loses the old one; and so, step by step, he goes
on--this gallant Crusoe--till he has conquered circumstances and
reached a secure shelter. Another man: but here we must speak of
crowds and classes, for imbecility affects whole regions of society at
once. A certain branch of industry, we shall say--agriculture,
handloom weaving, anything--is struck with decay, and its followers
thrown out of employment. What course do the unfortunates take? They
sit down and curse their day; they appeal to the sympathies of their
more successful brethren; they lean idly wherever they can find
support; and failing this, they starve in a body, or drift into the
workhouses. In such circumstances, men seldom think even of the
obvious expedient of changing their locality, far less of changing
their employment. They are rooted to the soil like a plant; when the
work they have been accustomed to is no longer wanted, they cross
their hands; and so they remain, and wither, and despair, and die.
Thus when the kelp business was at an end, the Scotch Highlanders sat
down in their helpless hunger, till they were swept as with a besom
out of the land they cumbered. Yet what Mechi has done for his Tiptree
bog on a large scale, with expensive machinery, and hired labour,
might have been done by each of them on a small scale, without
expense, and with his own labour. A wholesome living might be wrested
by determined men from the wildest nook in Scotland, and the sea alone
would support a large population. What the people did, however, was
merely to pick up such shell-fish as the waves chanced to throw at
their feet, and hold out their lean hands for national charity.

As we ascend in society, a similar spectacle presents itself. All
trades and professions, without exception, are crowded with once
well-doing individuals, who now serve only to cumber the ground, and
obstruct the progress of others. Whatever be his reverses, a man seems
to think it necessary to abide by his employment and his station, even
if he starves in the one, and excites pity or ridicule in the other.
He will not see that he has suffered shipwreck; that he has been
thrown into entirely new circumstances; that he must disengage himself
from old habits and prejudices, and construct anew his scheme of life.
He is one of a tribe, and must stand or fall by his profession and his
order. He has lost all perception of his own individuality, and is
afraid to take a single step that is not prescribed by custom and
example. But, independently of the Robinson Crusoes of the class, many
such slaves of conventionalism achieve their freedom while intending
only to better their condition. They emigrate to a new country, and
find themselves actually in a desert island--an oasis in the
wilderness--where it is necessary to work at whatever employment
offers the means of subsistence--to resort to all sorts of shifts and
expedients, and to submit cheerfully to the deprivation of things they
had in former times reckoned necessaries of life. The change is found
to be conducive to vigour both of mind and body. The indolent become
active, the delicate, strong. Neither the physical nor moral
constitution is easily injured, except by the influences of artificial
life. A man who dares not sit by an open window for fear of the
draught of air, if thrown upon a rock in the sea--exposed for days and
nights to all the winds that blow, wet, cold, and starving--sustains
no injury. Persons in this situation, or similar ones, have remarked
over and over again with astonishment, that they were never in better
health in their lives!

The beneficial effect of emigration on the character and habits of the
lazzaroni of Ireland, is sufficient to indicate the cause of many of
the great evils of social life at home. People will not recognise the
fact, that they are castaways of fortune, and require to scramble as
well as they can for a subsistence. They like to read of the struggles
of the Robinson Crusoes, but never think of imitating them. They have
not imagination enough to see the analogy between such positions and
their own; and it is not till they actually find themselves in some
far-away desert, that the slumbering energies of their character are
awakened. Then they have nothing to lean upon but their
industry--nothing to look to but their ingenuity. Expedients must take
the place of habits; necessity must be their law instead of
prescription; the chains of conventionality--as strong among the
lowest as among the highest--drop from their limbs, and the man rises
up from the ruins of the slave and beggar. This consummation, however,
is not the invariable result. Even emigration only increases, although
to a large extent, the number of Crusoes; and there is still a portion
of the people who drift to and fro as helplessly as sea-weed. But at
home, the _bulk_ of the people are in this condition; they have no
capacity for expedients, which are the stepping-stones of progress. A
resolute tradesman, when one thing fails, tries another; when one
process is found tedious or expensive, he has recourse to another; and
in the same way the whole of society is on the move onward and upward.
But the movers are not the mass; they are the stirring spirits of the
time, at whose ceaseless work the multitude gaze unreflectingly,
grumbling when their own occupation grows scanty, and looking for
relief, not to themselves, but to their neighbours, their superiors,
their rulers.

Some time ago, a correspondent of ours, struck apparently with
the true cause of the evil--the tyranny of conventional
feeling--deprecated the emigration of those classes supposed to be the
most slavishly subjected to it, without having previously made a trial
of their energies. He proposed that every 'genteel' family, before
setting their lives and fortune upon the cast, should establish
themselves for a time in some solitary district of their own country,
remote from the comforts and conveniences of life, and try whether
their industry and ingenuity were of an available kind. He seemed to
be of opinion that in most cases the experiment would fail, and that
thus many an unfortunate expedition into the wildernesses beyond seas
would be prevented. We are of the same opinion, only we do not think
either the experiment fair or the result desirable. The very
atmosphere of our country is pervaded by a conventionalism which, as
is proved by what passes every day before our eyes, cannot be
counteracted by mere external circumstances. The family in question
would feel themselves to be only amateur Crusoes; they would be
haunted by the idea, that they were surrounded, at a distance of only
a day or two's travel, by the 'genteel' society of which they had
formed a part; and, above all, they would have the consciousness
perpetually before them, of being able to withdraw from the adventure
as soon as they lost heart. This last consideration of itself would be
fatal. Nothing rouses energy and strengthens determination so
effectually as the knowledge that we are irretrievably committed: the
climber of some desperate but possible steep is never safe till the
rope is cut beneath him; the crosser of a difficult ford is never sure
of completing the feat till he has

    Stept in so far that, should he wade no more,
    Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

The family, therefore, might fail in their experiment, and yet be
fully adequate to the struggles of actual emigration.

The humanitarians of the day, though full of a fine Crusoe spirit
themselves, seem not to recognise its necessity as a general
principle. They draw a distinction that has no existence in nature
between the classes they design to benefit and themselves, legislating
for their protégés in the fashion of a permanent providence. They know
that a very large part of the population must labour with their hands
for hire--that this is an indispensable condition of all civilised
society. They know likewise that the labour-market is necessarily full
of vicissitude, that work of particular kinds is constantly shifting
its place, now from one street to another, now from one town to
another, now from one province to another. It would seem, therefore,
to be their cue, to fit the labourer for the changes that are liable
to beset the way of life he has chosen, or into which he has been
thrown; to imbue him with the noble Crusoe spirit of adventure and
expedient; and to leave his hands free to embrace his fortune wherever
it may offer. But no such thing. Their grand effort at present appears
to be, to chain him to the spot on which he happens to stand, by
making him the possessor of some small house, or some small plot of
ground. If the labour-market were permanent in its demand, exactly
proportioned to the existing numbers, and yet elastic enough to meet
the movement of population, this would be an excellent plan; but as it
is, it may be doubted whether there is not in a system which restricts
the locomotion of the workman, the germ of a great evil, both to the
class to which he belongs and to the cause of general progress. It
seems to us that this plan, which is now making such rapid strides
over the whole kingdom, is in antagonism with the other great
influences that are occupied in developing the character of the age.
While railway transit and steam navigation are labouring to break the
chains that bound the workman to the locality in which he grew, the
various land-investment societies are doing everything in their power
to rivet them anew. But this hint must be understood as applied to the
system in its general, not special application. There can be no doubt
of its admirable effect in multitudes of individual cases: what we
disapprove of, is the manner in which it addresses itself to the
working-class as a body.

That no external circumstances at home, however terrible or desperate,
can struggle successfully, except in a small minority of cases, with
the spirit of conventionalism and the inert force of habit, is proved
by what is passing around us in society. But it may at least be hoped,
that reason is able to exercise a power which appears not to reside in
the mechanical pressure of events. The misfortune is, that the
calamities of life do not find our minds in a state of preparation to
meet them. We have formed no _à priori_ theory. We are able to sink,
and to suffer--some of us bravely; we are able, when necessary, to
'die like the wolf in silence;' but of manly struggle we are
incapable. Now, we have a plan of our own to propose, in which, we
think, resides the grand arcanum of social regeneration. Have you
guessed it, intelligent reader? It is simply this: _read Robinson
Crusoe_. But not as formerly. Do not regard it as a romance. Look upon
it as a mirror of human life, in which the fortunes of men--in which
your own possible fortunes are figured with photographic truth; and
learn from it how to meet, how to resist, how to subdue them. Forget
not, when overtaken by heavy misfortunes, that you have suffered
shipwreck; and do not fancy that your desert island is a land flowing
with milk and honey. Look at things as they are. Listen to the wind as
it moans along the water, and to the sea as it breaks on that dread
lee-shore. Remember that your safety depends upon your own courage,
your own energy, your own ingenuity. Do not dream that you hear amid
the din the voices of friends and comrades, for that is proved by
everyday experience to be a delusion: and, above all things, if you be
of the station in which conventionalism is strongest, do not fancy
that the eyes of genteel people are staring at you through the gloom!




AN EPISODE OF THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC.


Brave old Denmark was sincerely neutral during the great French
Revolution; but England, by a very questionable act, seized two Danish
frigates--under search-warrants--and towed them to British ports. This
arbitrary insult appears to have induced both Denmark and Sweden to
join the 'Northern Armed Neutrality,' which they did in the middle of
December 1800. Upon this, England embargoed all Danish and Swedish
ships in our ports, and seized all, or nearly all, their colonies.
Shortly afterwards, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker (commander-in-chief of the
fleet), Admiral Lord Nelson, and Admiral Graves, sailed for the Baltic
with some forty-seven ships of war. They passed without opposition
through the Sound, and the Swedish fleet of seven ships of the line
and three frigates, could not, or did not, leave Carlscrona; as to the
Russian fleet, it was frozen up; besides which, the demise of the
Emperor Paul caused a vacillation in the councils of Russia. The
result was, that little Denmark was left unaided to bear the brunt of
mighty England's vengeance.

Upon the crown-prince of Denmark--afterwards Frederick VI., one of the
best sovereigns that ever swayed a northern sceptre--devolved the
management of the nation's affairs; for he had been regent since 1784,
in consequence of the mental derangement of Christian VII. The
crown-prince was a brave and energetic man, and he made every possible
preparation to defend Copenhagen--himself assuming the very
responsible post of commander-in-chief. The land defences consisted of
the Citadellet Frederikshavn, the Crown Batteries, and if they were as
formidable in 1801 as they were when we saw them in 1850, they indeed
possessed tremendous powers of destruction--also batteries on the
shore of the island of Amak--Amager, as the English call it--which is
separated from Copenhagen by a narrow arm of the sea called
Kallebostrand. The Danish fleet was moored in the inner harbour, which
is a very strong position, as the entrance is defended by booms, and
batteries are along its east or seaward side.

On April 1, 1801, the English fleet loomed ominously in the horizon,
and it became evident that a fearful combat was close at hand. The
crown-prince issued his last orders to Admiral Fisher, the gallant
commander of the Danish fleet, and to the officers in command of the
several batteries. A terrible day and night was that for the Danes!
They knew that with the morrow's sun many of their fathers, husbands,
and brothers, _must_ fall; and in case victory should declare on the
side of the assailant, they knew not what horrors of war might befall
their city. Yet the Danes--as brave and noble a people as any upon
earth--yielded not to despair. They bitterly felt the cruel nature of
their position, and with characteristic fortitude and unflinching
resolution, prepared to meet it. They might be conquered, and their
capital given to the flames--they knew that; but undauntedly did they
rely on their native bravery, and the justice of their cause; for they
believed they were engaged in a struggle of right against might.

At the hour of seven o'clock on this momentous evening of the 1st of
April, a 'mess' of sailors on board a Danish ship of the line, the
outermost of all in the harbour, had just received, in common with
their shipmates, an extra allowance of _brændeviin_--white
corn-brandy, somewhat like whisky. They were filled with feelings of
high professional pride and confidence, and eagerly pledged one
another, with patriotic resolves, to conquer or die in the morrow's
conflict. Some tossed off their allowance with national toasts. One
man among them held his _brændeviin_ untasted until all the others had
swallowed theirs. This man was a sailor who had volunteered to serve
in the man-o'-war only the previous day. He was a native of
Copenhagen, and hitherto had spent his life in the merchant service;
but he had offered himself patriotically on this great emergency to
fight in his country's cause. There was nothing remarkable or striking
in his appearance: he was a sun-burnt, hardy-looking young man of
about five-and-twenty, and slight rather than muscular in appearance.
Like many of his countrymen, his hair was very light flaxen, and his
eyes bright blue. His name was Anton Lundt.

'Come, messmate,' said one of the sailors, 'what is _your_ toast?'

Anton Lundt started a little, his lip quivered, and his eyes grew
lustrous with hidden emotion. Holding his glass on high, he exclaimed
with fervour: 'For Pigen og vort Land--for Rosine og gamie Danmark!'
(For the girls and our country--for Rose and old Denmark!) and
drained his _brændeviin_ to the last drop.

'Ah!' exclaimed his messmates, 'your sweetheart and your country--no
toast can be better than that! Hurrah for Rosine and old Denmark!'
Anton Lundt dashed the cuff of his sleeve over his eyes, and turned
aside with a glowing heart, and a prayer on his lips.

On the eventful morning of the 2d April--

    ---- To battle fierce came forth
    All the might of Denmark's crown,
    And her arms along the deep proudly shone.
    By each gun a lighted brand,
    In a bold determined hand,
    And the prince of all the land
          Led them on.

Nelson was the chief in command of the English ships engaged on this
eventful day, for Sir Hyde Parker could not possibly come up with his
portion of the fleet, as wind and tide were both dead against him. Of
Nelson, then, and his ships, it is that Campbell sings:

    It was ten of April morn by the chime;
    As they drifted on their path,
    There was silence deep as death,
    And the boldest held his breath
          For a time.

And well might the boldest hold his breath! It was no ordinary foe
that British valour had to contend with, but one of the bravest and
most skilful both by sea and land in the whole world. At length the
dread signal flew 'along the lofty British line,' and each gun--

    From its adamantine lips,
    Spread a death-shade round the ships,
    Like the hurricane eclipse
           Of the sun.

The appalling roar of a thousand cannon answered on the part of the
Danes, and soon the very wind of heaven was stilled by the thundering
reverberations of the artillery. We leave the historian to describe
minutely the progress of the fight, and turn to the ship of Anton
Lundt.

We have already said that this ship was the outermost in the inner
harbour, and as the combat deepened, she was exposed to the heavy
broadsides of two English seventy-fours. She was moored stem and
stern, but her stern moorings were shot away, and she consequently
drifted in such a position, that both the English ships poured in an
awful fire that raked her fore and aft. In a few minutes, her bowsprit
was cut to shivers; her foremast was splintered and tottering; her
main-yard broken up; her mizen-mast entirely carried away, and
drifting under her counter; her bows riddled with shot; and her upper
decks strewn with dead and dying. Only about half a dozen of her guns
could be brought to bear, and although the crew made every possible
attempt to manoeuvre the ship, so as to recover her original position,
they entirely failed in doing so; and it was obvious that the
unfortunate vessel would soon be a mere floating shambles, if not
altogether shattered to pieces, and sent to the bottom.

If a boat could have been sent ashore with a hawser, the ship would
speedily have hauled, so as to avoid being raked, and also her own
broadside would have been available; but it would have been hopeless
to send off a boat, as every yard of intervening water was ploughed up
with round and grape shot, and a boat would have been specially aimed
at, and sunk before she had gone a couple of lengths. Moreover, every
boat in the ship had been staved or knocked to atoms already.

In this horrible crisis, Anton Lundt, who was stationed on the
quarter-deck, stepped up to the captain, stripped to the waist, all
begrimed with powder, and sprinkled with the blood of his messmates,
and said: 'I will leap overboard with a line, and swim ashore to that
battery, and then you can bend a hawser to the line; and when we have
hauled and secured it ashore, you will heave upon it, and get the ship
back to her moorings!' The captain gazed a moment at the intrepid
mariner who made such a chivalrous proposal, and then, without a word
of reply, sadly shook his head, and significantly pointed to the
water, which was all alive with hissing balls.

'I know it, captain,' rejoined the undaunted volunteer; 'but there is
a God above all!' Without further parley, Anton seized a coil of small
white line, and with the dexterity of a seaman, knotted the end over
his neck and beneath one arm, bringing the bight over his shoulder for
convenience in swimming. He then slipped off his trousers--the only
garment he had on--and took a few loose coils in his hand, his
messmates undertaking to attend to the running out of the bight after
him. All was the work of a minute; and without pause, he plunged
head-foremost into the sea from the taffrail, shouting, as he clave
the air: 'For Rosine og gamle Danmark--hurrah!'

He rose some dozen yards or more from the ship's stern, having dived
straight for his bourne, which was not more than eighty yards distant
at the most. The general surface of the harbour would have been
perfectly calm, had it not been for the continuous swells created by
the oscillations of the Danish ships, as they rocked to and fro under
their heavy broadsides. Just as Anton Lundt emerged, a twenty-four
pounder struck the water within a few yards of his back, but
ricochetted exactly over his head, merely stunning him for a moment
with the spray. He swam straight as an arrow, with the long and
powerful strokes of a first-rate swimmer; and occasionally, when the
grape and musket shots whistled thick as hailstones around him, he
dexterously dived. Thus swimming and diving alternately, he very
quickly sped two-thirds of the perilous distance, amid the cheers of
his countrymen. At length, however, the nearest English ship observed
him, and probably guessed his object; for the marines on her poop
fired a close volley at him, and a scream of rage and despair from his
messmates arose, when they beheld him wildly throw up his left arm in
unmistakable agony, and flounder in what appeared his death-flurry.
Then his body rose perpendicularly, till his shoulders were a foot or
more clear above the water, and he slowly fell backward, with his head
pointing to the Danish battery. Contrary to expectation, he did not
sink, however, but floated at full length, with nothing but a portion
of his face visible. After a pause, he was observed to be propelling
himself with his feet--swimming on his back, in fact--and his
messmates on board the ship, and his countrymen at the battery, now
cheered louder than ever. Two minutes of breathless suspense followed,
and then a dozen hands were stretched forth, and he was lifted up the
stony slope that led to the level of the battery. A moment he turned
round, and faced towards his ship--his right arm hanging helplessly
down by his side, shattered above the elbow by a ball, and his naked
body streaming with blood from several wounds--then he waved his left
arm in the air, and feebly hurrahing, fell senseless in the arms of
the soldiers. By the order of one of their officers, he was
immediately conveyed out of further danger. Meanwhile, had victory to
the Danish arms depended on poor Anton Lundt's single heroic effort,
Denmark would assuredly have triumphed, for his scheme succeeded
perfectly. A hawser had been attached to the end of the line aboard
the ship, the soldiers promptly hauled it ashore and secured it, and
then the man-o'-war was easily hauled out of her critical position.

Let us now briefly glance at the progress of the main battle. It
commenced exactly at five minutes after ten A.M., and in about an
hour it was general on both sides. The Danes fought--as they ever have
fought, and ever will fight--like worthy descendants of their
Scandinavian forefathers, and for awhile the result seemed doubtful.
As already mentioned, Sir Hyde Parker could not get to Nelson's aid;
and it is related that this excellent man--who was as generous-minded
as brave--endured dreadful anxiety on account of Nelson and Graves. In
another half hour he could bear it no longer, and resolved to make a
signal for the recall of the two subordinate admirals, remarking to
his own captain, that if Nelson, whose extraordinary character he well
understood, really felt himself in a position to continue the battle
with a prospect of ultimate victory, he would heroically disobey the
signal.

The signal of recall was accordingly hoisted, just at the time when
the fire of the Danes had reached its acme, and it was yet a matter of
considerable uncertainty to which side victory would incline. Nelson
was swiftly pacing his quarter-deck, moving the stump of his lost arm
up and down with excitement, and the balls of the foe whizzed thickly
around him, stretching many a brave fellow lifeless at his feet. The
splinters flew from the main-mast, which a ball perforated; and then
it was that Nelson is said to have smilingly observed: 'Warm work!
this day may be the last to any of us at a moment! But, mark you--_I
would not be elsewhere for thousands!_'

The lieutenant whose duty it was to attend to the signals, now
informed him that No. 39--'Leave off action!'--was hoisted on board
the commander-in-chief. Nelson heard this unmoved, and made no reply.
A second time the signal-lieutenant reported it to him, and asked if
he should answer it in turn. 'No!' was the stern reply; 'but
acknowledge it.' He then asked if his own signal for 'close action'
was duly flying, and being affirmatively responded to, said: 'Mind you
keep it so!' Let us quote the characteristic scene that immediately
ensued:--

'"Do you know," said he to Mr Ferguson, "what is shewn on board the
commander-in-chief! No. 39!" Mr Ferguson asked what that meant. "Why,
to leave off action!" Then, shrugging his shoulders, he repeated the
words, "Leave off action? Now, ---- me if I do! You know, Foley,"
turning to his own captain, "I have only one eye--I have a right to be
blind sometimes!" and then, putting the glass to his blind eye, in
that mood of mind which sports with bitterness, he exclaimed: "I
really do not see the signal!" Presently he exclaimed: "---- the
signal! keep mine flying for closer battle! That's the way I answer
such signals! Nail mine to the mast!"'

The action continued with increased vigour, for Admiral Graves,
probably taking his cue from Nelson, also disobeyed Sir Hyde Parker's
signal. At one P.M., the fire of the Danes grew weaker, and by degrees
it slackened, so that at thirty minutes past two P.M., it had ceased
altogether in many parts of their shore defences, and most of their
ships struck to the English, although the Crown Batteries, and a few
men-o'-war ahead of Nelson's position, still fought with desperation,
and fired on the English boats sent off to secure the prizes. Some of
the surrendered ships were, in fact, placed between two fires--that of
friends and foes, and the unfortunate crews suffered proportionately.
Nelson was both angry and grieved at this; and he immediately went
into the stern-gallery, and addressed a world-renowned note to the
crown-prince, couched in these words:--

'Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson has been commanded to spare Denmark when she
no longer resists. The line of defence which covered her shores has
struck to the British flag; but if the firing is continued on the part
of Denmark, he must set on fire all the prizes that he has taken,
without having the power of saving the men who have so nobly defended
them. The brave Danes are the brothers, and should never be the
enemies, of the English.'

He sealed this in an unusually formal manner, saying, that 'it was no
time to appear hurried.' Captain Sir Frederick Thesiger carried this
letter ashore,[1] with a flag of truce, and delivered it to the
crown-prince, at the Sally Port. The latter sent to know the precise
meaning of Nelson, and he replied thus:--'Lord Nelson's object in
sending the flag of truce was humanity; he therefore consents that
hostilities shall cease, and that the wounded Danes may be taken on
shore. And Lord Nelson will take his prisoners out of the vessels, and
burn or carry off the prizes as he shall think fit. Lord Nelson, with
humble duty to his Royal Highness the Prince, will consider this the
greatest victory he has ever gained, if it may be the cause of a happy
union between his own most gracious sovereign and his majesty the king
of Denmark.'

The immediate result was a total cessation of hostilities, and a most
complete victory to the English. When the contest was over, the
wounded were gradually collected and removed to the hospitals and
private houses of the city--to the latter when their personal friends
claimed them. Many of the Danish soldiers and sailors engaged were
natives of Copenhagen, or had relatives and dear friends therein, and
the scenes that ensued during the afternoon, evening, and night, were
heart-rending in the extreme. Parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and
sweethearts, franticly ran from place to place, alike hoping and
dreading to learn certain tidings of the fate of those so dear to
them. All Copenhagen was a city of wo and wailing. Everybody had
sustained a loss. Mothers and fathers wept for their brave sons
killed, wounded, or prisoners; sisters for their brothers; girls for
their lovers; the patriot for his poor conquered country and his
slaughtered countrymen. Tremendous, in our estimation, was the moral
responsibility of the English ministry for 'letting slip the dogs of
war' for a slight cause--nay, strictly speaking, for no valid cause
whatever. Our firm conviction is, that had England left Denmark to her
own honourable instincts, the latter nation would never have given
real occasion for an appeal to arms. Even yet more cruel and criminal
was the bombardment of the city of Copenhagen itself, only six years
subsequently to Nelson's _raid_--for it was nothing better. But they
managed matters fifty years ago in a different manner from what the
enlightened spirit of the age would now tolerate. No British ministry
of the present day would dare or wish to act as did the ruling sachems
in the early part of this century.

Anton Lundt--as true a hero as Nelson himself, although incomparably a
humbler one--was, as already related, conveyed to the rear of the
battery, and his wounds were attended to as well as circumstances
would admit. Later in the evening, his father, an old invalid
man-o'-war's-man, found him, and had him removed to his own humble
home. The poor fellow had never recovered consciousness, and for many
long hours he lay moaning, and occasionally struggling convulsively,
under his natal roof, and in the same little room where he was born.
His aged parents and a few friends wept around him; but there was one
other watcher by his side, whose grief, although silent, surpassed
theirs. It was his betrothed _Pige_, or sweetheart, Rosine
Boerentzen--she whose image had excited his heroism, she whose name
was coupled with Denmark as his battle-cry. She shed not a tear--her
anguish was too deep for that--but sat by his lowly pallet,
supporting his head on her bosom, and wiping away the light foam from
his bubbling lips. Ever and anon the dying sailor--for, alas! dying he
was--would utter sea-phrases, or affecting words of friendship or of
love, yet not even the voice of Rosine, continually murmuring in his
ear, could recall him to sensibility.

The midnight hour approached: a medical man had just been in, and
departed with the brief but decided assurance that the patient could
not possibly survive many minutes. A worthy clergyman was kneeling
with the family around the couch, praying to God to receive the
parting spirit. In the midst of their supplications, the countenance
of Anton Lundt was illumined with a gleam of unearthly triumph, and
springing half-upright, he tossed his left arm aloft, and in
soul-thrilling tones pealed forth his battle-cry of 'Rosine og gamle
Danmark--hurrah!' He then instantly fell back a corpse on the bosom of
his betrothed.

In the suburb of Oesterbrö, at Copenhagen, is a naval cemetery, and it
generally attracts the eye of the stranger, as it most forcibly did
our own, by a number of rough, picturesque fragments of unhewn
granite, strewn over the mortal remains of the brave men who fell
fighting for old Denmark against Nelson. The simple words, '_Anton
Lundt, död 2 April 1801_,' may be seen on one of them.

Rosine Boerentzen never smiled again. On the first anniversary of the
battle, she returned home from the cemetery, where she had been to
place a wreath of _immortelles_ on the grave of her betrothed, after
the fashion of her country, and ere morning dawned, her soul had fled
to rejoin her hero in heaven. Peace to the souls of the brave, and of
all who loved and were loved of the brave who fell at the Battle of
the Baltic!


FOOTNOTES:

[1] One of the grand basso-relievos recently placed on the base of
Nelson's Monument, in Trafalgar Square, London, represents Nelson in
the act of delivering the letter to the young captain who acted as his
aid-de-camp on the occasion. The subjects of the three other relievos
are _St Vincent_, _The Nile_, and _Trafalgar_.




WHY DOES THE CLOCK KEEP TIME?


A pendulous body vibrates when it is suspended so that the centre of
its mass is not placed directly under the point of suspension, because
then the alternating influences of weight and velocity are constantly
impressing it with motion. Weight carries it down as far as it can go
towards the earth's attraction; acquired velocity then carries it
onwards; but as the onward movement is constrained to be upward
against the direction of the earth's attraction, that force
antagonises, and at last arrests it, for velocity flags when it has to
drag its load up-hill, and soon gives over the effort. The body swings
down-hill with increasing rapidity, because weight and velocity are
then both driving it; it swings up-hill with diminishing rapidity,
because then weight is pulling it back in opposition to the force of
velocity. Weight pulls first this way, then that way; velocity carries
first this way, then that way: but the two powers do not act evenly
and steadily together; they now combine with, and now oppose each
other; now increase their influence together, and now augment and
diminish it inversely and alternately; and so the suspended body is
tossed backwards and forwards between them, and made to perform its
endless dance.

It is related of Galileo, that he once stood watching a swinging lamp,
hung from the roof of the cathedral at Pisa, until he convinced
himself that it performed its vibratory movement in the same time,
whether the vibration was one of wide or of narrow span. This
traditionary tale is most probably correct in its main features, for
the Newtons and Galileos of all ages do perceive great truths in
occurrences that are as commonplace as the fall of an apple, or the
disturbance of a hanging lamp. Trifles are full of meaning to them,
because their minds are already prepared to arrive at certain
conclusions by means of antecedent reflections. Simple and familiar
incidents, thus accidentally associated with the history of grand
discoveries, are the channels through which the accumulating waters at
length descend, rather than the rills which feed the swelling of their
floods. The orchard at Woolsthorpe, and the cathedral at Pisa, were
outlets of this kind, through which the pent-up tide of gathering
knowledge burst. If they had never offered themselves, the laws of
universal gravitation and isochronous vibration would still have
reached the world.

If the reader will hang up two equal weights upon nearly the same
point of suspension, and by means of two strings of exactly the same
length, he will have an apparatus at his command that will enable him
to see, under even more favourable conditions, what Galileo saw in the
cathedral at Pisa. Upon drawing one of them aside one foot from the
position of rest, and the other one yard, and then starting them off
both together to vibrate backwards and forwards, he will observe, that
although the second has a journey of two yards to accomplish, while
the first has but a journey of two feet, the two will, nevertheless,
come to the end at precisely the same instant. As the weights swing
from side to side in successive oscillations, they will always present
themselves together at the point which is the middle of their
respective arcs. This is what is called isochronous vibration--the
passing through unequal arcs in equal periods of time.

At the first glance, this seems a very singular result. The careless
observer naturally expects that a weight hung upon a string ought to
take longer to move through a long arc than through a short one, if
impelled by the same force; but the subject appears in a different
light upon more mature reflection, for it is then seen, that the
weight which performs the longer journey starts down the steeper
declivity, and therefore acquires a greater velocity. A ball does not
run down a steep hill and a more gently inclined one at the same pace;
neither, therefore, will the suspended weight move down the steeper
curve, and the less raised one, at equal rates. The weight which moves
the fastest, of necessity gets through more space in a given period
than its more leisurely companion does. The equality of the periods in
which two weights vibrate, is perfect so long as both the unequal arcs
of motion are short ones, when compared with the length of the
suspending strings; but even when one of the arcs is five times longer
than the other, ten thousand vibrations will be completed before one
weight is an entire stride in advance of the other; and even this
small amount of difference is destroyed when the arc in which the
weights swing is a little flattened from the circular curve.

But there is yet another surprise to be encountered. Hang a weight of
a pound upon one of the strings, and a weight of two pounds upon the
other, and set them vibrating in arcs of unequal length as before, and
still their motions will be found to be isochronous. Unequal weights,
as well as equal ones, when hung on equal strings, will swing through
arcs of unequal length in equal periods of time. This seeming
inconsistency also admits of a satisfactory explanation. It has been
stated, that the motion of swinging bodies is caused by the earth's
attraction. But what are the facts that are more particularly implied
in this statement? What discoveries does the philosophic inquirer make
when he looks more narrowly into it? For the sake of familiar
illustration, let it be imagined that a man stands at the top of the
Monument of London, with two leaden bullets in his hand, each weighing
an ounce, and that he drops these together. They go to the earth,
because the earth's mass draws them thither; and since the two bodies
exactly resemble each other, and start at the same instant upon their
descent, they must of course both strike the pavement beneath
simultaneously. There can be no reason why one should get down before
the other, for the same influence causes the fall of each. The entire
mass of the huge earth attracts each bullet alike, and the bullets,
therefore, yield like obedience to the influence, and fall together to
the ground.

But now, suppose that the two bullets were to be all at once fused
into one, and that this combined mass were then dropped from the top
of the Monument as a single bullet, would there then be any reason why
the two ounces of lead should make a more rapid descent than they
would have made while in separate halves? Clearly not. There is but
the same earth to attract, and the same number of particles to be
drawn in each case, and therefore the same result must ensue. Each
particle still renders its own individual obedience, and makes its own
independent fall, although joined cohesively to its neighbours. It is
the mass of the attracting body, and not the mass of the attracted
body, that determines the velocity with which the latter moves. The
greater mass of an attracted body expends its superior power, not in
increasing its own rate of motion, but in pulling more energetically
against the attracting mass. Every particle of matter when at rest
resists any attempt to impress it with motion. The amount of this
resistance is called its inertia. When many particles are united
together into one body, they not only, therefore, take to that body
many points upon which the earth's attraction can tell, but they also
carry to it a like quantity of resistance or inertia, which must be
overcome before any given extent of motion can be produced. If the
earth's force be but just able to make particle 1 of any body go
through 200 inches in a second, it will also be but just able to make
particles 2, 3, and 4 do the same; consequently, whether those
particles be separate or combined together, their rate of travelling
will be the same. Hence all bodies descend to the earth with exactly
the same velocities, however different their natures may be in the
matter of weight, always provided there be no retarding influence to
act unequally upon their different bulks and surfaces. It is well
known that even a guinea and feather will fall together when the
atmospheric resistance is removed from their path.

The reader will now, of course, see that what is true of the motion of
free bodies, must also be true of the motion of suspended ones, since
the same terrestrial attraction causes both. There is no reason why
the two-pound weight in the experiment should vibrate quicker than the
one-pound weight, just as there is no reason why a two-ounce bullet
should fall quicker than a one-ounce bullet. Here, also, there are
only the same number of terrestrial particles to act upon each
separate particle of the two unequal weights. Hence it is that the
vibrations of unequal weights are isochronous when hung on strings of
equal lengths.

Thus far our dealings have been with what has seemed to be a very
single-purposed and determined agent. We have hung a weight upon a
piece of string and set it swinging, and have then seen it persisting
in making the same number of beats in the same period of time, whether
we have given it a long journey or a short one to perform; and also
whether we have added to or taken from its mass. But now we enter upon
altogether new relations with our little neophyte, and find that we
have reached the limits of its patience.

Take three pieces of string of unequal lengths--one being one foot
long; the second, four feet; and the third, nine feet. Hang them up by
one extremity, and attach to each of the other ends a weight. Then
start the three weights all off together vibrating, and observe what
happens. The several bodies do not now all vibrate in the same times
as in the previous experiments. By making the lengths of the strings
unequal, we have introduced elements of discord into the company. The
weight on the shortest string makes three journeys, and the weight on
the next longest string makes two journeys, while the other is
loitering through one.

This discrepancy, again, is only what the behaviour of the vibrating
masses in the previous experiments should have taught the observer to
anticipate. Each of the weights in this new arrangement of the
strings, has to swing in the portion of a circle, which, if completed,
would have a different dimension from the circles in which the other
weights swing. The one on the shortest string swings in the segment of
a circle that would be two feet across; the one on the longest string
swings in the segment of a circle that would be eighteen feet across.
Now, if these two weights be made to vibrate in arcs that shall
measure exactly the twelfth part of the entire circumference of their
respective circles, then one will go backwards and forwards in a
curved line only half a foot long, while the other will move in a line
four feet and a half long.

But both these weights, the one going upon the short journey, and the
other upon the long, will start down exactly the same inclination or
declivity. The reader will see that this must be the case if he will
draw two circles on paper round a common centre, the one at the
distance of one inch, and the other at the distance of nine inches.
Having done this, let him cut a notch out of the paper, extending
through both the circles to the centre, and including a twelfth part,
or thirty degrees, of each between its converging sides. He will then
observe, that the two arcs cut out by the notch are everywhere
concentric with each other; therefore, their beginnings and endings
are concentric or inclined in exactly the same degree to a
perpendicular crossing their centres. These concentric beginnings and
endings represent correctly the concentric directions in which the
swinging weights commence their downward movements.

Now, since it has been shewn that bodies begin to run down equal
descents with equal velocities, it follows that the weight on the
short string and that on the long string must commence to move down
the concentric curves of their respective arcs at an equal rate. But
it has been also shewn that the one of these weights has a nine times
longer journey to perform than the other; it is clear, therefore, that
both cannot accomplish their respective distances in the same time.
The weight on the shortest string in reality makes three vibrations,
and the weight on the string that is next to this in length makes two
vibrations, while the weight on the longest string is occupied about
one; and the differences would be as 9, 4, and 1, instead of as 3, 2,
1, but that the weights moving in the longer arcs benefit most from
acceleration of velocity. Although all the vibrating bodies begin to
move at equal rates, they pass the central positions directly beneath
their points of suspension at unequal ones. Those that have been the
longest in getting down to these positions, have of necessity
increased their paces the most while upon their route.

Suspended weights, then, only vibrate in equal times when hung upon
equal strings; but they continue to make vibrations in equal times
notwithstanding the diminution of the arcs in which they swing. This
was the fact that caught the attention of Galileo; he observed that
the vibrations of the lamp slowly died away as the effect of the
disturbing force was destroyed bit by bit, but that, nevertheless, the
last faint vibration that caught his eye, took the same apparent time
for its performance as the fullest and longest one in the series.

The instrument that has been designated by the learned name of
pendulum, is simply a weight of this description placed on the end of
a metallic or wooden rod, and hung up in such a way that free sideways
motion is permitted. This freedom of motion is generally attained by
fixing the top of the rod to a piece of thin, highly elastic steel. A
pendulum fitted up after this fashion, will continue in motion, if
once started, for many hours. It only stops at last, because the air
opposes a slight resistance to its passage, and because the suspending
spring is imperfectly elastic. The effects of these two causes
combined arrest the vibration at last, but not until they have long
accumulated. The weight does not stand still at once, but its arc of
vibration grows imperceptibly less and less, until at last there comes
a time when the eye cannot tell whether the body is still moving or in
absolute repose.

Now, suppose that a careful and patient observer, aware of the exact
length of the suspending-rod of a vibrating pendulum, were to set
himself down to count how many beats it would make in a given period,
he would thenceforward be able to assign a fixed value to each beat,
and would consequently have acquired an invariable standard whereby he
might estimate short intervals. If he found that his instrument had
made exactly 86,400 beats at the end of a mean solar day, and knew
that the length of its rod was a trifle more than 39 inches, he would
be aware that each beat of such a pendulum might always be taken as
the measure of a second. The length of the rod of a pendulum which
beats exact seconds in London is 39.13 inches.

But there are few persons who would be willing to go through the
tedious operation of counting 86,400 successive vibrations. The
invention of a mechanical contrivance that was able to break the
monotony of such a task, would be hailed by any one who had to perform
it as an invaluable boon. Even a piece of brass with sixty notches
upon it, which he might slip through his fingers while noting the
swinging body, would enable him to keep his reckoning by sixties
instead of units, and so far would afford him considerable relief. But
if the notched brass could be turned into a ring, and the pendulum be
made to count the notches off for itself, round and round again
continuously, registering each revolution as it was completed for
future reference, the observer would attain the same result without
expending any personal trouble about it. It is this magical conversion
of brass and iron into almost intelligent counters of the pendulum's
vibrations, that the clock-maker effects by his beautiful mechanism.

In the pendulum clock, the top of the swinging-rod is connected with a
curved piece of steel, which dips its teeth-like ends on either hand
into notches deeply cut in the edges of a brass wheel. The notched
wheel is connected with a train of wheel-work kept moving by the
descent of a heavy weight; but it can only move onwards in its
revolution under the influence of the weight, as the two ends of the
piece of steel are alternately lifted out of the notches by the
swaying of the pendulum. The other wheels and pinions of the movement
are so arranged that they indicate the number of turns the wheel at
the top of the pendulum completes, by means of hands traversing round
a dial-plate inscribed with figures and dots.

It is found convenient in practice to make the direct descent of a
weight the moving power of the wheel-work, instead of the swinging of
the pendulum, for the simple reason, that the excess of its power
beyond what is required to overcome the friction of the wheel-work, is
then employed in giving a slight push to the pendulum; this push just
neutralises the retarding effects before named as inseparable from the
presence of air and imperfect means of suspension. The train of
wheel-work in a clock, therefore, serves two purposes--it records the
number of beats which the pendulum makes, and it keeps that body
moving when once started. As far as the activity of the pendulum is
concerned, the wheel-work is a recording power, and a preserving
power, but _not_ an originating power. If there were no air, and no
friction in the apparatus of suspension, the pendulum would continue
to go as well without the wheel-work as with it. With the wheel-work
it beats as permanently and steadily upon material supports and
plunged in a dense atmosphere, as it would if it were hung upon
nothing, and were swinging in nothing; and also performs its backward
and forward business in solitude and darkness, to the same practical
purpose that it would if the eyes of watchful and observant guardians
were turned incessantly towards it.

Galileo published his discovery of the isochronous property of the
pendulum in 1639. Richard Harris of London took the hint, and
connected the pendulum with clock-work movement in 1641. Huyghens
subsequently improved the connection, and succeeded in constructing
very trustworthy time-keepers, certainly before 1658.

But notwithstanding all that the knowledge and skill of Huyghens could
do, his most perfect instruments were still at the mercy of
atmospheric changes. It has been said, that the time of a pendulum's
vibration depends upon the length of its suspending-rod. This length
is measured, not down to the bottom of the weight, but to the centre
of its mass. For the weight itself is necessarily a body of
considerable dimensions, and in this body some particles must be
nearer to, and others further from the point of suspension. Those
which are nearest will, of course, in accordance with the principles
already explained, have a tendency to make their vibrations in shorter
periods; and those which are furthest, in longer periods. But all
these particles are bound together firmly by the power of cohesion,
and must move connectedly. They, therefore, come to an agreement to
move at a mean rate--that is, between the two extremes. The top
particles hurry on the middle ones; the bottom particles retard them
in a like degree. Consequently, the whole of the weight moves as if
its entire mass were concentered in the position of those middle
particles; and the exact place of this central position in relation to
the point of suspension, becomes the important condition which
determines the time in which the instrument swings.

In pendulums of ordinary construction, this relation is by no means an
unvarying one--changes of temperature alter the bulk of all kinds of
bodies. A metal rod runs up and down under increase and diminution of
heat, as certainly as the thread of mercury in the tube of the
thermometer does. A hot day, therefore, lengthens the metallic
suspending-rod of a pendulum, and carries the centre of its weight to
a greater distance from the point of suspension. By this means, the
period of each vibration is of necessity lengthened. An increase of
temperature to the extent of ten of Fahrenheit's degrees, will make a
second's pendulum with a brass rod lose five vibrations in a day. All
substances do not, however, suffer the same amount of expansion under
like increments of heat. If the rod of the pendulum be made of
varnished or black-leaded wood, an addition of ten degrees of heat
will not cause it to lose more than one vibration in a day. But even
this small irregularity is too vast for the purposes of precise
science, and accordingly ingenuity has been taxed to the utmost to
find some means of removing the source of inaccuracy, to invent some
plan whereby the pendulum may be made sensitive enough to discover and
correct its own varying dimensions as different temperatures are
brought to bear upon its material.

The first successful attempt to accomplish this useful purpose was
made by George Graham in 1715. He replaced the solid weight at the
bottom of the rod by a glass jar containing mercury. The rod he
formed of steel of the usual length; and because mercury expands five
times more than steel, he fixed the height of the column of mercury in
the jar at only 6-1/2 inches. In this arrangement he found that
additional heat carried up the mercury in the jar, as much as it
carried down the jar by the elongation of the rod. Consequently, the
motion of the one perfectly compensated the motion of the other, and
the effective centre of the weight always remained at the same precise
distance from the top of the rod. By the application of this
compensating pendulum, clocks are now constructed that do not vary to
the extent of a tenth of a second in a day.

Soon after the invention of Graham's mercurial pendulum, John
Harrison--the same clever mechanician who received L.20,000 from
government for making a chronometer that went to Jamaica in one year
and returned in another with an accumulated error of only 1 minute and
54 seconds--hit upon another means of gaining the same end. He brought
a steel rod down from the point of suspension, turned it up into a
copper rod of less length; and from the top of this hung the weight.
He fixed the lengths of the steel and copper rods, which expand
unequally, in such a way that the steel carried the copper down
exactly as much as the copper carried the weight up; and thus the
centre of the weight was still kept at the same distance from the real
point of suspension. Harrison's pendulum is generally seen in somewhat
the form of a gridiron, because many parallel bars of copper and steel
are used in its construction, for the sake of rendering it firm and
unyielding in all its parts.




MAGIC IN INDIA.


A correspondent in India tells us that a military friend of his, on
returning to England, and finding all astir there about mesmerism,
writes to him that he had often had much cause to regret that, during
his long residence of more than twenty-eight years in India, he was
ignorant of the very name or existence of mesmerism; as he could
recall to mind many instances of what he then deemed to be native
superstitions, on which he now looked very differently, believing them
to be the direct effects of mesmeric influence. These instances are
daily and hourly exhibited in Indian dwellings, though either passing
without notice, or ascribed to other causes. Children in India,
especially European children, seldom go to sleep without being
subjected to some such influence, either by the ayahs or the attendant
bearers; and our military friend says, that he has himself repeatedly,
in a few seconds, been the means of tranquillising a fractious,
teething child, and throwing it into a profound sleep by the mere
exercise of the will, quite ignorant that he was thus using, though in
one of its simplest forms, a power at which he laughed heartily when
displayed around him in some of its more hidden ramifications. We give
the following in his own words:--

I shall now relate a circumstance, proving that the natives of India
apply mesmeric power to the removal of diseases with the utmost
success. I had in my establishment at Lucknow a _chuprassie_,[2] who
was a martyr to the most deplorable chronic rheumatism. His hands,
wrists, knees, and all his joints, were so greatly enlarged, and in a
state so painful, that his duties had gradually become merely nominal.
One day, he hobbled up, and begged my permission to remain at home for
a few days, for the purpose of being cured of his agonising disease. I
said: 'Certainly; get cured of your complaint, and let me see you when
you return.' In a very few days, perhaps in four or five, to my great
astonishment he returned, smiling and joyous, with his limbs as pliant
and supple as my own.

'What!' said I, 'are you come back already?'

'Yes, sir, by your favour, I am perfectly cured.'

'What! entirely cured?'

'Yes, sir; perfectly cured.'

'Well, then, tell me what medicine you took.'

'I took no medicine; I called in two women, _zadoo walees_ (dealers in
magic) from the bazaar, and gave them four pice apiece (about twopence
each), and they cured me.'

'But how--what did they do?'

'They put me on a _charpaee_ (a low bed), and one sat at each side of
me, and both passed their hands over my body so (describing long
mesmeric passes), and thus they set me to sleep, and I slept soundly:
when I awoke, I was free from rheumatism, and am now perfectly well.'

The master made no investigation of the matter; the man was laughed
at, and told to return to his duties, which he continued thenceforth
to perform with all his former zeal. Now, this was not regarded by the
patient or the other servants as a strange thing, for they took it
quite as a matter of course; and there is indeed no reason to doubt,
that the natives of India frequently have recourse to _jhar phoonk_,
or mesmerism, for the cure of rheumatism; but many interesting things
arc carefully concealed from the English, because we invariably
ridicule or sneer at native customs--a mode of treatment peculiarly
distasteful to the inhabitants of the East.

But though willing to make use of these mysterious powers in their
beneficent and curative forms, there exist all over Hindostan abundant
proofs of the dread of 'zadoo,' or witchcraft, among all classes,
Moslems as well as Hindoos, when it appears to threaten them with
evil. If a cultivator has transplanted his tobacco or other valuable
plant, he collects old cracked earthen cooking-pots, and places a spot
of limestone whiting on the well-blackened bottom of each. They are
then fixed on stakes driven into the ground, so that the white spots
may be seen by all passers-by. This ingenious process is meant to
neutralise the influence of the 'evil eye' of the envious. The
talismans worn by the natives, said to be always the same, consist of
an oblong cylinder, with a couple of rings for a string to pass
through to fasten them, and would appear to have been originally
impregnated with the electric fluid. Children are invariably provided
with such amulets to avert the 'evil eye;' and should any one praise
their beauty, the parent spits on the ground, and declares them to be
perfect frights.

The inhabitants of the mountainous regions east of Bengal--the
Bhooteeas, and others--accuse all those of Bengal of being great
sorcerers; and when seized with fever in the low malarious tracts,
which they must pass through on descending from the mountains and
entering that province, for the purpose of bathing in the holy Ganges,
or visiting one of the numerous shrines in the plains, the disease is
invariably imputed to the incantations of the Bengalees.

                  Nor tree, nor plant
    Grows here, but what is fed with magic juice,
    All full of human souls.

Our military friend gives two other instances in which the effects
produced were really and truly mesmeric, though of course ascribed to
magic. He vouches for the facts, but leaves every one to form his own
opinion:--

The wife of one of my grooms, a robust woman, and the mother of a
large family, all living within my grounds, was bitten by a poisonous
serpent, most probably a cobra, or coluber maja, and quickly felt the
deadly effects of its venom. When the woman's powers were rapidly
sinking, the servants came to my wife, to request that the civil
surgeon of the station might be called in to save her life. He
immediately attended, and exerted his utmost skill, but in vain. In
the usual time, the woman appeared to be lifeless, and he therefore
left her, acknowledging that he could not be of any further service.
On his reaching my bungalow, some of my servants stated, that in the
neighbourhood a fakir, or wandering mendicant, resided, who could
charm away the bites of snakes; and begged, if the doctor had no
objection, that they might be permitted to send for him. He answered:
'Yes, of course: if the poor people would feel any consolation by his
coming, they could bring him; but the woman is dead.'

After a considerable lapse of time, the magician arrived, and began
his magical incantations. I was not present at the scene, but it
occurred in my park, within a couple of hundred yards of my bungalow;
and I am quite confident that any attempt to use medicines would have
been quite useless, as the woman's powers were utterly exhausted,
though her body was still warm. The fakir sat down at her side, and
began to wave his arm over her body, at the same time muttering a
charm; and he continued this process until she awoke from her
insensibility, which was within a quarter of an hour.

The last instance we shall give occurred at Bombay. The writer says:
On visiting Bombay in 1822, I was greatly diverted by a circumstance
told to me by an old friend in the artillery there. He stated that he
had had a _kulashee_, or tent-pitcher, in his service for many years;
that he was a most faithful and active man; but that he had all of a
sudden, and without any visible cause, become very greatly emaciated,
feeble, and ghastly. His master had sent him to the hospital, to have
the benefit of the skill of the regimental surgeon; but after the
lapse of some time, he was sent back, with the intimation that the
surgeon could not discover any specific disease, and that he,
therefore, could make nothing of his case. On bringing back this
information, my friend began to cross-question his servant, who would
not at first acknowledge the cause of his disease; but at last, after
much persuasion, he candidly avowed to his master, in confidence, that
he was labouring under the effect of witchcraft. 'And do you know,'
said my friend, 'that the fellow actually believed it himself.' And we
both laughed most heartily. His master continued his examination,
until the kulashee confessed that a certain Brahmin, officiating at a
large tank close to the fortress of Bombay, had threatened him with
his revenge, and was now actually eating up his liver, by which
process he would shortly be destroyed. 'I will tell you what I did: I
no sooner got the Brahmin's name, than I ordered my buggy, and quickly
drove down to the tank. On reaching it, I inquired for the magician;
and on his arrival, I leaped down, seized him by the arm, and
horsewhipped him within an inch of his life, now and then roaring out:
"I'll teach you to bewitch my kulashee, you villain!" "How dare you
injure my servant, you rascal?" and so forth. In a very few minutes,
the liver-eating Brahmin declared that he would instantly release the
kulashee from the spell; that, on reaching home, I would find him
recovered; and ultimately he was perfectly released. And, believe me,'
said my friend laughing, 'that the fellow mended from that hour, and
is now a capital servant.'

In a series of interesting papers in the _Dublin University Magazine_,
called 'Waren, or the Divine Afflatus of the Hindoos,' the writer
gives a lengthened description of that strange possession (which he
calls _daimoniac_, preferring that word to _demoniac_--the latter
being exclusively evil or devilish, while the former implies a
superhuman power for good as well as evil), with all its varied
manifestations. This faith, if it may be so called, prevails over the
whole of Western India, its greatest stronghold being the province of
Concan, not far from Bombay. There are three kinds of waren: the
hereditary or family waren; the transmitted or tribe waren; and that
which is summoned by a variety of spells and incantations, called the
village waren; the last being, of course, the most widely spread, as
almost every village has a temple dedicated to Devee, the frightful
goddess who presides over and is consulted on every calamity, giving
her responses in the person of some waren selected for the purpose. In
the hereditary and tribe waren, the visitation continues at intervals
through life in the person once influenced, and it is always regarded
as a proof of divine favour, being seldom exercised but for beneficent
purposes. Its approach is made known by sundry sudden changes and
tremblings, _and always_ by a nodding of the head. After heavings,
pantings, gurglings, and moanings, composure returns, and the
possessed begins his utterances, and always in the name of some
divinity or other waren, speaking of himself as a distinct person, by
the name of _Majhen Jhad_, _my tree_, whom he reproves, admonishes,
and advises, in such terms as '_My tree_ has broken such a vow'--'If
_my tree_ acts thus,' &c. This phrase has been variously explained, as
the spirit of the root-man or family ancestor, speaking of his
descendant waren as _my tree_, or as a simple allusion to his
motionless condition.

The hereditary waren is the oracle of the household, as the village
waren is of the entire neighbourhood, often usurping the functions of
judge and jury, causing sometimes the innocent to suffer for the
guilty, but also, by his prophecies, being the means of recovering
stolen property. There are many other kinds of waren: a cholera waren,
a sanitary waren, a necromantic waren; and so forth. The last named
not only discovers the state of affairs of those who die suddenly, or
disappear mysteriously, but pretends to raise the dead; and a story is
recorded of an impudent impostor, taking advantage of the belief of
the people in the identity of the persons thus raised, and personating
so well a prince slain in battle some years before, that not only did
his brother swear to his identity, but the widow actually threw off
her weeds, and went to live with him!

When calamity or pestilence visits a place, the village oracle is
consulted as to the cause of the anger of the goddess Devee, and the
responses are given forth by her inspired waren, amidst a cloud of
incense, strongly reminding us of the oracle of Delphi. When the sins
have been pointed out which have caused the particular scourge, some
sacrifice is prescribed, chiefly that of goats and cocks; sometimes
the inspired waren desires a certain number of goats to be let loose,
and driven beyond the boundary, and that he, the incarnation of the
evil, will go with them. Of course, the scourge diminishes from that
day. Several who have witnessed this practice in India, have been
struck with the remarkable analogy it bears to the scape-goat of the
Mosaic dispensation, sent into the wilderness burdened with the sins
of the congregation.

The word waren signifies a dual possession--the one beneficent, and
the other malignant. One curious instance is given of a man speaking
_in_ the person of Devee, and _of_ himself as a third person, saying
to a Brahmin: 'You are going to the Concan: take _this fellow_ with
you. _He_ was happy and pure, performing _my_ worship,' &c. Under the
influence of waren, mild persons have become so infuriated as to die
under the visitation; and it is related that, during a procession in
honour of the flagellating waren, the infection spread, the waren was
propagated through the whole multitude, who became so excited by the
beating of drums, tom-toms, horns, great brazen trumpets, and other
instruments, that, with dishevelled hair, and backs streaming with
blood from their own flagellations, they danced forward with a
measured convulsive motion, bellowing out and shaking their heads;
and so terrific was the excitement, that a Portuguese servant who was
passing began making the same frantic gestures, and could only be
recovered after repeated cuts with the horsewhip--the Hindoos,
meanwhile, exulting that their goddess had entered into a Christian!
That such powers are made a matter of merchandise follows of course;
and, like the woman who brought her master much gain by soothsaying,
so there are persons who make a trade of going about with some waren,
who is consulted on secret affairs, who foretells the future, and
whose utterances are sold for money. Extraordinary instances are also
recounted of warens of the necromantic class, especially when they
have worldly goods, becoming the dupes of those who foil them with
their own weapons, that they may be the more readily despoiled. In the
Mahratta country, except in the large towns, there are no physicians;
and when simple remedies fail, they say: 'Send for the god,' or
magician, just as in the case of our correspondent; and besides the
sacrifice of goats and cocks, there is, under the name of religious
fasts, a much more telling and significant prescription in the way of
regimen.

It were impossible, in a space like ours, to give even an outline of
the different species of waren and their strange practices, part of
which would seem to be akin to what we call mesmerism and
clairvoyance, with the addition of spells and sacrifices. We might
write volumes, and search every volume that has been written on the
subject, and we could expiscate nothing else than that from the
beginning of the world, and we may say in every country in the world,
there has been, under different names and forms, a very general belief
in some supernatural power walking abroad on the earth, by which, when
presuming on its possession, one man may rule over another to his own
hurt or benefit, as the case may be. We have as little sympathy with
those who pretend to account for everything, and would solve all
mysteries by natural causes, as with those who yield implicit belief,
and run after every new thing. If such powers are illusive--in their
operations they are certainly not always so--and the illusion be
mental; if faith be all that is needed, that strong faith which, if
able on the one hand to remove mountains, on the other, causes scales
to grow on the eyes of the mind, so that a man loses his identity, and
is blindly led about by the will of another; or if the result of
bodily disease, hysteria, or some other derangement of the nervous
system, there still remains enough of mystery to awaken the solemn
inquiry of the physician, the psychologist, the Christian, of every
thinking man. Contradictions will meet him at every turn. He will find
all theories more than usually fallacious. He will see a strictly
matter-of-fact person, in seeming health, and of strong mind, so
easily acted on as in a few seconds to present the appearance of a
doting idiot; and a highly imaginative person, or one driven about by
every wind of doctrine, who cannot be touched. He will see the healthy
taken, and the sickly left. If, then, it be disease, and whether
mental or bodily, such disease and its causes must be latent indeed;
and we confess we look for no 'coming man' who is to solve the
mystery.

That this power, which we call mesmerism, was also known to the
priests of ancient Egypt, is supposed to be proved by carvings on the
temples of priests making the passes with their hands, opposite other
figures, to produce the sleep; a circumstance which has been recounted
as proving a connection between the ancient religion in Egypt, and
some unknown faith formerly prevalent in India, at the time the
temples of Elephanta, Kennery, and others were built. We greatly
admire the philanthropic Major Ludlow, who devoted his energies to the
abolishing of the suttee; but whose labours met with very partial
success, until, by searching their own Shasters, he discovered that
there was a time at which the rite did not exist. A greater than he,
however, must arise before the other still more ancient and
wide-spread faith can either be explained or abolished.


FOOTNOTES:

[2] Running-footmen, who attend the carriage or palanquin, go
messages, carry books or letters, or any light thing they can take in
their hands.




WHERE DOES LONDON END?


It is not only a well-understood fact, that the Great Metropolis is a
sore puzzle to strangers, but even the dwellers therein are wont to
give up, in despair, any attempt to define or limit it. What _is_
London? There are two causes, or rather two sets of causes, which
throw great doubt on the proper answer to this question. The one is
the varying acreage or area comprised under this name, and the other
is the natural increase of population over every part of the area. Let
us shortly glance at both these groups of disturbing causes.

The original London was the nucleus of that which now constitutes the
_City_ of London. The London of the Britons before the Romans landed,
is supposed to have been little other than 'a collection of huts set
down on a dry spot in the midst of the marshes;' a forest nearly
bounded this spot, at no great distance from the Thames; and a lake or
fen existed, _outside_ London, at or near the site now occupied by
Finsbury Square. The area of London, at this early period, is supposed
to have been bounded by--to use their modern designation--Tower Hill
on the east, Dowgate Hill on the west, Lombard and Fenchurch Streets
on the north, and of course the river on the south--a limited area,
certainly, not much exceeding half a mile in length by a quarter in
breadth. There are indications that brooks bounded this area on the
north and west, and a marsh on the east; but there is no reason to
believe that the city had walls. The terrible devastation in the time
of Boadicea must have nearly destroyed London, destined to be replaced
by one of Roman construction.

The Roman London was evidently of larger size. The ancient city-wall
is known to have been of Roman substructure, although surmounted by
work of later date. It had many turrets or towers, and seven
double-gates, supposed to have been Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate,
Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and the Tower Postern-gate; and the
streets now named from those gates will serve to mark out the included
area. Roman London may be said to lie about sixteen feet below _our_
London, over all this area; about two feet being the _débris_ of the
Roman buildings, and the rest being subsequent accumulations of
rubbish, at the rate, say, of a foot in a century. In the later Saxon
and Norman times, the western portion of the wall was extended so as
to include a somewhat larger area, the utmost limit of 'London within
the walls' being 370 acres.

But London refused to stay within its walls; it walked forth into the
country; and even so far back as 1662, London, beyond these limits,
was four times as large as that 'within the walls.' Of this exterior
portion, 230 acres constituted the 'city without the walls,' subjected
to civic jurisdiction by successive grants; it formed a belt nearly
around the portion 'within' the walls. These 600 acres, less than a
square mile, have ever since constituted the 'city of London,' divided
into two portions--'without' and 'within' the walls. There are
ninety-eight parishes in the inner portion, and eleven in the outer;
but the London which lay beyond the corporate rule had no social or
political bounds placed to its extension. There were the ancient city
of Westminster and the village of Charing, on the west; and London
marched along the Strand to meet them: there were Kensington and
Bayswater in the remoter west, and Piccadilly and Oxford Street became
links to join them to London: there were Killurn and Hampstead and
Highgate, Newington and Hornsey and Hackney, on the north; and London
has travelled along half-a-dozen great roads northward to fraternise
with them. So, likewise, on the east; and so, likewise, crossing the
river to the south, do we find this same process to have been active:
villages and hamlets have become absorbed into London, by London going
to meet them.

If we now ask, Where does London end? it will be found that this
ramification perplexes the subject greatly. Who shall say that such or
such a hamlet is _not_ in London? Who is to draw the line, and where?
It was said ten years ago, that the metropolis is a _hundred and forty
times_ as large as the _city_ of London 'within the walls;' but even
this is vague, unless we know where the limit is placed. One mode of
grouping, adopted before the appointment of the Registrar-General of
births, &c., depended on the 'London bills of mortality,' or the
record of deaths preserved by the parish-clerks. London, in this
sense, included the city within the walls, the city without the walls,
Westminster, and about forty out-parishes. Southwark was not included
in these bills originally, but became a component part afterwards. The
Registrar-General, under the improved modern system, gives an immense
range to London; it includes the City, Westminster, Southwark, all the
out-parishes of the former system, and the villages or hamlets of Bow,
Bromley, Brompton, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Fulham, Greenwich,
Hammersmith, Hatcham, Kensington, Brompton, Marylebone, Paddington,
Pancras, Highgate, Stoke-Newington, and Woolwich. It is true, he calls
all this the 'metropolis;' but the metropolis is in common parlance
identical with 'London.'

The population returns are not even a correct test in this matter, for
they include different districts at different times. In 1821, of the
eighteen villages or hamlets named above, only five were included in
the 'metropolis;' and in 1831, there were two additional. The
metropolitan population in 1841, in comparison with that of 1831,
differs by no less than 200,000 on this mere question of nomenclature
alone, independent of real increase on other grounds. The poor-law
grouping differs again from that of the Registrar-General; the
metropolis, or the 'London division,' does not include so many of the
marginal parishes as the Registrar's system. Again, the Post-office
arrangement is independent of all the others; for it is based upon
taking St Paul's as a centre, and drawing circles around this at a
definite number of miles' radius; and the metropolis is thus made
expansible on geometrical principles. Then the parliamentary limit is
_sui generis_; for the metropolis here comprises the City of London,
the city of Westminster, the borough of Southwark, and the five modern
boroughs of Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, and
Lambeth--a very capricious limit, truly; for while it includes the far
east at Woolwich, it excludes Pimlico, Brompton, and a vast adjoining
area. Lastly, to give one more mesh to this net, we find the police
metropolis to be the most grasping of all: by the original act of
1829, the metropolis is made to fill a circle twenty-four miles in
diameter, having Charing Cross in its centre; while in 1840, this
circle was coolly stretched to a diameter of thirty miles.

When a reader, therefore, is told of the vast increase of population
in London, let him sober down his astonishment until he knows which
(among half-a-dozen different Londons) is the one alluded to. As 'our
own country' may be taken to mean England only, or England and Wales,
or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or the British Empire, in
five different degrees of largeness, so may 'our metropolis' have at
least as many significations. Tables of metropolitan population have
been issued in the following form:--1750, 676,250; 1801, 900,000;
1811, 1,050,000; 1821, 1,274,800; 1831, 1,471,941; 1841, 1,873,676;
1851, about 2,250,000. But this table is subject to the correction
above hinted at. Nearly a century ago, Maitland said: 'This ancient
city has engulfed one city, one borough, and forty-three villages.' A
formidable addition has since been made to this 'engulfed' family. So
enigmatical is this metropolis of ours, that it would be equally true
to state that 'London is rapidly increasing in population,' and that
'London is slowly decreasing in population.' The metropolis, as a
whole, yearly increases its numbers; but the _City_, the original
London, is less populous now than a century ago, on account of the
streets having been widened, and many small dwelling-houses removed,
to make way for large commercial establishments, the managers and
clerks of which almost all sleep out of London.

If we glance over a map of London, or, still better, take a resolute
series of omnibus-rides or foot-rambles, we shall find ourselves as
little able as before to settle the question, 'Where does London end?'
That huge mass of small streets and poor houses, comprising the
borough of the Tower Hamlets, allows us no rest till we get three
miles eastward of St Paul's. Beyond this point, there are a few
patches of Bow Common yet left; but Poplar and Blackwall, Bromley and
Bow, tell us to go yet further eastward to the river Lea; and even
West Ham and Stratford, though on the Essex side of the Lea, seem to
claim a metropolitan position. Again, passing over Victoria Park--that
pleasant oasis in a desert of houses--and bending round towards the
north, we may ask where are the fields; and may wait until 'echo
answers, Where.' Hackney and Homerton, Clapton and Dalston,
Shacklewell and Newington, not only have the houses ranged themselves
closely along the main roads to these villages, but have filled up
nearly all the vacant ground between those roads. Is Tottenham to be
included in our London; and if, not, why not? And at Highgate and
Hampstead, as the rows of houses have ascended these hills, and
climbed over the hills, why stop there? why not send London still
further out of town? Look at the new town springing up around the
Camden Station; at the Portland Town westward of Regent's Park; at the
Westbourne Town far beyond the Paddington terminus; at the new town
west of Kensington; at the vast mass of buildings between Kensington
and the Thames--all these are the mere filling up of the districts
which had before been marked out by the great roads; and the great
roads themselves are carrying out their rows of houses still further
into what we may, in courtesy, designate 'the fields.'

So it is on the south side of the river. Of the 13,000 vehicles which
cross London Bridge in twelve hours on an average summer day, an
immense number is employed in conveying 'City men' to and from their
homes on the south of the Thames. Walworth, Camberwell, Kennington,
and Brixton were once on the border region between town and country;
nay, the city really _did_ reach the country there; but now, all these
belong to London. A bit of green at Kennington is, by good-luck, to be
kept green as a people's park; but nearly all else has become brick
and mortar; the City man has to go further to get a pleasant house and
a good garden, and _we_ have to go further to ascertain--where does
London end?

Among many curious proofs of the wide grasp of the all-absorbing
metropolis, we may adduce the horror of the Pentonvillians at the
proposed new cattle-market. How many years ago is it since Copenhagen
Fields were almost beyond the regions of civilisation, known only as a
prairie lying between London and the Copenhagen Tea-gardens? Let any
one, whose knowledge of the district goes back fifteen or twenty
years, answer this question. But now, Copenhagen House itself is
brought within the limits of London, by rows of goodly houses belting
it in on the north; and the gentilities of the new town are shocked at
the threatened advent of bullocks and sheep.

If we look into the stupendous _London Directory_, it does not remove
our troubles; it gives us the names of nearly 7000 streets, places,
roads, squares, circuses, crescents, quadrants, rows, hills, lanes,
yards, buildings, courts, alleys, gardens, greens, mews, terraces, and
walks, but it does not tell us how far the suburbs are included, nor
what are the principles which determine the inclusion or exclusion.

In short, we began by asking a question, and must end by leaving it
unanswered. Although tolerably familiar with London, we cannot
tell--'Where does London end?'




EDUCATED SKILL.


It is well known, that in the manufacture or preparation of most
articles in the arts, the main cost lies in the judicious application
of skilled labour. The value of the raw material is usually of
comparative small amount. A pound's worth of iron makes six hundred
pounds' worth of penknives; and cotton, which in the state of gingham
may be bought at 3d. per yard, is sold for the same weight as gold in
threads for Brussels lace.

It is therefore obvious, that the great advantage of cheap raw
material is in the rude stages of manufactures, or when our skill in
production is not inferior to that possessed by our neighbours. In a
manufacture in which the cost of the finished article is several
hundred times the price of the materials used to make it, it is skill,
and not the original cost of the material, that determines successful
competition.

We find that all European nations except England, have accepted this
fact as a principle of state, and have founded schools and colleges to
train their industrial population in the knowledge of art and science,
which are the only true foundations of practical skill in an advanced
stage of civilisation. In fact, we in this country have for some years
seen this truth, so far as art is involved, and have established
Schools of Design; but we have forgotten that art in industry is
chiefly used to adorn the productions of science, and have neglected
the latter. What circumstances have happened in the last few years in
the history of the world, that compel an allusion to this neglect in a
speech from the throne?

The marking features of our age are the great economy of time, and the
practical abbreviation of space. Coal and iron are now transported by
other means than by slow-going trains or coast-hugging luggers. Iron
horses, which feed on coal and drink only water, go screaming over the
country at a gigantic pace, dragging with them the whole produce of
coalmines and ironworks. Marine monsters, related to these, plough the
ocean, and scatter our natural riches over the world, receiving in
exchange the produce of other climes. The earth is bound round by
chains, which render geographical distribution arbitrary distinctions,
and enable thought to be reciprocated without being arrested by
distance in space. Blind must be the nation that does not see in all
this an alteration of conditions, which introduce new elements into
the competition of industry. The changes may be summed up in the
remark, that as improved locomotion distributes raw material to all
lands at a very slightly increased cost for the transit, manufacturing
competition among nations is resolved into a race for intellectual
pre-eminence.

This truth is less likely to be speedily acknowledged by us, because
if our native science languishes, we have yet capital to import it;
and we do not see that this is only accelerating our overthrow. But
the relative influence of abundance in raw material, and the
application of science to its development, may be seen by an
illustration from a barbarous country, in which the former is
plentiful, and the latter is beginning to shine on it by means of an
enlightened prince.

Siam, as our readers know, is an important kingdom situated between
the Burman Empire on the one hand, and Cochin-China on the other. It
abounds in natural resources, but exports only sugar, spices, drugs,
and lead, and these only in comparatively small quantity; yet it has
gold enough to make pavements for the sacred white elephants, and to
throw down into the unfathomed abyss in the Cavern of the Sun. Of
antimony, there are stores sufficient to render lustrous the eyes of
the black-teethed beauties of Siam; while silver, iron, copper, lead,
and fuel, are known to abound in these favoured regions. Yet with all
these local advantages, it is nearly certain that we could, in spite
of the distance, successfully compete with the productions of copper
and iron in their own markets, because we have applied science to
their extraction and preparation.

Siam, like nations nearer home, is very proud of its own industry, and
of its position among the states of the earth; and it may well be,
seeing that its king is hereditary lord of the stars, and gives them
permission to move in their orbits. The presumptive heir to the stars
thought one day he would like to know what Europeans believed of his
celestial powers, so he studied mathematics and astronomy from English
books, afterwards extending his knowledge to navigation, to the
natural sciences, and to English literature. Prince Chow Faa, who has,
since April 1851, succeeded his sensual and ignorant brother, under
the new appellation of King Somdet Phra Chom Klow, found his knowledge
of science thus acquired a prodigious power in the improvement of his
future terrestrial kingdom, although his celestial possessions
vanished at the same time. Like Prince Henry of Portugal, the Siamese
prince believed that the only princely talent worth cultivating, was
'the talent to do good;' and under his mental vigour, this distant
kingdom began to develop in a wonderful manner. Like Peter the Great,
he founded dockyards, and built ships of war equal to first-class
English vessels, navigating them, not by eyes painted in front, as of
old, but by chronometers and Greenwich tables. He introduced European
discipline into the army, and taught it how to use artillery. He
obtained miners of talent to examine into his mines, and the mode of
working in them; but in his reforms he awakened the jealousy of the
king and of the priesthood, and for the last few years has been
obliged to conceal his talents and good designs under the yellow garb
of a priest, which he threw off in the April of last year, a few days
previous to the opening of our Great Exhibition.

In this case of a semi-barbarous nation, we see clearly that knowledge
is power, and more surely is it so with regard to competing civilised
nations. We, too, have a prince highly educated in science and in art,
who is endeavouring to impress upon his nation the benefits of
science. At the same time that the Siamese prince threw off the yellow
robe of superstition and ignorance, the prince of this country invited
all nations to throw off their robes of prejudice and vanity, and, in
his own words, to commence at 'this new starting-point, from which all
nations will be able to direct their future exertions.' It was a
capital idea to make each nation the judge of its own position, by
shewing to what point other states had attained. Our thinking men--our
Brewsters, Herschels, Babbages, and a host of others--have declared
that our deficiencies arise from neglecting science in its application
to industry; and the general feeling of the public has ratified this
judgment by their consent. In another article, we will allude to the
means of accomplishing this want; but in the meanwhile may conclude by
drawing attention to a couple of sentences uttered on a late occasion
by Prince Albert:--'Man's reason being created after the image of God,
he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs
his creation, and by making these laws his standard of action, to
conquer nature to his use--himself a divine instrument. Science
discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry
applies them to the raw matter which the earth yields us in abundance,
but which becomes valuable only by knowledge; art teaches us the
immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to our productions
forms in accordance with them.'




ENGLAND'S FIRST COLONY.


Where did England plant her first colony? 'Why, in North America, to
be sure,' says a transatlantic cousin: 'on those shores to which our
fathers resorted during the seventeenth century, for the enjoyment of
civil and religious liberty, and where they laid the foundation of
those States whose wealth and power are now the wonder of the world.'
Stay, Cousin Jonathan, not so fast. 'We reckon' that England made an
experiment in colonisation some 250 years earlier than that, and one
no less demonstrative of the enterprise and hardihood of our
ancestors. There was a spot nearer home, the stronghold of a nest of
pirates, who were to England such an annoyance as the corsairs of
Algiers proved in later times to Southern Europe; and our monarch,
provoked by their numerous and daring outrages, and carrying with him
the enthusiastic concurrence of his people, resolved to dispossess
them. Crossing the water in person, with 738 vessels of war, and a
numerous army, he invested the place both by sea and land; and finding
that it could not be taken by storm, he sat patiently down for nearly
eleven months outside the walls, till the inhabitants were starved
into a surrender. But every reader of history is familiar with the
siege of Calais, so gallantly prosecuted by the English under Edward
III., so gallantly endured by the French under Sir John de Vienne.

As soon as the keys were surrendered, the town was cleared not only of
the soldiery, but of all the inhabitants, men, women, and children,
the king's determination being to repeople it entirely with English.
'Thus all manner of people,' says a historian of 1688, 'were turned
out of the town, except one priest, and two other ancient men, who
understood the customs, laws, and ordinances of the place, and how to
point out and assign the lands that lay about, as well as the several
inheritances, as they had been divided before. And when all things
were duly prepared for the king's reception, he mounted his war-horse,
and rode into Calais with a triumphant clamour of trumpets, clarions,
and tabours;' the drum now sounding for the first time on French
ground. The great lords, who, with their feudal retinues, had assisted
in the siege, were rewarded with gifts of 'many fair houses' and
lands, that through their tenantry and retainers they might assist in
defending the new colony. Abundant encouragement was also given for
the emigration of the stout men of Kent, and the substantial citizens
of London, with their families. The streets and principal buildings
received English names, and the borough was organised in unison with
English feeling, being governed by a mayor and corporation. Thus
commenced in August 1347 England's first colony, which in due time was
represented in the home parliament by two members of the House of
Commons.

The English Pale, as this settlement was called, had a seaboard
extending about eight leagues, while it stretched some three leagues
into the interior. Within this space, a considerable population was
located, not only much more numerous than in the present day, but
including a much greater number of trades-people dealing in articles
of luxury, as we infer from some records of Henry VIII.'s expenditure,
which include, for instance, dealings with five different jewellers.
There is still existing at Calais a curious chart, dated 1460,
containing a minute specification of the roads, farm-steads, mills,
quarries, and bulwarks, as they then existed. Here are 'English
Street,' 'Knight Street,' 'Evelyne's Waye,' 'Ye waye from Marck to St
Peter's,' and 'Ye new main Bank.' Many of the larger country
dwellings, which are rudely depicted, appear more like rustic
fortalices than farmhouses of our day. Numerous towers, marked as
'bulwarks,' seem to have commanded the boundary and other more exposed
parts of the Pale. The only road across the 'marishes' on the south
and south-west was commanded by Fort Nieulay--then called
Newlandbridge--a place of great importance, originally built in an
extensive morass, and furnished with sluice-gates to the sea, which
enabled its holders to flood the surrounding country at will. Not only
the fortifications then existing, but those which succeeded them in
later times, are now in ruin; but the curious traveller finds remains
enough to repay a stroll among the grass-covered bastions.

In the town, we find Castle Street, Duke Street, Hill Street, Shoe
Lane, and Love Lane--names which smack unmistakably of the island home
of John Gibbons, Hugh Giles, Richard Gilbert, and other colonial
householders, whose names appear on a still existing rent-roll.

Though the English monarch was instigated to the capture and
colonisation of Calais mainly with a view to dislodge the pirates, who
issued from its fastnesses and harassed our navigation, yet he very
soon learned to appreciate the possession of such a frontier port and
fortress as a depôt for purposes of aggression, as well as a means of
maritime protection. Moreover, it was afterwards perceived, that
immense gain would accrue to the Exchequer from the maintenance of
this station as a port of _entrée_ into the Netherlands for English
manufactures; and though at a day when knight-errantry was infinitely
more in vogue than commercial enterprise, these interests were
carefully studied, so that the conquest of a small piratical town was
turned to vastly better account than had been anticipated.

The preservation of a settlement so important, and yet surrounded by
an inveterately hostile people, demanded no ordinary vigilance. The
keeping of it was accordingly always committed to one of the most
trusty of the English barons, with the title of lord-deputy, and the
command of a sufficient garrison; while no expense was spared on the
works necessary for its maintenance. There were stringent laws for the
daily opening and closing of the gates, which were superintended by a
knight or master-porter, and a gentleman-porter, with a staff of
subordinates. The lord-deputy himself received the keys every evening,
and delivered them in the morning to the knight-porter, with orders as
to the number of gates to be opened for the day. This was done as soon
as the first watch-bell had tolled three times, and the guard turned
out. During the time of dinner, which was an hour before noon, the
gates were invariably closed, and the keys again delivered to the
lord-deputy, by whom they were 'hidden in a safe place, known only to
himself.' When the meal was ended, and business resumed, they were
reopened with the same ceremony as in the morning; and at four o'clock
P.M., they were shut for the night. Except by special order of the
deputy, none but the Lanthorn Gate was opened during the herring
season. There were strict regulations also with regard to strangers
lodging in the town; the keepers of hostelries and lodging-houses
being sworn to make a daily report of the number and quality of their
guests. The French, by the way, have deemed it proper to maintain this
custom of the place, despite the lapse of four centuries since its
peculiar position rendered such espionage a necessary precaution.

During the 200 years that we boasted the possession of Calais, it was
often the scene of courtly festivities on a magnificent
scale--oftener, perhaps, than any other spot under English dominion,
except the metropolis. We need scarcely remind the reader of the
marriage of Richard II. with the youthful Isabella of Valois in the
church of St Nicholas, a fête which cost the English monarch 300,000
marks; nor the rendezvous of Henry VIII. and Francis I., called the
Field of the Cloth of Gold from the sumptuousness of the royal
pavilions, and other accessories, the preparation of which employed
above 2000 English artificers. We have before us a collection of
annals,[3] recently published, chiefly from rare and ancient
documents, and affording such details of the 'fashionable arrivals'
here as give us a high idea of what this our first colony was capable
of doing in its palmy days.

There landed, for instance, on the 8th of May 1500, Henry VII.,
accompanied by his queen, the Bishop of London, the Duke of
Buckingham, the Earls of Surrey and Essex, with several other
noblemen. Closely following, came the Earl of Suffolk, with an immense
retinue of esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen; the Bishop of Durham, the
Earl of Ormond, with seven other noblemen and gentlemen of rank; and
in the following month, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Mountjoy,
Lord Devonshire, Sir John Wyngfielde, and their retinues, to assist at
a magnificent banquet given by Henry to the Archduke Philip of
Burgundy. Nothing, as our annalist observes, but numbers, real names,
and dates, can effectually enable the reader to form a notion of the
state, 350 years ago, of this at present trist and unimportant
frontier town. And even with these authentic data before us, it
appears surprising how such a host of nobility, with their numerous
retainers, should have been adequately lodged within the walls of
Calais, on viewing the existing proportions of the town. The banquet
was given at St Peter's, just without the walls--for it seems not to
have been the mode to invite continental guests to 'walk inside'--the
fine old parish church being partitioned off into various apartments
for the guests, and richly hung with arras and cloth of gold.

'Our Lady's Chapel was set apart for the archduke's chamber, the walls
being hung with arras representing the story of Ahasuerus and Esther,
and the floor laid with carpets strewed with roses, lavender, and
other sweet herbs. Another compartment of the church was hung with
tapestry, representing the siege of Troy; the walls of the choir being
covered with blue cloth, emblazoned with _fleurs-de-luce_. The vestry
was hung with "red sarsenet, most richly beseen;" whilst the belfry
was ordained for the offices of the pantry, confectionary, and cellar.
There "lacked neither venison, cream, spice-cakes, strawberries, or
wafers," as the chronicler expresses it; an English fat ox was
"poudered and lesed;" an immense number of young kids and
venison-pasties were consumed, besides "great plenty of divers sorts
of wine, and two hogsheads of hippocrass." Seven horse-loads of
cherries were eaten, besides "pypyns, grengenges, and other sugardys."
The plenty was such, that the guests and their retainers could not
consume all the viands the first day, wherefore the king ordered a
second feast for the peasants, on the one following.'

One of the largest of the apartments formed in the church of St
Pierre, was appropriated as the guest-chamber, in which Philip dined
with Henry and his queen, the party eating off 'gold and silver
vessels of goodlie fashion,' and pledging each other in 'cuppes and
flagons of golde, garnyshed with perculles, rosys, and white hearts,
in gemmes.' After dinner, the archduke 'daunced with the English
ladyes,' then took leave of the king and queen, and rode the same
evening to Gravelines.

Among the august personages who sojourned at Calais in days of yore,
none excelled the gorgeous priest, Cardinal Wolsey, in the display of
pomp, or in the number and quality of his retinue. On the 11th July
1527, his landing _en route_ to Boulogne was attended by the Earl of
Derby, the Bishops of London and Dublin; the Lords Monteagle and
Harredew, with a staff of knights, secretaries, physicians,
gentlemen-ushers, officers of the household, gentlemen of the chapel,
and other retainers; the legate's train of attendants alone requiring
900 horses. But at the same time came the pope's nuncios, the French
king's ambassadors, and the captain of Boulogne, 'with a goodlie
companie,' to welcome him. On the occasion of a previous visit, he
brought over 12 chaplains, 50 gentlemen, 238 servants, and 150 horses.

The Harleian and Cottonian Manuscripts are rich in interesting details
of another fashionable arrival at Calais--that of Anne of Cleves, on
her way to England to be united in marriage to Henry VIII. Her train
was composed of 263 persons, including the Earls of Oversteyn and
Roussenbergh, with their 'gentlemen, ladies, pages, officers, and
servants.' The Lord High Admiral of England came over expressly to
take command of the vessel destined to convey the bride across the
Channel. Accompanied by the lord-deputy of Calais, and a numerous
retinue, he went forth to meet the _fiancée_ on her way from
Gravelines. His dress, and that of his attendants, is recorded for our
gratification:--'For he was apparelled in a coat of purple velvet, cut
in cloth of gold, and tied with aigulets and trefoils of gold to the
number of four hundred. Baldricwise, he wore a chain of strange
fashion, to which was suspended a whistle of gold, set with precious
stones of great value. The admiral's train consisted of thirty
gentlemen of the king's household, apparelled with massive chains.
Besides these, he had a great number of gentlemen of his own suite, in
blue velvet and crimson satin, as well as the mariners of his ship, in
satin of Bruges (blue), both coats and slops of the same colour--his
yeomen being clad in blue damask.' A foul wind detained the lady here
for fifteen days, 'during which time, in order to afford her
recreation, jousts and banquets were got up by the authorities.' The
simplicity with which our gracious Queen travels from the Isle of
Wight to Aberdeenshire, or takes a trip across the Channel to see her
uncle Leopold, makes us almost forget that such gorgeous state
attended every step of royalty in the olden time. Glance we now a
moment at the commercial aspect of Calais during the English
occupancy.

The Staple-Hall or Wool Staple (now called the Cour de Guise) built by
letters-patent from Richard II., dated 1389, was a singular
combination of palace and market, exchequer and cloth-hall; the seat
alike of royalty and trade; for here our English monarchs often
lodged, and within these precincts our ancestors established their
seat of custom, beneath the royal eye and roof-tree. Hither were not
only the 'merchauntes and occupiers of all manner of wares and
merchandizes' in England, but the 'merchauntes straungers' of the Low
Countries invited by proclamation to resort and repair, from time to
time, there to 'buy and sell, change and rechange, with perfect and
equal freedom and immunity;' provided always the traffic or 'feates of
merchandizes' were effected according to tariff; 'our dread and
sovereigne lord the king mynding the wealth, increase, and enriching
of his realm of England, and of this his town of Calais.' In the court
of this our Calaisian Guildhall, the iron-clad man-at-arms, the
gaily-decked esquire, or captain of the guard, used to mingle with the
staid wool-staplers, clothiers, cutlers, or weavers, just arrived from
our primitive manufacturing districts, laden with bales and hardwares
for bartering with their colonial and Flemish customers; whilst the
nobles, princes, and at times even the king of England, sat at the
upper casements, countenancing if not enjoying the bustle of the mart.
Immense fortunes were realised by the merchants of the Staple; they
were often in a position to aid the exchequer of the mother-country;
and one of them named Fermour was, from some patriotic act in
money-matters, raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Pomfret.
We are told that a great revenue was derived to the crown from the
customs' duty here levied on wool; that which passed into the
Netherlands alone amounting to 50,000 crowns per annum--an enormous
sum in those days. Modern Vandalism has done for this building what
time had failed to effect; and now there is little remains of it to
gratify the antiquary, save its metamorphosed contour and a fine old
gateway.

That a handful of troops and emigrant residents should have enjoyed
for above two centuries the unmolested occupation of a sea-port town,
and an extensive adjacent district, in one of the most powerful and
warlike kingdoms of Europe, is a singular episode in the history of
the two nations. At length, after an almost fabulous retention of the
place, the very facility of tenure having led to heedlessness and
neglect of proper precaution, the day of reprisal came. In 1558, the
Duke of Guise, being put in command of a powerful army, effected its
recapture without any signal display of valour on the one hand, or
heroism on the other. On its surrender, the lord-deputy, with 50 of
his officers, were detained as prisoners of war; the residue of the
inhabitants had to turn out, as the French had done before, and were
compelled to retire either to England or Flanders. All the property of
every description was placed at the disposal of the conqueror, in
honour of whom our famous Wool Staple was thenceforth called the Cour
de Guise. The booty in gold, silver, and valuable merchandise was
enormous, and even the common soldiers, we are told, made fortunes by
their share of it. So perished England's first colony!


FOOTNOTES:

[3] _Annals and Legends of Calais_. By Robert B. Calton. London: J. R.
Smith. 1852.




A FLOATING CITY.


The city of Bang-kok, the capital of Siam, consists of a long, double,
and, in some parts, treble row of neatly and tastefully painted wooden
cabins, floating on thick bamboo rafts, and linked to each other, in
parcels of six or seven houses, by chains; which chains were fastened
to huge poles driven into the bed of the river. The whole city rose at
once like a magic picture to our admiring gaze.... If the air of the
'Fleet Street' of Siam does not agree with Mrs Yowchowfow and her
children, or they wish to obtain a more aristocratic footing by being
domiciled higher up and nearer to the king's palace, all they have to
do, is to wait till the tide serves, and, loosing from their moorings,
float gently up towards the spot they wish to occupy. Bang-kok, the
modern capital of Siam, and the seat of the Siamese government, was
computed, at the period of my residence there, to consist of 70,000
floating houses or shops, and each shop, taking one with another, to
contain five individuals, including men, women, and children; making
the population amount to 350,000 souls, of which number 70,000 are
Chinese, 20,000 Burmese, 20,000 Arabs and Indians; the remainder, or
about 240,000, being Siamese. This was the best census we could take,
and I believe it to be nearly accurate. The situation is exceedingly
picturesque. I was told that, when the Siamese relinquished the
ancient capital of Yuthia, and first established the throne at
Bang-kok, the houses were built upon the banks of the river itself;
but the frequent recurrence of the cholera induced one of the kings to
insist upon the inhabitants living upon the water, on the supposition
that their dwellings would be more cleanly, and, consequently, the
inmates less subjected to the baneful effects of that scourge of the
East.--_Neale's Residence in Siam_.




THE TWO PRAYERS.

BY MARIE J. EWEN.


I.

    It was the hour for evening prayer--there came a goodly throng
    Within that dim cathedral church to join the vesper song;
    And _she_ was there amid the crowd, and on the altar stair,
    As if she were alone she knelt in the depth of her despair.

    She did not heed the many eyes upon her beauty turned;
    _One_ vision still oppressed her soul, _one_ grief within her burned.
    The tones of holy minstrelsy, the solemn anthem strain,
    They were like voices in a dream--as meaningless and vain.

    Strange tumult reigned within her soul--there came a gush of tears,
    Deep, wild, as if it bore along the passion-flood of years;
    And 'Mary! Mary!' was her prayer, and 'Mary!' still she prays,
    'O give me back the love of old--the light of other days!'

    A deeper gloom o'erspread the aisles--the altar-lamp grew dim,
    And fainter still the echoes came from the dying vesper hymn;
    She listened for an answering voice--but no response was given:
    The marble steps were cold as death, and silence was in heaven.


II.

    Within that dim cathedral church once more she stood alone,
    When from her cheek, and brow, and eye, youth's loveliness had flown;
    She wandered down the gloomy aisles--no worshippers were there;
    And on the altar steps she knelt in the depth of her despair.

    The sunset's parting gleam came down to kiss the pictured pane;
    Upon the marble stone it flung full many a crimson stain.
    There was a hush within the air--no holy chant arose
    To fill the aisles with joy, and break the spirit-like repose.

    A broken reed, she lowly bent--life's passion dream was o'er,
    And there were tears--repentant tears--not like to those of yore;
    And murmurs of a nobler faith fixed on the sacred shrine,
    'O human love so false, so vain! O love that is divine!'

    Fair shone the symbol of the cross--the altar-lamp grew bright;
    There came a gleam like trembling stars athwart her spirit's night;
    She listened for an answering voice--the peace of God was given:
    The marble steps were cold as death, but gladness was in heaven!

       *       *       *       *       *

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End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457, by Various