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  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCCIV.         JUNE, 1849.        VOL. LXV.




CONTENTS.


  THE CAXTONS.--PART XIII.                                  637

  THE ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY,                           664

  LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN, AN ANGLO-CATHOLIC,   679

  AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY,                                      697

  FEUDALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,                      713

  CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS,                          727

  DIES BOREALES. NO. I. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS,          742

  INDEX,                                                    768




EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.




  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

  NO. CCCCIV.         JUNE, 1849.          VOL. LXV.




THE CAXTONS.--PART XIII.


CHAPTER LXVI.

St Chrysostom, in his work on The Priesthood, defends deceit, if for
a good purpose, by many Scriptural examples; ends his first book by
asserting that it is often necessary, and that much benefit may arise
from it; and begins his second book by saying that it ought not to be
called _deceit_, but "good management."

Good management, then, let me call the innocent arts by which I
now sought to insinuate my project into favour and assent with my
unsuspecting family. And first I began with Roland. I easily induced
him to read some of the books, full of the charm of Australian life,
which Trevanion had sent me; and so happily did those descriptions
suit his own erratic tastes, and the free, half-savage man that
lay rough and large within that soldierly nature, that he himself,
as it were, seemed to suggest my own ardent desire--sighed, as the
careworn Trevanion had done, that "he was not my age," and blew the
flame that consumed me with his own willing breath. So that when at
last--wandering one day over the wild moors--I said, knowing his hatred
of law and lawyers--

"Alas, uncle, that nothing should be left for me but the bar!--"

Captain Roland struck his cane into the peat, and exclaimed, "Zounds,
sir, the bar and lying, with truth and a world fresh from God before
you!"

"Your hand, uncle--we understand each other. Now help me with those two
quiet hearts at home!"

"Plague on my tongue! what have I done?" said the Captain, looking
aghast. Then, after musing a little time, he turned his dark eye on me
and growled out, "I suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for
me; and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am."

"Oh, sir, if you prefer the bar!--"

"Rogue!"

"Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a merchant's office?"

"If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree!"

"Huzza then for Australasia!"

"Well, well, well," said my uncle,

    "With a smile on his lip and a tear in his eye;"

"the old sea-king's blood will force its way--a soldier or a rover,
there is no other choice for you. We shall mourn and miss you; but who
can chain the young eagles to the eyrie?"

I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me
as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a
dexterous dose of the old Greek _Cleruchiæ_--cited by Trevanion--which
set him off full trot on his hobby, till, after a short excursion to
Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian
colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into
his favourite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the
origin of the American savages, and considering the rival claims of
Cimmerians, Israelites, and Scandinavians, I said quietly,--"And you,
sir, who think that all human improvement depends on the mixture of
races--you, whose whole theory is an absolute sermon upon emigration,
and the transplanting and interpolity of our species--you, sir, should
be the last man to chain your son, your elder son, to the soil, while
your younger is the very missionary of rovers."

"Pisistratus," said my father, "you reason by synecdoche--ornamental,
but illogical;" and therewith, resolved to hear no more, my father rose
and retreated into his study.

But his observation, now quickened, began from that day to follow my
moods and humours--then he himself grew silent and thoughtful, and
finally he took to long conferences with Roland. The result was that,
one evening in spring, as I lay listless amidst the weeds and fern that
sprang up through the melancholy ruins, I felt a hand on my shoulder;
and my father, seating himself beside me on a fragment of stone, said
earnestly--"Pisistratus,--let us talk--I had hoped better things from
your study of Robert Hall."

"Nay, dear father, the medicine did me great good: I have not repined
since, and I look steadfastly and cheerfully on life. But Robert Hall
fulfilled his mission, and I would fulfil mine."

"Is there no mission in thy native land, O planeticose and exallotriote
spirit?[1]" asked my father, with compassionate rebuke.

[1] Words coined by Mr Caxton from [Greek: planêtikos], disposed to
roaming, and [Greek: exallotrioô], to export, to alienate.

"Alas, yes! But what the impulse of genius is to the great, the
instinct of vocation is to the mediocre. In every man there is a
magnet; in that thing which the man can do best there is a loadstone."

"Papæ!" said my father, opening his eyes; "and are no loadstones to be
found for you nearer than the great Australasian Bight?"

"Ah, sir, if you resort to irony, I can say no more!" My father looked
down on me tenderly, as I hung my head moody and abashed.

"Son," said he, "do you think that there is any real jest at my heart
when the matter discussed is whether you are to put wide seas and long
years between us?" I pressed nearer to his side, and made no answer.

"But I have noted you of late," continued my father, "and I have
observed that your old studies are grown distasteful to you; and I have
talked with Roland, and I see that your desire is deeper than a boy's
mere whim. And then I have asked myself what prospect I can hold out at
home to induce you to be contented here, and I see none; and therefore
I should say to you, 'Go thy ways, and God shield thee,'--but,
Pisistratus, _your mother_?"

"Ah, sir, that is indeed the question! and there indeed I shrink. But,
after all, whatever I were--whether toiling at the bar, or in some
public office--I should be still so much from home and her. And then
you, sir--she loves _you_ so entirely, that----"

"No," interrupted my father; "you can advance no arguments like these
to touch a mother's heart. There is but one argument that comes home
there--Is it for your good to leave her? If so, there will be no need
of farther words. But let us not decide that question hastily; let you
and I be together the next two months. Bring your books and sit with
me; when you want to go out, tap me on the shoulder and say 'Come.' At
the end of those two months, I will say to you 'Go,' or 'Stay.' And you
will trust me; and if I say the last, you will submit?"

"Oh yes, sir, yes."


CHAPTER LXVII.

This compact made, my father roused himself from all his
studies--devoted his whole thoughts to me--sought with all his gentle
wisdom to wean me imperceptibly from my own fixed tyrannical idea,
ranged through his wide pharmacy of books for such medicaments as might
alter the system of my thoughts. And little thought he that his very
tenderness and wisdom worked against him, for at each new instance of
either my heart called aloud, "Is it not that thy tenderness may be
repaid, and thy wisdom be known abroad, that I go from thee into the
strange land, O my father?"

And the two months expired, and my father saw that the magnet had
turned unalterably to the loadstone in the great Australasian Bight;
and he said to me, "Go, and comfort your mother. I have told her your
wish, and authorised it by my consent, for I believe now that it _is_
for your good."

I found my mother in the little room which she had appropriated to
herself, next my father's study. And in that room there was a pathos
which I have no words to express; for my mother's meek, gentle, womanly
soul, spoke there, so that it was as the Home of Home. The care with
which she had transplanted from the Brick House, and lovingly arranged,
all the humble memorials of old times, dear to her affections--the
black silhouette of my father's profile cut in paper, in the full pomp
of academics, cap and gown, (how had he ever consented to sit for
it!) framed and glazed in the place of honour over the little hearth;
and boyish sketches of mine at the Hellenic Institute, first essays
in sepia and Indian ink, to animate the walls, and bring her back,
when she sate there in the twilight musing alone, to sunny hours when
Sisty and the young mother threw daisies at each other;--and, covered
with a great glass shade, and dusted each day with her own hand, the
flower-pot Sisty had bought with the proceeds of the domino-box, on
that memorable occasion on which he had learned "how bad deeds are
repaired with good." There, in one corner, stood the little cottage
piano, which I remembered all my life--old-fashioned, and with the
jingling voice of approaching decrepitude, but still associated with
such melodies as, after childhood, we hear never more! And in the
modest hanging shelves which looked so gay with ribbons, and tassels,
and silken cords--my mother's own library, saying more to the heart
than all the cold wise poets whose souls my father invoked in his grand
Heraclea. The Bible over which, with eyes yet untaught to read, I had
hung in vague awe and love, as it lay open on my mother's lap, while
her sweet voice, then only serious, was made the oracle of its truths.
And my first lesson-books were there, all hoarded. And bound in blue
and gold, but elaborately papered up, _Cowper's Poems_--a gift from
my father in the days of courtship--sacred treasure which not even I
had the privilege to touch; and which my mother took out only in the
great crosses and trials of conjugal life, whenever some word less
kind than usual had dropped unawares from her scholar's absent lips.
Ah! all these poor household gods, all seemed to look on me with mild
anger; and from all came a voice to my soul, "Cruel, dost thou forsake
us!" And amongst them sate my mother, desolate as Rachel, and weeping
silently.

"Mother! mother!" I cried, falling on her neck, "forgive me, it is
past, I cannot leave you!"


CHAPTER LXVIII.

"No--no! it is for your good--Austin says so. Go--it is but the first
shock."

Then to my mother I opened the sluices of that deep I had concealed
from scholar and soldier. To her I poured all the wild, restless
thoughts which wandered through the ruins of love destroyed--to her I
confessed what to myself I had scarcely before avowed. And when the
picture of that, the darker, side of my mind was shown, it was with a
prouder face, and less broken voice, that I spoke of the manlier hopes
and nobler aims that gleamed across the wrecks and the desert, and
showed me my escape.

"Did you not once say, mother, that you had felt it like a remorse
that my father's genius passed so noiselessly away, half accusing the
happiness you gave him for the death of his ambition in the content
of his mind? Did you not feel a new object in life when the ambition
revived at last, and you thought you heard the applause of the
world murmuring round your scholar's cell? Did you not share in the
day-dreams your brother conjured up, and say, 'If _my_ brother could be
the means of raising _him_ in the world!' and when you thought we had
found the way to fame and fortune, did you not sob out from your full
heart, 'And it is _my_ brother who will pay back to _his_ son--all--all
he gave up for me?'"

"I cannot bear this, Sisty!--cease, cease!"

"No; for do you not yet understand me? Will it not be better still, if
_your son_--yours--restore to your Austin all that he lost, no matter
how? If through your son, mother, you do indeed make the world hear
of your husband's genius--restore the spring to his mind, the glory
to his pursuits--if you rebuild even that vaunted ancestral name,
which is glory to our poor sonless Roland--if your son can restore the
decay of generations, and reconstruct from the dust the whole house
into which you have entered, its meek presiding angel--ah, mother, if
this can be done, it will be your work; for unless you can share my
ambition--unless you can dry those eyes, and smile in my face, and bid
me go, with a cheerful voice--all my courage melts from my heart, and
again I say I cannot leave you!"

Then my mother folded her arms round me, and we both wept, and could
not speak--but we were both happy.


CHAPTER LXIX.

Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most heroic of us all. So
I began to prepare myself in good earnest; and I followed Trevanion's
instructions with a perseverance, which I could never, at that young
day, have thrown into the dead life of books. I was in a good school
amongst our Cumberland sheepwalks, to learn those simple elements
of rural art which belong to the pastoral state. Mr Sidney, in his
admirable _Australian Hand-Book_, recommends young gentlemen who
think of becoming settlers in the Bush to bivouac for three months on
Salisbury Plain. That book was not then written, or I might have taken
the advice; meanwhile I think, with due respect to such authority, that
I went through a preparatory training quite as useful in seasoning
the future emigrant. I associated readily with the kindly peasants
and craftsmen, who became my teachers. With what pride I presented my
father with a desk and my mother with a work-box, fashioned by my own
hands! I made Bolt a lock for his plate-chest. And (that last was _my_
magnum opus, my great masterpiece) I repaired and absolutely set going
an old turret clock in the tower, that had stood at two P.M.
since the memory of man. I loved to think, each time the hour sounded,
that those who heard its deep chime would remember me. But the flocks
were my main care. The sheep that I tended and helped to shear, and
the lamb that I hooked out of the great marsh, and the three venerable
ewes that I nursed through a mysterious sort of murrain, which puzzled
all the neighbourhood--are they not written in thy loving chronicles, O
House of Caxton!

And now, since much of the success of my experiment must depend on
the friendly terms I could establish with my intended partner, I
wrote to Trevanion, begging him to get the young gentleman who was to
join me, and whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us.
Trevanion complied, and there arrived a tall fellow somewhat more than
six feet high, answering to the name of Guy Bolding, in a cut-away
sporting-coat, with a dog-whistle tied to the button-hole; drab shorts
and gaiters, and a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive
pockets. Guy Bolding had lived a year and a half at Oxford as a "fast
man;" so "fast" had he lived that there was scarcely a tradesman at
Oxford into whose books he had not contrived to run.

His father was compelled to withdraw him from the university, at which
he had already had the honour of being plucked for the little go: and
the young gentleman, on being asked for what profession he was fit, had
replied with conscious pride, "That he could tool a coach!" In despair,
the sire, who owed his living to Trevanion, had asked the statesman's
advice, and the advice had fixed me with a partner in expatriation.

My first feeling, in greeting the fast man, was certainly that of deep
disappointment and strong repugnance. But I was determined not to be
too fastidious; and, having a lucky knack of suiting myself pretty well
to all tempers, (without which a man had better not think of loadstones
in the great Australasian Bight,) I contrived, before the first week
was out, to establish so many points of connexion between us that we
became the best friends in the world. Indeed, it would have been my
fault if we had not, for Guy Bolding, with all his faults, was one
of those excellent creatures who are nobody's enemies but their own.
His good humour was inexhaustible. Not a hardship or privation came
amiss to him. He had a phrase "Such fun!" that always came to his lips
when another man would have cursed and groaned. If we lost our way in
the great trackless moors, missed our dinner, and were half-famished,
Guy rubbed hands that would have felled an ox, and chuckled out "Such
fun!" If we stuck in a bog, if we were caught in a thunderstorm, if we
were pitched head over heels by the wild colts we undertook to break
in, Guy Bolding's only elegy was "Such fan!" That grand shibboleth
of philosophy only forsook him at the sight of an open book. I don't
think that at that time, he could have found "fun" even in Don Quixote.
This hilarious temperament had no insensibility; a kinder heart never
beat,--but, to be sure, it beat to a strange, restless, tarantula
sort of measure, which kept it in a perpetual dance. It made him one
of those officiously good fellows who are never quiet themselves, and
never let any one else be quiet if they can help it. But Guy's great
fault, in this prudent world, was his absolute incontinence of money.
If you had turned an Euphrates of gold into his pockets at morning, it
would have been as dry as the great Sahara by twelve at noon. What he
did with the money was a mystery as much to himself as to every one
else. His father said in a letter to me, that "he had seen him shying
at sparrows with half-crowns!" That such a young man could come to no
good in England, seemed perfectly clear. Still, it is recorded of many
great men, who did not end their days in a workhouse, that they were
equally non-retentive of money. Schiller, when he had nothing else to
give away, gave the clothes from his back, and Goldsmith the blankets
from his bed. Tender hands found it necessary to pick Beethoven's
pockets at home before he walked out. Great heroes, who have made no
scruple of robbing the whole world, have been just as lavish as poor
poets and musicians. Alexander, in parcelling out his spoils, left
himself "hope!" And as for Julius Cæsar, he was two millions in debt
when he shied his last half-crown at the sparrows in Gaul. Encouraged
by these illustrious examples, I had hopes of Guy Bolding; and the more
as he was so aware of his own infirmity that he was perfectly contented
with the arrangement which made me treasurer of his capital, and
even besought me, on no account, let him beg ever so hard, to permit
his own money to come in his own way. In fact, I contrived to gain a
great ascendency over his simple, generous, thoughtless nature; and
by artful appeals to his affections--to all he owed to his father for
many bootless sacrifices, and to the duty of providing a little dower
for his infant sister, whose meditated portion had half gone to pay his
college debts--I at last succeeded in fixing into his mind an object to
save for.

Three other companions did I select for our Cleruchia. The first was
the son of our old shepherd, who had lately married, but was not yet
encumbered with children,--a good shepherd, and an intelligent, steady
fellow. The second was a very different character; he had been the
dread of the whole squirearchy. A more bold and dexterous poacher
did not exist. Now my acquaintance with this latter person, named
Will Peterson, and more popularly "Will o' the Wisp," had commenced
thus:--Bolt had managed to rear, in a small copse about a mile from the
house--and which was the only bit of ground in my uncle's domains that
might by courtesy be called "a wood"--a young colony of pheasants, that
he dignified by the title of a "preserve." This colony was audaciously
despoiled and grievously depopulated, in spite of two watchers who,
with Bolt, guarded for seven nights successively the slumbers of the
infant settlement. So insolent was the assault that bang, bang went
the felonious gun--behind, before--within but a few yards of the
sentinels--and the gunner was off, and the prey seized, before they
could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of the enemy soon
proclaimed him, to the experienced watchers, to be Will o' the Wisp;
and so great was the dread of this fellow's strength and courage,
and so complete their despair of being a match for his swiftness and
cunning, that after the seventh night the watchers refused to go out
any longer; and poor Bolt himself was confined to his bed by an attack
of what a doctor would have called rheumatism, and a moralist, rage.
My indignation and sympathy were greatly excited by this mortifying
failure, and my interest romantically aroused by the anecdotes I had
heard of Will o' the Wisp; accordingly, armed with a thick bludgeon,
I stole out at night, and took my way to the copse. The leaves were
not off the trees, and how the poacher contrived to see his victims I
know not; but five shots did he fire, and not in vain, without allowing
me to catch a glimpse of him. I then retreated to the outskirt of the
copse, and waited patiently by an angle, which commanded two sides of
the wood. Just as the dawn began to peep, I saw my man emerge within
twenty yards of me. I held my breath, suffered him to get a few steps
from the wood, crept on so as to intercept his retreat, and then
pounce--such a bound! My hand was on his shoulder--prr, prr--no eel was
ever more lubricate. He slid from me like a thing immaterial, and was
off over the moors with a swiftness which might well have baffled any
clodhopper--a race whose calves are generally absorbed in the soles of
their hobnail shoes. But the Hellenic Institute, with its classical
gymnasia, had trained its pupils in all bodily exercises; and though
the Will o' the Wisp was swift for a clodhopper, he was no match at
running for any youth who has spent his boyhood in the discipline of
cricket, prisoner's bars, and hunt-the-hare. I reached him at length,
and brought him to bay.

"Stand back," said he, panting, and taking aim with his gun; "it is
loaded."

"Yes," said I; "but though you're a brave poacher, you dare not fire at
your fellow man. Give up the gun this instant."

My address took him by surprise; he did not fire. I struck up the
barrel, and closed on him. We grappled pretty tightly, and in the
wrestle the gun went off. The man loosened his hold. "Lord ha' mercy, I
have not hurt you!" he said falteringly.

"My good fellow--no," said I; "and now let us throw aside gun and
bludgeon, and light it out like Englishmen, or else let us sit down and
talk it over like friends."

The Will o' the Wisp scratched its head and laughed.

"Well, you're a queer one," quoth it. And the poacher dropped the gun
and sate down.

We did talk it over, and I obtained Peterson's promise to respect the
preserve henceforth, and we thereon grew so cordial that he walked home
with me, and even presented me, shyly and apologetically, with the
five pheasants he had shot. From that time I sought him out. He was a
young fellow not four-and-twenty, who had taken to poaching from the
wild sport of the thing, and from some confused notions that he had a
license from Nature to poach. I soon found out that he was meant for
better things than to spend six months of the twelve in prison, and
finish his life on the gallows after killing a gamekeeper. That seemed
to me his most probable destiny in the Old World, so I talked him into
a burning desire for the New one: and a most valuable aid in the Bush
he proved too.

My third selection was in a personage who could bring little physical
strength to help us, but who had more mind (though with a wrong twist
in it) than all the others put together.

A worthy couple in the village had a son, who being slight and puny,
compared to the Cumberland breed, was shouldered out of the market of
agricultural labour, and went off, yet a boy, to a manufacturing town.
Now about the age of thirty, this mechanic, disabled for his work by
a long illness, came home to recover; and in a short time we heard
of nothing but the pestilential doctrines with which he was either
shocking or infecting our primitive villagers. According to report,
Corcyra itself never engendered a democrat more awful. The poor man
was really very ill, and his parents very poor; but his unfortunate
doctrines dried up all the streams of charity that usually flowed
through our kindly hamlet. The clergyman (an excellent man, but of the
old school) walked by the house as if it were tabooed. The apothecary
said "Miles Square ought to have wine," but he did not send him any.
The farmers held his name in execration, for he had incited all their
labourers to strike for another shilling a-week. And but for the old
tower, Miles Square would soon have found his way to the only republic
in which he could obtain that democratic fraternisation for which he
sighed--the grave being, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains
that dead flat of social equality, that life in its every principle so
heartily abhors.

My uncle went to see Miles Square, and came back the colour of purple.
Miles Square had preached him a long sermon on the unholiness of war.
"Even in defence of your king and country!" had roared the Captain; and
Miles Square had replied with a remark upon kings, in general, that
the Captain could not have repeated without expecting to see the old
tower fall about his ears; and with an observation about the country,
in particular, to the effect that "the country would be much better
off if it _were_ conquered!" On hearing the report of these loyal and
patriotic replies, my father said, "Papæ!" and, roused out of his usual
philosophical indifference, went himself to visit Miles Square. My
father returned as pale as my uncle had been purple. "And to think,"
said he mournfully, "that in the town whence this man comes, there are,
he tells me, ten thousand other of God's creatures who speed the work
of civilisation while execrating its laws!"

But neither father nor uncle made any opposition when, with a basket
laden with wine and arrowroot, and a neat little Bible, bound in brown,
my mother took her way to the excommunicated cottage. Her visit was
as signal a failure as those that preceded it. Miles Square refused
the basket; 'he was not going to accept alms, and eat the bread of
charity;' and on my mother meekly suggesting that, 'if Mr Miles
Square would condescend to look into the Bible, he would see that
even charity was no sin in giver or recipient,' Mr Miles Square had
undertaken to prove 'that, according to the Bible, he had as much a
right to my mother's property as she had--that all things should be in
common--and that, when things were in common, what became of charity?
No; he could not eat my uncle's arrowroot, and drink his wine, while
my uncle was improperly withholding from him and his fellow-creatures
so many unprofitable acres: the land belonged to the people.' It
was now the turn of Pisistratus to go. He went once, and he went
often. Miles Square and Pisistratus wrangled and argued--argued and
wrangled--and ended by taking a fancy to each other; for this poor
Miles Square was not half so bad as his doctrines. His errors arose
from intense sympathy with the sufferings he had witnessed, amidst the
misery which accompanies the reign of _millocratism_, and from the
vague aspirations of a half-taught, impassioned, earnest nature. By
degrees, I persuaded him to drink the wine and eat the arrowroot, _en
attendant_ that millennium which was to restore the land to the people.
And then my mother came again and softened his heart, and, for the
first time in his life, let into its cold crotchets the warm light of
human gratitude. I lent him some books, amongst others a few volumes on
Australia. A passage in one of the latter, in which it was said "that
an intelligent mechanic usually made his way in the colony, even as
a shepherd, better than a dull agricultural labourer," caught hold of
his fancy, and seduced his aspirations into a healthful direction.
Finally, as he recovered, he entreated me to let him accompany me. And
as I may not have to return to Miles Square, I think it right here to
state, that he did go with me to Australia, and did succeed, first as
shepherd, and, on saving money, as landowner; and that, in spite of
his opinions on the unholiness of war, he was no sooner in possession
of a comfortable log homestead, than he defended it with uncommon
gallantry against an attack of the aborigines, whose right to the soil
was, to say the least of it, as good as his claim to my uncle's acres;
that he commemorated his subsequent acquisition of a fresh allotment,
with the stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at Sydney, on
the _Sanctity of the Rights of Property_; and that, when I left the
colony, having been much pestered by two refractory "helps" that he had
added to his establishment, he had just distinguished himself by a very
anti-levelling lecture upon the duties of servants to their employers.
What would the Old World have done for this man!


CHAPTER LXX.

I had not been in haste to conclude my arrangements, for, independently
of my wish to render myself acquainted with the small useful crafts
that might be necessary to me in a life that makes the individual
man a state in himself, I naturally desired to habituate my kindred
to the idea of our separation, and to plan and provide for them all
such substitutes or distractions, in compensation for my loss, as my
fertile imagination could suggest. And first, for the sake of Blanche,
Roland, and my mother, I talked the Captain into reluctant sanction of
his sister-in-law's proposal, to unite their incomes and share alike,
without considering which party brought the larger proportion into
the firm. I represented to him that, unless he made that sacrifice
of his pride, my mother would be wholly without those little notable
uses and objects--those small household pleasures--so dear to woman;
that all society in the neighbourhood would be impossible, and that my
mother's time would hang so heavily on her hands that her only resource
would be to muse on the absent one and fret. Nay, if he persisted in
so false a pride, I told him, fairly, that I should urge my father to
leave the tower. These representations succeeded; and hospitality had
commenced in the old hall, and a knot of gossips had centred round
my mother--groups of laughing children had relaxed the still brow of
Blanche--and the Captain himself was a more cheerful and social man.
My next point was to engage my father in the completion of the Great
Book. "Ah, sir," said I, "give me an inducement to toil, a reward for
my industry. Let me think, in each tempting pleasure, each costly
vice--No, no; I will save for the Great Book! and the memory of the
father shall still keep the son from error. Ah, look you, sir! Mr
Trevanion offered me the loan of the £1500 necessary to commence with;
but you generously and at once said--'No; you must not begin life under
the load of debt.' And I knew you were right, and yielded--yielded the
more gratefully, that I could not but forfeit something of the just
pride of manhood in incurring such an obligation to the father of--Miss
Trevanion. Therefore I have taken that sum from you--a sum that would
almost have sufficed to establish your younger and worthier child in
the world for ever. To that child let me repay it, otherwise I will
not take it. Let me hold it as a trust for the Great Book; and promise
me that the Great Book shall be ready when your wanderer returns, and
accounts for the missing talent."

And my father pished a little, and rubbed off the dew that had gathered
on his spectacles. But I would not leave him in peace till he had given
me his word that the Great Book should go on _à pas du géant_--nay,
till I had seen him sit down to it with good heart, and the wheel went
round again in the quiet mechanism of that gentle life.

Finally, and as the culminating acme of my diplomacy, I effected the
purchase of the neighbouring apothecary's practice and good-will for
Squills, upon terms which he willingly subscribed to; for the poor man
had pined at the loss of his favourite patients, though, Heaven knows,
they did not add much to his income. And as for my father, there was no
man who diverted him more than Squills, though he accused him of being
a materialist, and set his whole spiritual pack of sages to worry and
bark at him, from Plato and Zeno to Reid and Abraham Tucker.

Thus, although I have very loosely intimated the flight of time, more
than a whole year elapsed from the date of our settlement at the tower
and that affixed for my departure.

In the meanwhile, despite the rarity amongst us of that phenomenon
a newspaper, we were not so utterly cut off from the sounds of the
far-booming world beyond, but what the intelligence of a change in the
administration, and the appointment of Mr Trevanion to one of the great
offices of state, reached our ears. I had kept up no correspondence
with Trevanion subsequent to the letter that occasioned Guy Bolding's
visit; I wrote now to congratulate him: his reply was short and hurried.

Intelligence that startled me more, and more deeply moved my heart,
was conveyed to me some three months or so before my departure, by
Trevanion's steward. The ill health of Lord Castleton had deferred his
marriage, intended originally to be celebrated as soon as he came of
age. He left the university with the honours of "a double-first class;"
and his constitution appeared to rally from the effects of studies
more severe to him, than they might have been to a man of quicker and
more brilliant capacities--when a feverish cold, caught at a county
meeting, in which his first public appearance was so creditable as
fully to justify the warmest hopes of his party, produced inflammation
of the lungs, and ended fatally. The startling contrast forced on
my mind--here sudden death, and cold clay--there youth in its first
flower, princely rank, boundless wealth, the sanguine expectation of
an illustrious career, and the prospect of that happiness which smiled
from the eyes of Fanny--that contrast impressed me with a strange awe:
death seems so near to us when it strikes those whom life most flatters
and caresses. Whence is that curious sympathy that we all have with the
possessors of worldly greatness, when the hour-glass is shaken and the
scythe descends? If the famous meeting between Diogenes and Alexander
had taken place not before, but after, the achievements which gave to
Alexander the name of Great, the cynic would not, perhaps, have envied
the hero his pleasures or his splendours, the charms of Statira, or
the tiara of the Mede; but if, the day after, a cry had gone forth,
"Alexander the Great is dead!" verily I believe that Diogenes would
have coiled himself up in his tub, and felt that, with the shadow of
the stately hero, something of glory and of warmth had gone from that
sun, which it should darken never more. In the nature of man, the
humblest or the hardest, there is a something that lives in all of the
Beautiful or the Fortunate, which hope and desire have appropriated,
even in the vanities of a childish dream.


CHAPTER LXXI.

"Why are you here all alone, cousin? How cold and still it is amongst
the graves!"

"Sit down beside me, Blanche; it is not colder in the churchyard than
on the village green."

And Blanche sate down beside me, nestled close to me, and leant her
head upon my shoulder. We were both long silent. It was an evening in
the early spring, clear and serene--the roseate streaks were fading
gradually from the dark gray of long, narrow, fantastic clouds. Tall,
leafless poplars, that stood in orderly level line, on the lowland
between the churchyard and the hill, with its crown of ruins, left
their sharp summits distinct against the sky. But the shadows coiled
dull and heavy round the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so
that their outline was vague and confused; and there was a depth in
their gloomy stillness, broken only when the thrush flew out from
the lower bushes, and the thick laurel leaves stirred reluctantly,
and again were rigid in repose. There is a certain melancholy in the
evenings of early spring which is among those influences of nature the
most universally recognised, the most difficult to explain. The silent
stir of reviving life, which does not yet betray signs in the bud and
blossom--only in a softer clearness in the air, a more lingering pause
in the slowly lengthening day; a more delicate freshness and balm in
the twilight atmosphere; a more lively yet still unquiet note from
the birds, settling down into their coverts;--the vague sense under
all that hush, which still outwardly wears the bleak sterility of
winter--of the busy change, hourly, momently, at work--renewing the
youth of the world, reclothing with vigorous bloom the skeletons of
things--all these messages from the heart of Nature to the heart of
Man may well affect and move us. But why with melancholy? No thought
on our part connects and construes the low, gentle voices. It is not
_thought_ that replies and reasons: it is _feeling_ that hears and
dreams. Examine not, O child of man!--examine not that mysterious
melancholy with the hard eyes of thy reason; thou canst not impale it
on the spikes of thy thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted circle by
problems conned from thy schools. Borderer thyself of two worlds--the
Dead and the Living--give thine ear to the tones, bow thy soul to the
shadows, that steal, in the season of change, from the dim Border Land.

BLANCHE (_in a whisper_.)--What are you thinking of?--speak,
pray!

PISISTRATUS.--I was not thinking, Blanche; or, if I were, the
thought is gone at the mere effort to seize or detain it.

BLANCHE (_after a pause_.)--I know what you mean. It is the
same with me often--so often, when I am sitting by myself, quite still.
It is just like the story Primmins was telling us the other evening,
how there was a woman in her village who saw things and people in a
piece of crystal, not bigger than my hand:[2] they passed along as
large as life, but they were only pictures in the crystal. Since I
heard the story, when aunt asks me what I am thinking of, I long to
say, "I'm not thinking! I am seeing pictures in the crystal!"

[2] In primitive villages in the west of England, the belief that the
absent may be seen in a piece of crystal is, or was not many years
ago, by no means an uncommon superstition. I have seen more than one
of these magic mirrors, which Spenser, by the way, has beautifully
described. They are about the size and shape of a swan's egg. It is not
every one, however, who can be a crystal-seer; like second-sight, it is
a special gift.

PISISTRATUS.--Tell my father that; it will please him. There
is more philosophy in it than you are aware of, Blanche. There are
wise men who have thought the whole world, "its pride, pomp, and
circumstance," only a phantom image--a picture in the crystal.

BLANCHE.--And I shall see you--see us both, as we are sitting
here--and that star which has just risen yonder--see it all in my
crystal--when you are gone!--gone, cousin!

And Blanche's head drooped.

There was something so quiet and deep in the tenderness of this poor
motherless child, that it did not affect one superficially, like a
child's loud momentary affection, in which we know that the first toy
will replace us. I kissed my little cousin's pale face, and said,
"And I too, Blanche, have my crystal; and when I consult it, I shall
be very angry if I see you sad and fretting, or seated alone. For you
must know, Blanche, that that is all selfishness. God made us, not to
indulge only in crystal pictures, weave idle fancies, pine alone, and
mourn over what we cannot help--but to be alert and active--givers
of happiness. Now, Blanche, see what a trust I am going to bequeath
you. You are to supply my place to all whom I leave. You are to bring
sunshine wherever you glide with that shy, soft step--whether to your
father, when you see his brows knit and his arms crossed, (that,
indeed, you always do,) or to mine, when the volume drops from his
hand--when he walks to and fro the room, restless, and murmuring to
himself--then you are to steal up to him, put your hand in his, lead
him back to his books, and whisper, 'What will Sisty say if his younger
brother, the Great Book, is not grown up when he comes back?'--And my
poor mother, Blanche!--ah, how can I counsel you there--how tell you
where to find comfort for her? Only, Blanche, steal into her heart and
be her daughter. And, to fulfil this threefold trust, you must not
content yourself with seeing pictures in the crystal--do you understand
me?"

"Oh yes," said Blanche, raising her eyes, while the tears rolled from
them, and folding her arms resolutely on her breast.

"And so," said I, "as we two, sitting in this quiet burial-ground,
take new heart for the duties and cares of life, so see, Blanche,
how the stars come out, one by one, to smile upon us, for they too,
glorious orbs as they are, perform their appointed tasks. Things seem
to approximate to God in proportion to their vitality and movement. Of
all things, least inert and sullen should be the soul of man. How the
grass grows up over the very graves--quickly it grows and greenly--but
neither so quick and so green, my Blanche, as hope and comfort from
human sorrows."


CHAPTER LXXII.

There is a beautiful and singular passage in Dante, (which has not
perhaps attracted the attention it deserves,) wherein the stern
Florentine defends Fortune from the popular accusations against her.
According to him, she is an angelic power appointed by the Supreme
Being to direct and order the course of human splendours; she obeys the
will of God; she is blessed, and, hearing not those who blaspheme her,
calm and aloft amongst the other angelic powers, revolves her spheral
course, and rejoices in her beatitude.[3]

[3] Dante here evidently associates Fortune with the planetary
influences of judicial astrology. It is doubtful whether Schiller ever
read Dante, but in one of his most thoughtful poems, he undertakes the
same defence of Fortune, making the Fortunate a part of the Beautiful.

This is a conception very different from the popular notion which
Aristophanes, in his true instinct of things popular, expresses by the
sullen lips of his Plutus. That deity accounts for his blindness by
saying, that "when a boy he had indiscreetly promised to visit only
the good," and Jupiter was so envious of the good that he blinded the
poor money-god. Whereon Chremylus asks him, whether, "if he recovered
his sight, he would frequent the company of the good?" "Certainly,"
quoth Plutus, "for I have not seen them ever so long." "Nor I either,"
rejoins Chremylus pithily, "for all I can see out of both eyes!"

But that misanthropical answer of Chremylus is neither here nor there,
and only diverts us from the real question, and that is, "Whether
Fortune be a heavenly, Christian angel, or a blind, blundering, old
heathen deity?" For my part, I hold with Dante--for which, if I were
so pleased, or if, at this period of my memoirs, I had half a dozen
pages to spare, I could give many good reasons. One thing, however, is
quite clear--that, whether Fortune be more like Plutus or an angel, it
is no use abusing her--one may as well throw stones at a star. And I
think if one looked narrowly at her operations, one might perceive that
she gives every man a chance, at least once in his life; if he take
and make the best of it, she will renew her visits; if not--_itur ad
astra_! And therewith I am reminded of an incident quaintly narrated by
Mariana in his "History of Spain," how the army of the Spanish kings
got out of a sad hobble among the mountains at the pass of Losa, by
the help of a shepherd, who showed them the way. "But," saith Mariana,
parenthetically, "some do say the shepherd was an angel; for after he
had shown the way, he was never seen more." That is, the angelic nature
of the guide was proved by being only once seen, and disappearing after
having got the army out of the hobble, leaving it to fight or run away,
as it had most mind to. Now I look upon that shepherd, or angel, as a
very good type of my fortune at least. The apparition showed me my way
in the rocks to the great "Battle of Life;" after that,--hold fast and
strike hard!

Behold me in London with Uncle Roland. My poor parents naturally wished
to accompany me, and take the last glimpse of the adventurer on board
ship; but I, knowing that the parting would seem less dreadful to them
by the hearthstone, and while they could say, "He is with Roland--he
is not yet gone from the land"--insisted on their staying behind; and
so the farewell was spoken. But Roland, the old soldier, had so many
practical instructions to give--could so help me in the choice of the
outfit, and the preparations for the voyage, that I could not refuse
his companionship to the last. Guy Bolding, who had gone to take leave
of his father, was to join me in town, as well as my humbler Cumberland
colleagues.

As my uncle and I were both of one mind upon the question of economy,
we took up our quarters at a lodging-house in the City; and there it
was that I first made acquaintance with a part of London, of which few
of my politer readers even pretend to be cognisant. I do not mean any
sneer at the City itself, my dear alderman; that jest is worn out. I am
not alluding to streets, courts, and lanes; what I mean may be seen at
the west end, not so well as at the east, but still seen very fairly; I
mean--THE HOUSE-TOPS!


CHAPTER LXXIII.

BEING A CHAPTER ON HOUSE-TOPS.

The house-tops! what a soberising effect that prospect produces on
the mind. But a great many requisites go towards the selection of the
right point of survey. It is not enough to secure a lodging in the
attic; you must not be fobbed off with a front attic that faces the
street. First, your attic must be unequivocally a back attic; secondly,
the house in which it is located must be slightly elevated above its
neighbours; thirdly, the window must not lie slant on the roof, as is
common with attics--in which case you only catch a peep of that leaden
canopy which infatuated Londoners call the sky--but must be a window
perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the parapets of that fosse
called the gutter; and, lastly, the sight must be so humoured that you
cannot catch a glimpse of the pavements: if you once see the world
beneath, the whole charm of that world above is destroyed. Taking it
for granted that you have secured these requisites, open your window,
lean your chin on both hands, the elbows propped commodiously on the
sill, and contemplate the extraordinary scene which spreads before you.
You find it difficult to believe that life can be so tranquil on high,
while it is so noisy and turbulent below. What astonishing stillness!
Eliot Warburton (seductive enchanter) recommends you to sail down the
Nile if you want to lull the vexed spirit. It is easier and cheaper to
hire an attic in Holborn! You don't have the crocodiles, but you have
animals no less hallowed in Egypt--the cats! And how harmoniously the
tranquil creatures blend with the prospect--how noiselessly they glide
along at the distance, pause, peer about, and disappear. It is only
from the attic that you can appreciate the picturesque which belongs to
our domesticated tiger-kin! The goat should be seen on the Alps, and
the cat on the house-top.

By degrees the curious eye takes the scenery in detail: and first, what
fantastic variety in the heights and shapes of the chimney-pots! Some
all level in a row, uniform and respectable, but quite uninteresting;
others, again, rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking
the reason to conjecture why they are so aspiring. Reason answers
that it is but a homely expedient to give freer vent to the smoke;
whereon Imagination steps in, and represents to you all the fretting,
and fuming, and worry, and care, which the owners of that chimney,
now the tallest of all, endured, before, by building it higher, they
got rid of the vapours! You see the distress of the cook, when the
sooty invader rushed down, "like a wolf on the fold," full spring on
the Sunday joint. You hear the exclamations of the mistress, (perhaps
a bride,--house newly furnished,) when, with white apron and cap,
she ventured into the drawing-room, and was straightway saluted by a
joyous dance of those monads, called vulgarly _smuts_. You feel manly
indignation at the brute of a bridegroom, who rushes out from the door,
with the smuts dancing after him, and swears, "Smoked out again--By
the Arch-smoker himself, I'll go and dine at the club!" All this might
well have been, till the chimney-pot was raised a few feet nearer
heaven; and now perhaps that long-suffering family owns the happiest
home in the Row. Such contrivances to get rid of the smoke! It is not
every one who merely heightens his chimney; others clap on the hollow
tormentor all sorts of odd headgear and cowls. Here patent contrivances
act the purpose of weathercocks, swaying to and fro with the wind;
there others stand as fixed as if by a "_sic jubeo_" they had settled
the business. But of all those houses that, in the street, one passes
by, unsuspicious of what's the matter within, there is not one in a
hundred but what there has been the devil to do, to cure the chimneys
of smoking! At that reflection, Philosophy dismisses the subject; and
decides that, whether one lives in a hut or a palace, the first thing
to do is to look to the hearth--and get rid of the vapours.

New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various
declivities and ascents: here a slant, there a zig-zag! With what
majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left!--Doubtless, a palace
of Genii or Gin, (which last is the proper Arabic word for those
builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin.) Seeing only
the roof of that palace boldly breaking the skyline--how serene your
contemplations! Perhaps a star twinkles over it, and you muse on soft
eyes far away; while below, at the threshold--No, phantoms, we see you
not from our attic! Note, yonder, that precipitous fall--how ragged and
jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge. He who would travel on foot
through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque
summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and
hurries along through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But
seen _above_, what a noble break in the skyline! It would be sacrilege
to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull roof-tops. Look
here--how delightful!--that desolate house with no roof at all--gutted
and skinned by the last London fire! You can see the poor green and
white paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm that once was
a cupboard, and the shadows gathering black on the aperture that once
was a hearth! Seen below, how quickly you would cross over the way!
That great crack forbodes an avalanche; you would hold your breath, not
to bring it down on your head. But seen _above_, what a compassionate
inquisitive charm in the skeleton ruin! How your fancy runs
riot--repeopling the chambers, hearing the last cheerful good-night
of that destined Pompeii--creeping on tiptoe with the mother, when
she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and
silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath;
hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and coils; now he
soars up erect--crest superb, and forked tongue--the beautiful horror!
Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run
here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; the cry from the
window, and the knock at the door, and the spring of those on high
towards the stair that leads to safety below, and the smoke rushing
up like the surge of a hell! And they run back stifled and blinded,
and the floor heaves beneath them like a bark on the sea. Hark! the
grating wheels thundering low; near and near comes the engine. Fix the
ladders!--there! there! at the window, where the mother stands with
the babe! Splash and hiss comes the water; pales, then flares out, the
fire: foe defies foe; element, element. How sublime is the war! But
the ladder, the ladder!--there at the window! All else are saved: the
clerk and his books; the lawyer, with that tin box of title-deeds; the
landlord, with his policy of insurance; the miser, with his bank-notes
and gold: all are saved--all, but the babe and the mother. What a crowd
in the streets! how the light crimsons over the gazers, hundreds on
hundreds! All those faces seem as one face, with fear. Not a man mounts
the ladder. Yes, there--gallant fellow! God inspires--God shall speed
thee! How plainly I see him!--his eyes are closed, his teeth set. The
serpent leaps up, the forked tongue darts upon him, and the reek of the
breath wraps him round. The crowd has ebbed back like a sea, and the
smoke rushes over them all. Ha! what dim forms are those on the ladder?
Near and nearer--crash come the roof-tiles. Alas, and alas!--no; a cry
of joy--a "Thank heaven!" and the women force their way through the men
to come round the child and the mother. All is gone, save that skeleton
ruin. But here, the ruin is seen from _above_. O Art, study life from
the roof-tops!


CHAPTER LXXIV.

I was again foiled in seeing Trevanion. It was the Easter recess, and
he was at the house of one of his brother ministers, somewhere in the
north of England. But Lady Ellinor was in London, and I was ushered
into her presence. Nothing could be more cordial than her manner,
though she was evidently much depressed in spirits, and looked wan and
careworn.

After the kindest inquiries relative to my parents, and the Captain,
she entered with much sympathy into my schemes and plans, which
she said that Trevanion had confided to her. The sterling kindness
that belonged to my old patron (despite his affected anger at my
not accepting his proffered loan) had not only saved me and my
fellow-adventurer all trouble as to allotment orders, but procured
advice, as to choice of site and soil, from the best practical
experience, which we found afterwards exceedingly useful. And as Lady
Ellinor gave me the little packet of papers with Trevanion's shrewd
notes on the margin, she said with a half sigh, "Albert bids me say,
that he wishes he were as sanguine of his success in the cabinet as
of yours in the Bush." She then turned to her husband's rise and
prospects, and her face began to change. Her eyes sparkled, the colour
came to her cheeks--"But you are one of the few who know him," she
said, interrupting herself suddenly; "you know how he sacrifices all
things--joy, leisure, health--to his country. There is not one selfish
thought in his nature. And yet such envy--such obstacles still! and"
(her eyes dropped on her dress, and I perceived that she was in
mourning, though the mourning was not deep,) "and," she added, "it has
pleased heaven to withdraw from his side one who would have been worthy
his alliance."

I felt for the proud woman, though her emotion seemed more that of
pride than sorrow. And perhaps Lord Castleton's highest merit in her
eyes had been that of ministering to her husband's power and her own
ambition. I bowed my head in silence, and thought of Fanny. Did she,
too, pine for the lost rank, or rather mourn the lost lover?

After a time, I said hesitatingly, "I scarcely presume to condole with
you, Lady Ellinor; yet, believe me, few things ever shocked me like
the death you allude to. I trust Miss Trevanion's health has not much
suffered. Shall I not see her before I leave England?"

Lady Ellinor fixed her keen bright eyes searchingly on my countenance,
and perhaps the gaze satisfied her, for she held out her hand to me
with a frankness almost tender, and said--"Had I had a son, the dearest
wish of my heart had been to see you wedded to my daughter."

I started up--the blood rushed to my cheeks, and then left me pale as
death. I looked reproachfully at Lady Ellinor, and the word "cruel"
faltered on my lips.

"Yes," continued Lady Ellinor, mournfully, "that was my real thought,
my impulse of regret, when I first saw you. But, as it is, do not think
me too hard and worldly, if I quote the lofty old French proverb,
_Noblesse oblige_. Listen to me, my young friend,--we may never meet
again, and I would not have your father's son think unkindly of me
with all my faults. From my first childhood I was ambitious--not as
women usually are, of mere wealth and rank--but ambitious as noble
men are, of power and fame. A woman can only indulge such ambition
by investing it in another. It was not wealth, it was not rank, that
attracted me to Albert Trevanion; it was the nature that dispenses with
the wealth, and commands the rank. Nay," continued Lady Ellinor, in a
voice that slightly trembled, "I may have seen in my youth, before I
knew Trevanion, one (she paused a moment, and went on hurriedly)--one
who wanted but ambition to have realised my ideal. Perhaps, even when
I married--and it was said for love--I loved less with my whole heart
than with my whole mind. I may say this now, for _now_ every beat of
this pulse is wholly and only true to him with whom I have schemed, and
toiled, and aspired; with whom I have grown as one; with whom I have
shared the struggle, and now partake the triumph--realising the visions
of my youth."

Again the light broke from the dark eyes of this grand daughter of
the world, who was so superb a type of that moral contradiction--_an
ambitious woman_.

"I cannot tell you," resumed Lady Ellinor, softening, "how pleased I
was when you came to live with us. Your father has perhaps spoken to
you of me, and of our first acquaintance?"--

Lady Ellinor paused abruptly, and surveyed me as she paused. I was
silent.

"Perhaps, too, he has blamed me?" she resumed, with a heightened colour.

"He never blamed you, Lady Ellinor!"

"He had a right to do so--though I doubt if he would have blamed me on
the true ground. Yet, no; he never could have done me the wrong that
your uncle did, when, long years ago, Mr de Caxton in a letter--the
very bitterness of which disarmed all anger--accused me of having
trifled with Austin--nay, with himself! And _he_, at least, had _no_
right to reproach me," continued Lady Ellinor warmly, and with a curve
of her haughty lip, "for if I felt interest in his wild thirst for
some romantic glory, it was but in the hope that, what made the one
brother so restless, might at least wake the other to the ambition that
would have become his intellect, and aroused his energies. But these
are old tales of follies and delusions now no more: only this will I
say, that I have ever felt in thinking of your father, and even of
your sterner uncle, as if my conscience reminded me of a debt which
I longed to discharge--if not to them, to their children. So when
we knew you, believe me that your interests, your career, instantly
became to me an object. But, mistaking you--when I saw your ardent
industry bent on serious objects, and accompanied by a mind so fresh
and buoyant; and, absorbed as I was in schemes or projects far beyond
a woman's ordinary province of hearth and home--I never dreamed, while
you were our guest--never dreamed of danger to you or Fanny. I wound
you, pardon me; but I must vindicate myself. I repeat that, if we had
a son to inherit our name, to bear the burthen which the world lays
upon those who are born to influence the world's destinies, there is
no one to whom Trevanion and myself would sooner have intrusted the
happiness of a daughter. But my daughter is the sole representative of
the mother's line, of the father's name: it is not her happiness alone
that I have to consult, it is her duty--duty to her birthright, to the
career of the noblest of England's patriots--duty, I may say, without
exaggeration, to the country for the sake of which that career is run!"

"Say no more, Lady Ellinor; say no more. I understand you. I have
no hope--I never had hope--it was a madness--it is over. It is but
as a friend that I ask again, if I may see Miss Trevanion in your
presence, before--before I go alone into this long exile. Ay, look in
my face--you cannot fear my resolution, my honour, my truth. But once,
Lady Ellinor, but once more! Do I ask in vain?"

Lady Ellinor was evidently much moved. I bent down almost in the
attitude of kneeling; and, brushing away her tears with one hand, she
laid the other on my head tenderly, and said in a very low voice--

"I entreat you not to ask me; I entreat you not to see my daughter. You
have shown that you are not selfish--conquer yourself still. What if
such an interview, however guarded you might be, were but to agitate,
unnerve my child, unsettle her peace, prey upon"--

"Oh, do not speak thus--she did not share my feelings!"

"Could her mother own it if she did? Come, come, remember how young
you both are. When you return, all these dreams will be forgotten;
then we can meet as before--then I will be your second mother, and
again your career shall be my care; for do not think that we shall
leave you so long in this exile as you seem to forbode. No, no; it
is but an absence--an excursion--not a search after fortune. Your
fortune--confide that to us when you return!"

"And I am to see her no more?" I murmured, as I rose, and went silently
towards the window to conceal my face. The great struggles in life are
limited to moments. In the drooping of the head upon the bosom--in the
pressure of the hand upon the brow--we may scarcely consume a second in
our threescore years and ten; but what revolutions of our whole being
may pass within us, while that single sand drops noiseless down to the
bottom of the hour-glass.

I came back with a firm step to Lady Ellinor, and said calmly, "My
reason tells me that you are right, and I submit. Forgive me! and do
not think me ungrateful, and over proud, if I add, that you must leave
me still the object in life that consoles and encourages me through
all."

"What object is that?" asked Lady Ellinor, hesitatingly.

"Independence for myself, and ease to those for whom life is still
sweet. This is my twofold object; and the means to effect it must be my
own heart and my own hands. And now convey all my thanks to your noble
husband, and accept my warm prayers for yourself and _her_--whom I will
not name. Farewell, Lady Ellinor."

"No, do not leave me so hastily; I have many things to discuss with
you--at least to ask of you. Tell me how your father bears his
reverse?--tell me, at least, if there is aught he will suffer us to do
for him? There are many appointments in Trevanion's range of influence
that would suit even the wilful indolence of a man of letters. Come, be
frank with me!"

I could not resist so much kindness; so I sat down, and, as collectedly
as I could, replied to Lady Ellinor's questions, and sought to convince
her that my father only felt his losses so far as they affected me,
and that nothing in Trevanion's power was likely to tempt him from
his retreat, or calculated to compensate for a change in his habits.
Turning at last from my parents, Lady Ellinor inquired for Roland, and,
on learning that he was with me in town, expressed a strong desire to
see him. I told her I would communicate her wish, and she then said
thoughtfully--

"He has a son, I think, and I have heard that there is some unhappy
dissension between them."

"Who could have told you that?" I asked in surprise, knowing how
closely Roland had kept the secret of his family afflictions.

"Oh, I heard so from some one who knew Captain Roland--I forget when
and where I heard it--but is it not the fact?"

"My uncle Roland has no son."

"How!"

"His son is dead."

"How such a loss must grieve him!"

I did not speak.

"But is he sure that his son is dead! What joy if he were mistaken--if
the son yet lived!"

"Nay, my uncle has a brave heart, and he is resigned;--but, pardon me,
have you heard anything of that son?"

"I!--what should I hear? I would fain learn, however, from your uncle
himself, what he might like to tell me of his sorrows--or if, indeed,
there be any chance that"--

"That--what?"

"That--that his son still survives."

"I think not," said I; "and I doubt whether you will learn much from
my uncle. Still there is something in your words that belies their
apparent meaning, and makes me suspect that you know more than you
will say."

"Diplomatist!" said Lady Ellinor, half smiling; but then, her face
settling into a seriousness almost severe, she added, "It is terrible
to think that a father should hate his son!"

"Hate!--Roland _hate_ his son! What calumny is this?"

"He does not do so, then! Assure me of that; I shall be so glad to know
that I have been misinformed."

"I can tell you this, and no more--for no more do I know--that if ever
the soul of a father were wrapt up in a son--fear, hope, gladness,
sorrow, all reflected back on a father's heart from the shadows on a
son's life--Roland was that father while the son lived still."

"I cannot disbelieve you," exclaimed Lady Ellinor, though in a tone of
surprise. "Well, do let me see your uncle."

"I will do my best to induce him to visit you, and learn all that you
evidently conceal from me."

Lady Ellinor evasively replied to this insinuation, and shortly
afterwards I left that house in which I had known the happiness that
brings the folly, and the grief that bequeaths the wisdom.


CHAPTER LXXV.

I had always felt a warm and almost filial affection for Lady Ellinor,
independently of her relationship to Fanny, and of the gratitude
with which her kindness inspired me: for there is an affection very
peculiar in its nature, and very high in its degree, which results
from the blending of two sentiments not often allied,--viz., pity
and admiration. It was impossible not to admire the rare gifts
and great qualities of Lady Ellinor, and not to feel pity for the
cares, anxieties, and sorrows which tormented one who, with all the
sensitiveness of woman, went forth into the rough world of man.

My father's confession had somewhat impaired my esteem for Lady
Ellinor, and had left on my mind the uneasy impression that she _had_
trifled with his deep, and Roland's impetuous, heart. The conversation
that had just passed allowed me to judge her with more justice--allowed
me to see that she had really shared the affection she had inspired
in the student, but that ambition had been stronger than love--an
ambition, it might be, irregular and not strictly feminine, but still
of no vulgar nor sordid kind. I gathered, too, from her hints and
allusions, her true excuse for Roland's misconception of her apparent
interest in himself: she had but seen, in the wild energies of the
elder brother, some agency by which to arouse the serener faculties
of the younger. She had but sought, in the strange comet that flashed
before her, to fix a lever that might move the star. Nor could I
withhold my reverence from the woman who, not being married precisely
from love, had no sooner linked her nature to one worthy of it, than
her whole life became as fondly devoted to her husband's as if he had
been the object of her first romance and her earliest affections. If
even her child was so secondary to her husband--if the fate of that
child was but regarded by her as one to be rendered subservient to the
grand destinies of Trevanion--still it was impossible to recognise
the error of that conjugal devotion without admiring the wife, though
one might condemn the mother. Turning from these meditations, I felt
a lover's thrill of selfish joy, amidst all the mournful sorrow
comprised in the thought that I should see Fanny no more. Was it true
as Lady Ellinor implied, though delicately, that Fanny still cherished
a remembrance of me--which a brief interview, a last farewell, might
re-awaken too dangerously for her peace? Well, that was a thought that
it became me not to indulge.

What could Lady Ellinor have heard of Roland and his son? Was it
possible that the lost lived still? Asking myself these questions, I
arrived at our lodgings, and saw the Captain himself before me, busied
with the inspection of sundry specimens of the rude necessaries an
Australian adventurer requires. There stood the old soldier, by the
window, examining narrowly into the temper of hand-saw and tenor-saw,
broad axe and drawing-knife; and as I came up to him, he looked at me
from under his black brows, with gruff compassion, and said peevishly--

"Fine weapons these for the son of a gentleman!--one bit of steel in
the shape of a sword were worth them all."

"Any weapon that conquers fate is noble in the hands of a brave man,
uncle!"

"The boy has an answer for everything," quoth the Captain, smiling, as
he took out his purse and paid the shopman.

When we were alone, I said to him--"Uncle, you must go and see Lady
Ellinor; she desires me to tell you so."

"Pshaw!"

"You will not?"

"No!"

"Uncle, I think that she has something to say to you with regard
to--to--pardon me!--to my cousin."

"To Blanche?"

"No, no--to the cousin I never saw."

Roland turned pale, and, sinking down on a chair, faltered out--"To
him--to my son!"

"Yes; but I do not think it is news that will afflict you. Uncle, are
you sure that my cousin is dead?"

"What!--how dare you!--who doubts it? Dead--dead to me for ever! Boy,
would you have him live to dishonour these gray hairs!"

"Sir, sir, forgive me--uncle, forgive me: but, pray, go to see Lady
Ellinor; for whatever she has to say, I repeat that I am sure it will
be nothing to wound you."

"Nothing to wound me--yet relate to _him_!"

It is impossible to convey to the reader the despair that was in those
words.

"Perhaps," said I, after a long pause, and in a low voice--for I was
awestricken--"perhaps--if he be dead--he may have repented of all
offence to you before he died."

"Repented!--ha, ha!"

"Or, if he be not dead"--

"Hush, boy--hush!"

"While there is life, there is hope of repentance."

"Look you, nephew," said the Captain, rising and folding his arms
resolutely on his breast--"look you, I desired that that name might
never be breathed. I have not cursed my son yet; could he come to
life--the curse might fall! You do not know what torture your words
have given me, just when I had opened my heart to another son, and
found that son in you! With respect to the lost, I have now but one
prayer, and you know it--the heartbroken prayer--that his name never
more may come to my ears!"

As he closed these words, to which I ventured no reply, the Captain
took long disordered strides across the room; and suddenly, as if
the space imprisoned, or the air stifled him, he seized his hat, and
hastened into the streets. Recovering my surprise and dismay, I ran
after him; but he commanded me to leave him to his own thoughts, in a
voice so stern, yet so sad, that I had no choice but to obey. I knew,
by my own experience, how necessary is solitude in the moments when
grief is strongest and thought most troubled.


CHAPTER LXXVI.

Hours elapsed, and the Captain had not returned home. I began to feel
uneasy, and went forth in search of him, though I knew not whither to
direct my steps. I thought it, however, at least probable, that he
had not been able to resist visiting Lady Ellinor, so I went first to
St James's Square. My suspicions were correct; the Captain had been
there two hours before. Lady Ellinor herself had gone out shortly after
the Captain left. While the porter was giving me this information, a
carriage stopped at the door, and a footman, stepping up, gave the
porter a note and a small parcel, seemingly of books, saying simply,
"From the Marquis of Castleton." At the sound of that name I turned
hastily, and recognised Sir Sedley Beaudesert seated in the carriage,
and looking out of the window with a dejected, moody expression of
countenance, very different from his ordinary aspect, except when the
rare sight of a gray hair, or a twinge of the toothache, reminded him
that he was no longer twenty-five. Indeed, the change was so great
that I exclaimed, dubiously--"Is that Sir Sedley Beaudesert?" The
footman looked at me, and touching his hat said, with a condescending
smile,--"Yes, sir--now the Marquis of Castleton."

Then, for the first time since the young lord's death, I remembered Sir
Sedley's expressions of gratitude to Lady Castleton, and the waters of
Ems, for having saved him from "that horrible marquisate." Meanwhile,
my old friend had perceived me, exclaiming,--

"What, Mr Caxton! I am delighted to see you. Open the door, Thomas.
Pray come in, come in."

I obeyed; and the new Lord Castleton made room for me by his side.

"Are you in a hurry?" said he; "if so, shall I take you anywhere?--if
not, give me half an hour of your time, while I drive to the City."

As I knew not now in what direction, more than another, to prosecute my
search for the Captain, and as I thought I might as well call at our
lodgings to inquire if he had not returned, I answered that I should
be very happy to accompany his lordship; "though the City," said I,
smiling, "sounds to me strange upon the lips of Sir Sedley--I beg
pardon, I should say of Lord--"

"Don't say any such thing; let me once more hear the grateful sound of
Sedley Beaudesert. Shut the door, Thomas; to Gracechurch Street--Messrs
Fudge and Fidget."

The carriage drove on.

"A sad affliction has befallen me," said the marquis, "and none
sympathise with me!"

"Yet all, even unacquainted with the late lord, must have felt shocked
at the death of one so young, and so full of promise."

"So fitted in every way to bear the burthen of the great Castleton
name and property, and yet you see it killed him! Ah! if he had been
but a simple gentleman, or if he had had less conscientious desire
to do his duties, he would have lived to a good old age. I know what
it is already. Oh, if you saw the piles of letters on my table! I
positively dread the post. Such colossal improvements on the property
which the poor boy had begun, for me to finish. What do you think takes
me to Fudge and Fidget's? Sir, they are the agents for an infernal
coal mine which my cousin had reopened in Durham, to plague my life
out with another thirty thousand pounds a-year! How am I to spend the
money?--how am I to spend it! There's a cold-blooded head steward,
who says that charity is the greatest crime a man in high station
can commit; it demoralises the poor. Then, because some half-a-dozen
farmers sent me a round-robin, to the effect that their rents were
too high, and I wrote them word the rents should be lowered, there
was such a hullabaloo--you would have thought heaven and earth were
coming together. 'If a man in the position of the Marquis of Castleton
set the example of letting land below its value, how could the poorer
squires in the county exist?--or, if they did exist, what injustice to
expose them, to the charge that they were grasping landlords, vampires,
and bloodsuckers. Clearly, if Lord Castleton lowered his rents, (they
were too low already,) he struck a mortal blow at the property of
his neighbours, if they followed his example; or at their character,
if they did not.' No man can tell how hard it is to do good, unless
fortune gives him a hundred thousand pounds a-year, and says,--'Now, do
good with it!' Sedley Beaudesert might follow his whims, and all that
would be said against him would be, 'Good-natured, simple fellow!' But
if Lord Castleton follow his whims, you would think he was a second
Catiline--unsettling the peace, and undermining the prosperity, of the
entire nation!" Here the wretched man paused, and sighed heavily; then,
as his thoughts wandered into a new channel of woe, he resumed,--"Ah,
if you could but see the forlorn great house I am expected to inhabit,
cooped up between dead walls, instead of my pretty rooms, with the
windows full on the park; and the balls I am expected to give, and the
parliamentary interest I am to keep up; and the villanous proposal
made to me to become a lord steward, or lord chamberlain, because it
suits my rank to be a sort of a servant. Oh, Pisistratus! you lucky
dog--not twenty-one, and with, I dare say, not two hundred pounds
a-year in the world!"

Thus bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortunes, the poor marquis ran on,
till at last he exclaimed, in a tone of yet deeper despair,--

"And everybody says I must marry, too!--that the Castleton line must
not be extinct! The Beaudeserts are a good old family eno'--as old, for
what I know, as the Castletons; but the British empire would suffer no
loss if they sank into the tomb of the Capulets. But that the Castleton
peerage should expire, is a thought of crime and woe, at which all
the mothers of England rise in a phalanx! And so, instead of visiting
the sins of the fathers on the sons, it is the father that is to be
sacrificed for the benefit of the third and fourth generation!"

Despite my causes for seriousness, I could not help laughing; my
companion turned on me a look of reproach.

"At least," said I, composing my countenance, "Lord Castleton has one
comfort in his afflictions--if he must marry, he may choose as he
pleases."

"That is precisely what Sedley Beaudesert could, and Lord Castleton
cannot do," said the marquis gravely. "The rank of Sir Sedley
Beaudesert was a quiet and comfortable rank--he might marry a curate's
daughter, or a duke's--and please his eye or grieve his heart as the
caprice took him. But Lord Castleton must marry, not for a wife,
but for a marchioness,--marry some one who _will wear his rank_ for
him,--take the trouble of splendour off his hands, and allow him to
retire into a corner, and dream that he is Sedley Beaudesert once more!
Yes, it must be so--the crowning sacrifice must be completed at the
altar. But a truce to my complaints. Trevanion informs me you are going
to Australia,--can that be true?"

"Perfectly true."

"They say there is a sad want of ladies there."

"So much the better,--I shall be all the more steady."

"Well, there's something in that. Have you seen Lady Ellinor?"

"Yes--this morning."

"Poor woman!--a great blow to her--we have tried to console each
other. Fanny, you know, is staying at Oxton, in Surrey, with Lady
Castleton,--the poor lady is so fond of her--and no one has comforted
her like Fanny."

"I was not aware that Miss Trevanion was out of town."

"Only for a few days, and then she and Lady Ellinor join Trevanion
in the north--you know he is with Lord N----, settling measures on
which--but alas, they consult me now on those matters--force their
secrets on me. I have, heaven knows how many votes! Poor me! Upon
my word, if Lady Ellinor was a widow, I should certainly make up to
her: very clever woman--nothing bores her." (The marquis yawned--Sir
Sedley Beaudesert never yawned.) "Trevanion has provided for his Scotch
secretary, and is about to get a place in the Foreign Office for that
young fellow Gower, whom, between you and me, I don't like. But he has
bewitched Trevanion!"

"What sort of a person is this Mr Gower?--I remember you said that he
was clever, and good-looking."

"He is both, but it is not the cleverness of youth; he is as hard and
sarcastic as if he had been cheated fifty times, and jilted a hundred!
Neither are his good looks that letter of recommendation which a
handsome face is said to be. He has an expression of countenance very
much like that of Lord Hertford's pet bloodhound, when a stranger
comes into the room. Very sleek, handsome dog, the bloodhound is
certainly--well-mannered, and I dare say exceedingly tame; but still
you have but to look at the corner of the eye, to know that it is
only the habit of the drawing-room that suppresses the creature's
constitutional tendency to seize you by the throat, instead of giving
you a paw. Still this Mr Gower has a very striking head--something
about it Moorish or Spanish, like a picture by Murillo: I half suspect
that he is less a Gower than a gipsy!"

"What!"--I cried, as I listened with rapt and breathless attention to
this description. "He is then very dark, with high narrow forehead,
features slightly aquiline, but very delicate, and teeth so dazzling
that the whole face seems to sparkle when he smiles--though it is only
the lip that smiles, not the eye."

"Exactly as you say; you have seen him, then?"

"Why, I am not sure, since you say his name is Gower."

"_He_ says his name is Gower," returned Lord Castleton, drily, as he
inhaled the Beaudesert mixture.

"And where is he now?--with Mr Trevanion?"

"Yes, I believe so. Ah! here we are--Fudge and Fidget! But perhaps,"
added Lord Castleton, with a gleam of hope in his blue eye,--"perhaps
they are not at home!"

Alas, that was an illusive "imagining," as the poets of the nineteenth
century unaffectedly express themselves. Messrs Fudge and Fidget were
never out to such clients as the Marquis of Castleton: with a deep
sigh, and an altered expression of face, the Victim of Fortune slowly
descended the steps of the carriage.

"I can't ask you to wait for me," said he; "heaven only knows how long
I shall be kept! Take the carriage where you will, and send it back to
me."

"A thousand thanks, my dear lord, I would rather walk--but you will let
me call on you before I leave town."

"Let you!--I insist on it. I am still at the old quarters, under
pretence," said the marquis, with a sly twinkle of the eyelid, "that
Castleton House wants painting!"

"At twelve to-morrow, then?"

"Twelve to-morrow. Alas! that's just the hour at which Mr Screw, the
agent for the London property, (two squares, seven streets, and a
lane!) is to call."

"Perhaps two o'clock will suit you better?"

"Two!--just the hour at which Mr Plausible, one of the Castleton
members, insists upon telling me why his conscience will not let him
vote with Trevanion!"

"Three o'clock?"

"Three!--just the hour at which I am to see the Secretary of the
Treasury, who has promised to relieve Mr Plausible's conscience! But
come and dine with me--you will meet the executors to the will!"

"Nay, Sir Sedley--that is, my dear lord--I will take my chance, and
look in, after dinner."

"Do so; my guests are not lively! What a firm step the rogue has! Only
twenty, I think--twenty! and not an acre of property to plague him!" So
saying, the marquis dolorously shook his head, and vanished through the
noiseless mahogany doors, behind which Messrs Fudge and Fidget awaited
the unhappy man,--with the accounts of the great Castleton coal mine.


CHAPTER LXXVII.

On my way towards our lodgings, I resolved to look in at a humble
tavern, in the coffee-room of which the Captain and myself habitually
dined. It was now about the usual hour in which we took that meal, and
he might be there waiting for me. I had just gained the steps of this
tavern, when a stage coach came rattling along the pavement, and drew
up at an inn of more pretensions than that which we favoured, situated
within a few doors of the latter. As the coach stopped, my eye was
caught by the Trevanion livery, which was very peculiar. Thinking I
must be deceived, I drew near to the wearer of the livery, who had
just descended from the roof, and, while he paid the coachman, gave
his orders to a waiter who emerged from the inn--"Half-and-half, cold
without!" The tone of the voice struck me as familiar, and, the man now
looking up, I beheld the features of Mr Peacock. Yes, unquestionably
it was he. The whiskers were shaved--there were traces of powder
in the hair or the wig--the livery of the Trevanions (ay, the very
livery--crestbutton, and all) upon that portly figure, which I had
last seen in the more august robes of a beadle. But Mr Peacock it
was--Peacock travestied, but Peacock still. Before I had recovered my
amaze, a woman got out of a cabriolet, which seemed to have been in
waiting for the arrival of the coach, and, hurrying up to Mr Peacock,
said in the loud impatient tone common to the fairest of the fair sex,
when in haste--"How late you are--I was just going. I must get back to
Oxton to-night."

Oxton--Miss Trevanion was staying at Oxton! I was now close behind the
pair--I listened with my heart in my ear.

"So you shall, my dear--so you shall; just come in, will you."

"No, no; I have only ten minutes to catch the coach. Have you any
letter for me from Mr Gower? How can I be sure, if I don't see it under
his own hand, that"--

"Hush!" said Peacock, sinking his voice so low that I could only
catch the words, "no names, letter, pooh, I'll tell you." He then
drew her apart, and whispered to her for some moments. I watched the
woman's face, which was bent towards her companion's, and it seemed
to show quick intelligence. She nodded her head more than once, as if
in impatient assent to what was said; and, after a shaking of hands,
hurried off to the cab; then, as if a thought struck her, she ran back,
and said--

"But in case my lady should not go--if there's any change of plan?"

"There'll be no change, you may be sure: Positively to-morrow--not too
early; you understand?"

"Yes, yes; good-by"--and the woman, who was dressed with a quiet
neatness, that seemed to stamp her profession as that of an abigail,
(black cloak, with long cape--of that peculiar silk which seems spun
on purpose for ladies'-maids--bonnet to match, with red and black
ribbons,) hastened once more away, and in another moment the cab drove
off furiously.

What could all this mean? By this time the waiter brought Mr Peacock
the half-and-half. He despatched it hastily, and then strode on towards
a neighbouring stand of cabriolets. I followed him; and just as, after
beckoning one of the vehicles from the stand, he had ensconced himself
therein, I sprang up the steps and placed myself by his side. "Now,
Mr Peacock," said I, "you will tell me at once how you come to wear
that livery, or I shall order the cabman to drive to Lady Ellinor
Trevanion's, and ask her that question myself."

"And who the devil!--Ah, you're the young gentleman that came to me
behind the scenes--I remember."

"Where to, sir?" asked the cabman.

"To--to London Bridge," said Mr Peacock.

The man mounted the box, and drove on.

"Well, Mr Peacock, I wait your answer. I guess by your face that you
are about to tell me a lie; I advise you to speak the truth."

"I don't know what business you have to question me," said Mr Peacock
sullenly; and, raising his glance from his own clenched fists, he
suffered it to wander over my form with so vindictive a significance
that I interrupted the survey by saying, "Will you encounter the house?
as the Swan interrogatively puts it--shall I order the cabman to drive
to St James's Square?"

"Oh, you know my weak point, sir; any man who can quote Will--sweet
Will--has me on the hip," rejoined Mr Peacock, smoothing his
countenance, and spreading his palms on his knees. "But if a man does
fall in the world, and, after keeping servants of his own, is obliged
to be himself a servant,

    ---- 'I will not shame
    To tell you what I am.'"

"The Swan says, 'To tell you what I _was_,' Mr Peacock. But enough of
this trifling: who placed you with Mr Trevanion?"

Mr Peacock looked down for a moment, and then, fixing his eyes on me,
said--"Well, I'll tell you: you asked me, when we met last, about a
young gentleman--Mr--Mr Vivian."

PISISTRATUS.--Proceed.

PEACOCK.--I know you don't want to harm him. Besides, "He hath
a prosperous art," and one day or other,--mark my words, or rather my
friend Will's--

    "He will bestride this narrow world
    Like a Colossus."

Upon my life he will--like a Colossus,

    "And we petty men--"

PISISTRATUS (_savagely_.)--Go on with your story.

PEACOCK (_snappishly_.)--I am going on with it! You put me
out; where was I--oh--ah yes. I had just been sold up--not a penny in
my pocket; and if you could have seen my coat--yet that was better
than the small-clothes! Well, it was in Oxford Street--no, it was in
the Strand, near the Lowther--

    "The sun was in the heavens; and the proud day
    Attended, with the pleasures of the world."

PISISTRATUS, (_lowering the glass_.)--To St James's Square?

PEACOCK.--No, no; to London Bridge.

    "How use doth breed a habit in a man!"

I will go on--honour bright. So I met Mr Vivian, and as he had known me
in better days, and has a good heart of his own, he says--

    "Horatio,--or I do forget myself."

Pisistratus puts his hand on the check-string.

PEACOCK.--I mean, (_correcting himself_)--"Why, Johnson, my
good fellow."

PISISTRATUS.--Johnson!--oh that's your name--not Peacock.

PEACOCK.--Johnson and Peacock both, (_with dignity_.) When you
know the world as I do, sir, you will find that it is ill travelling
this "naughty world" without a change of names in your portmanteau.

"Johnson," says he, "my good fellow," and he pulled out his purse.
"Sir," said I, "if, 'exempt from public haunt,' I could get something
to do when this dross is gone. In London there are sermons in stones,
certainly, but not 'good in everything,'--an observation I should take
the liberty of making to the Swan, if he were not now, alas! 'the
baseless fabric of a vision.'"

PISISTRATUS.--Take care!

PEACOCK--(_hurriedly_.)--Then says Mr Vivian, "If you don't
mind wearing a livery, till I can provide for you more suitably, my old
friend, there's a vacancy in the establishment of Mr Trevanion." Sir, I
accepted the proposal, and that's why I wear this livery.

PISISTRATUS.--And, pray, what business had you with that young
woman, whom I take to be Miss Trevanion's maid?--and why should she
come from Oxton to see you?

I had expected that these questions would confound Mr Peacock, but
if there really were anything in them to cause embarrassment, the
_ci-devant_ actor was too practised in his profession to exhibit it. He
merely smiled, and smoothing jauntily a very tumbled shirt-front, he
said, "Oh sir, fie!

                      'Of this matter,
    Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made.'

If you must know my love affairs, that young woman is, as the vulgar
say, my sweetheart."

"Your sweetheart!" I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and acknowledging
at once the probability of the statement. "Yet," I added
suspiciously--"yet, if so, why should she expect Mr Gower to write to
her?"

"You're quick of hearing, sir; but though

          'All adoration, duty, and observance;
    All humbleness, and patience, and impatience,'

the young woman will not marry a livery servant--proud creature, very
proud!--and Mr Gower, you see, knowing how it was, felt for me, and
told her, if I may take such liberty with the Swan, that she should

      ----'Never lie by Johnson's side
    With an unquiet soul,'

for that he would get me a place in the Stamps! The silly girl said she
would have it in black and white--as if Mr Gower would write to her!"

"And now, sir," continued Mr Peacock, with a simpler gravity, "you
are at liberty, of course, to say what you please to my lady, but I
hope you'll not try to take the bread out of my mouth because I wear
a livery, and am fool enough to be in love with a waiting-woman--I,
sir, who could have married ladies who have played the first parts in
life--on the metropolitan stage."

I had nothing to say to these representations--they seemed plausible;
and though at first I had suspected that the man had only resorted to
the buffoonery of his quotations in order to gain time for invention,
or to divert my notice from any flaw in his narrative, yet at the
close, as the narrative seemed probable, so I was willing to believe
that the buffoonery was merely characteristic. I contented myself
therefore with asking--

"Where do you come from now?"

"From Mr Trevanion, in the country, with letters to Lady Ellinor?"

"Oh, and so the young woman knew you were coming to town?"

"Yes, sir; some days ago. Mr Trevanion told me the day I should have to
start."

"And what do you and the young woman propose doing to-morrow, if there
is no change of plan?"

Here I certainly thought there was a slight, scarce perceptible,
alteration in Mr Peacock's countenance, but he answered readily,
"To-morrow? a little assignation, if we can both get out;--

    'Woo me, now I am in a holiday humour,
    And like enough to consent.'

Swan again, sir!"

"Humph!--so then Mr Gower and Mr Vivian are the same person."

Peacock hesitated. "That's not _my_ secret, sir; 'I am combined by a
sacred vow.' You are too much the gentleman to peep through the blanket
of the dark, and to ask me, who wear the whips and stripes--I mean the
plush small-clothes and shoulder-knots--the secrets of another gent, to
whom 'my services are bound.'"

How a man past thirty foils a man scarcely twenty!--what superiority
the mere fact of living-on gives to the dullest dog! I bit my lip, and
was silent.

"And," pursued Mr Peacock, "if you knew how the Mr Vivian you inquired
after loves you"! When I told him incidentally, how a young gentleman
had come behind the scenes to inquire after him, he made me describe
you, and then said, quite mournfully, 'If ever I am what I hope to
become, how happy I shall be to shake that kind hand once more,'--very
words, sir!--honour bright!

    'I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom
    Can lesser hide his hate or love than he.'

And if Mr Vivian has some reason to keep himself concealed still--if
his fortune or ruin depend on your not divulging his secret for
awhile--I can't think you are the man he need fear. 'Pon my life,

    'I wish I was as sure of a good dinner,'

as the Swan touchingly exclaims. I dare swear that was a wish often on
the Swan's lips in the privacy of his domestic life!"

My heart was softened, not by the pathos of the much profaned and
desecrated Swan, but by Mr Peacock's unadorned repetition of Vivian's
words; I turned my face from the sharp eyes of my companion--the cab
now stopped at the foot of London Bridge.

I had no more to ask, yet still there was some uneasy curiosity in my
mind, which I could hardly define to myself,--was it not jealousy?
Vivian, so handsome and so daring--_he_ at least might see the great
heiress; Lady Ellinor perhaps thought of no danger there. But--I--I was
a lover still, and--nay, such thoughts were folly indeed!

"My man," said I to the ex-comedian, "I neither wish to harm Mr Vivian
(if I am so to call him,) nor you who imitate him in the variety of
your names. But I tell you, fairly, that I do not like your being in Mr
Trevanion's employment, and I advise you to get out of it as soon as
possible. I say nothing more as yet, for I shall take time to consider
well what you have told me."

With that I hastened away, and Mr Peacock continued his solitary
journey over London Bridge.


CHAPTER LXXVIII.

Amidst all that lacerated my heart, or tormented my thoughts, that
eventful day, I felt at least one joyous emotion, when, on entering our
little drawing-room, I found my uncle seated there.

The Captain had placed before him on the table a large Bible, borrowed
from the landlady. He never travelled, to be sure, without his own
Bible, but the print of that was small, and the Captain's eyes began
to fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type; and a
candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leant his
elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his
forehead--tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and _force_ his
whole soul upon the page.

He sate, the image of iron courage; in every line of that rigid form
there was resolution. "I will _not_ listen to my heart; I _will_ read
the Book, and learn to suffer as becomes a Christian man."

There was such a pathos in the stern sufferer's attitude, that it spoke
those words as plainly as if his lips had said them.

Old soldier! thou hast done a soldier's part in many a bloody field;
but if I could make visible to the world thy brave soldier's soul, I
would paint thee as I saw thee then!--Out on this tyro's hand!

At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and the strife he had
gone through was written upon his face.

"It has done me good," said he simply, and he closed the book.

I drew my chair near to him, and hung my arm over his shoulder.

"No cheering news then?" asked I in a whisper.

Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.


CHAPTER LXXIX.

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever
their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in
me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.

Yet, as "restless I roll'd around my weary bed," and revolved the
renewal of Vivian's connexion with a man of character so equivocal as
Peacock, the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his
own in the service of Trevanion, the care with which he had concealed
from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to
which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his
creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid, the words
that had passed between them--plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet
still suspicious--and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's
reckless ambition, and unprincipled sentiments--nay, the effect that
a few random words upon Fanny's fortune, and the luck of winning an
heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious
temper: when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the
darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the
world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue.
Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what?--the character of a servant,
or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say,
if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss
him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without, not indeed
betraying his confidence--for that he had never given me--but without
belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly
made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever
were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin
his prospects by revealing the aliases he assumed. But wherefore
reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not
myself analyse--suspicions founded on circumstances most of which had
already been seemingly explained away? Still, when morning came, I
was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland's countenance,
and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care, that I had no
option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong
understanding and unerring sense of honour, I wandered out, hoping that
in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts, and solve the problem
that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my
voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And,
this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as
it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon
Lady Ellinor, and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about
Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.

Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by
post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement--scattering to the
right and left all humbler equipages--and hurried, as if on an errand
of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland
Place. But, rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the
face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage, and that face wore a strange
expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and, by
her side--was not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did not
see the face of the woman, but I thought I recognised the cloak, the
bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If I could be mistaken there, I
was not mistaken at least as to the servant on the seat behind. Looking
back at a butcher's boy, who had just escaped being run over, and was
revenging himself by all the imprecations the Diræ of London slang
could suggest, the face of Mr Peacock was exposed in full to my gaze.

My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to spring after
the carriage; in the haste of that impulse, I cried "Stop!" But the
carriage was out of sight in a moment, and my word was lost in air.
After pausing for a moment, full of presentiments of some evil--I
knew not what--I then altered my course, and stopped not till I found
myself, panting and out of breath, in St James's Square--at the door of
Trevanion's house--in the hall. The porter had a newspaper in his hand
as he admitted me.

"Where is Lady Ellinor? I must see her instantly."

"No worse news of master, I hope, sir?"

"Worse news of what?--of whom?--of Mr Trevanion?"

"Did you not know he was suddenly taken ill, sir; that a servant came
express to say so last night. Lady Ellinor went off at ten o'clock to
join him."

"At ten o'clock last night?"

"Yes, sir; the servant's account alarmed her ladyship so much."

"The new servant, who had been recommended by Mr Gower?"

"Yes, sir--Henry," answered the porter staring at me. "Please, sir,
here is an account of master's attack in the paper. I suppose Henry
took it to the office before he came here, which was very wrong in him;
but I am afraid he's a very foolish fellow."

"Never mind that, Miss Trevanion--I saw her just now--_she_ did not go
with her mother; Where was she going, then?"

"Why, sir--but pray step into the parlour."

"No, no--speak."

"Why, sir, before Lady Ellinor set out, she was afraid that there
_might_ be something in the papers to alarm Miss Trevanion, and so she
sent Henry down to Lady Castleton's, to beg her ladyship to make as
light of it as she could; but it seems that Henry blabbed the worst to
Mrs Mole,--"

"Who is Mrs Mole?"

"Miss Trevanion's maid, sir--a new maid; and Mrs Mole blabbed to my
young lady, and so she took fright, and insisted on coming to town.
And Lady Castleton, who is ill herself in bed, could not keep her,
I suppose--especially as Henry said, though he ought to have known
better, 'that she would be in time to arrive before my lady set off.'
Poor Miss Trevanion was so disappointed when she found her mamma gone.
And then she would order fresh horses, and would go on, though Mrs
Bates (the housekeeper, you know, sir) was very angry with Mrs Mole,
who encouraged Miss; and--"

"Good heavens! Why did not Mrs Bates go with her?"

"Why, sir, you know how old Mrs Bates is, and my young lady is always
so kind that she would not hear of it, as she is going to travel night
and day; and Mrs Mole said she had gone all over the world with her
last lady, and that--"

"I see it all. Where is Mr Gower?"

"Mr Gower, sir!"

"Yes! Can't you answer?"

"Why, with Mr Trevanion, I believe, sir."

"In the north--what is the address?"

"Lord N----, C---- Hall, near W----"

I heard no more.

The conviction of some villanous snare struck me as with the swiftness
and force of lightning. Why, if Trevanion were really ill, had the
false servant concealed it from me? Why suffered me to waste his
time, instead of hastening to Lady Ellinor? How, if Mr Trevanion's
_sudden_ illness had brought the man to London--how had he known so
long beforehand (as he himself told me, and his appointment with the
waiting woman proved) the day he should arrive? Why now, if there were
no design of which Miss Trevanion was the object--why so frustrate the
provident foresight of her mother, and take advantage of the natural
yearning of affection, the quick impulse of youth, to hurry off a
girl whose very station forbade her to take such a journey without
suitable protection--against what must be the wish, and what clearly
were the instructions, of Lady Ellinor? Alone,--worse than alone!
Fanny Trevanion was then in the hands of two servants, who were the
instruments and confidants of an adventurer like Vivian; and that
conference between those servants--those broken references to the
morrow, coupled with the name Vivian had assumed--needed the unerring
instincts of love more cause for terror--terror the darker, because the
exact shape it should assume was obscure and indistinct?

I sprang from the house.

I hastened into the Haymarket, summoned a cabriolet, drove home as fast
as I could (for I had no money about me for the journey I meditated;)
sent the servant of the lodging to engage a chaise-and-four,
rushed into the room, where Roland fortunately still was, and
exclaimed--"Uncle, come with me!--take money, plenty of money!--Some
villany I know, though I cannot explain it, has been practised on the
Trevanions. We may defeat it yet. I will tell you all by the way--come,
come!"

"Certainly. But villany!--and to people of such a
station--pooh--collect yourself. Who is the villain?"

"Oh, the man I have loved as a friend--the man whom I myself helped to
make known to Trevanion.--Vivian--Vivian!"

"Vivian!--ah, the youth I have heard you speak of. But how?--villany to
whom--to Trevanion?"

"You torture me with your questions. Listen--this Vivian (I know
him)--he has introduced into the house, as a servant, an agent capable
of any trick and fraud; that servant has aided him to win over her
maid--Fanny's--Miss Trevanion's. Miss Trevanion is an heiress, Vivian
an adventurer. My head swims round, I cannot explain now. Ha! I will
write a line to Lord Castleton--tell him my fears and suspicions--he
will follow us, I know, or do what is best."

I drew ink and paper towards me, and wrote hastily. My uncle came round
and looked over my shoulder.

Suddenly he exclaimed, seizing my arm, "Gower, Gower. What name is
this? You said 'Vivian.'"

"Vivian or Gower--the same person."

My uncle hurried out of the room. It was natural that he should leave
me to make our joint and brief preparations for departure.

I finished my letter, sealed it, and when, five minutes afterwards,
the chaise came to the door, I gave it to the ostler who accompanied
the horses, with injunctions to deliver it forthwith to Lord Castleton
himself.

My uncle now descended, and walked from the threshold with a firm
stride. "Comfort yourself," he said, as he entered the chaise, into
which I had already thrown myself. "We may be mistaken yet."

"Mistaken! You do not know this young man. He has every quality that
could entangle a girl like Fanny, and not, I fear, one sentiment of
honour that would stand in the way of his ambition. I judge him now as
by a revelation--too late--oh Heavens, if it be too late!"

A groan broke from Roland's lips. I heard in it a proof of his sympathy
with my emotion, and grasped his hand; it was as cold as the hand of
the dead.




THE ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY.[4]

[4] _Histoire des Conspirations et des Executions Politiques,
comprenant l'Histoire des Sociétés Secrètes depuis les temps les plus
reculés jusqu'à nos jours._ Par A. BLANC. 4 Vols. Volume the Third:
RUSSIA.


Professor Shaw, in the preface to his translation of Lajetchnikoff's
striking and interesting romance, _The Heretic_, notices the shyness
of English novelists in approaching Russian ground. "How happens it,"
he says, "that Russia, with her reminiscences of two centuries and a
half of Tartar dominion--of her long and bloody struggles with the
Ottoman and the Pole, whose territories stretch almost from the arctic
ice to the equator, and whose semi-oriental diadem bears inscribed upon
it such names as Peter and Catherine--should have been passed over
as incapable of supplying rich materials for fiction and romance?"
The question is hard to answer, and appears doubly so after reading
the third volume of Monsieur A. Blanc's recent work on political
conspiracies and executions,--a volume sufficient of itself to set
those romance-writing who never wrote romance before. It is a trite
remark, that romances, having history for their groundwork, derive
their attraction and interest far more from the skill and genius of
their authors than from the importance of the period selected, and
from the historical prominence of the characters introduced. It is
unnecessary to name writers in whose hands a Bayard or a du Guesclin, a
Cromwell or a Charles of Sweden, would appear tame and commonplace. Our
readers need not to be reminded of others of a different stamp,--and
of one, great amongst all, the rays of whose genius have formed a halo
of grandeur, glory, or fascination around persons to whom history
accords scarcely a word. But such genius is not of every-day growth;
and to historical romance-writers of the calibre of most of those with
whom the British public is now fain to cry content, the mere devising
of a plot, uniting tolerable historical fidelity with some claim to
originality, is an undertaking in which they are by no means uniformly
successful. To such we recommend, as useful auxiliaries, M. Blanc's
octavos, and especially the one that suggests the present article.
English and Scottish histories, if not used up, have at least been very
handsomely worked, and have fairly earned a little tranquillity upon
their shelves: the wars of the Stuarts, in particular, have contributed
more than their quota to the literary fund. The same may be said of the
history of France, so fertile in striking events, and so largely made
use of by purveyors to the circulating libraries. Italy and Spain, and
even Poland, have not escaped; whilst the East has been disported over
in every direction by the accomplished Morier, and a swarm of imitators
and inferiors. But what Englishman has tried his hand at a Russian
historical romance? We strive in vain to call to mind an original novel
in our language founded on incidents of Russian history--although the
history of scarcely any nation in the world includes, in the same space
of time, a greater number of strange and extraordinary events.

M. Blanc's book, notwithstanding a certain air of pretension in the
style of its getting up, in the very mediocre illustrations, and in
the tone of the introductory pages, is substantially an unassuming
performance. It is a compilation, and contains little that is not to
be found printed elsewhere. At the same time, perhaps in no other
work are the same events and details thrown together in so compact
and entertaining a form. The author troubles us with few comments of
his own, and his reserve in this respect enhances the merit of his
book, for when he departs from it his views are somewhat strained
and ultra-French. But his narrative is spiritedly put together; and
although it will be found, upon comparison, that he has, for the most
part, faithfully adhered to high historical authorities, to the
exclusion of mere traditionary matter and of imaginative embellishment,
yet the dramatic interest of the subject is itself so vivid, that the
book reads like a romance.

The Russian history, even to our own day, is a sanguinary and cruel
chronicle. Its brevity is its best excuse. The youth of the country
extenuates the crimes of its children. For if the strides of Russia
have been vast and rapid in the paths of civilisation, we must bear
in mind that it is but very recently the progress began. "At the
commencement of the eighteenth century," says M. Blanc, "it had
certainly been very difficult to foresee that fifty years later a
magnificent and polite court would be established on the Gulf of
Finland; that soldiers raised on the banks of the Volga and the Don
would rank with the best disciplined troops; and that an empire, of
itself larger than all the rest of Europe, would have passed from a
state of barbarism to one of civilisation as advanced as that of the
most favoured European states." This is overshooting the mark, and
is an exaggeration even a hundred years after the date assigned. If
the civilisation of St Petersburg has for some time vied with that of
London or Paris, Russia, as a country, has even now much to do before
she can be placed on a footing with England or France in refinement and
intellectual cultivation. It is difficult to institute a comparison
in a case where the nature of the countries, the characters of the
nations, and the circumstances of their rise, are, and have been,
so dissimilar. The investigation might easily entail a disquisition
of a length that would leave very little room for an examination of
the book in hand. And all that we seek in the present instance to
establish will be readily conceded--namely, that in the throes of a
country accomplishing with unprecedented rapidity the passage, usually
so gradual, from barbarism to civilisation, some palliation is to be
found for the faults and vices of her nobles and rulers, and for the
blood-stains disfiguring her annals.

The early history of Russia, from the foundation of the empire by Rurik
to the reign of Ivan IV.--that is to say from the middle of the ninth
to the middle of the sixteenth century--is a chaos of traditions and
uncertainties, which M. Blanc has deemed unfavourable to the project
of his book, and which he accordingly passes over in an introductory
chapter. His business, as may be gathered from his title-page, is
with the internal convulsions of the country; and these are difficult
to trace, until Ivan Vassilivitch threw off the Tartar yoke, and his
grandson Ivan IV., surnamed the Tyrant, or the Terrible, began, with an
iron hand, it is true, to labour at the regeneration of his country. A
bloodthirsty despot, Russia yet owes him much. The people, demoralised
by Tartar rule, needed rigid laws and severe treatment. Ivan
promulgated a code far superior to any previously in use. He invited
to Russia foreign mechanics, artists, and men of science; established
the first printing-press seen in the country; and laid the foundation
of Russian trade, by a treaty of commerce with our own Elizabeth. By
the conquest of Kazan, of the kingdom of Astracan, and of districts
adjacent to the Caucasus, he extended the limits of the Russian
empire. But his wise enactments and warlike successes were sullied by
atrocious acts of cruelty. In Novogorod, which had offended him by its
desires for increased liberty, he raged for six weeks like an incensed
tiger. Sixty thousand human beings, according to some historians, fell
victims on that occasion. Similar scenes of butchery were enacted in
Tver, Moscow, and other cities. His cruel disposition was evident at
a very early age. He was but thirteen years old when he assembled his
boyarins to inform them that he needed not their guidance, and would
no longer submit to their encroachments on his royal prerogative. "I
ought to punish you all," he said, "for all of you have been guilty of
offences against my person; but I will be indulgent, and the weight of
my anger shall fall only on Andrew Schusky, who is the worst amongst
you." Schusky, the head of a family which had seized the reins of
government during the Czar's minority, endeavoured to justify himself.
Ivan would not hear him. "Seize and bind him," cried the boy-despot,
"and throw him to my dogs. They have a right to the repast." A pack of
ferocious hounds, which Ivan took pleasure in rearing, were brought
under the window, and irritated by every possible means. When they
were sufficiently exasperated, Andrew Schusky was thrown amongst them.
His cries increased their fury, and his body was torn to shreds and
devoured.

Ivan dead, his son Feodor, who should have been surnamed the Feeble,
as his father was the Terrible, ascended the Russian throne. He was
the last of Rurik's descendants who occupied it. Even during his reign
he recognised as regent of the empire his brother-in-law, the insolent
and ambitious Boris Godunof. Possessed of the real power, this man
coveted the external pomp of royalty. The crown was his aim, and to its
possession after the death of Feodor, who, as weak of body as of mind,
was not likely to be long-lived, only one obstacle existed. This was
a younger son of Ivan IV., a child of a few years old, named Dmitri
or Demetrius. The existence of this infant was a slight bar to one so
unscrupulous as Godunof, a bar which a poniard soon removed. Feodor
died, and his brother-in-law accepted, with much show of reluctance,
the throne he had so long desired to fill. For the first time for many
years he breathed freely; his end was attained; he thought not of the
many crimes that had led to it, of the spilt blood of his child-victim,
or of that of two hundred of the inhabitants of Ouglitch, judicially
murdered by his orders in revenge of the death of Demetrius' assassins,
whom the people had risen upon and slain; the tears of Ivan's widow,
now childless and confined in a convent, and of her whole family,
condemned to a horrible captivity, troubled not his repose or his
dreams of future prosperity. But whilst he exulted in security and
splendour, his joy was suddenly troubled by a strange retribution.
Demetrius was dead; of that there could be no doubt; his emissary's
dagger had done the work too surely--but the name of the rightful heir
survived to make the usurper tremble. It is curious to observe in how
many details Godunof's own crimes contributed to his punishment. His
manoeuvres to suppress the facts of Demetrius' death, by stopping
couriers and falsifying despatches, so as to make it appear that the
young prince had killed himself with a knife in a fit of epilepsy, had
thrown a sort of mystery and ambiguity over the whole transaction,
favourable to the designs and pretensions of impostors. One of the many
dark deeds by which he had paved his way to the supreme power was the
removal of the metropolitan of the Russian church, who was deposed and
shut up in a convent, where it was pretty generally believed he met a
violent death. In lieu of this dignitary, previously the sole chief of
the Russian church, Godunof created a patriarchate, and Jeremiah of
Constantinople went to Moscow to install the first patriarch, whose
name was Job. This prelate, whilst visiting the convent of Tchudof, was
struck by the intelligence of a young monk named Gregory Otrepief or
Atrepief, who could read, then a rare accomplishment, and who showed
great readiness of wit. The patriarch took this youth into his service
as secretary, and often carried him with him when he went to visit
the Czar. Dazzled by the brilliancy of the court, and perceiving the
ignorance and incapacity of many high personages, Otrepief conceived
the audacious design of elevating himself above those to whom he felt
himself already far superior in ability. He was acquainted with the
details of the death of young Demetrius; and from some old servants of
the Czarina Mary he obtained particulars of the character, qualities,
and tastes of the deceased prince, all of which he carefully noted
down, as well as the names and titles of the officers and attendants
who had been attached to his person. Having prepared and studied his
part, he asked leave to return to his convent. This was granted.
His fellow-monks wondered to see him thus abandon the advantageous
prospects held out to him by the favour of the patriarch.

"What should I become by remaining at court?" replied Otrepief, with a
laugh: "a bishop at most, and I mean to be Czar of Moscow."

At first this passed as a joke; but Otrepief, either through bravado,
or because it formed part of his scheme, repeated it so often, that it
at last came to the ears of the Czar himself, who said the monk must
be mad. At the same time, as he knew by experience that the usurpation
of the throne was not an impossible thing, he ordered, as an excessive
precaution, that the boaster should be sent to a remote convent.
Otrepief set out, but on the road he seduced his escort, consisting of
two monks. By large promises he prevailed with them to accompany him to
Lithuania, where many enemies of Godunof had taken refuge. According to
the custom of the times, the travellers passed the nights in roadside
monasteries, and in every cell that he occupied Otrepief wrote upon
the walls--"I am Demetrius, son of Ivan IV. Although believed to be
dead, I escaped from my assassins. When I am upon my father's throne
I will recompense the generous men who now show me hospitality." Soon
the report spread far and wide that the Czarowitz Demetrius lived,
and had arrived in Lithuania. Otrepief assumed a layman's dress, left
his monkish adherents--one of whom agreed to bear the name his leader
now renounced--and presented himself as the son of Ivan IV. to the
Zaporian Cossacks, amongst whom he soon acquired the military habits
and knowledge which he deemed essential to the success of his daring
schemes. After a campaign or two, which, judging from the character
of his new associates, were probably mere brigand-like expeditions in
quest of pillage, Otrepief resumed the cowl, and entered the service of
a powerful noble named Vichnevetski, whom he knew to have been greatly
attached to Ivan IV. Pretending to be dangerously ill, he asked for a
confessor. After receiving absolution: "I am about to die," he said to
the priest; "and I entreat you, holy father, to have me buried with
the honours due to the son of the Czar." The priest, a Jesuit, (the
Jesuits were then all-powerful in Poland) asked the meaning of these
strange words, which Otrepief declined telling, but said they would
be explained after his death by a letter beneath his pillow. This
letter the astonished Jesuit took an opportunity to purloin, and at the
same time he perceived on the sick man's breast a gold cross studded
with diamonds--a present received by Otrepief when secretary to the
patriarch. In all haste the Jesuit went to Vichnevetski; they opened
the letter, and gathered from its contents that he who had presented
himself to them as a poor monk was no other than Demetrius, son of
Ivan IV. Vichnevetski had in his service two Russians who had been
soldiers of Ivan. Led to the sick man's bedside, these declared that
they perfectly recognised in him the Czarowitz Demetrius; first, by
his features--although they had not seen him since his childhood--and
afterwards by two warts upon his face, and by an inequality in the
length of his arms.

The Jesuits, never negligent of opportunities to increase their
power, saw in the pretender to the czardom a fit instrument for the
propagation of Romanism in Russia. They enlisted Sigismund king of
Poland in the cause of the false Demetrius, who was treated as a
prince, and lodged in a palace. Thence he negotiated with the pope's
nuncio, who gave him assurance of the support of all Catholic Europe in
exchange for his promise to unite Russia to the Latin church. An army
of Poles and Russian refugees was raised, and the southern provinces of
Russia were inundated with florid proclamations, in which the joys of
an earthly paradise were offered to all who espoused the cause of their
legitimate sovereign, Demetrius. The Don Cossacks, whose robberies had
been recently checked by Godunof, flocked to the pretender's banner,
and so formidable was the army thus collected, that the Czar began
heartily to regret having paid such small attention to the words of the
monk Otrepief. The Ukraine declared for the self-styled son of Ivan
IV.; the voevóda of Sandomir, whose daughter he had promised to marry,
acknowledged him as his prince; towns submitted, and fortresses opened
their gates to the impostor, now in full march upon Moscow. Blinded
by success, Otrepief fancied himself invincible; and, with scarcely
fifteen thousand soldiers, he hurried to meet the Muscovite army, fifty
thousand strong, and provided with a formidable artillery. Beaten,
his undisciplined forces dispersed, and he himself escaped death by
a miracle; but his courage was still undaunted. After a few days,
during which he slept upon the snow, and subsisted upon a few grains of
barley, he succeeded in rallying his scattered bands. These became the
nucleus of a new army; and at the very moment that Godunof, rejoicing
at his victory, prepared to chastise the nobles compromised in the
rebellion, he heard that his enemy was again afoot, more formidable
than ever. Furious at the news, the Czar addressed reproaches and
menaces to his generals, whom he thus completely alienated; and
thenceforth he was surrounded by enemies. A sudden illness soon
afterwards carried him off, giving him scarcely time to proclaim his
son Feodor his successor. Court and clergy, people and army, paid
homage to the young Czar. Amongst others, the general-in-chief of the
army took the oath of fidelity; but no sooner was he again at the head
of his troops, than he negotiated with Otrepief, and went over to him
with all his forces. A few days afterwards the pretender was in Moscow.
He strangled Feodor, and proclaimed himself Czar. Never had an impostor
played his part with greater skill and such complete success. He had
the art even to obtain his recognition from Ivan's widow. He recalled
her relations, exiled since Godunof's usurpation, restored them their
property and loaded them with honours, and then sent word to Mary that
he would be to her a good son or a severe master, as she chose. The
Czarina acknowledged him as her son, and was present at his coronation.

Notwithstanding the strength of this evidence, a noble, named Basil
Shusky or Zulski,--of the family whose chief Ivan IV. had thrown to his
hounds,--still contended against the usurper. He had himself seen the
corpse of Ivan's son Demetrius, and he declared as much to his friends
and partisans, whom he offered to head and lead against the impostor.
Before his plans were ripe, however, he was arrested and brought to
trial. Otrepief offered to pardon him if he would name his accomplices,
and publicly admit that he had lied in stating that he had seen the
dead body of the son of Ivan IV.

"I will retract nothing," was Shusky's firm reply; "for I have spoken
the truth: the man who now wears the crown of the Czar is a vile
impostor. I know the fate reserved for me; but those you uselessly urge
me to betray will revenge my death, and the usurper shall fall."

As he persisted in his courageous assertions, the judges ordered him to
be put to the torture. The executioner tied his hands behind him and
placed upon his head an iron crown, bristling internally with sharp
points; then, with the palm of his hand, he struck the top of the
crown, and blood streamed over the victim's face.

"Confess your guilt!" said the judge.

The intrepid Shusky repeated his asseveration of Otrepief's imposture.
The judge signed to the executioner, who again clapped a heavy hand
upon the iron diadem. But suffering only augmented the energy of the
heroic Muscovite, who continued, as long as consciousness remained in
his tortured head, to denounce the false Czar. At last, when the whole
of the forehead and the greater part of the skull were bared to the
bone, he fainted and was removed. The terrible crown had been pressed
down to his eyes. He was condemned to decapitation; but Otrepief
pardoned him upon the scaffold, and, sometime afterwards, was imprudent
enough to take him into favour and make him his privy counsellor.
Shusky had vowed revenge, and waited only for an opportunity. This
was accelerated by Otrepief's fancied security. One morning the false
Demetrius was roused by alarm-bells, and, on looking from a window,
he beheld the palace surrounded by a host of armed conspirators. The
doors were speedily forced; pursued from room to room by overwhelming
numbers, his clothes and the doors through which he fled riddled with
balls, the Czar at last leaped from a window, and, notwithstanding
serious injuries received in falling, he reached a guardhouse occupied
by the Strelitz. The post was soon surrounded by an armed and menacing
crowd; but the officer commanding declared he would defend his
sovereign with his life.

"He whom you call your sovereign is a monk who has usurped the crown,"
said Shusky to the officer.

"He is the son of the Czarina Mary," was the reply.

"The Czarina herself declares him an impostor."

"Show me her written declaration to that effect, and I will give him
up; but only on that condition."

Shusky ran to the convent where Mary lived in a kind of semi-captivity,
told her what was passing,--that the capital was in his power, and that
she could not now refuse to proclaim the imposture of the wretch who
had compelled her to recognise him as her son. Mary yielded the more
easily that her timorous conscience reproached her with the falsehood
by which she had confirmed an adventurer in the imperial dignity; she
signed and sealed the declaration demanded, and Shusky hastened with
it to the officer of Strelitz. Otrepief was given up. Shusky assembled
some boyarins and formed a tribunal, of which he himself was president,
and before which the Czar, thus rapidly cast down from the throne to
which his address and courage had elevated him, was forthwith arraigned.

"The hour of expiation is come," said Shusky. "The head you so
barbarously mutilated has never ceased to ponder vengeance. Monk
Otrepief, confess yourself an impostor, that God, before whom you are
about to appear, may have pity on your soul."

"I am the Czar Demetrius," replied Otrepief, with much assurance: "it
is not the first time that rebellious subjects, led astray by traitors,
have dared lay hands on the sacred person of their sovereign; but such
crimes never remain unpunished."

"You would gain time," replied Shusky; "but you will not succeed; the
Czarina Mary's declaration is sufficient for us to decide upon your
fate, and, so doing, we doom you to die."

Thereupon four men seized the culprit and pushed him against a wall;
two others, armed with muskets, went close up to him and shot him. He
struggled an instant, and then expired. His corpse, dragged by the mob
to the place of common execution, was there abandoned with outrage
and mutilation. His death was the signal for the massacre of the
Poles, whom Otrepief had always favoured, affecting their manners, and
selecting them for his body-guard. Moscow just then contained a great
number of those foreigners; for Marina, daughter of the voevóda of
Sandomir, had arrived a few days before for her nuptials with the Czar,
and had been closely followed by the King of Poland's ambassadors,
with an armed and numerous suite. After an orgie at the palace, the
Poles had committed various excesses, beating peaceable citizens and
outraging women, which had greatly exasperated the people. Besides
this, their religion rendered them odious; and scarcely had the false
Demetrius fallen when the Russian priests and monks raised the cry
of massacre. With shouts of "Down with the Pope!" and "Death to the
heretics!" they spread through the city, pointing out to the people
the dwellings of the Poles, whose doors were already marked by the
conspirators. It was a St Bartholomew on a small scale. Blood flowed
for six hours in the streets of Moscow: more than a thousand Poles were
slaughtered; and, when the work was done, the murderers repaired to the
churches to thank God for the success of their enterprise. Shusky was
proclaimed Czar by the will of the people, which, at that moment, it
would not have been safe to thwart.

The brilliant success of one impostor, temporary though it had proved,
soon raised up others. Shusky was no sooner on the throne than the
report spread that Czar Demetrius had not been shot--that a faithful
adherent had suffered death in his stead. And a runaway serf, Ivan
Bolotnikof by name, undertook to personate the defunct impostor.
But although he collected a sort of army of Strelitz, Cossacks,
and peasants, glad of any pretext for pillage, and although he was
recognised by two powerful princes, one of whom, strange to say, was
his former owner, Prince Téliatevski, his abilities and his success
were alike far inferior to those of Otrepief. Astracan and several
other towns revolted in his favour; but Shusky marched against him,
won a battle, in which Téliatevski was killed, and besieged Toula, in
which Bolotnikof and the other chiefs of the revolt had shut themselves
up. "The besieged," says M. Blanc, "defended themselves vigorously";
but Shusky, by the advice of a child, who was assuredly born with
the genius of destruction, stopped the course of the Oupa, by means
of a dike made below the town, through which the river flowed. The
topographical position of the town was such that in a few hours it was
completely under water. Many of the inhabitants were drowned; defence
became impossible; and Bolotnikof, seized by his mutinous followers,
was given up to Shusky. This second false Demetrius was forthwith
shot; but his fate did not discourage a third impostor, who, like his
predecessor, commanded armies, but never reached the throne. From
first to last, no less than seven candidates appeared for the name and
birthright of Ivan's murdered son. Three of them were promptly crushed;
the seventh audaciously asserted that he united in his person not only
the true Demetrius, whom Godunof had assassinated, but also the one
whom Shusky had dragged from the throne, and two of the subsequent
impostors. This was rather a strong dose even for Cossacks to swallow;
but these gentlemen rejoiced at the prospect of booty, affected to
credit the tale, and bore the pretender's banner to within a short
distance of Moscow. There his career terminated. A Cossack chief, who
had often seen Otrepief, finding himself in the presence of the seventh
Demetrius, declared aloud that he was not the Czar he had served,
arrested the impostor with his own hand, and hung him on a neighbouring
tree.

The annals of this period of Russian history are painful from the
atrocities they record; and M. Blanc is prodigal of horrors. The
interval of a quarter of a century between the extinction of the line
of Rurik and the accession of the Romanoff dynasty, still paramount
in Russia, was occupied by constant struggles between usurpers and
pretenders, none of whom dreamed of a milder fate than death for the
foe who fell into their hands. And happy was the vanquished chief who
escaped with a prompt and merciful death by axe or bullet. The most
hideous tortures were put in practice, either for the extortion of
confessions, or for the gratification of malice. Even Shusky, whom we
have shown enduring with noble fortitude the agonising pressure of
the iron crown, learned not mercy from suffering. His treatment of an
enthusiastic boyarin, sent by the third false Demetrius to summon him
to vacate the throne, was such as Red Indians or Spanish inquisitors
might have shuddered to witness. It is recorded, in all its horrible
details, at page 52 of the _Histoire des Conspirations_, &c. The
torture of individuals, which was of frequent occurrence, was varied
from time to time by the massacre of multitudes. We have mentioned
that of the Poles. In 1611, after Shusky's dethronement, it was the
turn of the Muscovites. The Poles having seized Moscow, insisted that
Vladislaus, son of the King of Poland, should be elected Czar. The
nobles consented, but the patriarch steadily refused his consent;
and, by the law of the land, his opposition nullified the election.
Thereupon the Poles ran riot in the city, plundering, murdering, and
ravishing; and at last, unsheathing the sword for a general slaughter,
twenty thousand men, women, and children fell in one day beneath the
murderous steel. A Muscovite army then closely blockaded the place:
and the Poles were reduced to the greatest extremity of famine.
They at last surrendered on condition of their lives being spared,
notwithstanding which compact many were massacred by the Cossacks.
"And yet," says M. Blanc, "the aspect of the town was well calculated
to excite compassion rather than hatred. In the streets the cadaverous
and emaciated inhabitants looked like spectres; in the houses were the
remains of unclean animals, fragments of repasts horrible to imagine;
and what is still more frightful, perhaps unprecedented, salting tubs
were found, _filled with human flesh_."

It was under the reign of Alexis, the second Romanoff and father of
Peter the Great, that there appeared in Russia the most extraordinary
robber the world ever saw. He claimed not to be a Czar or the son of
a Czar; the Demetrius mask was out of date, and one real and another
pretended son of Otrepief and Marina had been executed by order of
Alexis. The new adventurer was a common Cossack from the Don, who went
by his own name of Stenka Razin, and to whom M. Blanc attributes,
perhaps with a little exaggeration, the ambition, courage, and ferocity
of a Tamerlane. In those days the Russian territory was by no means
free from robbers, who pillaged caravans of merchandise, but generally
respected the property of the Czar and the principal nobles, lest they
should make themselves powerful enemies. Razin's first act was to
throw down the glove to his sovereign. He seized a convoy belonging to
the court, and hung some gentlemen who endeavoured to defend it. The
fame of his intrepidity and success brought him many followers, and
soon he was at the head of an army. "He embarked on the Caspian Sea,
and cruised along its shores, frequently landing and seizing immense
booty. At the mouth of the Yaik he was met by an officer of the Czar's,
sent by the voevóda of Astracan to offer him and his companions a free
pardon on condition of their discontinuing their robberies. Razin
replied that he was no robber, but a conqueror; that he made war, and
suffered none to fail in respect towards him. And to prove his words,
he hung the officer, and drowned the men of his escort. A numerous
body of Strelitz was then sent against him. Razin beat the Strelitz,
seized the town of Yatskoi, massacred the garrison and the inhabitants,
and passed the winter there unmolested. In the spring he marched into
Persia." There he accumulated immense booty, but was at last expelled
by a general rising of the population. On his return to Russia he was
soon surrounded by troops; but even then, such was the terror of his
name, the Russian general granted him a capitulation, by which he and
his men were permitted to retire to their native provinces, taking
their plunder with them; and their security was guaranteed so long as
they abstained from aggression. This scandalous convention was ratified
by Alexis, but was not long adhered to by the bandit with whom the Czar
thus meanly condescended to treat as an equal. Stenka's next campaign
was even more successful than the previous one. Bodies of troops
deserted to him, and several towns fell into his power; amongst others,
that of Astracan, where frightful scenes of violence and murder were
enacted--Razin himself parading the streets, intoxicated with brandy,
and stabbing all he met. He was marching upon Moscow, with the avowed
intention of dethroning the Czar, when he sustained a reverse, and,
after fighting like a lion, was made prisoner, and sent in fetters to
the city he had expected to enter in triumph. Taken before Alexis, he
replied boldly and haughtily to the Czar's reproaches and threats.
The only anxiety he showed was to know what manner of death he was to
suffer. He had heard that, in the previous year, an obscure robber and
assassin, who pillaged convents and churches, had been cut into pieces
of half a finger's breadth, beginning at the toes. This barbarous
punishment, of which several instances are cited in M. Blanc's book,
was known as the "torture of the ten thousand pieces." "But," exclaimed
Stenka Razin, with a sort of terror, so horrible did this death appear
to him, "I am no robber of monks! I have commanded armies. I have made
peace with the Czar, therefore I had a right to make war upon him.
Is there not a man amongst you brave enough to split my head with a
hatchet?" The Strelitz guards, to whom these words were addressed,
refused the friendly office, and Razin heard himself condemned to be
quartered alive. He seemed resigned, as if he considered this death an
endurable medium between the decapitation he had implored of his judges
and the barbarous mincing he had been led to expect. But his energy
forsook him on the scaffold, and the man who had so often confronted
and inflicted death, received it in a swooning state.

The characters of few sovereigns admit of being judged more variously
than that of Peter I. of Russia, surnamed the Great. According to the
point of view whence we contemplate him, we behold the hero or the
savage; the wise legislator or the lawless tyrant; the patient pursuer
of science or the dissolute and heartless debauchee. In the long
chapter given to his romantic and eventful reign, M. Blanc shows him
little favour. In a work treating of conspiracies and executions, the
characters of the sovereigns introduced are naturally not exhibited
under their most amiable aspect, especially when those sovereigns are
Russian czars and czarinas, to whom lenity has generally been less
familiar than severity, and pardon than punishment. The pen of Voltaire
has done much for the reputation of Peter the Great, who to us has
always appeared an overrated personage. Historians have vaunted his
exploits and good deeds, till his crimes and barbarities have been lost
sight of in the glitter of panegyric. The monarch who could debase
himself to the level of an executioner, beheading his rebel subjects
with his own hand, and feasting his eyes with the spectacle of death
when he himself was weary of slaying; who could condemn his wife,
repudiated without cause, to the frightful torture of the knout, and
sign the order, which it is more than suspected he himself executed,
for the death of his own son--may have been great as a warrior and a
legislator, but must ever be execrated as a man. Peter was certainly
an extraordinary compound of vices and virtues. His domestic life will
not bear even the most superficial investigation, and M. Blanc has
ripped it up unmercifully. The great reformer--we might almost say
the founder--of the mighty empire of Russia, the conqueror of Charles
of Sweden, was a drunkard and gross sensualist, a bad father, a cruel
and unfaithful husband. Indeed some of his acts seem inexplicable
otherwise than by that ferocious insanity manifest in more than one
of his descendants. Even his rare impulses of mercy were apt to come
too late to save the victim. As illustrating one of them, an incident,
nearly the last event of Peter's life, is given by M. Blanc, in more
minute detail than we ever before met with it. Peter's whole life was
a romance; but this is assuredly one of its most romantic episodes.
A short time before his death, according to M. Blanc, although other
writers fix the date some years earlier, Peter was violently smitten by
the charms of a young girl named Ivanowa. Although tenderly attached,
and about to be married to an officer of the regiment of Schouvaloff,
she dared not oppose the Czar's wishes, but became his mistress. Peter,
who took her repugnance for timidity, fancied himself beloved, and
passed much of his time in her society, in a charming cottage in which
he had installed her at one of the extremities of St Petersburg. He had
enriched her family, who were ignorant, however, of her retreat. Her
betrothed, whose name was Demetrius Daniloff, was in despair at her
disappearance, and made unceasing efforts to discover her, but all in
vain, until Ivanowa, having made a confidant of a Livonian slave, had
him conducted to her presence. The lovers' meetings were then frequent,
so much so, that Peter received intelligence of them. "His anger was
terrible; he roared like a tiger.

'Betrayed! betrayed everywhere and always!' cried he, striding wildly
about the room, and striking his brow with his clenched fist. 'Oh!
revenge! revenge!'

Before the close of day he left the palace, alone, wrapped in a coarse
cloak, his feet in nailed shoes whose patches attested their long
services, his head covered with a fox-skin cap which came down over
his eyebrows and half concealed his eyes. He soon reached Ivanowa's
house, where the lovers deemed themselves perfectly secure, for the
Czar had spread a report of his departure for Moscow. Moreover, the
faithful Livonian slave kept watch in the antechamber, to give an alarm
at the least noise. Peter knew all this, and had taken his measures
accordingly. Opening an outer door with a key of his own, he bounded
into the anteroom, upset the slave, and, with a kick of his powerful
foot, burst the door that separated him from the lovers. All this
occurred with the speed of lightning. Daniloff and Ivanowa had scarce
time to rise from their seats, before the Czar stood over them with his
drawn sword in his hand. Ivanowa uttered a cry of terror, fell on her
knees, and fainted. Prompt as the Czar, Daniloff bared his sabre and
threw himself between his mistress and Peter. The latter lowered his
weapon.

'No,' he said, 'the revenge were too brief.'

He opened a window and cried _hourra_! At the signal, a hundred
soldiers crowded into the house. Mastering his fury, the Czar ordered
the young officer to be taken to prison, there to receive one hundred
blows of the _battogues_ or sticks. Ivanowa was also confined until the
senate should decide on her fate. The next day Daniloff received his
terrible punishment. Before half of it had been inflicted, his back,
from, the loins to the shoulders, was one hideous wound," &c. &c. We
omit the revolting details. "Nevertheless the executioners continued to
strike, and the hundred blows were counted, without a complaint from
the sufferer. The unfortunate Daniloff had not even fainted; he got up
alone,[5] when untied, and asked to have his wounds carefully dressed.

[5] The victim is placed upon his belly (and tied down so that he
cannot change his position) to receive this terrible punishment, in
severity inferior only to the knout.

'I have need to live a short time longer,' he added."

Meanwhile Ivanowa was brought before the senate, and accused of high
treason and of trying to discover state secrets--a charge of Peter's
invention. The supple senate, created by the Czar, condemned her to
receive twenty-two blows of the knout in the presence of her accomplice
Daniloff, already punished by the emperor's order. On the day appointed
for the execution, Peter stood upon the balcony of his winter palace.
Several battalions of infantry marched past, escorting the unfortunate
Demetrius, who, in spite of the frightful sufferings he still endured,
walked with a steady step, and with a firm and even joyful countenance.
Surrounded by another escort, was seen the young and lovely Ivanowa,
half dead with terror, supported on one side by a priest and on the
other by a soldier, and letting her beautiful head fall from one
shoulder to the other, according to the impulse given it by her painful
progress. Even Peter's heart melted at the sight. Re-entering his
apartment, he put on the ribbon of the order of St Andrew, threw a
cloak over his shoulders, left the palace, sprang into a boat, and
reached the opposite side of the river at the same time as the mournful
procession which had crossed the bridge. Making his way through the
crowd, he dropped his cloak, took Ivanowa in his arms, and imprinted
a kiss upon her brow. A murmur arose amongst the people, and suddenly
cries of "pardon" were heard.

"The knights of St Andrew then enjoyed the singular privilege that a
kiss given by them to a condemned person, deprived the executioner of
his victim. This privilege has endured even to our day, but not without
some modification.

"Daniloff had recognised Peter. He approached the Czar, whose every
movement he had anxiously watched, stripped off his coat, and rent the
bloody shirt that covered his shoulders.

"'The man who could suffer thus,' he said, 'knows how to die. Czar,
thy repentance comes too late! Ivanowa, I go to wait for thee!' And
drawing a concealed poniard, he stabbed himself twice. His death was
instantaneous. Peter hurried back to his palace, and the stupified,
crowd slowly dispersed. Ivanowa died shortly afterwards in the convent
to which she had been permitted to retire."

If we are frequently shocked, in the course of M. Blanc's third volume,
by the tyrannical and brutal cruelty of the Russian sovereigns, we are
also repeatedly disgusted by the servility and patient meanness of
those who suffered from it. We behold Muscovite nobles of high rank
and descent, cringing under the wanton torments inflicted on them by
their oppressor, and submitting to degradations to which death, one
would imagine, were, to any free-spirited man, fifty times preferable.
As an example, we will cite the conduct of a Prince Galitzin, who,
after long exile in Germany, where he had become a convert to the
Romish church, solicited and obtained permission to return to his
country. This was in 1740, under the reign of the dissolute and cruel
Czarina Anne. The paramours and flatterers who composed the court of
that licentious princess, urged her to inflict on the new-made papist
the same punishment that had been suffered by a noble named Vonitzin,
who had turned Jew, and had been burned alive, or rather roasted at a
slow fire. Anne refused, but promised the courtiers they should not be
deprived of their sport.

"The same day, Galitzin, although upwards of forty years old, was
ordered to take his place amongst the pages: a few days later he
received a notification that the empress, contented with his services,
had been pleased to raise him to the dignity of her third buffoon.
'The custom of buffoons,' says an historian, 'was then in full force
in Russia; the empress had six, _three of whom were of very high
birth_, and when they did not lend themselves with a good grace to the
tomfooleries required of them by her or her favourites, she had them
punished with the _battogues_.' The empress appeared well satisfied
with the manner in which the prince fulfilled his new duties; and,
as he was a widower, she declared she would find him a wife, that so
valuable a subject might not die without posterity. They selected,
for the poor wretch's bride, the most hideous and disgusting creature
that could be found in the lowest ranks of the populace. Anne herself
arranged the ceremonial of the wedding. It was in the depth of one
of the severest winters of the century; and, at great expense, the
empress had a palace built of ice. Not only was the building entirely
constructed of that material, but all the furniture, including the
nuptial bed, was also of ice. In front of the palace were ice cannons,
mounted on ice carriages.

Anne and all her court conducted the newly-married pair to this
palace, their destined habitation. The guests were in sledges drawn
by dogs and reindeer; the husband and wife, enclosed in a cage, were
carried on an elephant. When the procession arrived near the palace,
the ice cannons were fired, and not one of them burst, so intense was
the cold. Several of them were even loaded with bullets, which pierced
thick planks at a considerable distance. When everybody had entered the
singular edifice, the ball began. It probably did not last long. On its
conclusion, Anne insisted on the bride and bridegroom being put to bed
in her presence: they were undressed, with the exception of their under
garments, and were compelled to lie down upon the bed of ice, without
covering of any kind. Then the company went away, and sentinels were
placed at the door of the nuptial chamber, to prevent the couple from
leaving it before the next day! But when the next day came, they had
to be carried out; the poor creatures were in a deplorable state, and
survived their torture but a few days."

This patient submission to a long series of indignities on the part of
a man of Galitzin's rank and blood is incomprehensible, and pity for
his cruel death is mingled with contempt for the elderly prince who
could tamely play the page, and caper in the garb of a court jester.
But the Russian noble of that day--and even of a later period--united
the soul of a slave with the heart of a tyrant. To the feeble a
relentless tiger, before the despot or the despot's favourite he
grovelled like a spiritless cur. The memoirs of the eighteenth century
abound in examples of his base servility. We cite one, out of many
which we find recorded in an interesting _Life of Catherine II. of
Russia_, published at Paris in 1797. Plato Zouboff, one of Catherine's
favourite lovers, had a little monkey, a restless, troublesome
beast, which everybody detested, but which everybody caressed, by
way of paying court to its master. Amongst the host of ministers,
military men, and ambassadors, who sedulously attended the levees of
the powerful favourite, was a general officer, remarkable for the
perfection and care with which his hair was dressed. One day the monkey
climbed upon his head, and, after completely destroying the symmetry of
his hyacinthine locks, deliberately defiled them. The officer dared not
show the slightest discontent. There are not wanting, however, in the
history of the eighteenth century, instances of heroism and courage to
contrast with the far more numerous ones of vileness afforded by the
aristocracy of Russia. The dignity and fortitude of Menzikoff--that
pastrycook's boy who became a great minister--during his terrible
exile in Siberia, are an oft-told tale. Prince Dolgorouki, the same
to whom Anne owed her crown, and whom she requited by a barbarous
death, beheld his son, brother, and nephew broken on the wheel. When
his turn came, and the executioners were arranging him suitably upon
the instrument of torture: "Do as you please with me," he said, "and
without fear of loading your consciences, for it is not in human power
to increase my sufferings." And he died without uttering a complaint.
But perhaps the most extraordinary instance of coolness and self
command, at the moment of a violent and cruel death, to be found in
the annals of executions, is that of Pugatscheff, who, however, was no
nobleman, but a Cossack of humble birth, who deserted from the Russian
army after the siege and capture of Bender by General Panim, and fled
to Poland, where he was concealed for a time by hermits of the Greek
church. "Conversing one day with his protectors," says a French writer
already referred to, "he told them, that once, during his service in
General Panim's army, a Russian officer said to him, after staring him
very hard in the face, 'If the emperor Peter III., my master, were not
dead, I should think I now stood before him.' The hermits paid little
attention to this tale; but some time afterwards one of their number,
who had not yet met Pugatscheff, exclaimed, on beholding him, 'Is not
that the emperor, Peter III.?' The monks then induced him to attempt
an imposture they had planned." M. Blanc's account differs from this,
inasmuch as it asserts the resemblance to the defunct Czar to have been
very slight. Whatever the degree of likeness, Pugatscheff declared
himself the husband of Catherine II. (murdered some time previously,
by Prince Bariatinski and by Alexis Orloff, the brother of Catherine's
lover), and thousands credited his pretensions. The Cossacks of the
river Yaik (afterwards changed to the Ural by Catherine, who desired
to obliterate the memory of this revolt) were just then in exceedingly
bad humour. After patiently submitting to a great deal of oppression
and ill usage, they had received orders to cut off their beards. This
they would not do. They had relinquished, grumbling but passive, many
a fair acre of pasturage; they had furnished men for a new regiment of
hussars; but they rebelled outright when ordered to use a razor. The
Livonian general, Traubenberg, repaired to Yaitsk with a strong staff
of barbers, and began shaving the refractory Cossacks on the public
market-place. The patients rose in arms, massacred general, barbers,
and aide-de-camps; recognised Pugatscheff as Peter III., and swore to
replace him on his throne, and to die in his defence. The adventurer
was near being as successful as the monk Otrepief. Catherine herself
was very uneasy, although she published contemptuous proclamations,
and jested, in her letters to Voltaire, on the Marquis of Pugatscheff,
as she called him. It was rather a serious subject to joke about. The
impostor defeated Russian armies, and slew their generals; took towns,
whose governors he impaled; burned upwards of two hundred and fifty
villages; destroyed the commerce of Siberia; stopped the working of the
Orenberg mines; and poured out the blood of thirty thousand Russian
subjects. At last he was taken. On his trial he showed great firmness;
and, although unable to read or write, he answered the questions of
the tribunal with wonderful ability and intelligence. He was condemned
to death. According to the sentence, his hands were to be cut off
first, then his feet, then his head, and finally the trunk was to be
quartered. When brought upon the scaffold, and whilst the imperial
ukase enumerating his crimes was read, he undressed quickly and in
silence; but when they began to read the sentence, he dexterously
prevented the executioner from attending to it, by asking him all
manner of questions--whether his axe was in good order, whether the
block was not of a less size than prescribed by law, and whether he,
the executioner, had not, by chance, drank more brandy than usual,
which might make his hand unsteady.

"The sentence read, the magistrate and his assistant left the scaffold.

'Now, then,' said Pugatscheff to the executioner, 'let us have no
mistakes; the prescribed order must be strictly observed. So you will
first cut off my head----'

'The head first!' cried the executioner.

'So runs the sentence. Have a care! I have friends who would make you
dearly expiate an error to my prejudice.'

It was too late to call back the magistrate; and the executioner, who
doubted, at last said to himself that the important affair, after all,
was the death of the criminal, and that there was little difference
whether it took place rather sooner or rather later. He grasped his
axe; Pugatscheff laid his head on the block, and the next moment it
rebounded upon the scaffold. The feet and hands were cut off after
death; the culprit escaping torture by his great presence of mind."

It has been asserted that an order from the empress thus humanised
the cruel sentence; but this is exceedingly improbable, for she was
bitter against Pugatscheff, who, ignorant Cossack as he was, had made
the modern Semiramis tremble on her throne; besides, it is matter of
history that, after his execution, the headsman had his tongue cut
out, and was sent to Siberia. Catherine, who had affected to laugh at
Pugatscheff during his life, was so ungenerous as to calumniate him
after death. "This brigand," she said, in one of her letters quoted by
M. Blanc, "showed himself so pusillanimous in his prison, that it was
necessary to prepare him with caution to hear his sentence read, lest
he should die of fear." It is quite certain, M. Blanc observes, that to
his dying hour Pugatscheff inspired more fear than he felt.

The misfortunes of the unhappy young Princess Tarrakanoff supply M.
Blanc with materials for the most interesting chapter in this volume
of his work. The Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, and
predecessor of Peter III.--whose marriage with the Princess of Anhalt
Zerbest, afterwards Catherine the Great, was brought about by her--had
had three children by her secret marriage with Alexis Razumoffski.
The youngest of these was a daughter, who was brought up in Russia
under the name of the Princess Tarrakanoff. When Catherine trampled
the rights of Poland under foot, the Polish prince, Charles Radzivil,
carried off the young princess, and took her to Italy, thinking to
set her up at some future day as a pretender to the Russian throne.
Informed of this, Catherine confiscated his estates; and in order to
live, he was compelled to sell the diamonds and other valuables he
had taken with him to Italy. These resources exhausted, Radzivil set
out for Poland to seek others, leaving the young princess, then in
her sixteenth year, at Rome, under the care of a sort of governess or
duenna. On reaching his native country he was offered the restoration
of his property if he would bring back his ward to Russia. He refused;
but he was so base as to promise that he would take no further trouble
about her, and leave her to her fate. Catherine pardoned him, and
forthwith put Alexis Orloff on the scent. He was a keen bloodhound,
she well knew, capable of any villany that might serve his ambition.
Gold unlimited was placed at his disposal, and promise of high reward
if he discovered the retreat of the princess, and lured her within
Catherine's reach. Orloff set out for Italy; and on arriving there
he took into his employ a Neapolitan named Ribas, a sort of spy,
styling himself a naval officer, who pledged himself to find out the
princess, but stipulated for rank in the Russian navy as his reward.
M. Blanc asserts that he demanded to be made admiral at once; and
that Orloff, afraid, notwithstanding the extensive powers given him,
to bestow so high a grade, or compelled by the suspicions of Ribas to
produce the commission itself, wrote to Catherine, who at once sent
the required document. Whether this be exact or not, more than one
historian mentions that Ribas subsequently commanded in the Black Sea
as a Russian vice-admiral. When certain of his reward, Ribas, who
then had spent two months in researches, revealed the retreat of the
unfortunate princess. With some abridgment we will follow M. Blanc,
whose narrative agrees, in all the main points, with the most authentic
versions of this touching and romantic history.

The princess was at Rome. Abandoned by Radzivil, she was reduced to the
greatest penury, existing only by the aid of a woman who had been her
servant, and who now served other masters. Alexis Orloff visited her in
her miserable abode, and spoke at first in the tone of a devoted slave
addressing his sovereign; he told her she was the legitimate empress
of Russia; that the entire population of that great empire anxiously
longed for her accession; that if Catherine still occupied the throne,
it was only because nobody knew where she (the princess) was hidden;
and that her appearance amongst her faithful subjects, would be a
signal for the instant downfall of the usurper. Notwithstanding her
youth, the princess mistrusted these dazzling assurances; she was even
alarmed by them, and held herself upon her guard. Then Orloff, one of
the handsomest men of his time, joined the seductions of love to those
of ambition; he feigned a violent passion for the young girl, and swore
that his life depended on his obtaining her heart and hand. The poor
isolated girl fell unresistingly into the infamous snare spread for her
inexperience: she believed and loved him. The infamous Orloff persuaded
her that their marriage must be strictly private, lest Catherine should
hear of it and take precautions. In the night he brought to her house a
party of mercenaries, some wearing the costumes of priests of the Greek
church, others magnificently attired to act as witnesses. The mockery
of a marriage enacted, the princess willingly accompanied Alexis
Orloff, whom she believed her husband, to Leghorn, where entertainments
of all sorts were given to her. The Russian squadron, at anchor off the
port, was commanded by the English Admiral Greig. This officer, either
the dupe or the accomplice of Orloff, invited the princess to visit
the vessels that were soon to be commanded in her name. She accepted,
and embarked after a banquet, amidst the acclamations of an immense
crowd: the cannon thundered, the sky was bright, every circumstance
conspired to give her visit the appearance of a brilliant festival.
From her flag-bedecked galley she was hoisted in a splendid arm-chair
on board the admiral's vessel, where she was received with the honours
due to a crowned head. Until then Orloff had never left her side for an
instant. Suddenly the scene changed. Orloff disappeared: in place of
the gay and smiling officers who an instant previously had obsequiously
bowed before her, the unfortunate victim saw herself surrounded by
men of sinister aspect, one of whom announced to her that she was
prisoner by order of the Empress Catherine, and that soon she would
be brought to trial for the treason she had attempted. The princess
thought herself in a dream. With loud cries she summoned her husband
to her aid; her guardians laughed in her face, and told her she had
had a lover, but no husband, and that her marriage was a farce. Her
despair at these terrible revelations amounted to frenzy; she burst
into sobs and reproaches, and at last swooned away. They took advantage
of her insensibility to put fetters on her feet and hands, and lower
her into the hold. A few hours later the squadron sailed for Russia.
Notwithstanding her helplessness and entreaties, the poor girl was kept
in irons until her arrival at St Petersburg, when she was taken before
the empress, who wished to see and question her.

Catherine was old; the Princess Tarrakanoff was but sixteen, and of
surpassing beauty; the disparity destroyed her last chance of mercy.
But as there was in reality no charge against her, and as her trial
might have made too much noise, Catherine, after a long and secret
interview with her unfortunate prisoner, gave orders she should be kept
in the most rigorous captivity. She was confined in one of the dungeons
of a prison near the Neva.

Five years elapsed. The victim of the heartless Catherine, and of the
villain Orloff, awaited death as the only relief she could expect; but
youth, and a good constitution, struggled energetically against torture
and privations. One night, reclining on the straw that served her as
a bed, she prayed to God to terminate her sufferings by taking her
to himself, when her attention was attracted by a low rumbling noise
like the roll of distant thunder. She listened. The noise redoubled:
it became an incessant roar, which each moment augmented in power. The
poor captive desired death, and yet she felt terror; she called aloud,
and implored not to be left alone. A jailer came at her cries; she
asked the cause of the noise she heard.

"'Tis nothing," replied the stupid slave; "the Neva overflowing."

"But cannot the water reach us here?"

"It is here already."

At that moment the flood, making its way under the door, poured into
the dungeon, and in an instant captive and jailer were over the ankles
in water.

"For heaven's sake, let us leave this!" cried the young princess.

"Not without orders; and I have received none."

"But we shall be drowned!"

"That is pretty certain. But without special orders I am not to let you
leave this dungeon, under pain of death. In case of unforeseen danger I
am to remain with you, and to kill you should rescue be attempted."

"Good God! the water rises. I cannot sustain myself."

The Neva, overflowing its banks, floated enormous blocks of ice,
upsetting everything in its passage, and inundating the adjacent
country. The water now plashed furiously against the prison doors: the
sentinels had been carried away by the torrent, and the other soldiers
on guard had taken refuge on the upper floors. Lifted off her feet by
the icy flood which still rose higher, the unfortunate captive fell
and disappeared; the jailer, who had water to his breast, hung his
lamp against the wall, and tried to succour his prisoner; but when he
succeeded in raising her up, she was dead! The possibility anticipated
by his employers was realised; there had been stress of circumstances,
and the princess being dead, he was at liberty to leave the dungeon.
Bearing the corpse in his arms, he succeeded in reaching the upper part
of the prison.

If we may offer a hint to authors, it is our opinion that this tragical
anecdote will be a godsend to some romance-writer of costive invention,
and on the outlook for a plot. Very little ingenuity will suffice
to spread over the prescribed quantity of foolscap the incidents
we have packed into a page. They will dilute very handsomely into
three volumes. As to characters, the novelist's work is done to his
hand. Here we have the Empress Catherine, vindictive and dissolute,
persecuting that "fair girl" the Princess Tarrakanoff, with the
assistance of Orloff, the smooth villain, and of the sullen ruffian
Ribas. The latter will work up into a sort of Italian Varney, and may
be dispersed to the elements by an intentional accident, on board the
ship blown up by Orloff's order, for the enlightenment of the painter
Hackert. With the exception of the dungeon-scene, we have given but a
meagre outline of M. Blanc's narrative; and there are a number of minor
characters that may be advantageously brought in and expanded. "This
event," says M. Blanc, referring to the kidnapping of the Princess,
"caused a strong sensation at Leghorn. Prince Leopold, Grand-duke of
Tuscany, complained bitterly of it, and would have had Alexis Orloff
arrested; but this vile assassin of Peter III. maintained that he
had only executed the orders of his sovereign, who would well know
how to justify him. He was supported, in this circumstance, by the
English consul, who was his accomplice; and the Grand-duke, seeing
he was not likely to be the strongest, suffered the matter to drop."
"Some Englishmen," another French writer asserts, "had been so base
as to participate in Alexis Orloff's plot; but others were far from
approving it. They even blushed to serve under him, and sent in their
resignations. Admiral Elphinstone was one of these. Greig was promoted
in his place." An Italian prince, indignant, but timid; a foreign
consul, sold to Russian interests; a British sailor, spurning the
service of a tyrant. We need say no more; for we are quite sure that
before they get thus far, the corps of historical novelists will be
handling their goose-quills.




LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN,

AN ANGLO-CATHOLIC.


LETTER FIRST.

You object to being called a Puseyite, or a Tractarian; and as I
believe you never read any of the Tracts, nor were lucky enough to
comprehend any of Dr Pusey's writings, you are right to decline the
names. But it is easy to perceive, even from your outward man, that
some great change has taken place upon you. It is not for nothing that
you wear so very tight a neckcloth, and so very low-collared a coat;
your buttons also are peculiarly placed, and there is a solemnity in
your manner of refusing an invitation to pot-luck on a Friday which
it is edifying to behold. But all this surely must have a name. You
were intended by your father to be a clergyman of the Church of
England--that worthy gentleman toasted church and king, till a female
reign and premonitory symptoms of apoplexy reduced him to silence and
water-gruel; but he is as true a defender of the faith, in his easy
gown and slippers, as ever, and looks with still increasing surprise
at the appearance of his eldest son, as often as occasional help in
your curacy enables you to run home. But don't fancy, for a moment,
that I attribute these frequent visits to your regard for the fifth
commandment alone: no, dear Charles; for though I grant you are an
excellent son and praiseworthy brother, I consider you shine with
still greater lustre in the character of a neighbour, especially to
the family at Hellebore Park. Gradually I have seen a change almost
equal to your own in the seven fair daughters of that house; and it
is very evident that, with this change, in some way or other, you are
very intimately connected. The five daughters of our neighbour in
the Lodge are also very different from what they were; and only Miss
Lathpins--who is fifty years old, and believes good works to be such
filthy rags that she would be quite ashamed if she were seen putting
half-a-crown into the plate, or sending coal and flannel to the poor,
and therefore never does it--continues the even tenor of her way,
and sighs for a gospel ministry to tell her how few will achieve the
kingdom of heaven. Every other house in the parish feels the effects of
your visits. We must have a new almanac if you come among us much more;
for the very days of the week are no longer to be recognised. Tuesday,
instead of being the lineal descendant of Monday, is now known as the
heir presumptive of Wednesday, and does duty as the eve of something
else. The wife of our physician invited us to dinner on the Feast of
St Ollapod, which, after great inquiry, we found meant Monday the 22d.
The months will not long escape--the weeks are already doomed--and, in
a few years, our parish registers will be as difficult reading as the
inscriptions of Nemroud. Have you taken this result of your crusade
against the High and Dry into your consideration? Is it right to leave
a worthy man like our rector--who conducted his little ecclesiastical
boat with great comfort to himself and others, keeping a careful middle
channel between the shoals of Dissent and the mudbanks of contented
Orthodoxy--to struggle in his old age against rocks which you and your
female allies have rolled into the water; with fast-days rearing their
sharp points where there used to be such safe navigation, and saint's
days and festivals so blocking up the passage that he can't set his
skiff near enough the shore, to enable him to visit his parishioners
when they are sick or hungry? You would pin the poor old fellow for
ever into his pulpit or reading-desk, and he never would have time to
go to the extremity of his parish, which, you remember, is five miles
from the church; and, at the Doctor's rate of riding, occupies him a
good part of the day.

But perhaps you don't know what occurs as soon as your stay is
over, and we see the skirts of your departing surtout disappear over
Hitherstone Hill. Immediately the whole coterie (which, in this
instance, is an undiluted petticoatery) assembles for consultation.
Pretty young girls, who would have been engaged ten years ago in the
arrangements of a pic-nic, now lay their graceful and busy heads
together, to effect an alteration in the height of the pews. My dear
Charles, young ladies are by nature carpenters; they know all about
hinges, and pannellings, and glue, by a sort of intuition: and it is
clear to me that, before you return to us again, the backs of the
seats will be lowered at least a foot, and I shall have the pleasure
of seeing the whole extent of Tom Holiday's back, and the undulations
of the three Miss Holiday's figures during the whole of the lessons.
The rector can't hold out long--as indeed who could, against such
petitioners? And, after all, it is only so much wood; an his wife,
who has retained her shape with very little aid from padding, has no
objection to stand up during the psalms, nor any inclination to put
her light under a bushel at any time; and some of the younger people,
who have not attained the stature of the Venus de Medici, complain
that the present elevation of the backs, if it doesn't make dints in
their bonnets, at all events cuts them off in the very middle; and my
opposition, I am sorry to say, ever since I fell asleep at your sermon
on the holiness of celibacy, is attributed to interested motives, and
therefore you may fairly expect to find our pews reduced to the height
and appearance of a row of rabbit-hutches, when you come back. This
point they seem to consider already gained, and now they have advanced
their parallels against the Doctor on another side of his defences.

The Doctor, even in his youth, can never have run much risk of being
mistaken for Apollo--his nose was probably never of a Grecian pattern,
as that ingenious people would certainly have rounded the point with
a little more skill, and have placed the nostrils more out of sight.
I have heard his front teeth were far from symmetrical, and reminded
old Major M'Turk of the charge of Mahratta irregular horse, by which
that heroic gentleman lost his eye; but as he has got quit of those
spirited, though straggling defenders, and supplied their place with a
straight-dressed militia of enamel or bone, which do duty remarkably
well, in spite of the bright yellow uniform they have lately assumed, I
conclude that he has been a gainer by the exchange. And, on the whole,
I have no doubt, if there are some handsomer fellows in the Guards, and
at the universities, there are several much uglier people to be seen in
this very parish. It can't, therefore, be for the express purpose of
escaping the sight of his face that they have begun their operations to
force him to turn his back on them during the prayers. But this they
are thoroughly resolved on achieving. They have already once placed
the Bible surreptitiously on the side of the reading desk, towards the
people, leaving the Prayer-Book on the side towards the south; and as
the Doctor, in the surprise of the moment, began with his face in that
direction, his elocution was wasted on the blank wall of the chancel
and the empty pulpit; and we had the pleasure of an uninterrupted view
of his profile, and a side-hearing also of his words, which gave us as
complete a silhouette of the prayers as of the rector. When we come to
the enjoyment of his full-face reversed, and can leisurely contemplate
his occiput, and the nape of his neck--in which, I am sorry to see,
number one so powerfully developed--we shall have the farther advantage
of not having our own meditations interrupted by hearing a syllable he
says. He resists, indeed, at present; and even told a deputation of
ladies that he would consult common sense on the occasion, and read
so that the poor folks under the west gallery could join in every
petition. Miss Araminta--your Araminta, Charles--lifted her beautiful
eyes to the Doctor in surprise, and asked "if he really prayed _to_
John Simpkins and Peter Bolt, for surely he could pray _for_ them, and
_with_ them better, with his face to the altar;" and the Doctor said
something about "girls minding their own business, and leaving him to
his," which would have led to very unpleasant consequences, if the
rest of the ambassadors had not interfered, and smoothed the raven
down of the Doctor's temper by some judicious declarations of respect
for his office, and contempt for some unfortunate evangelical brethren
in the neighbourhood; till at last the old man took Araminta by the
hand, and told her, with great truth, that she was one of the nicest
girls in the world, and that he would ride fifty miles at a moment's
warning, to save her an instant's discomfort. So they retired for that
time, hinting that they were rather surprised that _their_ rector
should have used the same argument which had been employed by the Rev.
Ebenezer Snuffle, the low church vicar of the adjoining village. A
telling blow this, Charles, as you are well aware; for I verily believe
the Doctor would soften towards the Koran, if his neighbour made an
attack on Mahommed; so I wait the issue without much uncertainty as to
what it will be. For all this, I can't help holding you, in a great
measure, responsible; for there is no shutting one's eyes to the fact,
that a decided step in advance is taken after every one of your runs
into our parish. Your father, and Major M'Turk, and I, sink lower and
lower in the estimation of your followers every day. Instead of the
nice little parties we used to have, where the girls, most of whom we
remember as infants, used to sing "Lizzie Lindsay" for the amusement
of the old ones, or play magic music, or games at forfeits, to please
themselves, they now huddle up in a corner--if, perchance, no eve or
fast prevents them from coming out to tea--and hold deep consultations
on the state and prospects of the Church. And yet there is something
so innocent and pretty in the way they manage their plots, and such a
charming feeling of triumph fills their hearts, when they have achieved
a victory over the habits and customs of the village, that I hardly
wonder they never pause in their career, or give ear to the warnings of
stupid old people like the trio I have named. In the mean time, they
certainly have it all their own way,--in the injunctions they have
laid on the poor people, to turn round at some parts of the service,
stand up at others, and join in the most wonderful responses, in a
set key, which they call entoning; and they have tormented the band
so much with practising anthems, that half the population have turned
dissenters in self-defence; and while the front seats are filled with
satin bonnets and India shawls, and the rustle of silks is like the
flight of a thousand doves when the altitude needs to be changed, there
isn't a poor person to be seen in the church except John Simpkins and
Peter Bolt, and they, I am sorry to say, are far from being the same
quiet humble paupers they used to be; for our feminine apostles have
been telling them of the honour and dignity of the poor, till there
is no bearing their pride and self-conceit. Sometimes, out of respect
to the Doctor, and a reverence for the old church, the grocer, the
carpenter, and a few of the shopkeepers, still make their appearance
in the afternoon, but they are like children the first time they go
to Astley's, and stare with wonder at all the changes they see; and
even our rector himself has become so confused, that he doesn't feel
altogether sure that he hasn't turned a dissenter, for the mode, if not
of conducting, at least of joining in the service, is something quite
different from what he has been used to.

Now dissent, as you know, has been the bugbear of the Doctor through
life. The very name carries with it something inexpressibly dreadful,
and among the most terrifying to him of all the forms of dissent was
that of Rome. But lately, a vast number of bright eyes have been
lifted to the ceiling, and a great many beautiful lips opened, and a
great many sweet voices raised in opposition to any hostile allusion
to the objects of his abhorrence. "The church of Fenelon," says one
in a reverential tone, "can surely not be altogether apostate." "The
church of the two Gregories, the church of A'Beckett and Dunstan, of
St Senanus, St Januarius, and the Seven Champions of Christendom,
can never have fallen away from the faith," exclaims Miss Tinderella
Swainlove in a very contemptuous tone, when the Doctor contrasts the
great and ambitious names of Rome with the humility required in a
Christian pastor. "In short, Dr Smiler, we wish to know," she said
not a week ago, when she had gone up to the parsonage to practise a
Gregorian chant on Christina Smiler's concertina--"we wish to know,
Doctor Smiler, whether religion consists in bare plaster walls and a
cassock?" "Certainly not, my dear Tinderella, but you will observe"--

"Oh, we only want an answer to that question," said the young lady,
interrupting; "for, allow me to tell you, we feel our devotion greatly
excited by the noble solemnity of a service decently conducted with
albe and chasuble, in a building fitted for its high destination by the
richest combination of architecture and the arts."

Tinderella is nineteen years of age, and as decided in her manner as a
field-marshal. "May I ask, my dear, who the 'we' are in whose name you
speak?" inquired the rector.

"Not Mr Ruggles the grocer, nor Chipper the carpenter, but all who
are qualified by their fortune, and position in life, to judge on the
subject," was Tinderella's spirited rejoinder.

"Really," said the Doctor, "you young ladies are very much changed
from what you were. Two years ago, I used to have great difficulty in
keeping you from balls and archeries, and had frequent occasion to
lecture you for inattention in church. What, in the name of wonder, has
come over you all?"

"Do you find fault with us for having given up frivolities, and turned
reverent and attentive during the service?" inquired his questioner
with a sneer.

"Far from it, my dear,--very far from it; but I should like very much
to know what is the cause of the change. I trust, my dear Tinderella,
it isn't connected with the marriage of Lieutenant Polker, with whom I
remember you danced every night last winter."

"Lieutenant Polker," replied Tinderella, "has married a dissenter, or a
person of low church principles, and that is as bad, and he has nothing
whatever to do with our duty to the Holy Catholic Church I assure you,
sir."

"Then it must be that silly, ignorant coxcomb, Charles Fustian, my
own godson, my favourite from his youth--an excellent fellow, but a
conceited ass--I wish he had never gone into the diocese of Vexer."

This is the tender way in which you are spoken of, my dear Charles;
and I feel sure you will appreciate the compliment paid to you by the
Doctor, losing his temper, but retaining his affection.

There was a blush on Tinderella's cheek as she entered into a defence
of "the Reverend Charles Fustian, a priest of our church;" and she
almost curtsied in reverence for your name and office; and I advise
Araminta to keep watch over her friend's proceedings, for I don't think
Tinderella is so deeply attached to the doctrine of celibacy as she
pretends. And I take this opportunity also, my dear Charles, to tell
you that I shall keep watch over YOU; and if I find you casting your
smiles at Tinderella, and holding her by the hand, and recommending her
to enter into the privileges of confession, in the summer-house in her
father's garden--and holding forth all the time on the blessings of a
conventual life and penance, and hair shirts and a cat-o'-nine-tails--I
shall be greatly inclined to recur to the discipline that used to
improve your manners greatly when you were a little boy, and use the
scourge with more effect than when you apply it to your shoulders with
your own hand.

The Doctor has just been here, and as I know you will be rejoiced to
hear the news he gave me, I will transmit it to you at once.

"Buddle," he said to me, "you have perhaps seen how vainly I have tried
to resist the parish, at least the young ladies of the parish; for I
am sorry to say, that, with the exception of yourself and two or three
others of the seniors, the parish has left me to fight the battle
alone."

"My dear Smiler," I replied, "what can we do? Surely, if we lie quiet
on our oars, the fancy for that sort of thing will go off."

"Not at all; as they get older it will get worse. There is some hope
for them when they are very young, but in a few years there is no
chance of escaping a universal passing over to the Pope; and between
ourselves,"--and here the Doctor looked at the door, as if he wished
to bolt it with a twist of his eye--"I am in great anxiety of mind lest
they carry me with them. Yes, my good Buddle, it would not surprise me
if I awoke some morning and found myself a monk."

"How? Haven't you signed the articles and repeated the creed, and the
oath of abjuration, and all that?"

"That is no defence. Those girls go to work so scientifically, carrying
one object first, and then another; and they are so good, and active,
and amiable, and so useful in the parish, and so clever, and defer so
respectfully to my judgment in all things, that I find there is not an
alteration which has taken place in the parish that I did not at first
oppose, and end in a very short time by ordering on my own authority.
Yes, my dear friend, I feel that, if not supported by some person of
stout uncompromising church principles, I shall probably find myself
eating fish on Fridays, and administering castigation to myself in
my old age, and listening to young ladies' confessions, and flogging
Araminta or Tinderella in atonement for their tasting a mutton-chop on
a fast-day."

"It would do them both a great deal of good."

"No doubt of it, my dear Buddle; and if they were five or six years
younger, such things would soon be put out of their heads." And here he
clenched his hand on his riding switch, and looked like the picture of
Doctor Busby. "But, as it is, I think I have stolen a march on them.
Look at that."

So saying, he pointed to an advertisement in the _Record_ newspaper,
which stated that "a curate was wanted for a country parish; he must be
under thirty, an eloquent preacher and reader; and, finally, that no
Tractarian need apply."

"And he's coming, sir; the Reverend Algernon Sidney Mount Huxtable; a
man of good family, tolerable fortune, and highly orthodox principles,
is coming! I expect him next week, and as he is only eight-and-twenty,
and unmarried, I think he will be an excellent assistant in repelling
these attacks on our admirable Establishment."

So, with this piece of information, my dear Charles, I conclude, as I
am anxious to go through the houses in the village, and see the effect
of the announcement on the charming little army which Major M'Turk
irreverently calls St Ursula's dragoons.


LETTER SECOND.

On Monday last, our new curate came; a most gentlemanly-mannered
good-looking young man, with very dark eyes and very white teeth;
and I was pleased to observe, when I dined with him the first day at
the parsonage, that he did not consider these advantages as merely
ornamental, but made excellent use of both. He did yeoman's service
upon the fish and mutton, and cast glances on Miss Christina Smiler
that made her at once give up the opposition she had made to her
father's proposal of keeping a curate, and proved, to his entire
satisfaction, that it was the best arrangement in the world. A pleasant
good-humoured companion, a man of the world, and an unflinching son and
servant of the Church, gaining the rector's confidence by an attack on
Popery, and winning the ladies' affection by a spirited tirade on the
vulgarity of dissent.

"The fact is," said the Doctor, after the ladies had withdrawn, and we
had filled our glasses with the first bumper of port,--"the fact is, my
dear Mount Huxtable, that our parish is in a very curious condition. We
are all devoted members of the Church, and yet we are very suspicious
of each other. The inhabitants, especially the young lady part of them,
have taken such an interest lately in the affairs of the parish, and
are so unanimous in enforcing their own wishes, both on me and the
churchwardens--not to mention my stanch and kind friends Major M'Turk
and Mr Buddle--that we feel as if the revolutionary spirit had extended
to this village, and the regular authorities had been deposed by a
Committee of Public Safety."

"Do they _enforce_ their wishes?" inquired the new curate, with a
frown, and laying great emphasis on the word enforce.

"Well," replied the Rector, a little puzzled, "that's rather a strong
word. Do you think we can call it enforce, Major M'Turk?"

"They say they'll do it, and it's done," was the reply of the military
commander.

"And you, Buddle?"

"No; you can't call it enforce," said I; "for they are the meekest,
sweetest, and most submissive people I ever met with."

"That's right; I'm glad to hear it," said Mount Huxtable. "And do they
really succeed in all the efforts they make?"

"Not a doubt of it," said the Rector, looking rather confused. "The
church is entirely different from what it was a year ago; even the
service, by some means or other, has got into quite a different
order; I find myself walking about in my surplice, and standing up at
doxologies, and sometimes attempting to sing the Jubilate after the
second lesson, though I never had a voice, and it does not seem to be
set to any particular tune. And, in confidence between ourselves, I
think they could make me of any religion they chose."

"They're the fittest missionaries for the Mahommedan faith," said Major
M'Turk; "such Houris may always count on me for a convert."

The Curate sank into silence.

"You're not afraid of such antagonists, Mount Huxtable?" inquired the
Rector.

"I don't think they are at all to be feared as antagonists," he
replied, with a smile, as if assured of the victory.

And when we looked at his handsome face, and the glow of true orthodox
determination that brightened in his eyes, we were all of the same
opinion.

"But we won't let them see the battery we have prepared against them,"
continued the jubilant Rector, "till we are in a position to take the
field. I have applied to the bishop for a license for you for two
years, so that, whatever complaints they make against your proceedings,
nothing can get you removed from the parish; the whole onus of the
fight will be thrown on your shoulders; and all I can say to them,
when they come to me with their grievances, will be, my dear Araminta,
my dear Sophronia, my charming little Anastasia, Mr Mount Huxtable is
in the entire charge of the parish, and from his decision there is no
appeal."

The happiest man in England that night was the Reverend Doctor Smiler
of Great Yawnham, for he had now the assurance of preserving the
orthodoxy of his parish, without the pain of quarrelling with his
parishioners.

"Good night, good night," he said, as M'Turk and I walked away, while
Mount Huxtable got into his phaeton and whisked his greys very showily
down the avenue, "I think that ewe-necked donkey, Charles Fustian,
won't be quite so popular with the Blazers at Hellebore Park, in spite
of Araminta's admiration of his long back and white neckcloth."

"Mount Huxtable will cut him out in every house in the parish," replied
Major M'Turk; and I said,

"I know Charles very well, and like him immensely; he won't yield
without a struggle, and, in fact, I have no doubt he will proceed to
excommunication."

Pardon us all, my dear Charles, for the free-and-easy way we speak of
you. I don't believe three old fellows in England are fonder of you
than we; and no wonder--for haven't we all known you from your cradle,
and traced you through all your career since you were hopelessly the
booby of the dame's school, till you were twice plucked at Oxford, and
proved how absurdly the dons of that university behaved, by obtaining
your degree from Dublin by a special favour. Would a learned body have
treated a very decided fool with special favour? No; and therefore I
think Dr Smiler and M'Turk are sometimes a great deal too strong in
their language; but you must forgive them, for it proceeds from the
fulness of their hearts.

The license arrived next day, and a mighty tea-drinking was held last
night at the parsonage, to enable the Doctor to present his curate to
the parish. The Blazers came in from Hellebore Park, Araminta looking
beautiful in a plain nun-like white gown, with a cross and rosary of
jet falling tastefully over her breast. The Swainloves came from the
Lodge, the spirited Tinderella labouring under two prodigious folios of
Gregorian chants. Sophronia and her grandmamma came up from the vale;
and, in short, the whole rank and beauty of the village assembled.
The manly dignity of that charming district was represented by myself
and Major M'Turk; your father, who came down in his wheel-chair; Dr
Pulser and his son Arthur, who has lately settled down here, with a
brass plate on the surgery door, announcing that he is attorney-at-law.
Arthur, you remember, has a beautiful voice, and he entones the
responses like a nightingale.

We were all assembled before the guest of the evening arrived. For
the thousandth time we admired the garden and lawn, and heard how the
Doctor had altered the house, and levelled the grounds, and thrown out
bow-windows, and made the whole thing the perfect bijou it is. The
fuschias were in full bloom, the grass nicely mown, and the windows
being open, we could sally forth on to the terrace walk, and admire the
pleasure-grounds as we chose. But nobody moved. Christina Smiler sat
at the piano, but did not play; she kept her eyes constantly fixed on
the door,--as indeed did several of the other young ladies; and when at
last wheels were heard rapidly approaching, and a loud knock resounded
through the house, the amount of blushing was immense; the bloom of so
many cheeks would have recalled to an original-minded poet a bed of
roses, and old M'Turk kicked my shins unobserved, and whispered, "We
shall get quit of the female parliament very soon: this is the Cromwell
of the petticoats."

As he felt that he made his appearance, on this occasion, in his
professional character, Mr Mount Huxtable was arrayed in strictly
clerical costume. Your own tie, my dear Charles, could not have been
more accurately starched, nor your coat more episcopally cut. There was
the apostolic succession clearly defined on the buttons; and, between
ourselves, we were enchanted with the fine taste that showed that a
man might be a good stout high churchman without being altogether
an adherent of the Patristics. His introduction was excellently got
over, and the charming warmth with which he shook hands with the young
people, after doing his salutation to us of the preterite generation,
showed that his attention was not confined to the study of the fathers,
but had a pretty considerable leaning to the daughters also.

"So much the better, my boy," said M'Turk, "he'll have them all back to
the good old ways in a trice; we shall have picnics again on Fridays,
and little dances every day in the week." Tea was soon finished, and
Tinderella Swainlove, without being asked by anybody, as far as I could
see, walked majestically to the piano, and laying open a huge book,
gave voice with the greatest impetuosity to a Latin song, which she
afterwards (turning round on the music-stool, and looking up in Mr
Mount Huxtable's face) explained to be a hymn to the Virgin. But the
gentleman did not observe that the explanation was addressed to him,
and continued his conversation with Christina Smiler. In a few minutes
he accompanied her out of the window into the garden, and the other
young ladies caught occasional glimpses of the pair as they crossed
the open spaces between the shrubs. The Doctor rubbed his hands with
delight, and Mrs Smiler could scarcely conceal her gratification. But
these feelings were not entertained by the Swainloves. Tinderella
looked rather disappointed to her mother; and that lady addressed Major
M'Turk in rather a bitter tone of voice, and said it was a pity the
curate was so awkward, and asked how long he had been lame.

"He is by no means lame," replied the Major; "you'll learn that before
long, by the dance he'll show you."

"Does he dance?" inquired Mrs Swainlove, anxiously. "As you're at the
piano, my dear Tinderella, will you play us that charming polka you
used to play last year?"

A polka!--it was the first that had been demanded for a long time; and,
in the surprise and gratification of the moment, the Major took her
affectionately by the hand. Tinderella played as required; and great
was the effect of her notes: first one fair lady, and then another,
found the room too hot; and before many minutes elapsed, we, who sat
near the window, saw the whole assembly, except the performer on the
piano, grouped round the new curate, who seemed giving them lectures
on botany, for he held some flowers in his hand, and was evidently
very communicative to them all. Mrs Swainlove, seeing her stratagem of
no avail, told Tinderella to stop, and the conversation was entirely
limited to the men who stayed behind. Young Pulser, the attorney,
had joined the party in the garden, and the senior ladies, with the
discomfited musician, soon also retired.

"He'll do," said the Major confidentially--"he's the very man for our
money; and all things considered--not forgetting my friend Christina
among the rest--you never did a wiser thing in your life, my dear
Smiler."

"He seems a sure hand among the girls," said your father, "and I
haven't had a chance of a minute's talk with him. I wanted to speak to
him about my son Charles."

"He'll give you good advice about breaking in that stiff-necked
young gentleman," said the Rector, "and we must contrive to get them
acquainted."

"Bless ye," said your father, "they're very well acquainted already.
He lived in Charles's parish in the diocese of Vexer, and was a great
favourite, I'm told, of the bishop."

"Nonsense, my dear fellow," said the Doctor, taken a little aback, "he
can't possibly be a favourite of such a firebrand--it must be some one
else; and, besides, he never told me he was a friend of your son."

"You can ask him," replied your father, "for I'm quite sure I've often
heard Charles talk of his friend Mount Huxtable."

A dead silence fell upon us all. Strange, we thought, that he should
never have alluded to his acquaintance with you. Can he be ashamed of
the way you have been going on? Is he afraid of being suspected of
the same ludicrous feastings and fastings that have given you such a
reputation here?

"Pray, my dear Mount Huxtable," said Dr Smiler, when the new curate,
accompanied by the young ladies--like the proud-walking, long-necked
leader of a tribe of beautiful snow-white geese--entered the room,
"have you ever met our excellent friend, Charles Fustian?"

"Fustian--Fustian?" replied the Curate, trying to recollect. "There are
so many of that name in the Church, I surely ought to have met with one
of them."

The Doctor nodded his head, quite satisfied, to your father.

"You see, you see," he said, with a chuckle.

"I see nothing of the sort," said your progenitor; "for though Fustian
is common enough in the Church, I'm sure Mount Huxtable isn't."

"That's true," said the Doctor. "Pray, how do you account for Charles
Fustian happening to know YOU?"

"Ah, my dear sir," answered Mount Huxtable, with a smile to the ladies,
"there is an old byword, which says more people know Tom Fool than Tom
Fool knows."

A great laugh rewarded this sally, and the Doctor's triumph over his
neighbours was complete.

"I told you what it would come to," he said; "no true orthodox
churchman can have any acquaintance with such a semi-papist as poor
Charles."

The conversation now went on in the usual channel--that is to say,
we talked a little politics, which was very uninteresting, for we
all agreed; and the young ones attacked the Curate on music and
painting, and church architecture, on all which subjects he managed
to give them great satisfaction, for he was an excellent musician, a
tolerable artist, and might have passed anywhere for a professional
builder. I suppose they were as much astonished as pleased to find
that a man might be an opponent of the Tracts, and yet be as deep in
church matters as themselves. Encouraged by this, they must have pushed
their advances rather far for a first meeting; for, after an animated
conversation in the bow-window, Araminta and two or three other young
ladies came to the Doctor's chair.

"Only think, dear Doctor Smiler," she said, "how unkind Mr Mount
Huxtable is. Next Thursday, our practising day in the church, is the
Feast of holy St Ingulpus of Doncaster, and he won't give us leave to
ornament the altar with flowers."

"And who in the world is St Ingulpus of Doncaster?" said the Doctor.

"A holy man, I don't in the least deny," said Mount Huxtable, kindly
taking the answer on himself. "His acts and writings attest his
virtues and power; but I merely mentioned to the young ladies, as the
easiest way of settling the affair, that St Ingulpus, though most
justly canonised by the holy father in the thirteenth century, was
not elevated to the degree of worship or veneration by the succeeding
councils."

"And you answered them very well, sir," said the Doctor. "And as to St
Ingulpus of Doncaster, I never heard of him, and believe him to have
been an impostor, like the holy father, as you ironically call him, who
pretended to canonise him."

"Oh, papa!" said Christina, addressing her father, but looking all the
time at the Curate, "Mr Mount Huxtable himself confesses he was a holy
man."

"What?--do _you_ join in such follies? Go to bed, or learn to behave
less like a child. Mr Mount Huxtable accommodates his language to the
weakness of his auditors; but in reality he has as great a contempt for
this Ingulpus, or any other popish swindler, as I have."

The Doctor was now so secure of support from his curate, that he felt
bold enough to get into a passion. If he had fired a pistol at his
guests, he could scarcely have created a greater sensation. The effect
on Christina was such that she clung for support to Mount Huxtable, and
rested her head on his shoulder.

"Mr Mount Huxtable," continued the Rector, "has forbidden you to
disfigure my church with flowers. Mr Mount Huxtable has the entire
charge of this parish, and from his decision there is no appeal."

This knock-down blow he had kept for the last; and it had all the
effect he expected. They were silent for a long time. "That has
settled them, I think," he whispered to me; "they know me to be such a
good-natured old fool, and so fond of them all, that in time they might
have turned me round their thumbs; but Mount Huxtable is a different
man. At the same time, I must'nt have the darlings too harshly used. I
daresay I was a little too bitter in the way I spoke: I can't bear to
see any of them unhappy,--something must be done to amuse them."

If the Doctor had done them all some serious injury, he could not have
been more anxious to atone for it. He spoke to each of them, patted
them on the head, told them they were good girls, and that he loved
them all like his own children; and even went so far as to say that,
if the matter was entirely in his hands, he didn't know but that he
might have allowed them to make what wreaths and posies they liked
on Thursday. "And as to your friend Ingulpus," he concluded, "I hope
and trust he was a good man according to his lights, and probably
had no intention to deceive. So, my dear Mount Huxtable, as your
uncompromising Protestantism is the cause of disappointment to my young
flock, I must punish you by insisting on your immediately singing them
a song."

"The young ladies, sir, shall find I am not so uncompromising a
Protestant as they fear, for you see I don't even protest against
the justice of your sentence;" and with this he took his seat at the
piano. "The song I shall attempt is not a very new one," he said, "for
it was written in the year a thousand and forty by a monk of Cluny.
The Benedictines, you will remember, have at all times been devoted
to music." So saying, he threw his hand over the keys, and after a
prelude, sang in a fine manly voice--

    "Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt; vigilemus!--
    Ecce! minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus,--

    Imminet! imminet! ut mala terminet, æqua coronet,
    Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, æthera donet,

    Auferat aspera duraque pondera mentis onustæ;
    Sobria muniat, improba puniat, utraque justè."

Astonishment and delight kept the company silent for a while after he
had finished, and then the repressed feelings of the audience burst
out with tenfold force. "Oh, Mr Mount Huxtable!" said they all, "you
_must_ attend our Thursday practising in the church. It will be
so delightful now, for all we required was a fine man's voice. How
beautiful the words are, and how well adapted for singing! And the
music, how splendid!--pray whose is the music?"

"I am afraid I must confess myself the culprit in that respect,"
replied the Curate, very modestly. "I have been an enthusiast in music
all my life, and have a peculiar delight in composing melodies to the
old Catholic hymns."

After this no more was said of flowers on St Ingulpus's day; and it was
very evident that our new ally was carrying the war into the enemy's
country, and, in fact, was turning their artillery against themselves.

"If you are pleased with this simple song, I am sure that you will all
be enchanted next week with two friends who have promised to visit
me--both exquisite musicians, and very clever men."

"Clergymen?" inquired two or three of the ladies.

"Of course. I have very few lay acquaintances. You perhaps have heard
their names,--the Reverend Launton Swallowlies, and the Reverend
Iscariot Rowdy, both of Oxford."

"No we don't know their names, but shall be delighted to see
any friends of yours." And so the party broke up with universal
satisfaction. There was a brilliant moon, and Mount Huxtable sent away
his phaeton and two beautiful gray ponies, and walked to Hellebore gate
with the Blazers. Christina Smiler would rather have had him drive
home, and looked a little sad as they went off: but we heard happy
voices all the way down the avenue; snatches of psalm-music, even, rose
up from the shrubs that line the walk; and it appears that the whole
group had stopt short on the little knoll that rises just within the
parsonage gate, and sung the Sicilian Mariner's Hymn.

So I think, my dear Charles, you may give up any farther attempts on
our good old Church principles; the Doctor is determined not to turn
round to the communion-table even at the creed, and I will beat you £20
that the congregation will all come back again, and we shall once more
be a happy and united parish.


LETTER THIRD.

We look on you now, my dear Charles, as a fallen star; and, between
ourselves, I don't think you are missed by a single astronomer in
Yawnham, from the sky where you were once enthroned. No, sir: our
curate's neckcloth is stiffer than yours, his collar plainer, his tails
longer, his knowledge of saints and legends infinitely deeper--and,
besides, he sings like an angel, and has a phaeton and pair. And he
is so gentlemanly, too. He was at Eton, and is intimate with many
lords, and has a power of sneering at low churchmen and dissenters
that would be myrrh and incense to the Pope. Now you will observe, my
unfortunate young friend, that when gentlemanly manners, good looks
and accomplishments--not to mention an intimacy with the Red Book--and
fourteen hundred a-year are in one scale, and Charles Fustian and a ton
weight of Tractarians are in the other, the young persons who, in our
parish, hold the beam will very soon send you and your make-weights
half-way through the roof. Therefore, if you wish to retrieve your
influence, either with Araminta or the other fair innovators, now or
never is your time; come down and visit us. We shall all be delighted
to see your elongated visage, and are not without hopes--for you are a
good-natured excellent-dispositioned fellow after all--that you will
see the error of your ways, and believe that humility and charity are
Christian graces as well as faith and coloured windows. It so happens
that there is scarcely a house in the place without a visitor. Tom
Blazer has come down to Hellebore Park, and has brought Jones and
Smith, two of his brother officers of the Rifles, with him;--the two
Oxford men are with Mount Huxtable, who has taken Laburnum Place, and
our doings are likely to be uncommonly gay. Swallowlies and Rowdy
are great friends, though they seem to be the very antipodes of each
other. Rowdy won't believe anything, and has doubts about the battle
of Waterloo; and Swallowlies believes everything, and thinks the
American States will soon pay off my bonds. Rowdy says there is no
evidence, satisfactory to him, that there is such a state as Arkansas
in the world, as it is not authoritatively stated by church or council;
and tries to persuade me that I have lent six thousand pounds of real
money to an imaginary republic. In the mean time, the loss of three
hundred a-year is by no means an imaginary evil, and I feel a little
sore at both these Oxford humourists for laughing at my misfortunes.
However, Swallowlies errs on the right side, and is decidedly the
favourite with us all.

You may guess, my dear Charles, how the heart of Major M'Turk jumped
for joy when Mount Huxtable proposed a pic-nic at the Holywell tree at
the other extremity of the parish; and all the young ladies, without
a single exception, determined to be of the party. Fasting, my good
friend, has come to an end: there were pies enough made to feed an
army; baskets by the dozen were packed up, containing plates, and
knives and forks; crates filled with cold fowls and hams, and others
loaded with fruit and wine. The Rector had out his old coach, which
Chipper managed to decapitate for the occasion, and it did duty (like
St Denis) with its head off, as an open barouche. He took some of the
Puginstones, and two of the Pulsers; and, to make room for Mrs M'Turk,
he, or rather Mrs Smiler, asked the Curate to take Christina beside
him on the driving-seat of his phaeton. I got out my old four-wheel,
which was certainly not so fashionable-looking as Mount Huxtable's
drag, but so commodious that it appears made of India-rubber, and
stretches to any extent. Tom Blazer is an ostentatious fool and sports
a tandem--that is to say, he puts his own horse and Jones' (one before
the other) in his father's high gig, and insists on driving Tinderella
Swainlove all about the country. On this occasion she also graced his
side; and Jones himself, who is as active as one of the Voltigeurs at
Astley's, fixed a board on the hind part of the gig and sat with his
back to the horse, smoking cigars and calling it a dog-cart. At last
we all got there; and, when the company was assembled, it certainly
was a goodly sight to see. The little spring that gives its name to
the fine old elm--now, alas! a stump that might pass for Arthur's
Table Round--comes welling out from a glorious old rock, which rises
suddenly, you remember, from the richest pasture field in yeoman
Ruffhead's farm. I never saw the scenery to such advantage: the woods
of Kindstone Hill closed in the landscape on the west; and before us,
to the south, was spread out the long sunny level of Richland meads, at
the farther extremity of which rose the time-honoured ivy-covered ruins
of Leeches Abbey. While the servants, who had gone over in a couple of
carts, were busy in arranging the repast, we fell off into parties,
and, by mere accident, I joined the Blazer girls and Captain Smith, who
gathered round the Holywell, and told what little legends they knew of
it to Swallowlies and Rowdy.

"They thought it was good for epileptic fits," said Araminta, "in the
Roman Catholic time. It was blessed by St Toper of Geneva, who was
overcome by thirst one morning after spending the night with the monks
of Leeches."

"Toper of Geneva?" inquired Captain Smith,--"it's rather a jolly name
for a saint; no wonder the old boy felt his coppers hot after a night
with the monks."

But the remark was so coldly received that the Captain, who enjoys a
great reputation in the Rifles for wit and pleasantry, was for a while
struck dumb.

"Who shall tell what may be the efficacy of a good man's blessing,"
said Mr Swallowlies, dipping his finger reverently in the cow's
drinking trough, and touching his forehead. "Do you know, Miss Blazer,
if it still retains its virtue?"

"I believe epileptic patients are still brought to the spring," replied
Araminta, "and I have heard that the old woman in that little hut on
the hill-side has seen several cures."

"I will make her acquaintance this moment," exclaimed Swallowlies.
"I think it a privilege to look on a matron who has witnessed so
remarkable a manifestation. Will you go with me, Rowdy?"

"No, I have no great faith in the fountain."

"Why not?"

"Because it is a sufficient effort for the human mind to have faith in
one or two points of far greater importance."

"But you needn't make any effort at all. Take it on the assurance of
the Church," said Swallowlies persuasively. "We have, indeed, cut
ourselves off from a declaration of our belief in the power of saints
like the holy Toper; but we can surely entertain the belief, though we
are debarred from making public profession of it. And, in fact, any one
who believes in miracles at all must equally believe that this spring
will cure epileptic fits."

"Exactly as I say," responded Rowdy; "all miracles are equally
credible."

"Then come to the old woman," said Swallowlies, taking his arm.

"No," said Mr Rowdy, "I have lately had great doubts as to my own
identity, and I am going to try some experiments to see whether I am
now the same person I was when I signed the articles, and did duty in
my parish."

Mr Swallowlies, however, and the rest of us, with the exception of
Captain Smith, walked to old Janet Wheedler's cottage, while Rowdy
entered on his course of experimental philosophy. We found her nicely
dressed, as if in expectation of our coming; and as the spring, with
its capabilities for a pic-nic and its ancient associations, was a
source of considerable revenue to her, she evidently was greatly
pleased with the number of guests whom she saw approaching her door.

"_Pax vobiscum!_" said Mr Swallowlies, as we entered the cottage. "You
reside here in highly favoured ground."

"Yes, indeed, sir," said Janet, "the gentlefolks be very fond of it,
and very often come here from all parts about."

"Only the gentlefolks?" inquired her visitor. "I thought I heard that
others came to avail themselves of the holy spring."

"Some folks don't believe in it now, sir--more's the pity. It was of
great value in the old time."

"Why should it lose its virtue, Mrs Wheedler? If we had still the
faith, it would have still the power."

Janet looked towards Mr Swallowlies, to judge whether he was in jest or
earnest; but, on catching the face of wonderment with which he gazed at
the well, and the unmistakable sincerity with which he spoke, the old
woman, who had been a fortune-teller in her youth, involuntarily winked
her blear eye, and curled up the corners of her mouth.

"It ain't quite falled away yet, sir. This here cat as ever you
sees--here, Tabby dear, get up and show yourself to the gentles--this
here cat, sir, a week ago, was took so ill of the palsy that it shook
all over like a leaf. I thought it was agoing to die; but at last,
thinks I, why shouldn't St Toper cure she, as he cures so many as have
fits? And so, sir, I goes and fetches a little water, and flings it on
Tabby's face, and the moment she felt the water she stops the shaking,
and walks about as well as ever."

"Had she had any breakfast that morning?"

"No, sir, fasting from all but air; I gave her nothing from the night
before, when she supped on a mouse."

Mr Swallowlies stooped down and laid his hand on the cat, which was
purring and rubbing its fur against his leg.

"A strange instance this," he said, "of the efficacy of the ancient
faith."

"Do you believe it, sir?" I inquired.

"Why not, sir? I don't attribute this, of course, to the direct
operation of St Toper; but it certainly was endowed with this virtue
to be evidence of his holy life. A wonderful animal this, Mrs
Wheedler,--you would not probably wish to part with it?"

"I have two or three other cats, sir; but I'm very poor, and a little
money is more useful to me than old Tabby."

"I'll speak to you in a little on the subject. Meanwhile, have you any
other instances of cure?"

"Not to speak of, sir," replied Janet, delighted with the deference
she was treated with. "That there little calf as you sees among the
cabbage was born with five legs, and without ever a tail."

"Five legs! bless me!" exclaimed Mr Swallowlies--"how very strange!--it
has only four now."

"Ah, sir! that's all owing to the well. I takes it to the spring, and
sprinkles the fifth leg three times, and immediately it gives a jerk,
and up goes the leg into its body, like the winding up of a jack-chain;
and so I goes to work again, and flings a bucketful on its back, and,
in a minute or two, out comes a tail,--and there it is, and not a
single mark left of where the additional leg had disappeared."

"This is most interesting!" exclaimed Mr Swallowlies. "Have you got the
bucket you used in aspersing the calf?"

"There it be, sir," said Janet, pointing to a tub of some size, that
was placed upright against the wall.

"A blessed instrument, indeed," said the gentleman, bowing most
respectfully, as he sounded with his knuckles on the rim. "I must have
some minutes' conversation with you, Mrs Wheedler, for I make a point
of never taking any stories, which at first sight appear improbable,
without sedulous inquiry and anxious proof."

"I hear the dinner-bell," I said at this moment, for I heard Captain
Smith performing the "Roast beef of Old England" on a key-bugle, which
was the concerted signal for our assembling where the provender had
been spread; and I used a little more vigour than usual in drawing the
young ladies away.

"What a splendid specimen of Anglo-Catholic faith is Mr Swallowlies!"
exclaimed Araminta in a tone of rapture; "and how free from bigotry in
his reverence for a Romish saint like the holy Toper!"

"Hold your silly tongue, this moment!" I exclaimed, getting into a
passion--"a fellow that believes in paralytic cats and five-footed
calves being cured by such trumpery, should leave our church."

"You are so bitter, Mr Buddle, against the Holy Catholic Church, that I
wonder you call yourself a Christian at all."

"Where is the Holy Catholic Church, you little simpleton?" I said,
softening a little, for Araminta is a nice little girl.

"At Rome, Charles Fustian told me; and we are but a distant branch of
it, bearing very little fruit, and owing that little only to the sap
furnished to us by the main old trunk. And Mr Mount Huxtable says the
same,--only that our branch bears no fruit, as the continuity was cut
off at the deplorable Reformation."

"Charles Fustian! Mr Mount Huxtable!" I cried: "they're laughing at
you, my little dear: they are both ministers of our church, and have
made numberless protestations against the wickedness and errors of
Rome. They are laughing at you,--at least I know Mount Huxtable is,
for, to tell you a secret, my dear Araminta, he is placed here for no
other purpose but to defend our Protestant Establishment against the
Tractarian tendencies of the artists and young ladies of the day."

"Charles Fustian, sir, I beg to tell you, knows too well to presume to
laugh at me," said Araminta, tossing her head.

"He ought, my dear," I replied, "for he is a remarkably foolish young
man, and hasn't half the sense in his whole head which you have in your
little finger."

By this time we had reached the spring; and after placing the girls in
the best seats still to be found, I called Dr Smiler aside.

"My dear old friend," I said, "have you made proper inquiry about Mount
Huxtable's church principles, before you installed him in full power in
the parish?"

"No Tractarian need apply, was in the advertisement," replied the
Doctor. "He is a stout opponent of the dissenters; and, besides, my
dear Buddle, as you are the oldest friend I have in the parish, I
may tell you that on the way here he had a long conversation with
Christina, who sat beside him in his phaeton, and among other things he
asked her if she thought she could be content with the humble condition
of a curate's wife? She said yes, of course,--for she has liked him
ever since they met; and he told her he would wait on me to-morrow. I
now consider him my son-in-law. He has great expectations, and has
already fourteen hundred a-year."

"I don't like what I hear of his churchmanship," I said. "And as to
Swallowlies, I think he is a bigoted fool, and a Papist."

"I don't the least see, Mr Buddle, why a man should be either bigoted
or a fool who believes as two-thirds of the Christians throughout the
world believe."

So saying, the Doctor turned off in a very dignified manner, and
presided over the pigeon-pie.

I confess to you, my dear Charles, this acted like a thunderbolt on
me. Rejoiced as I was at Christina's good fortune, in attracting the
affection of so amiable and wealthy an admirer as Mount Huxtable, I did
not feel altogether comfortable at the effect which this discovery had
on the logical powers of my friend the Rector of Yawnham. Because a man
admires my daughter, and makes her an offer of marriage, am I to kiss
the Pope's toe? I made a determination to inquire into matters more
deeply than I had hitherto done, and, with a view to pick up all the
information I could, I watched the conversation in silence.

Betsy Blazer sat next Captain Smith of the Rifles, and, in one of the
pauses which occasionally occur in the noisiest assemblages, her voice
was distinctly heard.

"Do you ever chant when you are all together in barracks, Captain
Smith?--it must be delightful."

"Well, I can't deny that there is occasionally chanting after mess,"
replied the soldier, a little amazed.

"Who is the leader?"

"Why, Jones and I both pretend to some renown."

"Are they Gregorian?"

"I should say Stentorian was a better description, for, between
ourselves, Jones, in the Nottingham Ale, might be mistaken for an angry
bull."

What the denouement of the conversation was I don't know, for Rowdy's
voice rose above the din--

"Faith expires"--he said--"hope grows dim--but ceremony, the last
refuge of religion, remains. We lose the trustingness that makes us lay
the promises of holy writ to our hearts,--the childlike simplicity that
lifts us into a world where truth erects her palace on gorgeous clouds,
which to us take the semblance and solidity of mountains,--we lose
the thrill, the dread, the love,--but we can retain the surplice, the
albe, and the stole. The cloud that seemed a mountain has disappeared;
the confidence that sustained us has gone,--but we can erect churches
according to the strictest rules of architecture, cover the table with
cloth of gold,--have daily service, have some fixed, irrevocable,
eternal rule, and feel ourselves the slaves of hours and postures;--a
slavery befitting those who are left to grope in the darkness of their
own souls for a belief, and find nothing to support, to bless, or cheer
them."

"Do you advocate the externals of devotion, Mr Rowdy, after the reality
of religion has left the heart?" I inquired.

"Certainly, sir," he said. "If you waited for the internal religion
you talk of, you would never enter a church. And pray, sir, what is
internal, and what is external? Your heart is a piece of flesh, your
font is a piece of stone; why shouldn't holiness reside in the one as
well as in the other?"

"It strikes me, Mr Rowdy, to be rather hypocritical to go through the
forms of religion without the spirit," I urged again.

"And what is life but hypocrisy?--your very clothes make you a
hypocrite: without them you would resemble a forked radish, but
you disfigure yourself in surtout and pantaloons. Go through the
ceremonies, sir--the feeling in time will come; dig your trenches deep,
and the rain will pour into them and burn the sacrifice of your altar
with fire; kneel when you have no devotion, bend yourself to decrees
and ordinances when you have no humility and no faith; and, entering on
that course with the scoff of Voltaire, you will emerge from it with
the sanctity of Vincent de Paul."

"On the contrary, sir, I maintain," said I, "that, if you persist in
these miserable bonds of an outward obedience, in the expectation that
they will promote your advance in goodness, you bring on yourself the
condemnation of the Pharisee; you may enter them with the faith of
your friend Mr Swallowlies, but you will leave them ere long with the
sentiments of the infidel and apostate Strauss."

"I call no man an apostate," cried Mr Rowdy, "who traces the operations
of his own mind to their legitimate results; I call no man an infidel
who believes that he was born, and that he shall die."

"How good! how liberal! how humane!" exclaimed a chorus of sweet voices.

"And what do YOU say?" I enquired, addressing our new curate.

"For myself," said Mr Mount Huxtable, "I think it sinful in any one to
decide on such a subject, unless in the exact words of the church."

"Very good," said the Doctor; "judiciously answered."

"Don't you allow private judgment, sir?" said I.

"No more, sir," he replied, "than I should allow private execution.
It is for the church to pass sentence: if any presumptuous individual
interferes with her authority, he is as much out of his sphere as if he
were to displace Baron Alderson on the bench, go through the mockery of
a trial, and condemn an enemy of his own to be hanged."

"Very good, indeed," said the Doctor; "judiciously answered."

"I have often heard your friend, Charles Fustian, say the same," said
Araminta.

"Is he a friend of yours, Mount Huxtable?" inquired Dr Smiler, in a
very bland tone.

"A most intimate friend, my dear sir," replied Mount Huxtable.

"Dear me!--I thought you told me you didn't know him."

"No, my dear sir, I didn't tell you so: I only gave you to understand
that we weren't acquainted."

"That used to be pretty much the same thing," I said, a little chafed
with the putting down I had already experienced, "and I suspect you are
a great deal more intimate than you were inclined to let us know."

"You have exactly hit upon the reason," he replied. "I was not inclined
to let you know; and I have yet to learn that a priest is imperatively
required to confess to a layman, however inquisitive or ill-mannered he
may be."

"Come, my dear Buddle," said the Doctor, "I think you will see that you
ought to apologise."

"For what?" I exclaimed.

"For speaking so irreverently to the pastor of the parish," replied
Dr Smiler. "You should consider, sir, that Mr Mount Huxtable is your
spiritual guide."

"Certainly," said Araminta; and Christina Smiler grew first red and
then pale, and looked at me as if I were a heathen.

I sipped a glass in silence; and the altercation had the unpleasant
effect of producing an awkward pause.

When the silence had endured for upwards of a minute, it was suddenly
broken by Major M'Turk ejaculating, in his most military manner,
"Sharpshooters, to the front!" and mechanically Jones and Smith
sprang up, and, advancing a few paces, anxiously looked upward in the
direction pointed out by the commander's hand. The sight they saw might
have shaken less firm nerves than theirs; for, toiling slowly down
the hill, from Janet Wheedler's cottage, we perceived a nondescript
figure, yet evidently human, more puzzling than the sea-serpent. Some
large round substance enveloped its head, and entirely buried the hat
and face, and covered the whole of the neck down to the middle buttons
of the coat. Tucked under one arm we beheld a cat, secured by a ribbon
tied round its neck; and, with a large kitchen poker in the other hand,
the advancing stranger drove before him a great awkward calf. When he
got a little nearer, we recognised our friend Mr Swallowlies.

"In heaven's name!" exclaimed the Rector, "what have you got there, Mr
Swallowlies?"

"It is in heaven's name, indeed," replied Swallowlies, lifting up the
large washing-tub which we had seen in Janet's cottage. "These, sir,
are holy relies, which I have luckily induced the venerable matron of
the hut to part with--partly by prayers and supplications, and partly
by payments in money."

The Rector looked astonished, for he had not been of our party; and
Swallowlies, allowing the calf to feed on the grass near the spring,
explained his sentiments on the subject of the tub, and related the
miraculous history of the animals his companions.

"And how much did you give for the tub, sir?" said Smiler.

"Five pounds procured the inestimable treasure," answered Swallowlies
in triumph; "eight pounds procured me the sacred tabby, and twelve
guineas the calf. A very few pounds more have obtained for me, if
possible, still more precious articles. Look here, sir," he continued,
pulling from his coat-pocket an old quarter-boot, with the sole nearly
off, and two or three flat-headed nails sticking out from the tattered
heel--"this is one of the sandals in which the illustrious Toper used
to go his annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury.
This instrument of iron--which, I confess, struck me at first to bear
a great resemblance to a poker--was his staff. And this, sir," he
said, pulling from his bosom a piece of very old corduroy, mended in
several places--"this is the left leg of the pantaloons the saint wore
for upwards of forty years, without ever taking them off; for he is
recorded never to have changed his raiment but twice, and never to have
washed either his face or hands,--such a true Christian soldier was he."

"He was a dirty brute, and no soldier," cried Captain Smith, who was a
great martinet in his regiment, "and I would have had him flogged every
morning till he learned to be more tidy."

"Sacrilege! horror!" exclaimed Swallowlies, crossing himself in the
greatest perturbation, and placing the tub once more on his head, and
resuming his labours in driving the calf onward with his poker.

"Won't you have some pie?" said Dr Smiler.

"No, sir; I am fasting to-day, and am anxious to place my treasures in
security."

"Such faith is highly edifying," said Mount Huxtable, "and
unfortunately too uncommon in the present day. Ah! were all men equally
pure, and as highly gifted as Swallowlies, the Reformation would soon
be blotted out, and our Mother of Rome receive her repentant children."

"How? What did you say, my dear sir?" inquired the Rector. "Are you not
a Protestant?"

"Assuredly not, sir. I detest the cold and barren name. It is a mere
negation. I want something positive. It is the part of a Christian to
believe--certainly not to deny."

"To be sure, Doctor, we are none of us Protestants; we are
Anglo-Catholics," said Araminta, answering for the feminine part of his
flock.

"I never viewed it in that light before," said Dr Smiler, looking
assuringly at Christina, who seemed greatly alarmed at what her father
might do. "Certainly religion is not a mere denial of error; it is far
more--an embracing of truth."

"There is no truth omitted in the faith of the Catholic Church," said
Mount Huxtable solemnly. "Some are more developed than they were at
first; and some, more recently planted, are even now in course of
growth, and, before many years elapse, will infallibly spread their
branches all over this barren land. But I will call on you to-morrow,"
he added, with a smile, and a bend of his head towards Christina, which
entirely barred up all the arguments that our Protestant champion might
have been inclined to advance. And in a short time the pic-nic came to
an end, and we all returned to Yawnham in the order we had come--always
excepting Mr Swallowlies, whom we overtook in the first half-mile,
still under his umbrageous sombrero, and still gesticulating with the
poker to guide his erratic calf.


LETTER FOURTH.

I had not sealed up the letter which I inclose to you herewith, my dear
Charles, and fortunately, as it turns out--for I have it now in my
power to tell you the conclusion of your machinations in this parish.

Three weeks have elapsed since the expedition to Holywell Tree. My
anger, I confess, with Dr Smiler was so hot that I never called at the
parsonage; and after the first Sunday I did not even go to church. The
communion-table is now surmounted by a gigantic crucifix--a cover of
bright velvet, with a golden star in the centre, hangs down to the
ground, while a vase of flowers stands on the middle of the table,
flanked at each side by immense candlesticks, with a candle of two or
three pounds' weight in each. There is a stone creding table, an eagle
at one side of the aisle in bronze, and the old recess in the porch is
cleared out, and a basin placed in it; but whether for the reception
of holy water or charitable pence I did not stop to inquire. There is
daily service at ten in the morning. The girls wear a regular uniform,
and call themselves Sisters of the Order of St Cecilia, and have
appointed Swallowlies their father confessor; and once or twice a-week,
I believe, he, or Rowdy, or Mount Huxtable, attends in the vestry, and
takes the young ladies, one by one, to a solitary conversation, with
the door locked. And the best of the affair is, that Tom Blazer and
his two military friends are as constant in their attendance as the
rest. But, with these exceptions, there is not a man to be seen in the
church, either on week-days or Sundays; for I am told that even John
Simpkins and Peter Bolt have struck for wages, and won't attend prayers
under half-a-crown a-week. So we have begun a subscription in the
parish for a district chapel; and in the mean time we stream off by the
hundred, either to the church or meeting-houses of the nearest parish.
Major M'Turk, I am sorry to say, has had many interviews with the
Reverend Mr Rowdy, and has become almost an infidel, with a leaning, if
anything, to the religion of the Buddhists in India, who fast, he says,
fifty times more, and go through a thousand times more painful penances
than either Puseyite or Papist.

This morning I was surprised to see Doctor Smiler coming up my garden
walk, as he used to do in the days of our friendship. He looked rather
downcast as he drew near the window, where I was busy getting my
fishing-flies in order, and coughed once or twice, as if to announce
his approach. I pretended not to hear him, and continued absorbed in
my lines and feathers; and, instead of coming in at the open door as
he has done for the last twenty years, he actually rang the bell, and
old Thomas had to bustle on his coat, and come out of the back-yard to
see who was there,--and I thought the old man's tone was a little sharp
when he announced Dr Smiler.

"How do you do, Doctor Smiler?" I said very courteously; "have the
kindness to be seated."

The Doctor sat down.

"Are you going to the brook to-day?" he inquired.

"Yes; if the wind holds, I shall try it for an hour or two this
evening. I hope Mrs Smiler is well."

"She is not well," he said.

"And Christina--Miss Christina?" I added, correcting myself.

"Dying," said the Doctor.

"Christina dying!" I exclaimed, starting up and taking the Doctor's
hand; "my dear Smiler, why didn't you tell us?--why didn't you send for
us?"

"I was ashamed, and that's the truth," said the Doctor. "Ah! Buddle,
you were wiser than I."

"How?--what? Is it that rascal Mount Huxtable?" I inquired.

"No doubt of it," replied Smiler. "He has ruined the happiness of my
daughter, turned away the hearts of my parishioners, and made me a
laughing-stock to the whole county."

"Is he not going to marry her, then?--did he not call on you after the
pic-nic?"

"No, he didn't call on me; but he consulted Christina's taste in all
things--got her to superintend the alterations in the church--the
candlesticks and flowers; he even asked her what style of paper she
liked for drawing rooms, and the poor girl expected every moment that
he would make a formal demand."

"It may come yet," I said, endeavouring to cheer him.

"It can't, my dear friend. I find he is married already."

"The villain!"

"He was an intimate friend of Charles Fustian," continued the Rector,
"and by his advice answered my advertisement for an anti-Tractarian
curate; by his advice also he concealed the fact of his marriage, and,
in the course of less than a month, see what he has done."

"He denied that he knew Charles Fustian."

"I accused him of the duplicity this morning, but he says it was for
the good of the flock; and as he is their shepherd for two years, he
has a greater interest in them than I."

"And how did he explain his speeches to Christina?"

"General observations," he says; "he wished her opinion on drawing-room
papers, and required her assistance in the interior arrangement of his
church."

"His church! the puppy! We shall petition the bishop."

"Of no use," said the Rector. "You will perceive, my dear Buddle,
that the generality of the bench are either very fond of power, and
flattered with Puseyite sycophancy; or anxious to keep pace with the
titled aristocracy, and very fond of 'gentility.' Now there is no
denying that the Tractarians are more polished men, and, as far as
the arts and refinements go, more cultivated men than the labouring
clergy generally, and therefore these two things keep them secure from
any authoritative condemnation--their truckling to their spiritual
superiors, and their standing in society. If Mount Huxtable had been a
vulgar fellow, though with the energy and holiness of St Paul,--if he
had stood up against his diocesan and vindicated his liberty, either
of speech or action, in the slightest degree--we could have hurled him
from the parish, probably into gaol, in spite of all the licenses in
the world; but I have no hope in this case."

"Then I have," I said, "for, from what you told me of the fellow's
hypocrisy, I have no doubt he was the very man who was received, as
they call it, into the Romish Church by Bishop Cunningham, three months
since."

"It is surely impossible, my dear Buddle; how could he officiate in our
church after being a professed papist?"

"Easily, my dear Smiler; it has very often been done, and is frequently
done at this moment. Take that account of the ceremony with you, and
tax him with it at once."

The Doctor folded up the paper, and went on,--

"But this is not all. How am I to atone to poor Mrs Blazer, and poor
Mrs Swainlove, for what has happened?"

"Why?--what has happened to the old ladies?"

"Jones has eloped with Araminta Blazer; and, in the same post-chaise,
Smith has carried off Tinderella Swainlove!"

"Why, they were almost professed unbelievers,--at least not at all
Tractarian."

"That doesn't matter. They are off, and what we have now to hope for
is--that they will go to Gretna Green. Young Pulser also has kicked Mr
Rowdy into the mill-pond, where he was nearly drowned, for something
or other he said or did to Priscilla Pulser at confession; and, to
complete the catalogue of woes, Mr Swallowlies has been arrested for
theft; for it appears that the calf which Janet Wheedler sold him was
not her own, but belonged to farmer Ruffhead."

What could I say to comfort the poor old rector under such a tremendous
cloud of calamity? The solitary glimpse of satisfaction, I confess,
which I individually caught from his narrative was, that Araminta had
shown the good taste to leave a friend of mine in the lurch. I will add
nothing to this letter, for I am hurrying off to assist the Doctor in
comforting his household, and recovering possession of his parish. How
we succeed in this, and what steps we take to regain the confidence
and affection of the flock, I shall not fail to inform you. Meanwhile,
reflect on all that has arisen from your introduction of these foreign
mummeries and superstitions into this quiet parish, and "how great
effects from little causes spring."--

  Yours, &c.

  T. BUDDLE.




AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.


When Jellachich, on the 9th September 1848, passed the Drave, the
boundary of Croatia and of Hungary Proper, the war between Austria and
Hungary may be said to have commenced. Up to that time the hostilities
directed against Hungary had been confined to the attacks of her
revolted Sclavonic subjects in some parts of Croatia, and in the
counties on the Lower Danube. These revolts had been instigated, and
the attacks conducted, by officers in the Austrian service, who were
countenanced and aided by a party at the court, and who asserted that
they acted with the authority and in the interests of the Imperial
family. Still the emperor, on the demand of the Hungarian ministry,
had disavowed their proceedings. In May, he had publicly degraded
Jellachich from all his offices, as a rebel against the Hungarian
government. In July, he had formally announced to the diet, through his
representative the Archduke Palatine, his determination to maintain
the integrity of Hungary, and the laws he had sanctioned in April,
and repudiated, as a calumny, the assertion of Jellachich and the
other leaders of the revolt, that the emperor, or any other member of
the Imperial family, countenanced their proceedings. It is true that
Jellachich and another of these leaders had subsequently been received
by the emperor-king, and by several members of the Imperial family, in
a manner hardly consistent with their position as rebels; yet it was
possible that his majesty might still listen to other counsels--might
still resolve to pursue a constitutional course, and to preserve his
own faith inviolate. Even so late as the 9th September--the day on
which Jellachich passed the Drave--he solemnly renewed his promise to
maintain the integrity of Hungary and the laws of April. But upon the
4th September he had reinstated Jellachich in all his offices, civil
and military, knowing that he was then at the head of an army on the
frontiers of Hungary, preparing to invade that kingdom, and to force
the Hungarians to renounce the concessions made to them in April by
their king. It appeared that the Ban had been supplied with money and
with arms from Vienna while he was still nominally in disgrace, and
he was joined by Austrian regiments, which had marched from Southern
Hungary to put themselves under his orders. His advance, therefore, at
the head of an army composed of Austrian regiments and Croat forces,
was truly an invasion of Hungary by Austria.

The Hungarian forces collected to resist this invasion were still
without a commander-in-chief or a staff--without sufficient arms or
ammunition, and for the most part without military discipline or
organisation. We have already mentioned that, on the restoration of the
Ban to his offices and command, the Hungarian ministry resigned; but
Mazaros, minister of the war department, Kossuth, minister of finance,
and Szemere, minister of the interior, continued provisionally to
perform the duties of their offices. Their measures were so energetic,
that the Palatine called upon Count Louis Bathyanyi, the head of the
late ministry, to form another government. This step was approved
at Vienna; and Bathyanyi undertook the duty on the condition that
Jellachich should be ordered to retire, and, if he refused, should
be proclaimed a traitor. The king required a list of the proposed
ministry, which was immediately presented; but a week or more elapsed,
during which no answer was received, and during which Jellachich
continued to advance towards the capital of Hungary. The Palatine, at
the request of the diet, and after the measure had been approved by
the king, took command of the Hungarian troops opposed to the Ban,
which were then retiring upon Buda. Both parties, the invaders and the
invaded, appeared at this time to be countenanced by the Emperor of
Austria and King of Hungary; and the diet, while preparing for defence,
seems not to have relinquished all hope of a peaceful arrangement. The
Archduke Stephen, after joining the army, and hastily organising it,
opened communications with the Ban, and arranged a meeting in boats on
the Lake Balaton: but Jellachich did not keep his appointment; and the
Archduke Palatine, summoned to Vienna by the emperor, left the army,
passed through Pesth on his way to Vienna, and on his arrival there, as
we formerly stated, resigned the office of palatine. Shortly afterwards
he retired to his private residence on the Rhine.

Count Louis Bathyanyi, whose conditions had not yet been either
accepted or rejected, was thus left alone to carry on the whole
government; and the diet, for the purposes both of aiding and
controlling the administration of the minister, named a committee
of their number, called the "Committee of Defence," to assist in
conducting the government.

Jellachich had now established himself at Stuhlweissenberg, four or
five marches from Pesth; and the government at Vienna appears to have
anticipated that Hungary, left without a government, must fall into
confusion. But she preserved her loyal and constitutional attitude; and
while she was prepared to repel force by force, gave no pretext for
employing it. Count L. Bathyanyi was at length informed that his list
of the new ministry was not approved; and by an ordinance dated 25th
September, General Count Francis Lamberg was appointed to the command
of all the troops in Hungary, with power to restore order and to close
the diet. The time had arrived which the Hungarians had been most
desirous to avert, when they must either surrender their constitutional
rights or resist their king.

The murder of Count Lamberg by a frantic mob threw the diet into a
state of consternation. The regiment on which it most relied was the
regiment of Lamberg, and the Ban was at the gates of Buda. The diet
passed resolutions expressing its profound grief at the unhappy fate
of the count, and ordered criminal proceedings to be immediately
instituted against his murderers. The patriotism of the soldiers was
not shaken by the horrible event that had occurred; and they displayed
their wonted gallantry on the 29th, when the Ban was repulsed.
Immediately after the murder of General Lamberg, Count Louis Bathyanyi
resigned. There was now neither palatine nor minister in the kingdom,
and the enemy was about to attack the capital. In this emergency the
Committee of Defence, at the head of which was Louis Kossuth, took upon
itself the direction of affairs; and since that time it has governed
Hungary.

After the defeat of Jellachich, while he was on the frontiers of
Austria, followed by the Hungarian army, the king named Count Adam
Ricsay prime-minister, and by a new ordinance, countersigned Ricsay,
the diet was dissolved, its decrees annulled, and Jellachich appointed
commander-in-chief of all the troops in Hungary. The civil authorities
were suspended, and the country declared in a state of siege. At the
same time Jellachich was named royal commissioner, and invested with
executive power over the whole kingdom.

From the moment of Jellachich's nomination to the office of Ban of
Croatia, without the consent of the responsible Hungarian ministry, his
concert with a party hostile to Hungary at the imperial court had not
been doubtful; and that party had now prevailed upon the emperor-king
to adopt their views. The influence of the Ban was not shaken by
his defeat. The court had previously identified itself with his
proceedings, and he had faithfully, though not hitherto successfully,
espoused its cause. He had declared against the laws of April and the
separate ministry in Hungary, which these laws had established, and in
favour of a central government at Vienna for the whole dominions of
the emperor, which he proposed to force the Hungarians to accept. He
was no longer a Croat chief, asserting the national pretensions of his
countrymen, but an Austrian general, assailing the constitution and
the independence of Hungary. From the position at Raab, on the road to
Vienna, to which he had retreated after his reverse, he applied for
reinforcements to enable him again to advance towards Pesth. It was
the refusal of these reinforcements to march that led to the second
revolution at Vienna, which has been attributed to Hungarian agency.
It is probable that the Hungarians would employ all the influence
they could command to prevent or impede the march of troops to attack
them; but it is remarkable that the prosecutions of persons engaged
in that revolution do not appear to have elicited anything that would
justify us in attributing the revolt of the Viennese to the Hungarians.
Attempts have also been made to implicate the Hungarians in the
atrocious murder of Latour, the minister of war, by the insurgents of
Vienna, but we have not been able to trace any foundation for such
a charge. The Hungarians were formidable enemies, and to them every
atrocity was attributed.

The Emperor of Austria was now at war with Hungary, and his enemies,
therefore, became her allies. The revolutionary party at Vienna for a
time regained the ascendency, and signalised it by the crime to which
we have referred. After Windischgratz and Jellachich had invested the
city, the Viennese applied to the Hungarians for aid; but their levies
and national guards had returned in great numbers to their homes, and
their army was not in a condition to make any impression upon that of
the emperor. It advanced, and was repulsed. The Austrian government, by
allying itself with rebellion and anarchy to subvert the established
constitution of Hungary, had driven the Hungarians, in self-defence,
into an alliance with the revolutionary party in Vienna against the
government.

The error into which it had been led ought now to have been manifest to
the Austrian cabinet; and it was not yet too late to remedy the evil.
By returning to the course of legality and good faith, the Imperial
government might have disarmed and regained Hungary. If there was
in that country, as there no doubt was, a party which was disposed
to sympathise with the republicans, and even with the worst of the
anarchists in Austria, they were without power or influence, and
their evil designs would at once have been frustrated, their opinions
repudiated, and the loyalty of the nation confirmed; but the court
had unfortunately placed itself in a position that left it but the
choice of abandoning and breaking faith with the rebels to Hungary,
whose eminent services at Vienna it was bound to acknowledge, or of
persevering in the breach of faith with Hungary, which his advisers had
forced upon the emperor-king. That the Hungarians had been ready to
support the cause of monarchy and order, so long as faith had been kept
with them, was put beyond all question by the vote of the diet, which,
on the motion of the responsible Hungarian ministry formed in April,
had placed forty thousand Hungarian troops at the disposal of the
emperor, for service in Italy, "to preserve the honour of the Austrian
arms," then endangered by the first reverses of Marshal Radetski. The
Wessemberg ministry appears to have contemplated restoring the king of
Hungary and his subjects to their legal and constitutional relations,
for it issued a circular declaring that the king intended to fulfil
the engagements he had entered into in April. But the power of the
minister was subordinate to that of a party at the court, whose views
were opposed to his own; and the acts of the government were not such
as to restore confidence in its sincerity, at all times a difficult
task for a government that has justly forfeited the confidence of a
whole nation. Hungary did not dare to suspend her preparations for
resistance; and the second revolution at Vienna, by occupying the
troops destined to attack her, gave her time to improve her means of
defence.

Had there been at Vienna a government capable of inspiring confidence
in its sincerity--a government possessing power or influence enough to
carry out conciliatory measures, to fulfil the engagements it might
contract--the differences between Austria and Hungary might still have
been amicably adjusted, by restoring the constitutional government
established in April. All the bloodshed and misery that has ensued, and
all the evils that may yet follow from the war, would thus have been
averted. But irresponsible advisers had more influence at the court
than the ostensible cabinet, and were blindly bent on returning to the
irretrievable past. They founded their hopes upon the devotion of that
noble army which had re-established order in Austria, and which, if
employed only to maintain order and the just rights of the monarchy,
would have encountered no opposition that it could not overcome.
Hungary, cordially reunited to Austria under the same sovereign, would
again have become, what the Emperor Francis declared it to be, "the
chief bulwark of the monarchy;" and the empire would have resumed its
position as the guardian of peace and order in Eastern Europe, and a
powerful support to the cause of constitutional monarchy and rational
liberty everywhere.

Unhappily for the Austrian empire, for Europe, and for "the good
cause," evil counsels prevailed, and Hungary was again invaded. Many
of the leading magnates adhered to the court, at which they had spent
their lives, and which was in fact their home. But there was hardly
a great family of which some wealthy and influential members did not
declare for their native country. A great majority of the resident
aristocracy--the numerous class of resident country gentlemen, almost
without exception--the body of inferior nobles or freeholders--the
peasant-proprietors and the labouring population, espoused the cause of
Hungary. The Protestant clergy in the Majjar country, to a man, and the
Roman Catholic clergy of Hungary in a body, urged their flocks to be
patient and orderly, to obey the government charged with the defence of
the country, and to be faithful and valiant in defending it.

The attacks of Jellachich, and of that portion of the Croats and
Serbes which had declared against Hungary, had failed to bring about
the submission of the diet, and had produced an alliance, dangerous
to the court, between its enemies in the Hereditary States and the
Hungarians, with whom it was now at war. The national assembly or
congress that met at Vienna was tainted with republican notions, and
divided into factions, influenced for the most part by feelings of
race. German unity, Sclave ascendency, and Polish regeneration, were
the ultimate objects of many of those who talked of liberty, equality,
and fraternity. The discussion of the constitution revealed the
discord in their opinions, and they seemed to agree in nothing but the
determination to overturn the ancient system of the empire.

Wearied by contentions, in which his character and feelings unfitted
him to take a part; distracted by diverse counsels; involved by a
series of intrigues, from which he could not escape, in conflicting
engagements; dreading the new order of things, and diffident of his own
ability to perform the duties it demanded of him, the Emperor Ferdinand
abdicated; and by a family arrangement the crown of Austria was
transferred, not to the next heir, but to the second in succession. The
crown of Hungary, as we formerly stated, had been settled by statute
on the heirs of the House of Hapsburg; but no provision had been made
for the case which had now arisen. The Hungarians held that their king
had no power to abdicate; that so long as he lived he must continue
to be their king; that if he became incapable of performing the regal
functions, the laws had reserved to the diet the power to provide for
their due performance; that the crown of Hungary was settled by statute
on the heirs of the House of Hapsburg, and the Emperor Francis Joseph
was not the heir. The laws of Hungary required that her king should be
legitimately crowned according to the ancient customs of the kingdom,
and should take the coronation oath before he could exercise his rights
or authority as sovereign. If he claimed the crown of Hungary as his
legal right, he was bound to abide by the laws on which that right was
founded. But these laws required that he should be crowned according
to the customs of Hungary, and that he should bind himself by a solemn
oath to maintain the constitution and the laws, including those passed
in March, sanctioned and put into operation in April 1848. In short,
that he should concede what Hungary was contending for.

The abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand, and the accession to
the Imperial throne of his youthful successor, presented another
opportunity of which the Austrian government might have gracefully
availed itself, to terminate the differences with Hungary. The young
emperor was fettered by no engagements, involved in none of the
intrigues that entangled his unwary predecessor, and entailed so great
evils upon the country. He was free to take a constitutional course
in Hungary, to confirm the concessions which had been voluntarily
made, and which could not now be recalled--to restore to the Imperial
government a character for good faith; and thus to have won the hearts
of the Hungarians. Supported by their loyal attachment to their king,
he might have peacefully worked out the reforms in the government
of his empire which the times and the circumstances demanded or
justified. But Count Stadion, the real head of the new ministry,
though possessed of many eminent qualities as a statesman, was deeply
imbued with the old longing after unity in the system of government:
he hoped to effect, by means of a constitution devised and framed for
that purpose, the amalgamation of the different parts of the empire,
which abler men had failed to accomplish under an absolute monarchy,
in circumstances more favourable to success. The opposition that was
inevitable in Hungary he proposed to overcome by force of arms; and,
at a moment when a desire for separate nationality was the predominant
feeling in the minds of all the different races in the empire, he had
the hardihood to imagine that he could frame a constitution capable
of overcoming this desire, and of fusing them all into one. It was
considered an advantage that the emperor, unfettered by personal
engagements to Hungary, was free to prosecute its subjugation, to
subvert its constitution, and to force the Hungarians to accept in its
place the constitution of Count Stadion, with seats in the Assembly
at Vienna for their representatives, under one central government for
the united empire. This may have been a desirable result to obtain; it
might, if attainable, have been ultimately conducive to the strength of
the empire and the welfare of all classes; but it was not to claim the
hereditary succession to a throne secured and guarded by statutes--it
was rather to undertake the conquest of a kingdom.

Windischgratz and Jellachich occupied Pesth without opposition, set
aside the constituted authorities, and governed the country, as far as
their army extended, by martial law. The Committee of Defence retired
beyond the Theis to Debreczin, in the heart of the Majjar country, and
appealed to the patriotism of the Hungarians. The army was rapidly
recruited, and was organised in the field, for the campaign may be
said to have endured throughout the whole winter. From time to time it
was announced from Vienna that the war was about to be terminated by
the advance of the imperial army, and the dispersion or destruction
of _Kossuth's faction_. The flight of Kossuth, and his capture as a
fugitive in disguise, were reported and believed. The delay in the
advance of the imperial army was attributed to the rigour of the
season and the state of the roads; and, when these impediments no
longer existed, to the incapacity of Windischgratz, who was roughly
handled by the government press of Vienna. The true cause was carefully
concealed. The resistance was not that of a faction, but of a nation.
That fact has been fully established by the events in this unfortunate,
unnecessary, and unnatural war.

The Austrian armies employed in Hungary have probably exceeded one
hundred and fifty thousand regular troops, aided by irregular bands
of Croats and Serbes, and latterly by a Russian corps of ten thousand
men. They established themselves both in Transylvania and in Hungary,
and were in possession of the whole of the fertile country from the
frontiers of Austria to the Theis, which flows through the centre of
the kingdom. From Transylvania, both the Austrian and the Russian
forces have been driven into Wallachia. From the line of the Theis
the imperial army has been forced across the Danube, on which they
were unable to maintain their positions. The sieges of Komorn and
Peterwardein, the two great fortresses on the Danube, of which the
capture or surrender has so often been announced, have been raised;
and the question is no longer whether Debreczin is to be occupied by
the Emperor's forces, but whether Vienna is safe from the Hungarians.
Opposed to the admirable army of Austria, these results could not have
been obtained unless the great body of the nation had been cordially
united, nor even then, unless by a people of great energy, courage, and
intelligence.

Had the government of Austria known how to win the hearts of the
Hungarians for their sovereign--had they but preserved the good faith
and the sanctity of the monarchy in Hungary, how secure and imposing
might the position of the Emperor have now been, in the midst of
all the troubles in Germany! Hungary desired no revolution; she had
peacefully obtained, by constitutional means, all she desired. Her
revolution had been effected centuries ago; and, with indigenous
institutions, to which her people were warmly attached, she would have
maintained, as she did maintain, her internal tranquillity and her
constitutional monarchy, whatever storms might rage around her.

The resources that Hungary has put forth in this contest have surprised
Europe, because Europe had not taken the trouble to calculate the
strength and the resources of Hungary. With a compact territory, equal
in extent to Great Britain and Ireland, or to Prussia, and the most
defensible frontier of any kingdom on the continent of Europe; with a
population nearly equal to that of England, and not much inferior to
that of Prussia;[6] with a climate equal to that of France, and soil
of greater natural fertility than any of these; with a representative
government long established, and free indigenous institutions,
which the people venerate; with a brave, energetic, and patriotic
population, predisposed to military pursuits, jealous of their national
independence, and of their personal liberty--ambitious of military
renown, proud of their traditionary prowess, and impressed with an
idea of their own superiority to the surrounding populations--Hungary,
as all who know the country and the people were aware, would be found
a formidable antagonist by any power that might attack her. But,
paradoxical and incredible as it may appear, we believe it is not the
less true, that, little as Hungary was known in most of the countries
of Europe, there was hardly a capital, in that quarter of the globe,
where more erroneous notions regarding it prevailed than in Vienna. In
other places there was ignorance; in the capital of Austria there was
the most absurd misapprehension. Though generally a calm, sensible man,
possessing a considerable amount of general information, an Austrian,
even after he has travelled, appears to be peculiarly incapable of
understanding a national character different from his own: this is true
even in respect to other Germans; and neither the proximity of the
countries, nor the frequent intercourse of their inhabitants, seems
to have enabled him to form any reasonable estimate of the Hungarian
character or institutions. We might adduce curious evidence of this
ignorance, even in persons of distinction; but we shall content
ourselves with quoting Mr Paget's observations on the subject, in June
1835:--

[6] The extent of Hungary, including Transylvania, is above 125,000
square miles; that of Great Britain and Ireland is 122,000, and that of
Prussia about 116,000. The population of Hungary, according to the best
authorities, is nearly fourteen millions; that of England (in 1841) was
nearly fifteen millions; that of Prussia about sixteen millions.

    "The reader would certainly laugh, as I have often done
    since, did I tell him one half of the foolish tales the good
    Viennese told us of the country we were about to visit--no
    roads! no inns! no police! We must sleep on the ground, eat
    where we could, and be ready to defend our purses and our
    lives at every moment. In full credence of these reports, we
    provided ourselves most plentifully with arms, which were
    carefully loaded, and placed ready for immediate use.... It
    may, however, ease the reader's mind to know, that no occasion
    to shoot anything more formidable than a partridge or a hare
    presented itself, and that we finished our journey with the
    full conviction, that travelling in Hungary was just as safe as
    travelling in England.

    Why, or wherefore, I know not, but nothing can exceed the
    horror with which a true Austrian regards both Hungary and its
    inhabitants. I have sometimes suspected that the bugbear with
    which a Vienna mother frightens her squaller to sleep must be
    an Hungarian bugbear; for in no other way can I account for
    the inbred and absurd fear which they entertain for such near
    neighbours. It is true, the Hungarians do sometimes talk about
    liberty, constitutional rights, and other such terrible things,
    to which no well-disposed ears should be open, and to which the
    ears of the Viennese are religiously closed."

There were, no doubt, elements of discord in Hungary, of which Austria,
on former occasions as well as now, took advantage; but their value to
her in the present war has been greatly overrated. The population of
the kingdom, like that of the empire, is composed of various races,
amongst which there are differences of language, religion, customs,
and sentiments. Of the 14,000,000 of people who inhabit Hungary,
not more than 5,000,000 are Majjars, about 1,262,000 are Germans,
2,311,000 Wallacks, and, of the remaining 5,400,000, nine-tenths or
more are Sclaves. The Sclaves are therefore as numerous as the Majjars;
and, although these races had at all times combined against foreign
enemies, it was probable that they would not unite in a domestic
quarrel, as that with Austria might be considered. When a great part
of the colonists of the military frontier, chiefly Croats and Serbes,
took part against the government of Hungary, and asserted a Sclave
nationality as opposed to the Hungarian nationality, it was too hastily
assumed, by persons imperfectly informed, that the whole Sclavonic
population, equalling the Majjars in number, would be available to
Austria in the war. But the Sclaves of Hungary are a disunited race,
divided into nine different tribes, the greater part of which have
nothing in common except their origin. Most of these tribes speak
languages or dialects which are mutually unintelligible; and the
Sclaves of different tribes are sometimes obliged to use the Majjar
tongue as their only means of communication. Some belong to the Roman
Catholic Church, some to the Greek; others are Protestants--Lutheran
or Calvinist: and some, while they have submitted to the see of
Rome, retain many of their Greek forms and services, adhere to the
Greek calendar, and constitute a distinct communion. The Slovacks of
Northern Hungary, numbering 1,600,000, are partly Roman Catholics,
partly Protestants--and have no intercourse or community of language
or feeling with the Sclaves of Southern and Western Hungary, from whom
they are separated by the intervention of the Majjar country. The
Ruthenes, also in Northern Hungary, are distinct from the Slovacks,
occupy a different portion of the slopes and spurs of the Carpathians,
and have no connexion with the Sclaves on the right bank of the Danube,
from whom they are separated by the whole breadth of Hungary and
Transylvania at that point--they amount to about 400,000. The Croats,
not quite 900,000 in number, are partly Roman Catholics and partly
belong to the Greek Church. When religious toleration was established
in Hungary, they exercised the power enjoyed by the provincial assembly
to exclude Protestants from the country. The Shocks of Sclavonia
Proper, and the Rasciens of that province and of the Banat, amounting
respectively to above 800,000, and nearly half a million, are tribes of
the Serbe stock, of whom the greater part adhere to the Greek Church,
and whose language is different from that of the Croats, the Slovacks,
and the Ruthenes. The Bulgarians, about 12,000, the Montenegrins, about
2000, and the Wends from Styria, about 50,000, are small distinct
tribes, speaking different languages, and divided by religious
differences. But the whole of these Sclavonic tribes have this in
common, that they are all animated by a feeling of hatred to the German
race; and more than half of the Sclave population of Hungary has joined
the Hungarians against Austria.

There was also a belief that the Hungarians had oppressed the Sclaves,
and that the whole Sclave race would therefore combine to put down
their oppressors. This was another misapprehension. Great efforts have
been made by some of their poets and their journalists to persuade
the Sclaves that they were oppressed; and the Croat newspapers and
pamphlets of M. Gay, and the Austrian journals, have circulated this
belief over Germany, whence it was disseminated over Europe; but there
seems to have been no foundation for the charge. The Sclaves enjoyed
the same rights and privileges as the Hungarians; they were protected
by the same laws; they have shared equally with the Hungarians in all
the concessions obtained by the Diet of Hungary, to which the Sclaves
sent their own representatives, from the sovereign; they bore less than
their due proportion of the public burdens, and they were left in the
enjoyment of their own internal and municipal administration. Croatia,
where the movement in favour of what was called Illyrian nationality
originated fifteen or sixteen years ago, and where it was fostered,
curiously enough, by the patronage of two imperial governments--Croatia
does not appear to have any reason to complain of Hungarian oppression.
The Croats had their own provincial assembly or diet, which regulated
the internal affairs of the province, their own county assemblies,
their own Ban or governor, they elected their own county and municipal
officers; a great part of the province was organised as a part of
the military frontier, and was therefore removed from the control of
the Hungarian Diet, and brought more directly under the authorities
at Vienna. The only specific charge, so far as we have been able to
discover, that they brought against the Hungarians was, that the
Majjars desired to impose their language upon the Croats. The history
of the matter is this,--Latin had been the language of public business,
of debates, and of the decisions of courts of law in Hungary, till
the attempt of Joseph II. to substitute the German excited a strong
national movement in favour of the Majjar. From 1790 this movement
has been persevered in with the greatest steadiness; and in 1830 an
act was passed by the Diet, and sanctioned by the king, which decreed
that, after the 1st of January 1844, no one could be named to any
public office who did not know the Majjar. This completed the series
of measures which substituted that language for the Latin, a language
unintelligible to the great body of the people. If a living was to
be substituted for a dead language, no other than the Majjar could
well be selected. Besides being greatly more numerous than any other
tribe speaking one language, the Majjars were the wealthiest, the most
intelligent and influential; and their language was spoken not only by
their own race, but by a large proportion of the other inhabitants of
the country--probably by six or seven times as many persons as used
any other Hungarian dialect. The Croats, whose language was not that
of any other tribe, could not expect it to be chosen, and all that was
required of them to employ the Majjar where they had hitherto employed
the Latin language, and nowhere else. The county of Agram, the most
important and populous of the three counties of Croatia, repudiated
the notion of a separate Illyrian nationality, of which, however, the
county town was the centre; and clung to Hungary as the safeguard
of its liberty. The truth is that the Croats, of whose hostility to
the Hungarians we have heard so much, are nearly equally divided
between Hungary and Austria; and, but for the military organisation
which places so large a portion of that people at the disposal of
Austria--and that the most formidable portion--the agitators for
Illyrian nationality would probably have been put down by their own
countrymen. The Slovacks, a people of Bohemian origin, refugees from
religious persecution, have joined the Hungarians. A great part of
the people of Sclavonia Proper have refused to take part against
Hungary. The tribes that have engaged most extensively and violently
in hostilities against the Hungarians have been the people of Servian
race, and of the Greek church, in the counties of the Lower Danube, and
in Croatia. Amongst the Hungarian Sclaves of the Greek church, it is
well known that foreign influence has long been at work, for which the
Greek priesthood are ready instruments. The hopes of these tribes have
been turned towards the head of their church, and the sympathies of
thirty millions of Eastern Sclaves who belong to the same church.

Though feelings of nationality and of race have been developed in
Hungary, as elsewhere, to an extent hitherto unexampled, they have
there to contend with the craving for liberty, which has at the same
time acquired intensity, and which amongst the Sclaves has been
fostered and inflamed by the efforts of those who, for the purpose of
exciting them against the Majjars, would persuade them that they were
the victims of oppression. The more intelligent and influential are now
convinced, that it is to Hungary--to which they owe the liberty they
enjoy--and not to anarchy, or to Austria, against the attacks of whose
government Hungary has so long defended their freedom and her own, that
they must look for advancement.

The relative positions of the peasants and the nobles, and the
antagonism of these classes, enabled Austria to exercise great
influence and even power in Hungary. The peasant population, amounting
to three millions or more, now emancipated from their disabilities
and exclusive or disproportionate burdens, and raised to the rank and
wealth of freeholders and proprietors, by the liberality of the nobles,
have an equal interest with them in defending the institutions to which
they owe their elevation.

The elements of discord, although they were such as enabled agitators
to raise a part of the Sclaves against the Hungarians, when it was
resolved to retract the concessions that had been made to them,
would hardly have been found available for that purpose, had not the
instigators of the revolt acted in the name of the King of Hungary,
and of more than one imperial government; nor even then, perhaps, had
they not been enabled to dispose of the resources of the military
frontier. Now that the Hungarians have obtained important successes, it
is probable that the Sclaves will all join them. The movement of these
tribes against the Hungarians, which was caused by other influences
in addition to that of Austria, has thus tended to lead the imperial
government into hostility with Hungary, without contributing much to
its strength.

When the Austrian government resolved to subjugate Hungary, it was
presumed that they undertook the conquest of that country relying on
their own resources. But the success of the enterprise was so doubtful,
and a failure so hazardous to the empire, that we never could believe
it possible that it had been undertaken without an assurance of
support. It is true that the imperial government might at that time
have expected an adjustment of their differences with Sardinia; but
Venice still held out, peace with Sardinia had not been concluded,
the state of Italy was daily becoming more alarming, and the Austrian
cabinet knew that they could maintain their hold of Lombardy, and
reduce Venice, only by means of a powerful army. They were aware that
the condition of Galicia, and even of Bohemia, was precarious, and that
neither could safely be denuded of troops. The state of affairs in
Germany was not such as to give them confidence, still less to promise
them support; and the attitude they assumed towards the assembly at
Frankfort, though not unworthy of the ancient dignity of Austria,
was not calculated to diminish her anxiety. Even in the Hereditary
States all was not secure. They were aware that old sentiments and
feelings had been shaken and disturbed; that, although order had for
the time been restored, by the fidelity and courage of the army,
men's minds were still unsettled; and that, both in the capital and
in the provinces, there were factions whose sympathies were not with
the imperial government, and which, in case of disasters, might again
become formidable. The capital alone required a garrison of twenty
thousand men, to keep it in subjection--to preserve its tranquillity.
Putting aside, therefore, every consideration as to the justice of the
war, and looking merely to its probable consequences, it is obvious
that, without such a preponderance of power and resources as would
not only insure success, but insure it at once--by one effort--it
would have been madness in Austria, for the purpose of forcing her
constitution upon the Hungarians, to engage in a contest in which
she staked her power--her existence--and which could not fail to be
dangerous to her if it became protracted.

Let us then examine the resources of both parties, and see what was
the preponderance on the side of Austria, which would justify her in
undertaking so hazardous an enterprise, on the supposition that she
relied solely on her own resources.

The Austrian empire contains a population of 36,000,000; of these about
7,000,000 are Germans--about 15,500,000 are Sclaves,--nearly 8,000,000
are of Italian and Dacian races, and about 5,600,000 of Asiatic
races, including 5,000,000 of Majjars. If from these 36,000,000 we
deduct the population of Hungary, 14,000,000, of Lombardy and Venice,
4,876,000--or, together, nearly 19,000,000, hostile to Austria--and
the population of Galicia, 4,980,000, which did not contribute to
her strength, to say nothing of Bohemia or Vienna, or Crakow, there
will remain to Austria, to carry on the war, only 12,144,000. But,
as probably two millions of the Sclaves and other tribes of Hungary,
including the military frontier, may have been reckoned as on her
side, that number may be deducted from Hungary and added to Austria.
There will then remain to Hungary a population of 12,000,000,
concentrated in their own country for its defence, and to Austria about
14,000,000, whose military resources must be distributed over her whole
dominions--from the frontiers of Russia to those of Sardinia, from the
frontiers of Prussia to the confines of Turkey--to re-establish her
authority in Lombardy, to reduce Venice to submission, to hold the
Sardinians and the Italian republicans in check, to control and overawe
Galicia and Crakow, to garrison Vienna and maintain tranquillity at
home, and, finally, to conquer 12,000,000 of Hungarians. It is true
she had a noble army, and Hungary then had almost none, except such
levies as she had hastily raised, and which were as yet without skilful
commanders. But Austria knew by experience the difficulties and hazards
of a war in Hungary. Her government must have known the resources of
the country, the courage and patriotism of its inhabitants, and the
success that had attended their resistance to her forces on more than
one former occasion. Surrounded by difficulties at home, in Italy, and
in Germany, with full one half of the population of the empire hostile
to the government, she was undertaking an enterprise which her forces,
in circumstances far more favourable to success, had repeatedly failed
to accomplish.

Reviewing the whole of these considerations, therefore, we hold it
to be quite incredible that the Austrian government, having the
alternative of restoring peace, by permitting the King of Hungary to
fulfil his engagements to his subjects, could have preferred a war
for the subjugation of Hungary, if she had relied solely on her own
resources, or followed only her own impulses and the dictates of her
own interest. We cannot doubt that she was assured of foreign aid--that
her resolution to make war upon Hungary, rather than keep faith with
her, was adopted in concert with the power by which that aid was to
be furnished. If this inference be just, we may find in that concert
a reason for the extraordinary accumulation of Russian troops in
Wallachia and Moldavia, which appeared to threaten the Ottoman Porte,
but which also threatened Hungary, where the only corps that has been
actively employed found occupation. The feeling of Germany made it
unsafe to bring Russian troops into Austria; but the massing of Russian
troops in the Danubian principalities of Turkey excited no jealousy
in Germany. Austria, too, shrinking instinctively from the perils of
Russian intervention, while in reliance on that support she pursued a
bold and hazardous policy, with a confidence which otherwise would have
been unintelligible and misplaced, hoped perhaps to escape the danger
of having recourse to the aid on which she relied.

Having employed all her disposable means in the war, Austria now
maintains it at a disadvantage, for her own defence. Her armies have
been defeated, her resources exhausted or crippled, her capital is in
danger, and she must either concede the demands of the Hungarians, or
call in the armies of Russia to protect her government and enforce
her policy. What the demands of the Hungarians may now be, we know
not; but if they have wisdom equal to the courage and energy they have
displayed, they will be contented with the restitution of their legal
rights, which Austria may grant without dishonour, because in honour
and good faith they ought never to have been rejected. If they are
wise as they are brave, the Hungarians will seek to restore unity and
peace to the empire with which their lot has been cast--whose weakness
cannot be their strength--whose independence is necessary to their
own security. That the intervention of Russia would be fatal to the
Austrian empire, to its dignity, its power, its capacity to fulfil the
conditions of its existence as a great independent state--the guardian
of eastern Europe--is, we think, unquestionable. Attributing no
interested design to Russia--assuming that she desires nothing so much
as the strength and stability of the Austrian empire--we cannot doubt
that the re-establishment and maintenance of the imperial government's
authority by the military force of Russia, were it the best government
that ever existed, would desecrate, in the heart of every German, the
throne of the Kaiser, and cover it with dust and ashes. In a contest
between the Russians and the Hungarians, the sympathy of all Germany,
of all western Europe, would be with the Majjars. Half the Emperor
of Austria's own heart would be on the side of the loyal nation to
which his house owes so large a debt of gratitude; who, he must be
aware, have been alienated only by the errors and the injustice of his
advisers, and who, if they are sacrificed, will not, and cannot be
sacrificed to his interests. Hungary was perfectly satisfied with her
constitution and her government, as established by the laws of April
1848. She was loyal to her king, and careful of the honour of Austria,
which she sent her best troops to defend in another country; her crimes
have been her attachment to established institutions, and the courage
and patriotism with which she has defended them. This is not the spirit
which it can ever be the interest of a sovereign to extinguish in _his
own_ subjects. The desire to overturn established institutions is the
very evil which the Emperors of Austria and Russia profess to combat,
and their first efforts are to be directed against the only Christian
nation between the frontiers of Belgium and Russia--between Denmark and
Malta, which was satisfied with its institutions and government, and
determined to maintain them.

If Russia engages seriously in the war, she will put forth her whole
strength, and Hungary may probably be overpowered; but can she forget
her wrongs or her successes?--will she ever again give her affection to
the man who, claiming her crown as his hereditary right, has crushed
her under the foot of a foreign enemy? If anything can extinguish
loyalty in the heart of a Hungarian, the attempt of the Emperor to
put the Muscovite's foot upon his neck will accomplish it. We can
imagine no degradation more deeply revolting to the proud Majjar, or
more likely to make him sum up all reasoning upon the subject with the
desperate resolution to sell his life as dearly as he can. There is
therefore much reason to fear lest a people, who but a few weeks ago
were certainly as firmly attached to monarchy as any people in Europe,
not excepting either the Spaniards or ourselves, should be driven by
the course Austria has pursued, and especially by the intervention
of Russia, to renounce their loyalty and consort with the enemies of
monarchy. Their struggle is now for life or death--it ceases to be a
domestic quarrel from the moment Russia engages in it; and Hungary must
seek such support as she can find. Austria has done everything she
could to convert the quarrel into a war of opinion, by representing it
and treating it as such; and now that she has brought to her aid the
great exemplar and champion of absolute monarchy, it is not impossible
that she may succeed.

Russia comes forward to re-establish by force of arms the authority of
a government which has been unable to protect itself against its own
subjects; and, when re-established, she will have to maintain it. How
long this military protection is to endure, after all armed opposition
is put down, no man can pretend to foretell. It must depend upon
events which are beyond the reach of human foresight. But a government
that is dependent for its authority on a foreign power, must, in
every sense of the term, cease to be an independent government. Is
it under Russian protection that Austria is to preserve Lombardy, or
to maintain her influence in Germany? Would the Sclavonic population
of Austria continue to respect a German government protected by a
nation of Sclaves--would they not rather feel that the real power was
that of their own race? Would the Austrians forget the humiliation
of Russian protection, or forgive the government that had sacrificed
their independence? Dependent upon Russian protection, the Austrian
government could no longer give security to Turkey, or counterbalance
the weight with which the power of Russia, whatever may be the
moderation of the reigning emperor, must continue to press upon the
frontiers of weaker countries. In such a state of things, the relations
of Austria to the rest of Europe would be changed--reversed. Instead
of being the bulwark of Germany and the safeguard of Turkey against
Russia, she would become the advanced post of Russia against both. Is
it to bring her to this condition that she has allowed herself to be
involved in the war with Hungary? Is it to arrive at this result that
she will consent to prolong it?

Of the effect, in Germany, of the Russian intervention in Austria,
it is almost superfluous to speak. The advance of Russian armies,
simultaneously with the dissolution of more than one refractory
assembly, has raised in the minds of men, already in a state of furious
excitement, a suspicion that these events are not unconnected, and
that the Emperor of Austria is not the only German sovereign who is
in league with the Czar! The time has arrived when the question must
be determined whether order or anarchy is to prevail; and we have no
doubt that, in Germany as in France, the friends of order will speedily
gain a complete ascendency--if there be no foreign, and above all, no
Russian intervention. But to very many of the patriotic friends of
order in Germany, Russian intervention in her affairs, or an appearance
of concert between their own government and Russia for the purpose of
influencing German interests, and suppressing German feelings, would
be intolerable. There is reason to apprehend that a great body of
true-hearted Germans, especially in the middle classes--whose power
must, after all, decide the contest, and who desire social order and
security under a constitutional monarchy--may fancy they see in the
advance of Russian forces, at a moment when the sovereigns, supported
by their armies, are making a stand against popular tyranny, cause
to fear that even their constitutional freedom is in danger. We are
satisfied that there are no reasonable grounds for such fears--that
the other governments of Germany are too wise to follow the example of
Austria in her conduct towards Hungary; but that example cannot fail
to produce distrust in many minds already disposed to it; and popular
movements are more influenced by passion than by reason.

It is impossible not to feel that Russia is about to occupy a new
position in Europe, which, if no event occurs to obstruct her in
her course, must greatly increase her influence and her power for
good or for evil. She is to be the protector of Austria, not against
foreign enemies, but against one of the nations of which that empire
is composed. She is to re-establish and maintain, by military force,
a government which has been unable to maintain itself against its
internal enemies--a government which a nation of fourteen millions of
people has rejected, fought, and beaten. A great power cannot interfere
in the internal affairs of another state, to the extent of maintaining
there by force of arms a government incapable of maintaining itself
against the nation, without getting involved in the relations of the
government it upholds, to an amount of which it is impossible to fix
or to predict the limits, but of which the tendency has ever been, and
must ever be, progressively to increase the power of the protecting
over the protected government; and the single fact that the interests
of Austria were in this manner inseparably bound up, for a time of
indefinite duration, with those of Russia, would give to the great
northern power a preponderance, both in Europe and in Asia, such as no
hereditary monarchy has possessed in modern times.

With 150,000 or 180,000 men in Hungary, Wallachia, and Moldavia,
the Russian armies would encircle the frontiers of Turkey, from the
shores of the Adriatic to the frontiers of Persia. With a government
in Austria dependent upon the support of those armies, the power that
has hitherto been the chief security of Turkey against the military
superiority of Russia, would be at the command of the court of St
Petersburg. The Sclavonic tribes, which form the chief part of the
Turkish population in Europe, seeing themselves enveloped by the armies
of Russia, guiding and controlling the power of Austria, in addition to
her own, must be thoroughly demoralised, even if Russia should abstain
from all attempts to debauch them. They will feel that they have no
course left but to court her, to look to her whose force is visibly
developed before them, is in contact with them, surrounds them, and
appears to be irresistible everywhere. They will find in the unity
of race an inducement to adhere to the rising destinies of the great
Sclavonic empire--their instincts will teach them to abandon, in time,
the fabric that is about to fall.

Forced to involve herself in all the relations of the government she
upholds, Russia will come into immediate contact with the minor German
monarchies, whose governments may also stand in need of protection.
There is no one kingdom in Germany that could then pretend to
counterbalance her power, or to resist her policy. The same interests
would carry her influence, and it may be her arms, into Italy. It will
no longer be necessary to negotiate the passage of the Dardanelles by
her fleet--the road will be open to her troops, and the passage of her
fleet will no longer be opposed.

We have not attributed to the Emperor Nicholas, or to Russia, any
ambitious ulterior views in affording assistance to Austria--we have
supposed him to be influenced only by the most generous feelings
towards a brother emperor. But, to suppose that he has no desire to
extend his own or his country's influence and power--that he will not
take advantage of favourable circumstances to extend them--would be
absurd; and were he to set out with the firmest resolution to avoid
such a result, the course on which he is now said to have entered, if
he conducts it to a successful issue, must, in spite of himself, lead
to that result. It is no answer, therefore, to say that the Emperor of
Russia does not desire to extend his territory; that he has abstained
with singular moderation from interfering in the affairs of Europe,
while every capital was in tumult, and every country divided against
itself. Giving him credit for every quality that can adorn the loftiest
throne, the consequences of his present policy, if it be successfully
carried out, are equally inevitable.

We must remember, on the other hand, that after all, the Emperor of
Russia is but a man--but one man, in an empire containing above sixty
millions of people. He is the greatest, no doubt, the most powerful,
perhaps the ablest and wisest--the presiding and the guiding mind, with
authority apparently absolute--but they little know the details of
an autocratic government, who suppose that he is uninfluenced by the
will of the nation, or has power to follow out his own intentions. He
must see with other men's eyes, he must hear with other men's ears, he
must speak with the tongues of other men. How much of what is said and
done in his name, in his vast empire, and in every foreign country,
is it possible that he can ever know? How much of his general policy
must, from time to time, be directed by events prepared or consummated
in furtherance of their own views, by his servants, and without his
knowledge! How often must he be guided by the form in which facts are
placed before him, and by the views of those who furnish them! It is
important, therefore, to inquire what are the feelings and opinions,
not of the Emperor only, but of his servants and guides--of the men
who pioneer for him, and prepare the roads on which per force he must
travel.

Shortly after the French revolution of February 1848, a Russian
diplomatic memoir was handed about with an air of mystery in certain
circles in Paris. M. de Bourgoing, formerly French minister at St
Petersburg, and author of a recent work, entitled, _Les guerres
d'idiome et de nationalité_, has published a commentary upon the
Russian memoir, which he tells us was prepared by one of the ablest and
best-informed employés in the Russian Chancellerie, after the events of
February. He further informs us that it was presented to the Emperor
of Russia, and, with the tacit consent of the Russian government, was
sent to be printed in a German capital, (the impression being limited
to twelve copies,) under the title of "_Politique et moyens d'action
de la Russie impartialement apprécié_." The object of M. Bourgoing's
commentary, as well as of his previous publication, appears to be
to remove exaggerated apprehensions of the aggressive power and
tendencies of Russia, and the fears of a general war in Europe, which
her anticipated intervention in Austria, and the occupation in force
of Wallachia and Moldavia by her troops, had excited in France. His
fundamental position appears to be, that the wars of 1848 and 1849
are essentially wars of language and race; that France has therefore
nothing to fear from them; and that Russia has neither a sufficient
disposable force, nor the slightest desire to interfere, in a manner
injurious to France, in the affairs of Western Europe. With this view
he combats, with a gentle opposition, the reasoning of the Russian
memoir, which he represents as "une déclaration où l'on est autorisé
à voir une espèce de manifeste envoyé sans éclat par la Russie à ce
qu'elle intitule la révolution." From the tendencies of M. Bourgoing's
writings, which occasionally peep out somewhat thinly clothed, though
they are generally well wrapped up, we should infer that the "ancien
ministre de France en Russie" does not consider his connexion with the
court of St Petersburg as finally terminated; and we do not doubt that
he has good warrant for all he says of the history of this memoir.

But, whether or not we may be disposed to assign to it a character
of so much authority as M. Bourgoing attributes to that document, we
cannot but regard it as a curious illustration of the kind of memoirs
that Russian diplomatists, "les plus habils et les plus instuits,"
present to the Emperor, and that the Russian government "tacitly
consents" to have transmitted to a German capital to be printed
"sur-le-champ."

The Russian memoir commences with the following general proposition,--

    "Pour comprendre de quoi il s'agit dans la crise extrême où
    l'Europe vient d'entrer, voici ce qu'il faudrait se dire:
    Depuis longtemps il n'y a plus en Europe que deux puissances
    réelles, la Révolution et la Russie. Ces deux puissances sont
    maintenant en présence, et demain peut-être elles seront
    aux prises. Entre l'une et l'autre, il n'y a ni traité ni
    transaction possibles. La vie de l'une est la mort de l'autre.
    De l'issue de la lutte engagée entre elles, la plus grande des
    luttes dont le monde ait été témoin, dépend pour des siècles
    tout l'avenir _politique et religieux_ de l'humanité.

    La Russie est _avant tout l'empire chrétien_; le peuple
    russe est chrétien, non-seulement _par l'orthodoxie_ de ses
    croyances, mais par quelque chose de plus intime encore que
    la croyance: il l'est par cette faculté du renoncement et du
    sacrifice, qui sont comme le fond de sa nature morale.

    Il y a heureusement sur le trône de Russie un souverain en qui
    la pensée russe s'est incarnée, et dans l'état actuel du monde
    la pensée russe est la seule qui soit placée assez en dehors
    du milieu révolutionnaire pour pouvoir apprécier sainement les
    faits qui s'y produisent.

    Tout ce qui reste à la Bohême de vraie vie nationale est dans
    _ces croyances hussites_, dans cette protestation toujours
    vivante de sa nationalité slave opprimée contre _l'usurpation
    de l'église romaine_, aussi bien que contre la domination de la
    nation allemande. C'est là le lien qui l'unit à tout son passé
    de lutte et de gloire, et c'est là aussi le chemin qui pourra
    rattacher un jour le Tchèque de la Bohême à ses frères d'Orient.

    On ne saurait assez insister sur ce point, car ce sont
    précisément ces réminiscences sympathiques de l'église
    d'Orient, ce sont ces retours vers la _vieille foi_ dont le
    hussitisme dans son temps n'a été qu'une expression imparfaite
    et défigurée, qui établissent une différence profonde entre la
    Pologne et la Bohême, entre la Bohême ne subissant que malgré
    elle le _joug de la communauté occidentale_, et cette Pologne
    _factieusement catholique, seide fanatique de l'Occident_, et
    toujours traître vis-à-vis des siens."

We add a few more extracts:--

    "Que fera la Bohême, avec les peuples qui l'entourent, Moraves,
    Slovaques, c'est-à-dire, sept ou huit millions d'hommes de même
    langue et de même race qu'elle?... En general c'est une chose
    digne de remarque, que cette faveur persévérante que la Russie,
    le nom Russe, sa gloire, son avenir n'ont cessé de rencontrer
    parmi les hommes nationaux de Prague."--(Page 15.)

At page 18 we find the following observations upon Hungary:--

    "Cette enemie c'est la Hongrie, j'entend la Hongrie Magyar.
    De tous les ennemis de la Russie c'est peut-être celui qui
    la hait de la haine la plus furieuse. Le peuple Magyar, en
    qui la ferveur révolutionnaire vient de s'associer, par la
    plus étrange des combinaisons, à la brutalité d'une horde
    asiatique, et dont on pourrait dire avec tout autant de
    justice que des Turcs, qu'il ne fait que camper en Europe,
    vit entouré de peuples Sclaves, qui lui sont tons également
    odieux. Ennemi personel de cette race, il se retrouve, après
    des siècles d'agitation et de turbulence, toujours encore
    emprisonné au milieu d'elle. Tous ces peuple qui l'entourent,
    Serbes, Croates, Slovaques, Transylvaniens, et jusqu' au petits
    Russiens des Karpathes, sont les anneaux d'une chaine qu'il
    croyait à tort jamais briser. Et maintenant il sent, audessus
    de lui, une main qui pourra quand il lui plaira rejoindre ces
    anneaux, et resserrer la chaine à volonté. De là sa haine
    instinctive contre la Russie.

    D'autre part, sur le foi de journalisme étranger, les meneurs
    actuel du parti se sont sérieusement persuadé que le peuples
    Magyar avait une grande mission à remplir dans l'Europe
    orthodoxe, que c'était à lui en un mot à tenir en échec les
    destinés de la Russie."

If these are the mutual sentiments of Russians and Majjars, we may form
some idea of the kind of warfare that is about to be waged in Hungary.

It is curious to observe the confidence with which the Russian
diplomatist assumes that the influence of his master over all the
Sclavonic tribes of Hungary is completely established, and points
to the Emperor of Russia, not to their sovereign, as the hand that
is to clench the chain by which the Majjars are enclosed. When it
is remembered that this memoir was circulated in Paris before any
differences had arisen between Austria and Hungary--that the first
movement hostile to the Majjars was made by Sclavonic tribes of the
Greek Church, headed by the Patriarch--that Austria long hesitated
before she resolved to break faith and peace with Hungary--that her own
resources were inadequate to the enterprise she undertook--that her
own interests appeared to forbid her undertaking it--one is forced to
ponder and reflect on the means and influences by which she may have
been led into so fatal an error.

We cannot refrain from giving one other extract from the Russian
memoir, which is too pungent to be omitted:--

    "Quelle ne serait pas l'horrible confusion où tomberaient les
    pays d'Occident aux prises avec la révolution, _si le légitime
    souverain, si l'empereur orthodoxe d'Orient_, tardait longtemps
    à y apparaître!

    L'Occident s'en va; tout croule, tout s'abîme dans une
    conflagration générale, l'EUROPE DE CHARLEMAGNE
    aussi bien que l'Europe des traités de 1815, la PAPAUTE
    DE ROME _et toutes les royautés de l'Occident, le
    catholicisme_ et le protestantisme, _la foi depuis longtemps
    perdue_ et la raison réduite à l'absurde, l'ordre désormais
    impossible, la liberté desormais impossible, et sur toutes ces
    ruines amoncelées par elle, _la civilisation_ se suicidant de
    ses propres mains!

    Et lorsque, audessus de cet immense naufrage, nous voyons,
    _comme une arche sainte_, surnager cet empire plus immense
    encore, _qui donc pourrait_ douter de sa mission? Et est-ce à
    nous, ses enfans, à nous montrer sceptiques et pusillanimes?"

Such then, it appears, are the sentiments of some of the most
enlightened of the Russian diplomatists--such are the opinions
and views presented to the Emperor by the men on whose reports
and statements his foreign policy must of necessity be chiefly
founded--such, above all, are the feelings and aspirations, the
enmities and the means of action, which the nation fosters and on which
it relies.

It has been said that, in attacking the Hungarians, Russia is but
fighting her own battle against the Poles, who are said to compose a
large proportion of the Hungarian army; and those who desire to throw
discredit on the Hungarian movement have nicknamed it a Polo-Majjar
revolution. They must have been ignorant or regardless of the facts.
Whatever the Austrian journals or proclamations may assert, Russia must
know full well that in the Hungarian army there are not more than five
thousand Poles, and only two Polish general officers, Dembinsk and Bem.

That the Poles may think they see in a war between Russia and Hungary a
favourable opportunity to revolt, is not improbable, and that, if the
Poles should rise, they will find sympathy and support in the nation
that Russia is attacking, must be inevitable.

In the mean time, the Hungarians are preparing for the unequal contest.
They have a well-equipped army of 160,000 men in the field, and a levy
of 200,000 more has been ordered. Such is the national enthusiasm, that
this whole number may probably be raised. This feeling is not confined
to the Majjars, but extends to the Sclavonic population also.

The following extracts from a letter received on the 14th May, by one
of his correspondents, from an intelligent English merchant who has
just returned from a visit to the Sclavonic districts of northern
Hungary, on his commercial affairs, gives the latest authentic
intelligence we have seen of the state of things in the Slovack
counties, the only part of the country which the writer visited:--

    "I am just returned from Hungary. I was exceedingly surprised
    to see so much enthusiasm. My candid opinion is that, even
    if the Russians join against them, the Hungarians will be
    victorious. They are certainly short of arms; if they could
    procure one or two hundred thousand muskets, the affair would
    be closed immediately. In the mountains the cultivation of
    the land proceeds as usual, although the whole neighbourhood
    was full of contending troops. As I came out of Hungary, the
    advanced guards were only two German miles apart. However, I
    found no inconvenience; the roads were quite safe; and if it
    were not for the guerillas, whom one expects every minute to
    issue from the woods, the thing would go on, for a stranger,
    comfortably enough. The new paper-money (Kossuth's) is taken
    everywhere, not only for the common necessaries of life, but
    also for large business transactions--the idea being that there
    is about equal security for Hungarian as for the Austrian
    bank-notes."

It must be confessed, that in circumstances calculated to try her
prudence, Russia has acted with singular composure and wisdom. She
abstained from interfering in the affairs of western Europe while the
tide of republican frenzy was in flood. She contented herself with
carefully and diligently increasing and organising her army--then,
probably, in a more inefficient state than at any time during the
last thirty years--and gradually concentrated her disposable troops
on her western frontier, where magazines have been prepared for it.
While continental Europe was convulsed by revolutions, she made no
aggression--the occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia was her only
move in advance. She avoided giving umbrage to the people, to the
sovereigns, or to the successive governments that were formed, and
established a right to demand confidence in her moderation and
forbearance. She came to the aid of Austria at first with a small
force in a distant province, just sufficient to show that the Austrian
government had her support, and not enough to excite the jealousy of
Germany. Now that her military preparations are completed, she comes
to protect Austria, not until she is called, and at a time when the
most formidable dangers she has to encounter are such as the friends of
order, triumphant in the west, and we trust dominant everywhere, would
be the last to evoke. Yet it is impossible to deny that the successful
execution of her present project would be a great revolution--that it
would more seriously derange the relative positions of nations, and the
balance of power, than any or all of those revolutions which the two
last eventful years have witnessed.

The adjustment of the differences between Austria and Hungary would
avert this danger--would remove all hazard of throwing the power of
Hungary into the scale with the enemies of monarchy--would re-establish
the Austrian empire upon the only basis on which, as it appears to us,
it is possible to reconstruct it as an independent empire; and would
be "a heavy blow and great discouragement" to the anarchists, whose
element is strife, whose native atmosphere is the whirlwind of evil
passions. But if this may not be--if Austria uses the power of Russia
to enforce injustice, and, with that view, is prepared to sacrifice
her own independence--we should refuse to identify the cause of
monarchy and order--the cause of constitutional liberty, morality, and
public faith--with the dishonest conduct of Austria, or the national
antipathies and dangerous aspirations of Russia.




FEUDALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.


It is not exactly the best of all times to point out things that may
be amiss in, nor to find fault with either portions or the whole of
institutions which have received the approving sanction of time and
experience; for the bad passions of the lower and less moral orders
of men, in most European nations, have of late been so completely
unchained, and the _débacle_ of the revolutionary torrent has been so
suddenly overwhelming, that no extra impetus is required to be put upon
it. Rather should we build up and repair the ancient dams and dikes of
society, anomalous and inconvenient though they may be, than attempt to
remove them, even for the sake of what may appear better ones, while
the waters of innovation are still out, and when the spirit of man is
brooding over them for the elaboration of some new chaos, some new
incarnation of evil. Nevertheless there are a few noxious, and many
harmless, anomalies and contradictions in the feudal or aristocratic
constitution of society, induced by the lapse of time, the wear and
tear of ages, which, though they may not admit of removal now, may
demand it on the first convenient opportunity; and then on several of
the sterner and more fundamental principles of feudalism in ancient
days, upon which the basis of modern society really exists, but which
have been lost sight of, and yet which are forced into prominent
notice, and ought to be put in action once more, by the morbid
tendencies of popular violence. We shall be acquitted of all desire
of change for change's sake; no one will accuse us of being habitual
violators of ancient things, customs, and laws: it is rather because
we love them, and venerate them, and wish to revive them on account of
their intrinsic excellence, that we would call our reader's attention
to a few things going on around us. He need not be afraid of our
troubling him with a dry treatise on the theory of government--we are
no constitution-mongers: he need not expect to be bored with pages of
statistical details, nor to be satiated with the nostrums of political
economy. We propose making one or two very commonplace observations,
professing to take no other guide than a small modicum of common sense,
and to have no other object than our readers' delectation and the good
of our country.

(1.) How was it that nobles came to be nobles and commons came to be
commons? how was it that the great territorial properties of this
kingdom were originally set agoing and maintained? and how was it that
you and I, and millions of others, came to be put in the apparently
interminable predicament of having to toil and struggle with the
world, or to be sentenced to something like labour, more or less
hard, for life; you and I, we say, you and I, and our fathers and our
children? Tell us that, gentle reader, whether you be good old Tory,
or moderate Conservative, or slippery Peelite, or coldblooded Whig,
or profligate Radical, or demoniac Chartist? FORCE, my good
friend--FORCE, PHYSICAL FORCE--a good strong hand, and stout
arm, and a heavy sword, and brave heart, and a firm determination--and
no shilly-shally hesitation as to legality or illegality, no maudlin
sympathy nor compunction--these were the things that did it; these
carried the day; these were the moving powers of old; they raised
the lever, and they settled down society into that bed in which it
has been arranging itself ever since. And right good things they
were, too, in their proper time and place; and so they ever will
be: they are some of the mainsprings of the world; they may become
concealed in their action, they may be forgotten, they may even fall
into temporary inaction, but they come out again into full play ever
and anon, and, when the wild storm of human passion drives over the
world in a reckless tornado, they go along with the whirlwind, and
they hover all around it, and they follow it, and they reassert their
permanent sway over mankind. The Norman William's barons, the noble
peers of Charlemagne, the princes and marshals of Napoleon, all found
their estates at the points of their swords; and, while they kept
their swords bright, their estates remained intact; but, when military
prowess declined, legal astuteness and commercial craft crept in,
and the broad lands decreased, because the sharp point and edge were
blunted. The remote origin, the first title of every crowned head and
noble family of Europe, is to be traced to the sword, or has been
derived from it. We speak not of _parvenus_, we allude to the great
families of the various realms of the ancient world; all _old_ and
_real_ nobility is of the sword, and of the sword only. The French used
to express this well, and understood the true footing on which nobility
ought to stand; they always talked of la noblesse de l'epée, as
contradistinguished from _la noblesse de la robe_: the former referred
to the feudal families and their descendants, the latter to those who
had become ennobled for services at the bar. As for nobility granted
for any commercial or pecuniary causes, they never dreamed of such a
thing; or, if a spurious ennobling took place, it was deemed a glaring
and an odious violation of the fundamental laws of aristocratic society.

Now the ideas of the world have become so changed, or rather so
corrupted, on this point, that the prime notion of nobility no longer
is attached to military tenure or service; but, on the contrary, we
find titles given, nay, bought and sold, for any the most miscellaneous
services, and the meridian of nobleness, of elevation, of power,
altogether eliminated from the qualifications that the nobleman ought
to possess. Back-stair services, lobby services, electioneering
services, counting-house services, any services as well as military
services, have been deemed sufficient causes for procuring a patent
of nobility to those who could allege them. Titles and causes of
distinction they might have been, but surely not of nobility, not of
hereditary honour and distinction, the tenure and essence of which
should ever be attached to territorial power gained and held by the
sword. And this lowering of the tone of nobility, this communising of
what ought to be ever held up as a thing apart, as a thing originating
with the first beginnings of a nation, and remaining fixed till the
nation becomes itself extinct, has done no good to society: it has not
raised the tone of the commons, it has only lowered that of the nobles:
it has emasculated the one without adding any strength to the other.
In all nations, as long as the nobility have remained essentially a
military order, holding their own by their own strength, the fortunes
of that nation have advanced; but whenever the nobles have become
degenerate, and therefore the commons licentious--the former holding
only by prescriptive respect, and the latter subjected to them only in
theory, not in practice--the fate of that nation has been pronounced,
and its decline has already begun. The destruction and absorption of
the good fiefs of France, in the time of Louis XI., laid the way for
the razing of the châteaux, and the decapitation of their owners by the
Cardinal de Richelieu, in the time of Louis XIII.; and this gradual
degenerating process of undermining the true strength of the nobles,
led to the corruption of the nation, and to its reduction to the
primary starting-point of society in the reign of Louis XVI. So, too,
in England, the sapping of the strength of the nobles, in the reign of
Henry VIII., added to the corrupt proceedings of the times of James I.,
caused the Great Rebellion in the reign of his successor. The nation
has never recovered from this fatal revolution of the seventeenth
century. Like France, England has shone awhile, and sustained itself
both in arts and arms; but the dissolving process has begun long ago
with us as it did with them. One order of the state--the order of
nobles--has been constantly decreasing in power and influence; and the
descent towards the level of anti-social democracy seems now as easy
and as broad as that to the shades of Avernus. The nobles of Russia, on
the contrary, still retain their feudal power--they all draw and use
the sword: their nation is on the ascendant. In Spain and Italy the
nobles have descended so far as almost to have lost their claim to the
title of _men_; while in most parts of Germany the result of recent
movements has shown that the power of the nobles had long been a mere
shadow; and they have evaporated in empty smoke, while the nations are
fast sinking to the level of a common and savage democracy.

We would propose a remedy for this state of things. We consider the
profession of arms, when joined to the holding of territorial power, as
the highest form of civilisation and political excellence to which man
has yet been able to rise. It constitutes that union of all the highest
and best feelings of human nature with the supreme possession of power
and influence over material objects--over land and the produce of
land--which seems to be the ultimate and the worthy object of the good
and great in all ages. And, therefore, the nearer a nobleman can revert
to the principles upon which his order is, or ought to be, based, the
greater security, in the working out both for himself and the nation,
that the strength and dignity of the whole people shall be maintained
inviolate. Of all men in the state, the noble is he who is most
endangered by any approximation to effeminacy and inactivity: he is the
representative, the _beau ideal_, of the virility of the whole nation:
he is the active principle of its force--the leader, the chief agent,
in building up the fortunes of his country. Let him but once degenerate
from the elevating task, and he renounces the main privileges of his
order, he does wrong both to his fellow-countrymen and to himself--he
diminishes his own force, and he weakens their national powers.
Whenever, therefore, any such departure, more or less wide, from the
ancient principles of his order has taken place, let the nobleman
hasten to return to them, if he would stop the course of ruin before it
become too late. We would hold it to be the duty of every nobleman in
this country--and we include herein his immediate descendants--to enter
the profession of arms, and to adopt no other save that of afterwards
serving the state in the senate: we hold it to be his duty to avoid all
approximation to the engagements of commerce--we would even say of the
law, of any of the learned professions. These pursuits are intended for
other orders of men, not less essential to the state than the noble,
but still different orders. The noble is the leader, the type, the
example of public military and political strength. Let him keep to that
lofty function, and discharge it and no other.

Two methods of effecting this present themselves. In the first place, a
regulation might be easily and advantageously made, in connexion with
the army, whereby any nobleman, or son of a nobleman, or in fact any
person belonging to the class which the law might define to be noble,
(for some modification is wanted on this head,) might be allowed to
attach himself as a volunteer officer to any regiment, and be bound
to serve in it as such, without pay. He should receive his honorary
promotion the same as any other officer, and should be subject to all
the same duties and responsibilities; but "pay" he should not need;
himself or his family should provide for all his charges. Or, in the
second place, he should serve as an officer in a national force, the
constitution of which we propose and advocate below: in this case, too,
entirely without pay, and subject to all the articles of war. In either
instance, we think it the duty of the country to give the nobleman an
especial opportunity of serving her in a military manner; and we hold
it to be his especial duty--one of the most essential duties of his
order, without which his order degenerates and stultifies itself--to
serve as a military man, and to serve with distinction.

We often hear it said that the English are not a military people; that
they do not like an army; that they have a natural repugnance to the
military profession, and other similar pieces of nonsense or untruth.
Such libels as these on the innate courage of an Englishman, are never
uttered but by those who have something of the calf in their hearts;
the wish is father to the thought in all such declarations, when
seriously made; and, if alleged as matters of argument, they are used
only by the morbid lovers of _la paix à tout prix_ who infest our age
and country. It is just the same as when you hear a man say soberly,
that he does not like shooting, nor hunting, nor fishing; that he
cannot ride, nor drive, nor swim; that he cannot abide the country,
and that he prefers a constant residence in town. Such a man is not
only a useless, he is positively a noxious member of society--he is an
excrescence, a deformity, a nuisance, and the sooner his company is
avoided the better. Such men, however, do exist, and they do actually
say such things; but they are tokens of the debased and degrading
effects of over-civilisation, of social degeneracy, of national
humiliation; and whenever their sentiments shall come to be approved
of, or assented to, by any large portion of the people, then we may be
sure that the decline and fall of the nation are at hand, and that our
downward course is fairly commenced. No; the men and the nation that
can, in cool blood, repudiate the noble profession of arms, forfeit the
virility of their character, they may do very well for the offices that
slaves, and the puny denizens of crowded cities, can alone perform; but
they deserve to lose the last relics of their freedom, for thus daring
to contradict one of the great moral laws of nature. Force and courage
have been awarded to man like any other of his faculties and passions;
they were intended to be exercised, otherwise they would not have been
given: their exercise is both good and necessary; and, like their great
development, War, they are destined by our Maker to be the causes and
instruments of moral and physical purification and renovation. As long
as the mind and body of man continue what they are, the Profession of
Arms and the Science of War will be held in deserved honour among the
great and good of mankind.

Great evils have no doubt resulted from their use, and more especially
from their abuse; but not a whit greater than from the use and abuse
of any other of the faculties and propensities of man: not so much as
from the spirit of deceit and oppression, which is the concomitant of
trading and manufacturing operations; not so much as from the spirit
of religious fanaticism and superstition which haunts the human race;
not so much as from the gluttony and sensuality of civilised nations.
War and Arms are analogous to the Tempest and the Thunderbolt, but they
purify more than they destroy, and they elevate more than they depress.
The man that does not arm in defence of his country, of his family, and
of himself, deserves to die the death of a dog, or to clank about for
endless years in the fetters of a slave.

It has been well shown, by one of the most philosophic of modern
historians,[7] that the final causes of war are indissolubly united
with the moral constitution of man and human society; and that, as long
as man continues to be actuated by the same passions as hitherto, the
same causes of war must occur over and over again in endless cycles.
Not but that the pain and misery thereby caused are undoubted evils,
but that evil is permitted to form part of the moral and physical
system of the world; it is what constitutes that system a state of
probation and moral trial for man. When evil ceases to exist, men's
evil passions shall cease also, and the world shall become another
Eden; _but not till then_. The bearing of arms and the waging of war
are no disgrace to a nation; they are an honour and a blessing to
it if justly exercised, a disgrace and a curse, sooner or later, if
undertaken unjustly. Believing, therefore, that the proper maintenance
of a warlike spirit is absolutely essential to the welfare of any
nation, and knowing how much the pecuniary and political embarrassments
of our mighty though heterogeneous empire cripple the public means
(in appearance at least) for keeping up a sufficient military force,
we proceed to throw out the following hints for the formation of an
improved description of a national military force. And we may at
once observe, that it is one especially calculated to fall under the
direction of the nobles of the land, and to revive that portion of the
feudal spirit which depends on the proper constitution of the military
resources of a great people.

[7] ALISON, _History of Europe_, vol. x.

The military strength of this country lies at present concentrated in
the regular army, in the corps of veterans styled "pensioners," and, we
may very fairly add, in the "police." We have nothing to say except
in praise of these three bodies of men, the two latter of which are
most useful adjuncts and supporters to the former. But we not only wish
that the number of the regular army were _permanently and considerably
increased_, we could desire also that the number of the police were
augmented, and that they had more of military training about them. We
shall revert to one of these points, at least, at a future period. We
are also of opinion that the militia of the country should _always_ be
kept up, and regularly trained even in the intervals of war, were it
for no other purpose than to maintain some faint degree of military
spirit and knowledge among the common people. The question of expense
and of interruption to labour does not, we confess, stop us in the
least in our aspirations: we think that the country pays not a farthing
too much for its military and naval forces; and, as for interruption to
labour, anything that would draw off the attention of the lower orders
from the grinding and degrading occupations of manufacturing slavery,
we should consider one of the greatest benefits that could accrue to
the country.

We wish to call attention, however, to another method--by no means
a new one--of augmenting the military resources of the country, and
to throw out some hints for rendering that method more efficacious
than it may hitherto have been deemed. We allude to the system of
volunteers. And here let not our military readers laugh: we would
assure our gallant friends that we are fully aware of the thousand
and one objections that will be immediately started; we know how easy
it is to pooh-pooh a plan of this kind all to nothing. We can already
hear them calling out about the Lumber Troop, and the City Light
Horse: nay, we ourselves can actually remember that most astounding
and heart-stirring event of the late war, the storming of Putney, and
the battle of Wimbledon Common. We were present, gallant readers, not
as actors but as very juvenile spectators of that memorable combat, to
which Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo were mere farces; so we know
all that is to be said _against_ the volunteers. And now just have the
goodness to let us say something _for_ them.

A volunteer force, if it is to be merely a parade force, a make-believe
force, is a "sham," a humbug, and a gross absurdity. If it is to be
a "National Guard," playing the part of armed politicians, it is a
dangerous nuisance, and ought never to be formed. If it is to consist
of a crowd of pot-bellied citizens, with red noses and spectacles, who
are afraid of firing off a musket, and cannot march above ten miles a
day, nor go more than six hours without plenty of provisions tucked
under their belts, nor sleep anywhere except between clean sheets and
warm blankets--why, a set of wooden posts, sculptured into the human
form, and painted to look like soldiers, would be far more serviceable.
We are not going to commit the absurdity of advocating the formation of
any such corps of men as these; but we wish to point out how a really
efficient corps of volunteers might be raised throughout the kingdom,
kept on a footing of constant service and readiness, costing the
country not one farthing, and constituting a really useful and valuable
auxiliary force to co-operate with the regular troops.

If these qualifications are to exist in any volunteer corps, then it
is quite manifest that the following kinds of persons cannot form part
of it. First of all, the whole generation of pot-bellied, red-nosed,
counter-thumping fellows, alluded to above, would not be admissible;
next, no man who is not endowed with a good quantity of bodily
activity, health, and vigour of mind, could remain in its ranks; and
further, no one need apply for admission who wanted merely to "play at
soldiers," or whose means and occupations would not allow of his giving
up regularly a certain portion of his best time to the service, and
_occasionally_ of absenting himself from home for even a considerable
period--say of one, two, or more months, and proceeding wherever the
government might wish him. Furthermore, no such corps could have the
smallest pretensions to be effective, if it were left to its own
guidance and command: it must be as much under the control, and at the
orders, of the commander-in-chief--for home service--(for we do not
contemplate the possibility of its being ordered abroad,) as any of
the regular corps in her Majesty's army.

It will be seen at once, from the above stipulations, that we do not
advert to anything at all resembling the loose and extremely local
organisation of the old volunteers of 1805 and the subsequent years.

Now, a volunteer corps can only be held together by the two following
principles:--first, a strong sense of public and patriotic duty; and,
secondly, an acute feeling of Honour, and the Pride of belonging
to a really distinguished arm of the service--a bona fide _corps
d'élite_. Whenever war breaks out, we know, and we feel the most hearty
satisfaction in knowing, that in every corner of the land--save,
perhaps, in the murky dens of misery, discontent, and degeneracy
abounding in our manufacturing towns--thousands of British hearts
will beat with a tenfold warmer glow than heretofore, and will burn
to give forth their best blood for the services of their country. Let
but the most distant intimation of foreign invasion be given, and
hundreds of thousands of brave and generous defenders of their beloved
native land will instantly step forth. But we would say that, if the
defence of the country from invasion be really desirable, it is not
sufficient that the _will_ to defend it be forthcoming at the proper
moment--the _knowledge how to do it_, the _preparatory training_, the
_formation of military habits_,--always a matter of slow growth,--the
_previous organisation of the defenders themselves_, is much more
important. In short, to keep the country safe from foreign invasion,
(we do not allude to the naval strength of the country, which, after
all, may prove abundantly sufficient for the purpose,) to take away
from a foreign enemy even the spirit to dare an invasion, the previous
formation, the constant maintenance of an efficient volunteer force
must necessarily be of great value.

The expediency of this will be heightened by the consideration that it
may, at any time, even of the most profound peace in Europe, be found
necessary suddenly to detach a large portion of the regular army for
the defence of our numerous colonial possessions, or that disturbances
among our manufacturing population at home may require a sudden
augmentation of the armed force of the country. In either of these
emergencies, the existence of a considerable body of armed men who,
though perhaps not equalling the regulars in _precision_ of discipline
and evolution, might yet be in far better training than the militia,
_and who should be kept so at no expense to the government_, would
evidently be of great value to the whole community.

We do not expect that many persons engaged in trade and manufactures,
nor indeed that many inhabitants in large towns--at least of those
classes--would like to enrol themselves in a corps the service of
which would be constant, and might frequently take them away for a
considerable time from their homes and occupations. We should not
wish to see them joining it, for, however warm their goodwill might
be, we know that their pockets and stomachs would be continually
rebelling, and that, far from being "volunteers," they would more
commonly be found as "deserters." We would rather see them staying
at home, and acting as good members of their municipalities, or as
special constables, or forming "street associations" for the keeping
of the peace--all most necessary and laudable purposes, and not a whit
less useful to the country than the serving as volunteers. We would
rather see the force we meditate drawn exclusively from the gentry
and the farmers of the country, and in fact from the same classes
as now furnish the yeomanry cavalry,--only, we would have it most
especially to include _all the gentry of the nation_: and we would
have it thereby made an _honour_ even to belong to the corps. To see a
country gentleman heading his tenants, and his sons serving in their
ranks, as some of themselves, and the younger gentry from the country
or provincial towns also coming forward for the permanent military
service of their country--coming forward as gentlemen, and serving as
gentlemen, with the name and title of gentlemen--and to see the stout
farmers of England, the real pride and bulwark of the realm, thus
linked with their best and natural friends and protectors in a common
bond of honour and of arms, would be the most glorious sight that this
nation would have witnessed for many a long year. It would give a new
stamp to society, and would infuse a vigorous energy of mind amongst us
that should go far towards counteracting the dangerous and emasculating
influence of the "large town system." The heart-blood of England would
begin to flow back again into its old and natural channels; and that
linking of lords and tenants, which can never be loosened without the
most fatal consequences, would be rendered closer and tighter than ever.

Men drawn from such classes as these, the adult sons of respectable
farmers, the sons of the country gentry, the younger gentry from the
towns, the farmers and the gentry themselves, (such at least as could
really be spared from their numerous avocations,) would constitute,
both in their physical and mental qualifications, the very best
description of volunteers that could be selected in any land, for they
would be the true _élite_ of the whole nation, the very pride and hope
of the country. It would be truly an honour to belong to such a corps,
whether the applicant for admission were a yeoman or a gentleman;
and, if properly organised and trained, it might be made a force of
paramount efficiency.

Now what would be some of the main characteristics of the men composing
such a force? for by those characteristics the nature and destination
of the force should be mainly guided. First of all, a large portion
would be able, as now, to serve on horseback: and this leads at once
to show that the yeomanry cavalry, if more frequently exercised, and
if kept out for longer periods of service, might, with an improvement
which we shall by-and-by suggest, become of great value in this
division of the national force.

Next, men of this kind would be more or less distinguished for
bodily activity--we mean activity, as distinguished from muscular
strength--though of this they would have in the old proportion of one
Englishman to any two Frenchmen, we have no doubt. Hence the force
would be fitter for the service of light than of heavy armed troops.

And, thirdly, from their pecuniary means they would be capable of
_distant_ and _rapid_ motion; and therefore they should form a corps
destined for quick and desultory rather than for slow and stationary
warfare.

From the very fact, however, of their forming a corps drawn from the
middle classes of provincial and urban society, and from their having
pecuniary means at their command, more than any other class of troops
could possibly hope for, they would be especially liable to relax in
discipline from the contamination of garrisons, or the seductions
of large towns. They would be formed of the finest young fellows
of the whole country; and therefore a residence at "Capua" would
be destructive of their military efficiency. The damage they would
reciprocally cause and sustain by being quartered in any large town for
a lengthened period, might be great; hence they should be confined as
much as possible to--where they would be most effective--operations in
the open field.

Again, if there are any two points of manly exercise in which the
gentry and yeomanry of this country are distinguished beyond any other
European nation, they are these--the being _good marksmen_, and _good
horsemen_.

We are thus naturally led to the determining of the exact description
of troops which should be constituted with such admirable materials--_a
vast body of riflemen_--some mounted, the others on foot. Such a
corps, or rather such an assemblage of corps, if properly organised
and trained, would not have its equal in the world. It would be formed
of the choicest spirits, the picked men of the nation, and it would be
organised upon the very points, as bases, upon which those men would
the most pride themselves, in which they would be the strongest, which
they would be the most accustomed to, and would the best understand.
They would have all the elements of good soldiers among them; all that
would be wanting would be good organisation and training.

"This is no great discovery," some one will say; "there have been
volunteer rifle corps already. Of late days they started a thing of
the kind among the peaceable Glasgow bodies, and those treasonable
asses, the Irish. Irishmen that wanted to be rebels, and the English
Chartists that wanted to sack London, recommended their deluded
countrymen to 'club together and buy rifles.'" We acknowledge it--the
idea is old enough. We only mean to say, that if a volunteer force
be a desirable adjunct to our military system--and, under certain
regulations, it might no doubt become so--then a rifle corps, or
rather an army of volunteer riflemen, drawn from the classes specified
above, would constitute a most effective branch of the service. We
make no pretensions to the starting of a new idea; we merely endeavour
to render that idea practicable, and to point out how it may be best
realised.

The following points as to organisation we lay down as indispensable,
without which we should hardly care to see the force enrolled:--

1st, The only matter in which the volunteer spirit should subsist,
should be that of joining the corps in the first instance, and then
of equipping and maintaining the men, each at their own cost. Once
enrolled, it should no longer be at the option of the men whether they
served or not--nor _when_, nor _where_, nor _how_ they served: we mean
the force not to be a sham one; we do not want soldiers in joke, we
require them to come forward in good earnest. All matters concerning
the time, place, and mode of their service should lie with the
government. Once enrolled and trained, they should be at her Majesty's
disposal; they should be her _bonâ fide_ soldiers, only not drawing
pay, nor, except under certain circumstances, rations.

2d, The corps should be raised by counties, hundreds, and parishes,
and should be under the colonelcies of the Lords-Lieutenants or
their deputies. To keep up the _esprit de corps_ conjointly with the
spirit of local association and public patriotism, it is essential
that friends and neighbours, lords and tenants, should stand side by
side, fight in the same ranks, witness each other's brave deeds, and,
in every sense of the word, "put shoulder to shoulder." The several
counties might each furnish a regiment, and these regiments should then
be brigaded under the command of a general officer, appointed by the
commander-in-chief of her Majesty's forces. In the first instance, at
least, it would be desirable that a certain proportion of the officers
should be drawn from the half-pay list of the army, both for the sake
of instruction and example. Afterwards they should be taken _from the
ranks_, for the ranks in this corps would be, by the mere fact of
their organisation, composed of gentlemen and the best description
of yeomen--the latter, be it ever remembered, not unworthy to lead
their friends and neighbours; and the mode of so doing might be easily
arranged by the military authorities, on the combined footing of local
influence and personal merit.

3d, These corps, when organised, should be primarily intended for the
local defence of their several counties, or of any adjacent military
districts, into which the country might, from time to time, be divided.
But they should also be liable to serve, to the same extent as the
militia, anywhere within the European dominions of Her Majesty. We
do not contemplate the eventuality of their being ordered on foreign
service, though we strongly suspect that it would be very difficult to
keep such a corps always at home, when stirring scenes of national arms
and glory were to be met with away from their own shores. If, however,
the corps should be called on to do duty away from their own military
districts, then they should draw rations, clothes, equipments, and
ammunition, but _not pay_, the same as the regular troops.

4th, As it should be esteemed an honour to belong to such a corps,
so the members of it should not only be exempt from being drawn
for the militia, but they should also be free from paying for a
license to carry firearms and to shoot as sportsmen; and the cost
of their equipment should be such as to insure a certain degree of
respectability on the part of the volunteer. This preliminary expense,
added to that of maintaining himself on duty at his own cost, would
prevent any one but a man of a certain degree of substance from seeking
admission into the corps.

5thly, The acquisition of sufficient skill in the use of that deadliest
of all arms, the rifle, might be made by means of local meetings to
practise, at which heavy fines for non-attendance would not only
insure tolerable regularity, but would also provide a fund for prizes,
and for general purposes. At these meetings, which should be held
frequently, the knowledge of military evolutions, and the minutiæ of
drill might be readily communicated by the non-commissioned officers
of the pensioners' corps; and, from the circumstance of the men not
being mere clods from the plough tail, nor weavers from the loom, the
requisite amount of instruction would be conveyed in a comparatively
short time. We should suppose that, within six months from their first
organisation, if the discipline was well attended to, such corps might
be able to stand a field-day before their general officers. The cavalry
would not learn their duties so readily as the infantry, because the
men would have to teach not themselves alone, but also their horses;
and, though they would form a most effective and valuable species of
light cavalry, the combined practice of the rifle and the sabre would
demand a considerable time for the corps to be quite at home with
their duties. We would give them a year to make themselves complete.
A volunteer force of cavalry should never aim at being anything else
than a corps of light horse--they can never constitute effective heavy
cavalry. But as light horsemen possessing rifles, and able to use them
whether in the saddle or on the ground, they would become as formidable
to a European enemy as the African Arabs have been to the French, and
would be a match for any light cavalry that could be brought to act
against them. For all purposes, too, of local service they would be
admirably efficient.

6thly, The discipline of a volunteer corps is always the main
difficulty to be contended against in its practical management; but
we conceive that this difficulty would be lessened, in the present
instance, from the peculiarly good composition of the rank and file of
such a body of men. Several large classes of military offences could
not possibly prevail among them; and, for those that remained, the
ordinary articles of war would be sufficiently repressive. It should be
observed that we do not contemplate the granting leave to such corps
to disband themselves: the engagement once formed should be binding
for a certain moderate number of years, and the volunteer should
not have the faculty of releasing himself from his duties except by
becoming invalided. We imagine that the possibility of being ultimately
dismissed from such an honourable body of men, for ungentlemanlike
conduct, would constitute the most effectual check that could be
devised for the instances of breach of discipline likely to occur.

It should not be lost sight of that we advocate the formation of such a
force as a _corps d'élite_, as one elevated above the militia, and even
above the regular army, in the _morale_ of the men composing it, if
not in their _physique_; and therefore it may be very fairly inferred
that the members of it, feeling the _prestige_ attached to their name,
would act up to the dignity and honour of their station; that they
would not only behave as valiant soldiers in the field, but that they
would act as gentlemen in quarters. Drinking and gambling would be the
two main offences to provide against; but these, if discouraged, and
not practised by the officers, might be checked among the men. For all
quarrels and disputes likely to end in personal encounter, a special
tribunal of arbiters should be constituted among men and officers of
corresponding rank in the corps; and all duelling should be totally
prevented. The mere fact of sending or accepting a challenge should
involve, _ipso facto_, expulsion from the corps. The running into debt,
too, on the part of the members, should be most rigorously prevented,
and should incur the penalty of expulsion. By these and similar
regulations, combined with the judicious management of the superior
officers, we have no doubt that the discipline of such a body, (which
should be strict rather than lenient,) might be effectually maintained.

7thly, The arming and equipping of such a corps of men is a point of
importance, but by no means of difficulty. We may here disappoint
some of our pseudo-military readers; but we anticipate that the real
soldiers will agree with us, when we declare our conviction that a
military costume--we do not say a _uniform_ costume--but a _military_
one, would be altogether out of character and needless in such a case.
No: we would not have any of the smart shakos, and tight little green
jackets of the rifle brigade; no plumes nor feathers; no trailing
sabres for the officers, no cartouche boxes for the men--nothing at all
of the kind. We would put them all in uniform, but not in a uniform of
that nature--it should be one suited to the wearers, and to the nature
of their service.

Now the original intent and object of all uniform costume is, not the
ornamenting of the person; it is not the dressing of a young fellow,
until he becomes so handsome that the first woman he meets is ready to
surrender at discretion to him. It is not the uniform that makes the
soldier; it should be the soldier that should make the uniform; that is
to say, the kind of dress should be dictated both by the usual habits
and rank of the wearer, and by the service he is called on to perform.
Add to this that, provided the men all wear the same costume, no matter
what it may be, the great end of military costume, the holding the
men in distinct and united corps, is attained. The uniform does not
make a man fight a bit the better or worse: it is only for the sake of
evolutions and discipline that any uniform at all is needed.

We would therefore recommend the keeping in view of two principles,
in selecting the uniform of such corps; viz., utility and simplicity.
What are the duties a rifleman has to perform? Any man who ever went
deerstalking, any one who is accustomed to beat up the woods and covers
for cocks or pheasants, knows nine-tenths of a rifleman's duties. His
game is the enemy: whether he be a tall stag or a Frenchman, it is all
the same; a steady aim and a quick finger will do the job for him. And
now, dear reader, or gallant volunteer, or old fellow-shot, if you were
invited to go a-gunning, whether after stags, cocks, or men, how would
you like, if left to your own free choice, apart from all military
nonsense--how would you like to equip yourself? We know how we used to
go together over the Inverness-shire hills, and we know how we now go
through the Herefordshire preserves, and how we sometimes wander over
the Yorkshire moors; and it is just so that we should like to turn out.
You know the dress; we need hardly describe it: everybody knows it;
everybody has worn it. Just such a dress, then, as the volunteers would
wear at home in their field-sports and occupations, the very same, or
one of the same kind, would we recommend for their service as volunteer
riflemen.

A shooting-coat, made either of cloth or velveteen, differing in
colour, perhaps, for the different districts, or else one and the same
throughout the whole service--black, or dark brown, or dark green, or
any other colour that would suit the woodland and the moor; a waistcoat
to match, with those abundant pockets that the true shooter knows
how to make use of; trousers and stout boots, or else knee-breeches,
leathern leggings, and high-lows; in fact, whatever shooting costume
might be decided on by the gentry and authorities of the county for
their respective regiments. As for hats, either a plain round hat,
or else one of the soft felt ones, those most delightful friends to
the heated and exhausted sportsman. The only thing would be to have
everything cut after the same fashion, and the effect of uniformity
would be immediately attained, without running into any of those
excesses of paraphernalia which in former days brought down such
deserved ridicule on the corps of loyal volunteers. Every man should
wear round his waist a black leathern belt containing his bullets and
leathers; his caps would be stowed away in one of his pockets; and his
powder would travel well and dry in a horn or flask hung by a strap
over his shoulder. His rifle--we need hardly describe it--should be
rather longer and heavier than for sporting purposes, inasmuch as it
may have to be used against cavalry; and it should admit of having a
sword-bayonet fastened on at the muzzle. This bayonet might be worn
suspended, as a sword in its sheath, from the belt round the waist.
A black leathern knapsack, and a pilot-coat of warm stuff rolled up
on the top of it, would complete the costume of our volunteer; and he
would look more truly martial and serviceable, when thus equipped,
than if decked out with all kinds of lace and trimmings, and clad in a
jacket cut in the most _recherché_ style of military tailoring.

The officers should wear a precisely similar dress, but they might be
distinguished by gold or crimson sashes, according to rank, and might
wear round their breast, or on their hats, some further distinguishing
marks of their offices. The whole should be based on the idea of
equipping the corps as plain country gentlemen and yeomen going out to
do a day's serious business in the field; and if the business is not to
be serious, it is better to leave it alone than to attempt it.

Regard should be paid to the various inclinations and habits of
the districts from whence the regiments should be drawn, and, in
particular, those from Scotland should by all means retain some
strongly distinctive marks of their national costume: the plaid could
never be misapplied on their brawny shoulders.

We should suppose that it would cost each member of the corps at least
£10 or £15 to equip himself completely, and this would be by no means
too large a sum for the purposes required.

The costume of the mounted riflemen need not differ much from that of
the men on foot. The shooting-coat is as good on horseback as off; and
the only alteration we would recommend would be in the use of the stout
but supple black-jack hunting-boots now coming so much into fashion.
These admit of exercise on foot as well as in the saddle, and being
plain, quiet things, would be peculiarly suitable for the purpose
intended.

8thly, We are firmly persuaded that, if this experiment were tried in
any one county or district, it would be found to answer so well that
others would adopt and imitate it. The service it would render to
government might be most important in stirring times; and being a _bonâ
fide_ and really effective corps, it would revive the martial and manly
feelings of the people, now somewhat blunted by the long duration of
peace, and would diffuse a most wholesome spirit throughout the land.
From the sentiments of honour, and loyalty too, with which such a corps
would be animated, (for it would be composed of the very flower and
hope of the land,) it would, by its moral weight alone, keep in check
that crowd of discontented persons who always exist in our empire. The
loyal and honourable sentiments possessed by this corps would spread
themselves abroad among the people; the good example set would be
followed by the most respectable part of the nation, and a healthier
tone would be thereby given to society in general.

9thly, Taking into consideration the number of parishes, and the
population of Great Britain, (for we could not admit the Irish into our
loyal ranks) we should estimate the probable force that could thus be
raised and maintained at its own expense, at not less than 50,000 men,
of whom 10,000 would be effective light cavalry; and we should suppose
that at least 40,000 of this total number might be counted on for
active service, in any emergency.

The mere fact, if this calculation be not overrated, of our being
thereby able to add such a degree of strength to our regular army--or
that of our being able to replace such a number of our regular troops,
if called abroad suddenly for distant duty--or else, the knowledge that
there would always be such a numerous body of men in the country, armed
and arrayed in the support of the monarchy and the constitution; either
of these facts, taken separately, might justify the formation of such
a corps, but, taken conjointly, they seem to carry with them no small
weight.

An anomaly in the present constitution of noble society which
requires remedying, is the frequent inadequacy of the territorial
means possessed by noble families for the maintenance of their power
and dignity. This has reached to such a pitch, of late days, that
we have seen the ladies of two peers of the realm claiming public
support _in formâ pauperum_; and we have witnessed the breaking-up and
sale of such a princely establishment as that of Stowe. Many noble
families are forced to depend on public offices, and other indirect
sources, for the support of their members. Many noble families of
high distinction and renown are poorer than ordinary commoners. There
are very few estates of nobles (we say nothing of those of commoners)
which are not oppressed by mortgages, and which, in reality, confer
much less power than they nominally represent. From whatever causes
these circumstances may have arisen,--whether from the folly and
extravagance of the nobles themselves as a main cause, or from the
imprudence of the crown in making unworthy creations, as a subsidiary
cause--they have produced the most injurious effects upon the order,
and have even justified the boast of the first commoner who thought
himself superior to the last of the nobles. By few things has the
order been more injured in public opinion than by the inequality and
inadequacy of its territorial resources. This, too, becomes the more
painfully evident in a nation where commerce has been allowed to assume
an undue preponderance in the public mind, and where the means of
gaining money are so various and so many, that the rapid acquisition
of handsome fortunes is a very common occurrence. It is an evil, a
negation of the ends of life, and a main cause of the decline and fall
of a nation, that such a state of things should exist; but, seeing
that it does exist, it is doubly the duty and the interest of all who
have the honour and the permanency of national prosperity at heart, to
favour the establishment and the maintenance of the strongest possible
antagonistic principle--the forming and preserving of large territorial
possessions in favour of the order of nobles. Believing that the law of
primogeniture is the basis of all political freedom, we would urge the
expediency of modifying the law, so that certain great estates, like
the fiefs of old, should become inalienable by any person, unattachable
for any liabilities, and indivisible under any circumstances, in favour
of the order of nobles: and that the holders of such estates should
be nobles, and nobles only. In the same spirit we would say, that the
extent of territory should determine the rank of the noble, taking,
as the starting-point, the estates as they might exist at any period
of time; that to each title a certain territory should be inalienably
attached, and that the title itself should derive its name from that
territory--the holder of the territory, whoever he might be, always
taking the title. It would be productive of great good if facilities
were given as much as possible for massing together the properties
of the noble; and if estates widely spread over the kingdom could
be exchanged for others lying close together, and forming a compact
territory. The powers of the nobles are now greatly frittered away
and lost by the dispersion of their properties: he who holds nearly a
whole county continuously, like the Duke of Sutherland, is of much more
weight in the state than another, like the Duke of Devonshire, whose
estates, though of very great value, lie more widely scattered.

It may appear an innovation, but we are persuaded that it would be only
a return to the fundamental and ancient principles of the constitution,
to make the possession of a real estate of a certain value, for a
certain time, a legal title to claim the right to nobility. Thus the
possession of an estate of £10,000 per annum clear rental, or of 5000
acres, by the same family, in direct descent for four generations,
should of itself constitute a right for its owner to be ranked in the
lowest order of nobility,--that of barons,--and the barony should give
its name to its possessor; while, the possession of land of greater
extent and value should modify the superior titles of those who held
them, until the highest rank in the peerage were attained. All nobles
holding not less than £100,000 per annum of clear rental, or 50,000
acres, should _ipso facto_ and _de jure_ become dukes, and so on in
proportion between these two extremes of the peerage. Baronets should
rank, in virtue of their estates, immediately after the barons; and
in their turn, too, the possession of a certain income from landed
property, such as £5000 a-year clear for four generations, in the
same family, should immediately entitle its owner to rank among the
baronets, and to have the style and privileges of that order.

It will be urged, on the other hand, that the crown would thereby be
deprived of the power of rewarding meritorious public servants, by
calling them up to the House of Peers, if the possession of a certain
large amount of landed property were made a _sine quâ non_ for every
creation. To this it may be replied that, though the prerogatives
of the crown require extension rather than contraction, yet that a
sufficient power of reward would be possessed, if men of eminence
in the public service, whether great commanders or distinguished
lawyers, were summoned to the Upper House for their lives only,
without their titles being made hereditary; and further, that other
distinctions might be given which would be fully sufficient rewards
in themselves without any encroachment being made on the privileges
of the order of nobles. Thus, in former times, when the honour of
knighthood was not so common as it has now become, a great general and
a great judge considered themselves rewarded enough if knighted: they
never thought of being created peers. And the fact is, that though
personal nobility--the nobility acquired by the performance of great
actions--is in itself of the highest value to the state, as well as to
the individual, it is not sufficiently valuable to entitle the heirs of
a great man to take perpetual rank among the great landed proprietors
of the realm. The duties and responsibilities of nobility depend more
upon the trust reposed in each member than upon that member's personal
qualifications. The noble cannot be separated from his lands nor from
his tenants, nor from the multifarious heavy responsibilities thereby
incurred; he is the representative of a great interest in the state; he
is the representative of his land, and of all connected with it; he is
the representative of a great class and gathering: his duties are not
merely personal; he cannot found his right to nobility upon personal
merit alone. Personal qualifications can give no valid right to
hereditary privileges, whereas land is perpetual--_rura manebunt_--and
the privileges as well as the duties attached to it should be perpetual
also.

It would, therefore, be another step towards constituting the
aristocracy of the state on a more solid and reasonable basis, if
the orders of baronets, and of knights of various descriptions, were
purified of their anomalies, and rendered attainable only under rules
of a more general and fixed nature than at present prevail. Both these
classes of nobles--for so they may be called--require considerable
purification; the former, that of baronet, should be made the
intermediate class between the nobles by personal merit, or knights,
and those who are nobles by their lands, the peers. As was observed
before, no baronetcy should be conferred unless a real estate of a
certain value could be shown to be possessed, _clear_ of all mortgage
and debt; and the retention of such an estate for a certain number of
generations should establish a legal claim to the title of baronet;
while the subsequent increase of the same estate, and a similar
retention of it for a certain number of descents, should establish a
further claim to the honour of the peerage. If the orders of knighthood
were made more difficult of entry, and if they were specially reserved
only for public personal services, they would rise again in public
estimation, and would be suitable for all purposes of reward required
by the sovereign.

At the same time, and as a consequence of this, peers and baronets
should not be admitted into the orders of knighthood--they should be
satisfied with their own dignities. The garter, the thistle, and the
shamrock should be reserved especially for the great military and naval
commanders of the realm: the bath, and perhaps one or two other new
orders, should be destined for men of eminence in whatever line of life
they might be able to render service to their country.

It is an opinion controverted by some, but it seems founded in reason,
that the twelve judges, who are at the head of their most honourable
profession, should not merely be allowed to sit on the benches of the
House of Lords, but that they should have the right of voting therein,
and, in fact, be summoned as peers for life upon their elevation to
the bench. No order of men in the whole state would exercise power
more conscientiously, and from no other source could the Upper House
derive at once such an immense increase of deliberative strength in the
revision and framing of the laws. The bench of spiritual lords, and the
bench of legal lords, ought to form two of the purest ornaments in the
bright galaxy of the peers of the realm.

We shall content ourselves for the present with indicating two other
points, recognised and admitted by the constitutional forms of the
government, but at present much lost sight of; and they may be
considered as affecting the lowest order--the very root of the whole
nobility of the land.

Members of the Lower House for counties are always called _knights_ of
the shires they represent; and so they ought to be. No person should
be eligible to represent a county unless previously adorned with the
honour either of knighthood or of the baronetage, or unless the younger
son of a peer of the realm; and indeed the attaching of titles of
nobility to the possession of estates of a certain value and fixity of
tenure, and the annexing of baronetcies to similar properties, would
put all the principal country gentlemen in a position suited to the
duties of a knight of the shire. We should not then see the absurd and
mischievous anomaly of an ambitious theorist of no landed property in
his own possession, but backed by the democrats of a manufacturing
district, thrust upon the legislature as the representative of a large
agricultural county. We should rather find the knights of the shires
forming a compact and most influential body in the imperial parliament,
the real representatives of the interests of their constituents, and
the main conservative element in the Lower House of the legislature.

The bearing of arms, and the gratuitous assumption of the title of
esquire, now so universally adopted, require to be more strictly
limited, unless it is desired that the whole system should fall from
inevitable ridicule into ultimate disuse. It is a kind of morbid
feeling that has thus been produced by national vanity, and will some
day or other work out its opposite extreme, unless restrained in due
time. For the undue granting of arms the Herald's College is greatly
responsible; but for the universal assumption of the correlative title,
society at large is to be blamed. It is one of the weaknesses of the
day, that men and things are no longer called by their true names,
and it indicates a downward progress in the national fortunes rather
than the contrary. The evil might be checked by the confining of the
right to wear _coats_ of arms or _shields_ to the orders of knighthood
only--as it used to be at the first institution of the custom; while
for all persons under that standing in society, some distinctive
badge or family token might be adopted, sufficient to identify their
lineage, yet showing a difference of grade. It is more difficult to
say how the appellations of the various classes of commoners shall be
settled; but there can be no doubt that the common herding of all men
together--whether under the names of esquires, gentlemen, or even of
"gents"--is an absurdity: mischievous, inasmuch as it tends to level
what ought to be unequal, and as it renders ridiculous what ought to be
respected.

We readily allow that the ideas propounded above are more or less
Utopian; so, however, are all ideas of change. With this excuse,
however, we content ourselves for the present. If we have advocated
any amendments, they are not in the direction of what is called,
falsely enough--_Progress_, but in that of what is really and truly
improvement, because it implies a reverting to the fundamental and
unalterable basis of the modern European social system. "Progress" now
means advancement in the cause of democracy--that is, in the path which
marks the decline and fall, and ultimate destruction of any old nation.
Far be it from us to lend a hand to aught that can assist this fatal
and destructive process. We would preserve, and restore, and improve,
rather than destroy. And it is because we believe this ancient spirit
of feudalism to be that which contains the great elements of national
prosperity, that we therefore advocate a return towards some of its
first principles. A further development of this we reserve for a future
occasion. But this we will maintain, that in the great cycle of years
which constitute the life of a people, the upward rising of the nation
is characterised by the active vitality of what we will call feudalism,
its downward sinking by the existence of democratic license and opulent
enervation, following upon the decline of warlike and chivalrous
pursuits. The process of corruption and of disintegration may be slow,
but it is not the less certain. It overtakes even the most prosperous
nations at last. Would that we could check and avert that evil from our
own country!




CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS.


Strange though it sound to speak of a revolution in these provinces,
where the representative of the crown is notoriously supported by a
large majority in the provincial parliament, and where, for years
past, there has scarcely been an inquiry made as to when a regiment
either came or went, or even how many troops were in the whole American
colonies; yet it is nevertheless a fact, that a more important and
effective revolution is now going on in the Canadas, than if half their
population were in open arms against the mother country.

Before attempting either to describe or to account--which we trust in
the course of this paper to be able to do--for this extraordinary state
of things, it will be necessary to touch upon a few leading events in
the history of both provinces, and, incidentally, upon the character
and intentions of the parties engaged in them.

It is well known to all English readers, that the French of Lower
Canada, forming a population of some four hundred thousand people,
after a long course of factious and embarrassing legislation; after
a species of civil, social, and parliamentary strife for nearly half
a century, which was far more withering in its effects upon the
prosperity of the country than a good fight in the beginning would have
been, finally, in 1837, took up arms against the British government.
Shortly afterwards they were joined by the party in Upper Canada
which had long made common cause with them, though without common
principles, aims, or hopes--the one's pride being indissolubly wedded
to institutions which were pregnant with retrogression and decay, the
other's chief merit consisting in pretension to raise men from beneath
old ruins, instead of bringing old ruins down upon them. Yet both
agreed in hating England, and in taking up arms, jointly and severally,
to overthrow her institutions. Whatever other lesson England might have
learned from the fact, she should at least have learned this--that it
was no ordinary feelings of desperation or of difference that made them
forego so much to each other, in order to strike an effectual blow at
her; and that it could be no ordinary circumstance, if it was even
in the nature of things, after they had become partners in the same
defeats and humiliations--after they had been made bed-fellows by the
same misfortunes--that could disunite them in favour of their common
enemy; and not only turn the tide of their hatred against each other,
but make the party that became loyal to England kiss the rod that had
so severely scourged it.

Probably this might have been thought difficult. But where the
hostility to England might have been regarded as accidental, rather
than of settled and determined principle, it might be urged that the
reconciling one or both these parties to the British government, might
not have been impossible; or the bringing the one back to loyalty, even
at the expense of its having to oppose the other, might still be in the
power of wise legislation.

This brings us to consider the character and the principles, the
prejudices and the predilections, of the two parties. And if the reader
will follow us over a little scrap of history, possibly new to him, if
we do not happen to differ on the road, we apprehend we shall agree in
summing up the general results.

For many parliaments previous to the rebellion in Lower Canada, the
majority in favour of the French was on an average equal to four-fifths
of each house. And, instead of this majority being diminished by
the agency of immigration, or by reason of the detachment of almost
every Englishman and American in the province from their cause--who
at first sided with them for the purpose of procuring the redress of
all real abuses, most, if not all, of which, arose from the nature of
their own institutions,--it continued to increase, until at last every
county in the province which had a preponderance of French influence,
sent a member to parliament to carry on a kind of civil war with the
government. Men of the first talents in the country, who had freely
spent the best of their lives and their efforts in its service, when
they were compelled to leave this faction, or take leave of their
loyalty to the crown, found that the breadth of their own intellects
was all they were ever able to detach from its ranks. Every concession
the imperial government could make, every effort to conciliate them,
was met only by fresh demands--demands conceived in a spirit of
hostility, and wilfully and knowingly of such a character as could not
be conceded. Yet their majorities continued, and even increased, in
parliament. In 1832, they carried their measures of hostility to the
British, and even the Irish population so far, as to refuse to employ
them for any purposes whatever, and, in some cases, those employed
were dismissed. It is matter of Lower Canadian history, that one of
their greatest grievances was, that they had not the control of the
appointments of judges and other public officers, and the apportioning
of their salaries; yet it is well known--it was publicly avowed by
them in Parliament--that their object was, to starve out the British
government, by starving out its officers. Still the French leaders who
mooted these measures gained in popularity, and the English members
for French counties continued to lessen. British manufactures were
solemnly denounced in their parliament, and the use of them declared
a disgrace to every Frenchman; and a tax, which they intended as a
prohibition, was attempted to be placed upon British emigrants: yet
withal, Mr Papineau, the great French leader, rose the higher, and his
party grew the stronger. The more, in short, the French leaders could
embarrass the government, and the more they could throw obstacles in
the way of the improvements incident to the activity and enterprise of
the English race, the more they rose in the estimation of the French
constituencies. They claimed, in truth, for these very acts, their
confidence, and they received what they claimed to the fullest extent.
In a well-written, and, considering all the circumstances, a temperate
address of the Constitutional Association of Montreal in 1832--an
association got up with the view of making the situation of the British
population known to the imperial government, and an association
that afterwards greatly contributed to save the province during the
rebellion--we find the following among other passages to the same
effect, upon this subject:--

    "For half a century has the population of English and Irish
    descent in Lower Canada been subjected to the domination of
    a party whose policy has been to retain the distinguishing
    attributes of a foreign race, and to crush in others that
    spirit of enterprise which they are unable or unwilling to
    emulate. During this period, a population, descended from
    the same stock with ourselves, have covered a continent with
    the monuments of their agricultural industry. Upper Canada
    and the United States bear ample testimony of the flood-tide
    of prosperity--the result of unrestricted enterprise, and of
    equitable laws. Lower Canada, where another race predominates,
    presents a solitary exception to this march of improvement.
    There, surrounded by forests inviting industry, and offering
    a rich reward to labour, an illiterate people, opposed to
    improvements, have compressed their growing numbers almost
    within the boundaries of their original settlements, and
    present, in their mode of laws, in their mode of agriculture,
    and peculiar customs, a not unfaithful picture of France in
    the seventeenth century. There also may be witnessed the
    humiliating spectacle of a rural population not unfrequently
    necessitated to implore eleemosynary relief from the
    legislature of the country."

But it is no new lesson to learn, that an inert and unprogressive race,
with pride clinging to decay, and customs withering to enterprise,
cannot harmonise, in legislative provisions, with men who want laws
to assist the steps of advancing civilisation, rather than ways and
means of keeping up old ruins; who prefer to gather the fruits of a
thousand trees, for the planting of which enterprise has explored, and
industry has employed, new and rich domains, to tying up the decaying
branches of a few old ones, to which possibly memory may love to cling,
but under which plain human nature might starve. To expect, in fact,
that men with such opposite characteristics, apart even from their
other elements of discord, should harmonise, when the party weaker
in legislation was the stronger in civilisation, when the party that
stood still had the power of making the other stand still also, was
to expect an impossibility. And this was exactly the nature of the
contest so long carried on in Lower Canada. An ox and a race-horse
had been yoked together in the same legislative harness. But the
misfortune was increased by the race-horse's being subject--however
much he might struggle, and rear, and foam--to the motions of his
dogged companion, and to the necessity of not moving at all, whenever
it pleased his venerable mate to stand still. It is clear, therefore,
that any legislative provision, after the rebellion, which would
restore to the French this ascendency, would be but causing confusion
worse confused--would be but entailing upon both parties constant
contentions, with the probability, if not the certainty, of a final
appeal to arms; in which case England would be left without a friend
in either party--the one looking upon her as their natural enemy--the
other as a power which had always sacrificed its friends when it had
the means of benefiting them--had perpetually raised its defenders very
high, to see how very far it could let them fall.

The party in Upper Canada which had opposed the government step by
step, until it ended with rebellion in conjunction with the French,
was composed of vastly different materials from these its allies. And
it is somewhat singular, but it is nevertheless a fact, that this
party, both as to its strength, and the true causes of its hostility to
England, has never been very thoroughly understood even in the Canadas.
The principle of under-rating enemies was always applied to it by its
opponents in the province. The pernicious habit of looking upon men
with too much contempt to take the measure of their strength, is as bad
in politics as it is in a physical struggle. But the party known as the
government party in Upper Canada, was generally far too self-important
and too great to calculate how many dark-looking clouds it takes to
make a storm. The government of England too, never very clear-sighted
in colonial affairs, and with its Argus eye as directed to Canadian
prospects always suffering from some defect of vision, or looking
through very distorting media, was not very likely to catch the height
and cut of each individual in a colonial multitude, which it scarcely
ever saw even in gross; while the Governors who "did the monarch" in
the province, did not generally betray much taste for sitting down
by the farmer's fireside, and eating apple-sauce and sauerkraut at
his table, where there neither was, nor could have been, recognised a
distinction between the master and the man,--between the lord of the
castle and the cook in the kitchen. Yet such were the places where
governors and rulers might have seen at work the elements of democracy;
might have witnessed the process of education to the levelling system.
An education which, with the vast facilities for independence in
America, irrespective of situation or institutions--men never get over;
and in which they might have traced the natural growth of feelings and
principles, that must, in the very nature of things, be in a state
of continual warfare with the customs, the pride, and the love of
distinction, which are the inalienable offspring of the monarchy, the
aristocracy, and the social system of England. Yet here they never
penetrated either to count the voters or the children. They felt--they
were obliged to feel--that the great wheel of the government, which
was the majority in parliament, often performed extraordinary
revolutions the wrong way. But they knew not how or wherefore. They
never went where they might have studied, and could have understood,
the difficulty; where, to make a long story short, in order to get at
what they missed, and to understand what they did not, the reader has
possibly anticipated the necessity of accompanying us.

From the circumstances attending the early settlement of Upper Canada,
and from the character of the early settlers themselves, the preachers
of the Methodist denomination were not merely almost the only preachers
they had for many years an opportunity of hearing, but were, of all
others, those they most desired to hear. The clergymen of the Church
of England were few, and stationed in the larger towns. But it is one
of the peculiarities of Methodism, that however numerous or scattered
the settlers might have been, the preacher could always manage to
live among them; for he received with his circuit a sort of universal
billeting-ticket, and the houses of all his flock, and all his flock's
friends, thereupon became one vast home to him; and wherever he
happened to take up his temporary abode, he conferred a sort of honour
instead of receiving a favour. The system had another peculiarity
too--at all events, at the early period we are speaking of--it had
no standard of fitness in the way of education for its ministry. Yet
where men of education could never think of penetrating or existing,
these men were willing to go. Where no bishop could dream of sending a
pastor, it is the principle of Methodism to believe the Lord will raise
up or send one. If his talents are none of the brightest, they are
willing to trust to Heaven to make up the deficiency; and certainly, in
some instances, there is much need of it.

It is not difficult to perceive how great must have been the influence
of these preachers over a people so circumstanced: how eagerly--in the
absence of newspapers, and of nearly every means of learning what was
going on in the province, much less in the affairs of the world--the
leading characters of the neighbourhoods gathered round the preacher,
after the meeting was over, at the fireside of some brother of the
Church, to hear the latest news, to get the last newspaper or pamphlet,
and to receive his oracular opinions upon the measures and the men
agitating the country. And in two-thirds of the districts in the
province, these preachers had for years, unopposed and unquestioned,
those opportunities of instilling a political education--which, if they
chose to make use of them, would enable them to plant a crop, whether
of good or of evil, for or against the institutions of England, wholly,
uneradicable,--were there even the same opportunities afforded of
eradicating it that there were of sowing it.

For five successive parliaments in Upper Canada, previous to the
rebellion, each party had alternately the majority in the house--the
one party being known as the Tory or Family Compact; the other as
the Radical or the Saddle-bag faction--a name more truthfully than
elegantly applied to it, on account of its owing its majority to the
exertions of these same Methodist preachers in its favour; and from
their mode of travelling through the country being on horseback,
with large saddle-bags swung on each side of the nag, and, by way
of adding to the picturesque, with a leathern valise strapped on
immediately over his tail. These bags and valise, it was alleged by
their opponents, were always filled--with, we suppose, the necessary
exception of stowage for hymn-books, and the other paraphernalia of
their craft--with papers and pamphlets against the monarchy, the
Church, and the institutions of England, and in favour of the democracy
of the States. But whether the bags and valise were so filled or not;
or whether, indeed, these preachers, at this early period, had it in
their power to treat their friends to as many pamphlets, and papers,
and almanacs--for the last was and is a method of disseminating
political opinions much resorted to in America--as they were accused
of, we shall not undertake to determine. This, however, we certainly
can assert--that if we had out of the whole world to select the most
perfect embodiment of the spirit of hostility to all the pomp, and
pride, and distinction, and deference to rank, incident to monarchy,
wherever it may exist, we should select these same Methodist preachers.
Educated, for the most part, in the United States, or in Canada by
American schoolmasters; with their conferences held in the States; the
seat of their church in the States; their ministers ordained in the
States; their bishops sent from there--for they were all, at this time,
Episcopal Methodists--and the great body of their church flourishing
there,--they imbibed, from the very beginning, American feelings of
hostility to the established Church of England, and to the pride and
love of distinction--to all the characteristics which must exhibit
themselves wherever English society has a footing, and England's
monarchy a representative. Hostility to these was, in truth, the very
genius of their religion. Looked upon with contempt by Episcopal
clergymen, they took a pious revenge in wildly declaiming against the
pride and arrogance of those who derided them, and incidentally pointed
to the luxurious grandeur and sumptuous living of the great dignitaries
of the church, while its poor hard-working curates had scarcely the
means of living. Treated with contumely by the few educated English
who, from time to time, settled among their hearers, they pointed in
their indignation to that country, and to those institutions, where
one man was held no better than another, and where the many could soon
level the pride and bring down the pretensions of the few. Deprived by
law, as they were at this time, of nearly all the rights of Christian
ministers--of the right to marry, and all similar ones, (for both
the government and the church had long contended against men whom
they regarded and believed, in point of education and character, to
be wholly unfit to exercise these sacred functions,) they declaimed
from the very bottom of their hearts against the illiberality and
exclusiveness of English institutions, of English feelings, and of
English pride, in depriving them of these rights; and they applauded,
with equal earnestness, that government under which their church
flourished, in the fullest exercise of the widest privileges of a
Christian denomination. There is no exaggeration on the one side or
on the other in this. It would be offensive to the church and to its
adherents to say, that they regarded these preachers otherwise than we
have described. It would be unjust to the Methodists to say, that they
did not feel, and that they did not act, as we have given them credit
for doing.

But in addition to the effect, political and national, produced by
these preachers, the peculiarity of the Methodist church-government
spread the same influences by many minor, but not less effectual
ramifications. Every little society, in every neighbourhood, had what
is called a class-leader, or local preacher, whose duty it was to
exercise a sort of half-religious and half-civil domination over the
part of the church immediately surrounding him, to give them advice,
settle their differences, and practise the arts of small oratory and
miniature government.

It is not difficult to perceive how this system must have furnished a
leader to every little neighbourhood; how the ambition first formed
by a class-meeting must have wished the larger sphere of a political
one; and how the consciousness of ability to govern a congregation
naturally led to the conviction that the same abilities might be
usefully employed in the magistracy, or even in parliament. And it is
a significant fact, that since the friends of these class-leaders have
been in power, in every neighbourhood where the Methodists have had
a footing, two-thirds of the magistrates appointed by the government
were, and are, these very class-leaders themselves. But, at the time we
are speaking of, the idea of appointing a person a magistrate, whose
only qualification consisted in his exhibiting a stentorian voice at
Methodist meetings, or being an influential member of "his society,"
was utterly repugnant to the feelings of men educated to dislike such
persons, even when they are unpretending, much less when they aspire
to offices of honour and distinction. No class-leaders, therefore,
in neighbourhoods where every man was alike a lord of the soil, saw
themselves looked up to as leaders by the many, at the same time that
they were looked down upon as boorish pretenders by the few. But what
galled them yet more was, that they constantly saw the few placed in
offices of honour and emolument over them, and thus "rubbing in," as
they termed it, the insult and the injustice of their own exclusion.
Like the preachers, too, they pointed, in their indignation and
revenge, to that country and those institutions where the people could
raise the man, and not the crown--where they could not only attain what
they aimed at, but crush what they abhorred.

Partly from this system of religious and political education, and
partly from the great number of Americans who settled in the province
immediately after the revolutionary war, and who came in with, and at
the suggestion of Governor Simcoe, as well as the many who came in
without him--but mainly from the tinge of nationality that all large
communities impart to small ones adjacent to them--the manners, the
customs, the accent, and even the prejudices, of the rural native
population in Upper Canada, are scarcely distinguishable from the
American. Their very slang words are the same, and their dislike of
what they term "blooded critters,"--namely, Englishmen, who cannot help
evincing their inveterate dislike of either associating themselves,
or allowing their families to associate, with persons whose education
and habits they consider beneath them. Every feature, indeed, by which
an Englishman can detect the influence of the levelling system in
the States, particularly among the farming and lower classes, he can
also detect, and fully to the same extent, among all the American,
the Dutch, and most of the rural native Canadian population in Upper
Canada. It would be digressing too far from the main object of this
paper to bring forward examples--and we know hundreds--where English
gentlemen have been subjected to innumerable petty annoyances, (such
as cutting down their fences, and letting the cattle into their
corn-fields,) merely because it became hinted about the neighbourhoods
where they had settled that they were "blooded critters," and refused
to eat at the same table with their labourers, and associate upon an
equal footing with their neighbours, irrespective of their habits,
character, and education; where men have left the harvest-fields as
soon as they discovered that two tables were set in the house; and
where families have been obliged, to avoid inconveniences that could
not be endured, to conform, if not altogether, at least for a time,
to the general usage of admitting no distinction between master and
man. It must suffice for our purpose now, to say that these things
exist--that they exist to the extent that we have described them;
and without going into the question of the policy or the impolicy of
Englishmen not conforming to the general and prevailing customs of
the country in which they settle, or of the merit or demerit of these
customs themselves, all we wish to say here is, that these customs
are, in our humble opinion, inimical to all monarchical education--to
that state of society where rank must be recognised, respectability
distinguished, and refinement preserved, or monarchy cease to exist, or
become a mockery.

But what was the strength of all these natural and unmistakable
elements of hostility to monarchy under any form, and to a people bred
under monarchical institutions in any circumstances? What was the power
of the Methodists, in so far as that was used against the government,
over the constituencies of the province? What was the power of those
who were not Methodists, but who united with them in opposing the
government? And what was the power of the really honest Yankees in
the province, who never hesitated to avow that they hated the British
government, root, branches, and all? And in what way did their united
feelings and intentions develop themselves?

For upwards of a quarter of a century they maintained,--with all the
power and patronage of the government against them; with most of the
talent born in the province, and the whole, or very nearly so, of
that imported into it, against them; and with seven-eighths, yes,
nine-tenths, of the emigrants who were able to purchase property when
they came, or who subsequently became voters, against them,--alternate,
and more than alternate, majorities in parliament. It can answer
no good purpose now, it never answered any, to deny or to disguise
this fact. This class of men formed, as what we have already stated
must have satisfied the reader, fully two-thirds of the electors in
the counties. In the Home District, where M'Kenzie, who headed the
rebellion in 1837, had absolute control over the elections; in the
Midland District, where Mr Bidwell, an American by birth, by education,
and from principle, exercised a similar influence; in the London
District, where Duncombe, who also headed the rebels, could carry any
man into parliament he pleased; what was the character of the voters
in the townships and counties which gave them this power? They were
the Methodists, educated as we have described; they were the Americans
and Dutch, with strong predilections in favour of democracy, and still
stronger dislike of the natural and inevitable characteristics of
society which arise from monarchy itself. In the Gore district, in the
Niagara district, and in the Newcastle district, what do the poll-books
exhibit for the counties which sent member after member, with hardly an
exception, to support M'Kenzie in the parliament, and some of them to
support him in the rebellion? The number of Hezekiahs, and Jedediahs,
and Jonathans, of Eliacums, and Ezekiels, shows pretty clearly what
was their origin, and what were their political predilections. But
these democratic leanings were by no means arbitrarily confined to
names, for there was both a Duke of Wellington and a Horatio Nelson in
the Gore District gaol for treason in 1838. The Duke was a preacher,
and regularly held forth to his fellow prisoners, until the scamp
at last--we suppose to acquire a practical idea of the nature of
sin--stole a watch from one of his companions, and was thereupon
regularly deposed from his high calling; and the scene of his labours
changed from among the political offenders down to the petty larceny
fraternity. All of which may be found duly chronicled in the records of
the sheriff's office of the Gore District for the period.

But there is no circumstance, perhaps, that we could mention, that
could convey a better idea of the relative regard for England and the
United States, of the class of people we have been describing, than
the fact--well known to every person who has lived among them--that a
Yankee schoolmaster, without either education or intelligence--with
nothing on earth to recommend him, save an inveterate propensity for
vapouring and meddling in the affairs, religious and political, of
every sect and class wherever he goes--can, and ever has, exercised
more influence among them in a few months, than a whole neighbourhood
of English gentlemen could in years. And we speak neither from hearsay
nor conjecture: we speak from what we have seen and know, and what is
susceptible of full proof.

The political measures of this party, like all others, soon shaped
themselves into an embodiment of their motives and principles, and
into a means, the most natural and the most certain, of gaining and
keeping power. Ambition, mounted between two saddle-bags, upon a
jog-trot pony, was not likely to shine in the character of a courtier.
A strong nasal accent, and a love of the levelling system, were but
poor recommendations to English gentlemen, and English governors,
for offices of distinction and the command of her Majesty's militia
forces. But both were powerful at the hustings. What they could not
win from the crown they could gain from the electors. What monarchical
feelings and a monarchical education could not brook, democratic
voters would assuredly elevate. The consequences were such as may
be conceived. Their measures became, to all intents and purposes,
democratic. They began by requiring, as indispensable to the proper
"image and transcript," as they called it, of the British constitution,
that the legislative council--analogous to the House of Lords--should
be rendered elective; that the magistracy should be made elective;
that voting by ballot, as it is practised in the States, should be
introduced; and that every officer in the country, from a colonel to
a constable, should be chosen by the people. How much of monarchy
would have been left after all this--how many of the distinguishing
characteristics that the English government imparts to a British
people, would have been discernible, after all these measures were in
full operation, it would not have been very difficult to foresee.

Lord Durham, in speaking of this party, and of that which opposed it,
observes:--

    "At first sight it appears much more difficult to form an
    accurate idea of the state of Upper than of Lower Canada. The
    visible and broad line of demarcation which separates parties,
    by the distinctive characters of race, happily has no existence
    in Upper Canada. The quarrel is one of an entirely English, if
    not British, population. Like all such quarrels, it has, in
    fact, created not two but several parties, each of which has
    some objects in common with some one of those to which it is
    opposed. They differ on one point and agree on another; the
    sections which unite together one day are strongly opposed the
    next; and the very party which acts as one against a common
    opponent, is in truth composed of divisions seeking utterly
    different or incompatible objects. It is very difficult to make
    out, from the avowals of parties, the real objects of their
    struggles; and still less easy is it to discover any cause of
    such importance as would account for its uniting any large mass
    of the people in an attempt to overthrow, by forcible means,
    the existing form of government."

There could not have been anything more mischievously incorrect, or
more likely to lead to unfortunate conclusions, than these statements.
We can safely challenge the whole parliamentary history of the
province, the character of the leading measures and of the leading men,
and the result of every election, for twenty-five years, to find even a
reasonable pretext for them, although we believe they were made in full
conviction of their truth by the nobleman who made them. Of course,
he could not have properly understood what he was writing about. For
six successive elections previous to the rebellion, the whole history
of England does not afford an example of each party's going to the
hustings with so little change in men, measures, principles, or
feelings, as in every one of these. In every new House of Assembly the
same identical leaders, and the same followers, singled out the same
men four years after four years; and neither accidents nor changes, the
reproaches of treason on the one side, or the accusations of corruption
on the other, caused the loss of a man to one party or the gain of one
to the other. The whole heart, soul, and hopes of the two parties were
as distinct and opposite as those of any two parties that ever had an
existence. Nor could it have been otherwise, when the tendencies of the
one were so manifestly against the existence of a fabric, which every
feeling of the other urged them to preserve at all hazards and under
all circumstances.

At last an important event in the history of the province brought
the contest between these parties to an issue. When Sir Francis Head
assumed the government in 1836, he found the party which had opposed it
for so many years with a large majority in Parliament. With the view,
if possible, of reconciling the two parties, and of getting both to
unite with him in furthering the real interests of the province, he
formed an executive council of the leaders of both. But the council
had scarcely been formed, before the leaders of the party which had
been so perpetually in opposition declined remaining in it, unless Sir
Francis would surrender up to them, practically, the same powers that
are enjoyed by the ministry in England. This he neither could nor would
do. An angry correspondence ensued. They significantly pointed, in the
event of the character of the struggle being changed, to aid from the
great democracy of America. He asserted that the great right arm of
England should be wielded, if necessary, to support the crown. They
finally concluded by stopping the supplies. He dissolved the house.

In the election contest which ensued, it was distinctly and
emphatically declared by the government, that the contest was no longer
as between party and party in a colony, but as between monarchy and
democracy in America. Monarchy was, in fact and in truth, the candidate
at the election. And whether the whole of the party engaged in this
desperate opposition participated in the declaration made to Sir
Francis, that they would look for aid to the States, and which elicited
from him the reply, "Let them come if they dare," is not a matter that
they have ever enlightened the public upon. But that he was forced
and obliged to make monarchy the candidate in this election, or let
democracy threaten and bully him out of the country, is a historical
fact, and incontrovertible in the Canadas, but most grossly and most
unfortunately misunderstood in England.

The government party gained the election. But after the contest, the
opposition, seeing their hopes of success--which were founded upon the
plan of embarrassing the government into their measures, by gaining
majorities in parliament and stopping the supplies--all destroyed by
the result of this election; and knowing that immigration was every
year adding to the strength of their opponents, finally determined to
change the struggle from the hustings and the parliament, to the camp
and the battle-field--to risk all in a bold attempt to strike down the
oak at a blow, instead of attempting to destroy it, branch by branch,
by democratic measures and factious legislation. That there were men of
this party who did not approve of this desperate step, and that there
were others who thought it premature, we believe and know; but that the
great body of the party itself sympathised with the leaders in it, and
would have gloried in, and contributed by all the means in their power
to their success, had it been attainable, we are not only sure of, but
could prove by the history of the whole affair, given by those who had
the best means of understanding it.

When Lord Durham arrived in Canada, he found this party in the
situation of masses of threatening, but scattered clouds. Some had
voluntarily withdrawn to the States; others were there, either to
escape arrest, or from consciousness of their guilt in the rebellion.
The great body of the party remained in the province, with all those
feelings towards England and her loyalists, that humbled pride, many
sufferings, a contemptible struggle, and a mortifying defeat, were
likely to engender. But though the storm had passed over, the clouds
were nearly all left. The party had, in reality, gained by experience
much more than it had lost in numbers. It had come to the understanding
that England's great right arm could not be so easily broken. It had
learned, and its friends in the States had learned--what was most
useful to both under the circumstances--that if England's institutions
were to be destroyed in America, it must be done by some other means
than by blows and bayonets.

And it was with this party, thus situated, and composed of the
materials, and influenced by the considerations, we have mentioned,
that Lord Durham proposed, by a union of the provinces, to neutralise
the legislative influence of the French of Lower Canada--to destroy
their supremacy, which was pregnant with rebellion, and to subvert
their power, which had been synonymous with decay. For without the
aid of this party, or a great portion of it, the loyalists could not
accomplish this; much less could it ever be accomplished if this party
should happen to unite with the French. A vast power, too, whether for
good or for evil, and hitherto unknown in a colony, was thrown among
them all to be scrambled for. We mean a power analogous to that of the
ministry in England, and known by the name of a Responsible Government
in Canada. This power, always held in England by the heads of great
parties--by men of lofty intellects and great characters--by men who
were literally invested with the moral worth, the intelligence, the
rank, and the honour of millions--this mighty power was tossed up in
the Canadas like a cap in a crowd, to fall upon the head of whomsoever
it might chance. It mattered not whether it was a Frenchman, the
dearest object of whose existence was the destruction of England's
power, that gained the majority. The cap must be his. It mattered
not whether it was a democrat, whose secret but highest aim was the
annihilation of England's monarchy, that succeeded at the elections:
the mantle of England's honour, and of upholding England's crown
in America, must fall upon him. We should be sorry to propose the
curtailment of a single privilege of a single Briton, in any part of
the world where the flag of his country waves over him. In what we
shall have to say hereafter as to the government of the colonies, we
do not intend doing so. But what we mean to say of this vast power,
which was thrown among the people to be scrambled for at this time
in the Canadas, is, that what in England must have been, from the
very nature of things, a guarantee for all orders in the state being
preserved and protected under it, was in the Canadas, equally from the
nature of things, precisely the reverse. No ministry in England could
be formed without the nobility, the gentry, the wealth--all that owed
its all to the preservation of the institutions of the country--being
represented in it. In the Canadas a ministry could be--yes, from the
very nature of things, a ministry must be--formed, where Frenchmen, who
hated England--where democrats, who hated monarchy, must control the
destinies of England's subjects--the existence of England's empire in
the west. We would not be understood, therefore, as desiring to curtail
a single privilege; but we would, nevertheless, keep edge-tools out of
the hands of madmen and enemies. We would not remove the rope from the
neck of another to put it round our own.

Extraordinary though it seem that human credulity could go so far--if
the character of the parties, if the character even of the measures
of the parties, in Upper Canada was understood--as to expect that the
giving to the one which had opposed the government, as it were by
nature, the power, by uniting with the French, of crushing its enemies
for ever, that it would not do so; that it would not join with its old
allies in dividing the spoils of prosperity, as it had already done
in sharing the mortifications of defeat; that it would not join them,
even for the purpose of having revenge, each of its own enemy in its
own province;--yet such was the hope, such the infatuation of Lord
Durham. He let a little stream of abstract right fall into a whole sea
of French prejudices and democratic infatuations, and he expected that
it would change the great face of the waters. And what has been the
result?--that the little stream has been lost in the great sea; that,
instead of its changing the sea, it has but added to its weight; that
all the prejudices, all the infatuations are left; and the power that
was expected to change them has been converted into tools for them to
work with.

Up to the last election, the French had never fairly recovered their
former influence, or rather had not the opportunity of fully exerting
their powers in the elections. Up to the same period, the reform party,
as they styled themselves in Upper Canada, had laboured under a similar
disadvantage. The latter had suffered for the want of its leaders,
three of whom were outlaws in the States, as well as from other causes.
But at the last election--a fair one for all parties--the French
recovered all their former power, and the Upper Canadian party all its
former counties. The French, therefore, were making all the strides
they could towards the domination that, according to Lord Durham, was
pregnant with rebellion; the reform party had just the opportunity that
he fondly wished for them, of checking the evil, and of establishing an
enlightened and moderate British party between the two extremes. And
what did they do? The measures and the facts must speak for themselves.

The following resolution, moved by Mr Lafontaine, attorney-general
for Lower Canada, taken in the abstract, would seem harmless and fair
enough:--

    "Resolved, that this house do now resolve itself into a
    committee to take into consideration the necessity of
    establishing the amount of losses incurred by certain
    inhabitants of Lower Canada during the _political troubles_ of
    1837 and 1838, and of providing for the payment thereof."

But when the following commentary of items, intended to be paid under
it, is added to it, the nature of the _political troubles_ of 1837 and
1838, and the intention of the resolution, will be better understood:--

    _Items selected from the Report of the Commissioners appointed
    to ascertain the Amount of Rebellion Losses in Lower Canada,
    and their observations thereon_:--


    "No. 1109. Wolfred Nelson, Montreal. Property destroyed,
    £23,109, 19s. 5d.; but Dr Nelson deducts the amount of his
    liabilities (_for which his creditors have claimed, or may
    claim_) and claims the balance only, say £12,379, 12s. 7d.

    1089. Pierre Beauchere, St Ours. £69, 10s., quartering
    insurgents under the command of 'General Mathiot,' and £131,
    6s. 3d. for imprisonment five months and nine days.

    1107. Jos. Guimond, Chateauguay, conviction recorded. The wife
    claims £8, 10s. for the purchase of the confiscated estate
    bought by her.

    P. N. Pacaud, Three Rivers. Claims £400 for false imprisonment,
    and £25 for expenses there, and £500 for absence from the
    Province, to avoid arrest, &c.

    27. J. Dorion, M.D., St Ours. Claims £300 as due from Dr
    Nelson's estate; £175 for three months' imprisonment, &c.

    32. Theophile Robert, Montreal. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £215 for loss of time whilst in exile.

    34. Cyrille Beaudriault, Sault au Recollet. Claims £268, 16s.
    for interest, and £200 profit, on the goods destroyed and
    pillaged.

    77. Church of St Cyprien, Napierville. The sum of £327, 12s.
    6d. was taken from the treasury of the Church, forcibly, by Dr
    Cote, against the will and remonstrance of the churchwardens.

    398. Jos. Dumouchel, Ste. Martine. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £1878, 13s. 9d., including £525 for compensation for seven
    years' imprisonment and exile.

    564. Etienne Langlois, Blairfindie. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £345 for loss of time while in exile, and £34 passage from
    Sidney to Canada.

    565. Louis Pinsonneau, St Remi. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £2275, 10s. 9d., including £855, 15s. for imprisonment and
    exile.

    634. David Blanchette, St Cyprien. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £520, 16s. 8d. for imprisonment and exile.

    654. Pierre Lavois, St Cyprien. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £300 for being exiled six years, at £50 per annum.

    656. Louis Laurelin, St Cyprien, claims £50 for imprisonment
    and expenses, having been acquitted.

    789. Luc H. Masson, St Benoit, claims £450 for the interruption
    of his business during three years.

    Euph. Lamard, St Réme. Conviction recorded. Claims £519,
    including £150, six years' rent of property destroyed.

    838. Archelaus Welch, West Farnham, claims £80, 7s. 6d. loss on
    sale of timber, on account of the troubles in 1837.

    850. Théodore Béchard, Blairfrudie. Conviction recorded. Claims
    £670, 6s. 8d., value of his estate confiscated and purchased by
    his wife.

    931. Edouard Major, Ste. Scholastique, claims £921, 4s. 7d.,
    including £250 for interest, and £150 for the loss of profit,
    in discontinuing business.

    992. Léandre Ducharme, Montreal. Conviction recorded. Claims
    for imprisonment and transportation, living in exile, and
    passage home, £262, 5s.

    1327. B. Viger, Boucherville, claims £2000. Exile to Bermuda.

    1651. C. Baiseune, St Benoit, claims £150 for three years'
    exclusion from his profession as a notary, owing to the loss of
    his books, when prepared to pass his examination as notary.

    1812. J. B. Archambeault, and 216 others, of St Eustache, claim
    £489, 13s. for guns taken and not returned to the owners.

    1916. Ninety Persons of St Eustache, for guns taken and not
    returned, £205, 0s. 10d.

    1951. F. Dionne, St Cesaire, claims £12 per annum, or £200 for
    his brother, who lost his senses from imprisonment and ill
    usage.

    2215. H. D'Eschambault, Boucherville, claims the sum of
    £12,000, as partner of Dr Nelson, for the creditors of the
    joint estate; but as the separate creditors have filed, or will
    file, their separate claims, this claim is not inserted. Dr
    Nelson also deducted this amount from his claim, as still due
    to the creditors of the firm.

    2174. L. Perrault, Montreal, claims £500, absence in the United
    States, and £1105, loss of business."

That this flagitious calendar of charges was deliberately intended
to be paid by her Majesty's Canadian ministry, it may probably be
more satisfactory to the reader to establish by the testimony of that
ministry itself, than by any statements of our own.

Mr Merritt, the president of the council, and occupying a similar
position in the government of Canada that Lord John Russell does in
the government of England, thus writes to his constituents, who had
addressed him on the subject, and remonstrated against paying these
charges:--"On becoming a member of the government (he was appointed
president of the council upon Mr Sullivan's being raised to the bench,
a short time before the meeting of parliament) _I found their payment
determined on by the administration_." The reader will observe, that it
was against the payment of the items above quoted, that Mr Merritt's
constituents remonstrated. He answered, that their payment was decided
upon before he took office. But he continues:--"My first impression
was, I confess, against it; but I soon became convinced that they
had no alternative. I neither wish to be misunderstood, nor relieved
from responsibility. Although the government approved of Mr Boulton's
amendment, [which was an amendment of its own resolution,] which
excludes those who were sent to Bermuda, I was prepared to vote for
excluding none." That is to say,--Mr Merritt had the manliness to risk
his character, by voting for what his fellow-ministers had convinced
him was necessary. They wanted the manliness to do what they had
previously convinced him, according to their ideas, would be but an act
of justice.

But the fact was, her Majesty's Canadian Executive Council had
calculated too highly upon their own strength, or, having provoked the
storm, they shrunk back in terror at its violence and its consequences.
They were, therefore, obliged to resort to the skin of the fox, to
make up what they found they wanted of that of the lion. And the
substitution was managed after the following manner:

The amendment alluded to by Mr Merritt, or the operative part of it,
was in these words:

    "That the losses, so far only as they have arisen from
    the total, or _partially unjust, unnecessary_, or wanton
    destruction of the dwellings, buildings, property, and effects
    of the said inhabitants [of Lower Canada], and by the seizure,
    taking, or carrying away of their property and effects, should
    be satisfied; provided that none of the persons who have been
    convicted of high treason, alleged to have been committed in
    that part of this province formerly called Lower Canada, since
    the first day of November 1847, or who, having been charged
    with high treason, or other offences of a treasonable nature,
    and having been committed to the custody of the sheriff in
    the gaol of Montreal, submitted themselves to the will and
    pleasure of her Majesty, and were thereupon transported to her
    Majesty's island of Bermuda, shall be entitled to any indemnity
    for losses sustained during or after the said rebellion, or in
    consequence thereof."

This amendment is worded carefully enough, and, like Mr Lafontaine's
resolution, is apparently just and harmless in its abstract
signification; but it proves, like the former, a vastly different
matter when its intentions come to be discovered by its practical
application.

It is necessary that the reader should understand that there were a
great number of the French rebels, particularly the leading characters,
who fled the country immediately after the first few contests were
over--and some of them were brave enough not even to wait so long--who
came back under the amnesty, and consequently neither submitted
themselves to the custody of the sheriff of Montreal, nor were
prosecuted in any way: these are, therefore, no matter how high, or
how notorious their treason, exempted from disability, under this
amendment, to claim rebellion losses. Among these was a Doctor Wolfred
Nelson, who was commander-in-chief of the rebels at the battles of
St Denis and St Charles; who fought with them as well as he could;
who published the declaration of independence for the Canadas; who,
after he had made his escape to the States, hovered round the borders
as the leader of the piratical gangs that devastated the country;
and whom General Wood was finally despatched by the United States
government to put down. This individual is now a member of the Canadian
parliament for a French county, and is an _admitted_ claimant, under
Mr Boulton's amendment, for twenty-three thousand pounds, _for his
rebellion losses_. His own words in the debate upon the question
are these:--"As to the claims made for my property, I had sent in a
detailed account of the losses which had occurred, and which amounted
to £23,000, of which £11,000 did not belong to me, but to my creditors.
I mentioned their names, and as far as my memory would serve, that was
the amount." Now, setting aside the doctrine, subversive even of all
traitors' honour, and of all security under any government, that men
may first half destroy a country by rebellion, and afterwards make up
the other half of its destruction by claiming indemnity for incidental
losses; setting aside this question, and viewing the matter in the
abstract light, that all claims for injuries should be paid, we should
like to know who is to pay the creditors of the poor widows of the
soldiers and the loyalists whose blood stained the snows of Canada
in suppressing Dr Wolfred Nelson's rebellion? Who is to feed their
children, who are at this moment--we can vouch for the fact in at least
one instance--shoeless and houseless, wandering upon the world? Yet
Dr Nelson's creditors, on account of Dr Nelson's crime, must be paid.
Who is to pay the creditors of the merchants, of the millers, of the
lumberers, who were ruined by the general devastation that Dr Nelson's
rebellion brought upon Lower Canada? Still Dr Nelson's creditors must
be paid, although he spent the very money in bringing about other
people's ruin. Who is to indemnify the people of England for two
millions sterling spent in putting down Dr Nelson's rebellion? Yet Dr
Nelson's property must be made good, and Dr Nelson's creditors must
be paid, because England was under the necessity of putting down Dr
Nelson's insurrection. And will--can England look on with indifference
while Upper Canada--whose loyalists, when she was without a soldier
to hoist her flag, did it for her--whose people freely and gladly
sacrificed their lives, as well in the hardships as in the struggle
with the traitor and the assassin, and whose trade and property were
wellnigh ruined by this Dr Wolfred Nelson's rebellion--is now called
upon to make good to him money he spent in carrying it on, and property
that shared but the common ruin he brought upon the whole country? Yet
Dr Nelson's payment is now decided upon by the parliament of Canada;
and as the climax of such unheard-of legislation, he voted for it
himself.

When such a coach-and-four as this can walk through Mr Boulton's
amendment, it is needless to spend time upon smaller fry. The loyalists
of Canada have now, or will have, if the governor, or the British
government assents to the measure, to pay for the very torch that
was employed to set fire to their homes; for the guns that were used
to shoot them down by the wayside; for the shoes that an enemy who
challenged them to fight, wore out in running away; for the time that
men who, assassin-like, established hunters' lodges in the States,
for the purpose of cutting down the defenceless, and burning up the
unprotected, were engaged in the conception and execution of their
diabolical designs. These may be strong statements, but they are facts.
We need go no farther than Dr Nelson's case, who claims indemnity for
the very money he spent in buying powder and balls to destroy her
Majesty's subjects, and who claims £12,000 for injury to his property,
while he himself was at the head of gangs of desperadoes laying waste
the whole southern frontier of the province to sustain them.

But, to convey an idea to the English reader of the full extent to
which payment may be, and is contemplated to be, made to parties
engaged in the rebellion, under this amendment, we need but quote the
questions that were put to Mr Lafontaine, before the final vote was
taken on the question, and the manner in which he treated them.

    "In committee last night, Colonel Prince stated that a great
    deal of uncertainty existed as to the class of persons whom
    it was intended by the ministry to pay, under the measure
    introduced by them, and he begged Mr Attorney General
    Lafontaine to settle the matter explicitly by replying to
    certain questions which he would put to him. Colonel Prince
    promised, on his part, to regard the replies as final, and
    after receiving them, he would allude no further to the
    rebellion claims.

    He then put the following questions in a deliberate, solemn
    manner, pausing between each for an answer.

    'Do you propose to exclude, in your instructions to the
    commissioners to be appointed under this act, all who aided and
    abetted in the rebellion of 1837-1838?'

    NO REPLY.

    'Do you propose to exclude those, who, by their admissions and
    confessions, admitted their participation in the rebellion?'

    NO REPLY.

    'Do you mean to exclude those whose admission of guilt is at
    this very moment in the possession of the government, or of the
    courts of law, unless these admissions have been destroyed with
    the connivance of honourable gentlemen opposite?'

    NO REPLY.

    'Do you mean to exclude any of those 800 men who were
    imprisoned in the jail of Montreal, for their participation
    in the rebellion, and who were subsequently discharged from
    custody through the clemency of the government, and whose
    claims I understand to exceed some £70,000?'

    NO REPLY.

    'Do you not mean to pay every one, let his participation in
    the rebellion have been what it may, except the very few who
    were convicted by the courts-martial, and some six or seven who
    admitted their guilt and were sent to Bermuda?'

    NO REPLY."

  _Montreal Gazette._

But what course did the enlightened reformers of Upper Canada take in
this business--did that party which Lord Durham expressly stated was
made up, for the most part, of men of strong British feelings, and by
whose aid the French domination was to be crushed? Out of the strongest
majority--out of the most united and effective representation of the
whole party that has ever been had since Sir Francis Head assumed
the government of the province, one only voted against the French;
seventeen voted with them, and five found it convenient to be absent.

But, bad as this measure is, and plainly as it shows that England's
friends have been rendered politically powerless in the provinces,
it is even better than the representation scheme, which these two
parties have still more unitedly, and, if anything, more determinedly
endeavoured to push through parliament. The following extracts from
the leading journals of both provinces, will convey an idea of the
intention of this measure, and what it is likely to lead to:--

    "The rebellion claims which have roused, in every English
    breast, a feeling of strong antipathy against the French
    Canadian race, is but an affair of skirmishing, preparatory
    to the great battle for perpetual domination in Canada by the
    French Canadian race over those whom Mr Lafontaine has styled
    their 'natural enemies.' It is the Representation scheme that
    is to raise over us, for ever, our 'French Masters.' As an
    affair of money, that of the Rebellion Losses is an injury and
    insult to every man who obeyed the order of the government
    in its time of need. It has planted deeply the seeds of a
    never-dying irritation, but it involves not our national
    existence. The Representation scheme is a triple iniquity, and
    will cement, if the madness of party be strong enough to carry
    it, all the little differences of parties among Englishmen,
    into one settled, determined hatred of the French race. It is
    a triple iniquity--an injury, an insult, and slavery to our
    children."--_Montreal Gazette._

    "By the Ministerial scheme, then, it is proposed to give the
    British Canadian population, say 13 members--as follows:
    --Ottawa 2, Argenteuil 1, Drummond (doubtful) 1, Sherbrooke 2,
    Shefford 1, Huntingdon 1, Megantic 1, Missisquoi 1, Gaspé 1,
    Stanstead 1, Sherbrooke Town 1. Thus leaving 62 members for
    the Franco-Canadians--giving the former an increase on their
    present number of 3 and the latter of 30! Can this be called a
    just proportion? It cannot."--_Montreal Herald._

    "That measure extends over the whole of the province--_Lower_
    as well as _Upper_ Canada; and one of its leading features
    being, according to the testimony of Mr Hincks, to insure to
    the French Canadians the perpetuation of their ascendency in
    the legislature, as a distinct race, we may look forward in
    future to the infliction of the most oppressive measures, upon
    the colonists of British origin, which the masters of the
    Union may choose to dictate. These are the fruits of radical
    ascendency in the executive and the legislature, from Upper
    Canada, and the prostration of those of British origin in Lower
    Canada."--_British Colonist, Toronto._

Fortunately, however--fortunately even for those it was intended to
invest with so great a power, this measure did not pass. For to give a
naturally unprogressive race legislative superiority over an inevitably
progressive one, is but to prolong a contest, or make more desperate an
immediate struggle. The race that advances will not perpetually strive
with a rope round its neck, or a chain round its leg. If it cannot
loose itself, it will turn round and fight its holders. The French
might have bound the English, but they would have had to fight them. A
miss, however, is as good as a mile. It required a vote of two-thirds
of the whole house to make such a change in the representation.
Fifty-six voters would have done it; they had but fifty-five; so that
this part of the storm at all events has passed over.

But how did the enlightened reformers of Upper Canada act, upon a
measure avowedly and undisguisedly intended to perpetuate French
domination? _Every man of them voted for it._ What a melancholy comment
this is upon the following--the closing reflection of Lord Durham,
upon the government of Canada. What a comment it is upon the attempt
to change a people by a measure; to purge out of Frenchmen errors as
strong as their nature--out of democrats feelings as large as their
souls, by a single pill of abstract right in the shape of responsible
government.

    "In the state of mind in which I have described the French
    Canadian population, as not only now being, but as likely for a
    long while to remain, the trusting them with an entire control
    over this province would be, in fact, only facilitating a
    rebellion. Lower Canada must be governed now, as it must be
    hereafter, by an English population; and thus the policy which
    the necessities of the moment force on us, is in accordance
    with that suggested by a comprehensive view of the future and
    permanent improvement of the province."--_Report Can. E._, p.
    127.

But it is not alone that British prosperity is now crushed by the
domination of a retrogressive race, but it is that a British people are
obliged to feel the galling and unnatural fact, that the power of the
government of England is wielded to keep up institutions in America,
to the destruction of which, in Europe, it owes its freedom and its
greatness. It is not alone that loyalty is sickened to the very death
in Upper Canada, at seeing the best gifts of the crown handed over to
political pickpockets--for we hold every man, and we can call upon all
America to second us in it, as no better than a political pickpocket,
who is a democrat in his heart and soul, and whines out "God save the
Queen," to pillage her Majesty's treasury--it is not alone that loyalty
is galled to madness at this, but it is that loyalty is obliged to see
that, however much it may beat these men at the hustings, and by virtue
of the constitution, they can still laugh at all its efforts as long as
they can play the part of French tools. In all history, in short, there
is not a parallel to the state of things at present existing in the
Canadas. To men whose very accents, whose very faces are a living libel
upon all loyalty to England, England has by her legislation given power
to trample under their feet the only friends she had in the hour of her
need. To men who are contending for the perpetuation of institutions
which all Europe was obliged to throw off before it could breathe a
free breath, or extend a free arm, England has by her legislation given
the power, not only to drive her children into the slough of despond,
but to mount upon their shoulders there, and sink them irretrievably.
England has literally in the Canadas made her loyalists political
slaves; her enemies their political task-masters.

  HAMILTON, CANADA WEST.
  _23d April, 1849._




Dies Boreales.

No. I.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

       *       *       *       *       *

SCENE--_Cladich, Lochawe-side_.

TIME--_Sunrise_.

NORTH--BULLER--SEWARD.

       *       *       *       *       *

NORTH.

"Under the opening eyelids of the Morn!" Mefeels, Amici, at this
moment, the charm of that Impersonation. Slowly awaking from
sleep--scarcely conscious of her whereabouts--bewildered by the
beauty of the revelation, nor recognising her beloved lochs and
mountains--visionary and nameless all as if an uncertain prolongation
of her Summer's Night's Dream.

SEWARD.

I was not going to speak, my dear sir.

NORTH.

And now she is broad awake. She sees the heaven and the earth, nor
thinks, God bless her, that 'tis herself that beautifies them!

SEWARD.

Twenty years since I stood on this knoll, honoured sir, by your
side--twenty years to a day--and now the same perfect peace possesses
me--mysterious return--as if all the intervening time slid away--and
this were not a renewed but a continuous happiness.

NORTH.

And let it slide away into the still recesses of Memory--the Present
has its privileges--and they may be blamelessly, wisely, virtuously
enjoyed--and without irreverence to the sanctity of the Past. Let it
slide away--but not into oblivion--no danger, no fear of oblivion--even
joys will return on their wings of gossamer;--sorrows may be buried,
but they are immortal.

SEWARD.

I see not the slightest change on this Grove of Sycamores. Twenty
years tell not on boles that have for centuries been in their prime.
Yes--that one a little way down--and that one still farther off--_have_
grown--and those striplings, then but saplings, may now be called Trees.

BULLER.

I never heard such a noise.

NORTH.

A cigar in your mouth at four o'clock in the morning! Well--well.

BULLER.

There, my dear sir, keep me in countenance with a Manilla.

NORTH.

The Herb! You have high authority--Spenser's--for "noise."

BULLER.

I said Noise--because it is Noise. Why, the hum of bees overhead is
absolutely like soft sustained thunder--and yet no bees visible in the
umbrage. The sound is like that of one single bee, and he must be a
giant. Ay--there I see a few working like mad--and I guess there must
be myriads. The Grove must be full of bees' nests.

NORTH.

Not one. Hundreds of smokes are stealing up from hidden or apparent
cottages--for the region is not unpopulous, and not a garden without
its hives--and early risers though we be, the _matutinæ apes_ are still
before us, and so are the birds.

BULLER.

They, too, are making a noise. Who says a shilfa cannot sing? Of the
fifty now "pouring his throat," as the poet well says, I defy you to
tell which sings best. That splendid fellow on the birch-tree top--or
yonder gorgeous tyke on the yellow oak--or----

NORTH.

"In shadiest covert hid" the leader of the chorus that thrills the
many-nested underwood with connubial bliss.

SEWARD.

Not till this moment heard I the waterfall.

BULLER.

You did, though, all along--a felt accompaniment.

NORTH.

I know few dens more beautiful than Cladich-Cleugh!

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, if I do not attempt that name.

NORTH.

How mellifluous!--Cladich-Cleugh!

BULLER.

Great is the power of gutturals.

NORTH.

It is not inaccessible. But you must skirt it till you reach the meadow
where the cattle are beginning to browse. And then threading your way
through a coppice, where you are almost sure to see a roe, you come
down upon a series of little pools, in such weather as this so clear
that you can count the trouts; and then the verdurous walls begin to
rise on either side and right before you; and you begin to feel that
the beauty is becoming magnificence, for the pools are now black, and
the stems are old, and the cliffs intercept the sky, and there are
caves, and that waterfall has dominion in the gloom, and there is
sublimity in the sounding solitude.

BULLER.

Cladick-Cloock.

NORTH.

A miserable failure.

BULLER.

Cladig-Cloog.

NORTH.

Worser and worser.

SEWARD.

Any footpath, sir?

NORTH.

Yes--for the roe and the goat.

BULLER.

And the Man of the Crutch.

NORTH.

Good. But I speak of days when the Crutch was in its tree-bole----

BULLER.

As the Apollo was in its marble block.

NORTH.

Not so good. But, believe me, gentlemen, I have done it with the Crutch.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir, and could do it again.

NORTH.

No. But you two are yet boys--on the sunny side of fifty--and I leave
you, Seward, to act the guide to Buller up Cladich-Cleugh.

BULLER.

Pray, Mr North, what may be the name of that sheet of water?

NORTH.

In Scotland we call it LOCH-OWE.

BULLER.

I am so happy--sir--that I talk nonsense.

NORTH.

Much nonsense may you talk.

BULLER.

'Twas a foolish question--but you know, sir, that by some strange
fatality or another I have been three times called away from Scotland
without having seen _Lock-Owe_.

NORTH.

Make good use of your eyes now, sirrah, and you will remember it all
the days of your life. That is Cruachan--no usurper he--by divine right
a king. The sun is up, and there is motion in the clouds. Saw you ever
such shadows? How majestically they stalk! And now how beautifully
they glide! And now see you that broad black forest, half-way up the
mountain?

BULLER.

I do.

NORTH.

You are sure you do.

BULLER.

I am.

NORTH.

You are mistaken. It is no broad black forest--it is mere gloom--shadow
that in a minute will pass away, though now seeming steadfast as the
woods.

BULLER.

I could swear it is a forest.

NORTH.

Swear not at all. Shut your eyes. Open them. Where now your wood?

BULLER.

Most extraordinary ocular deception.

NORTH.

Quite common. Yet no poet has described it. See again. The same
forest a mile off. No need of trees--sun and cloud make our visionary
mountains sylvan: and the grandest visions are ever those that are
transitory--ask your soul.

BULLER.

Your Manilla is out, my dear sir. There is the case.

NORTH.

Caught like a cricketer. You must ascend Cruachan. "This morning gives
us promise of a glorious day;" you cannot do better than take time by
the forelock, and be off now. Say the word--and I will myself row you
over the Loch. No need of a guide: inclining to the left for an hour
or two after you have cleared yonder real timber and sap wood--and
then for an hour or two, to the right--and then for another hour or
two straight forwards--and then you will see the highest of the three
peaks within an hour or two's walk of you--and thus, by mid-day, find
yourself seated on the summit.

BULLER.

Seated on the summit!

NORTH.

Not too long, for the air is often very sharp at that altitude--and so
rare, that I have heard tell of people fainting.

BULLER.

I am occasionally troubled with a palpitation of the heart--

NORTH.

Pooh, nonsense. Only the stomach.

BULLER.

And occasionally with a determination of blood to the head--

NORTH.

Pooh, nonsense. Only the stomach. Take a calker every two hours on your
way up--and I warrant both heart and head--

BULLER.

Not to-day. It looks cloudy.

NORTH.

Why, I don't much care though I should accompany you--

BULLER.

I knew you would offer to do so, and I feel the delicacy of putting a
decided negative on the proposal. Let us defer it till to-morrow. For
my sake, my dear sir, if not for your own, do not think of it; it will
be no disappointment to me to remain with you here--and I shudder at
the thought of your fainting on the summit. Be advised, my dear sir, be
advised--

NORTH.

Well then, be it so--I am not obstinate; but such another day for the
ascent there may not be during the summer. On just such a day I made
the ascent some half-century ago. I took it from Tyanuilt--having
walked that morning from Dalmally, some dozen miles, for a breathing on
level ground, before facing the steepish shoulder that roughens into
Loch Etive. The fox-hunter from Gleno gave me his company with his
hounds and terriers nearly half-way up, and after killing some cubs we
parted--not without a tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well--

BULLER.

A tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well!

NORTH.

Yea--a tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well. Now I am a
total-abstinent--

BULLER.

A total-abstinent!

NORTH.

By heavens! he echoes me. Pleasant, but mournful to the soul is the
memory of joys that are past! A tinful of the unchristened creature to
the health of the Silent People. Oh! Buller, there are no Silent People
now.

BULLER.

In your company, sir, I am always willing to be a listener.

NORTH.

Well, on I flew as on wings.

BULLER.

What! Up Cruackan?

NORTH.

On feet, then, if you will; but the feet of a deer.

BULLER.

On all-fours?

NORTH.

Yes--sometimes on all-fours. On all-fours, like a frog in his prime,
clearing tiny obstructions with a spang. On all-fours, like an
ourang-outang, who, in difficult places, brings his arms into play. On
all-fours, like the--

BULLER.

I cry you mercy.

NORTH.

Without palpitation of the heart; without determination of blood
to the head; without panting; without dizziness; with merely a
slight acceleration of the breath, and now and then something like
a gasp after a run to a knowe which we foresaw as a momentary
resting-place--we felt that we were conquering Cruachan! Lovely level
places, like platforms--level as if water had formed them, flowing up
just so far continually, and then ebbing back to some unimaginable
sea--awaited our arrival, that on them we might lie down, and from beds
of state survey our empire, for our empire it was felt to be, far away
into the lowlands, with many a hill between--many a hill, that, in its
own neighbourhood, is believed to be a mountain--just as many a man of
moderate mental dimensions is believed by those who live beneath his
shade to be of the first order of magnitude, and with funeral honours
is interred.

BULLER.

Well for him that he is a hill at all--eminent on a flat, or among
humbler undulations. All is comparative.

NORTH.

Just so. From a site on a mountain's side--far from the summit--the
ascender hath sometimes a sublimer--often a lovelier vision--than
from its most commanding peak. Yet still he has the feeling of
ascension--stifle that, and the discontent of insufficiency dwarfs and
darkens all that lies below.

BULLER.

Words to the wise.

NORTH.

We fear to ascend higher lest we should lose what we comprehend: yet
we will ascend higher, though we know the clouds are gathering, and
we are already enveloped in mist. But there were no clouds--no mist
on that day--and the secret top of Cruachan was clear as a good man's
conscience, and the whole world below like the promised land.

BULLER.

Let us go--let us go--let us go.

NORTH.

All knowledge, my dear boy, may be likened to stupendous ranges of
mountains--clear and clouded, smooth and precipitous; and you or I in
youth assail them in joy and pride of soul, not blind but blindfolded
often, and ignorant of their inclination; so that we often are met
by a beetling cliff with its cataract, and must keep ascending and
descending ignorant of our whereabouts, and summit-seeking in vain.
Yet all the while are we glorified. In maturer mind, when experience
is like an instinct, we ascertain levels without a theodolite, and
know assuredly where dwell the peaks. We know how to ascend--sideways
or right on; we know which are midway heights; we can walk in mist and
cloud as surely as in light, and we learn to know the Inaccessible.

BULLER.

I fear you will fatigue yourself--

NORTH.

Or another image. You sail down a stream, my good Buller, which widens
as it flows, and will lead through inland seas--or lochs--down to the
mighty ocean: what that is I need not say: you sail down it, sometimes
with hoisted sail--sometimes with oars--on a quest or mission all
undefined; but often anchoring where no need is, and leaping ashore,
and engaging in pursuits or pastimes forbidden or vain--_with the
natives_--

BULLER.

The natives!

NORTH.

Nay, adopting their dress--though dress it be none at all--and becoming
one of themselves--naturalised; forgetting your mission clean out of
mind! Fishing and hunting with the natives--

BULLER.

Whom?

NORTH.

The natives--when you ought to have been pursuing your voyage
on--on--on. Such are youth's pastimes all. But you had not
deserted--not you: and you return of your own accord to the ship.

BULLER.

What ship?

NORTH.

The ship of life--leaving some to lament you, who knew you only as a
jolly mariner, who was bound afar! They believed that you had drawn up
your pinnace for ever on that shore, in that lovely little haven, among
reeds and palms--unknowing that you would relaunch her some day soon,
and, bounding in her over the billows, rejoin your ship, waiting for
you in the offing, and revisit the simple natives no more!

BULLER.

Methinks I understand now your mysterious meaning.

NORTH.

You do. But where was I?

BULLER.

Ascending Cruackan, and near the summit.

NORTH.

On the summit. Not a whit tired--not a bit fatigued; strong as
ten--active as twenty ownselves on the flat--divinely drunk on draughts
of ether--happier a thousand times, greater and more glorious, than
Jupiter, with all his gods, enthroned on Olympus.

BULLER.

Moderately speaking.

NORTH.

In imagination I hear him barking now as he barked then--a sharp,
short, savage, angry and hungry bark--

BULLER.

What? A dog? A Fox?

NORTH.

No--no--no. An Eagle--the Golden Eagle from Ben-Slarive, known--no
mistaking him--to generations of Shepherds for a hundred years.

BULLER.

Do you see him?

NORTH.

Now I do. I see his eyes--for he came--he comes sughing close by
me--and there he shoots up in terror a thousand feet into the sky.

BULLER.

I did not know the Bird was so timid--

NORTH.

He is not timid--he is bold; but an Eagle does not like to come all at
once within ten yards of an unexpected man--any more than you would
like suddenly to face a ghost.

BULLER.

What brought him there?

NORTH.

Wings nine feet wide.

BULLER.

Has he no sense of smell?

NORTH.

What do you mean, sir?

BULLER.

No offence.

NORTH.

He has. But we have not always all our senses about us, Buller, nor
our wits either--he had been somewhat scared, a league up Glen Etive,
by the Huntsman of Gleno--the scent of powder was in his nostrils; but
fury follows fear, and in a minute I heard his bark again--as now I
hear it--on the highway to Benlura.

BULLER.

He must have had enormous talons.

NORTH.

My hand is none of the smallest--

BULLER.

God bless you, my dear sir,--give me a grasp.

NORTH.

There.

BULLER.

Oh! thumbikins!

NORTH.

And one of his son's talons--whom I shot--was twice the length of mine;
his yellow knobby loof at least as broad--and his leg like my wrist. He
killed a man. Knocked him down a precipice, like a cannon-ball. He had
the credit of it all over the country--but I believe his wife did the
business, for she was half-again as big as himself; and no devil like a
she-devil fighting for her imp.

BULLER.

Did you ever rob an Eyrie, sir?

NORTH.

Did you over rob a Lion's den? No, no, Buller. I never--except on
duty--placed my life in danger. I have been in many dangerous-looking
places among the Mountains, but a cautious activity ruled all my
movements--I scanned my cliff before I scaled him--and as for jumping
chasms--though I had a spring in me--I looked imaginatively down the
abyss, and then sensibly turned its flank where it leaned on the
greensward, and the liberated streamlet might be forded, without
swimming, by the silly sheep.

BULLER.

And are all those stories lies?

NORTH.

All. I have sometimes swam a loch or a river in my clothes--but
never except when they lay in my way, or when I was on an angling
excursion--and what danger could there possibly be in doing that?

BULLER.

You might have taken the Cramp, Sir.

NORTH.

And the Cramp might have taken me--but neither of us ever did--and a
man, with a short neck or a long one, might as well shun the streets in
perpetual fear of apoplexy, as a good swimmer evade water in dread of
being drowned. As for swimming in my clothes--had I left them on the
hither, how should I have looked on the thither side?

BULLER.

No man, in such circumstances, could, with any satisfaction to himself,
have pursued his journey, even through the most lonesome places.

BULLER.

Describe the view from the summit.

NORTH.

I have no descriptive power--but, even though I had, I know better
than that. Why, between Cruachan and Buchail-Etive lie hundreds on
hundreds of mountains of the first, second, and third order--and, for
a while at first, your eyes are so bewildered that you cannot see any
one in particular; yet, in your astonishment, have a strange vision of
them all--and might think they were interchanging places, shouldering
one another off into altering shapes in the uncertain region, did not
the awful stillness assure you that there they had all stood in their
places since the Creation, and would stand till the day of doom.

BULLER.

You have no descriptive power!

NORTH.

All at once dominion is given you over the Whole. You gradually see
Order in what seemed a Chaos--you understand the character of the
Region--its Formation--for you are a Geologist, else you have no
business--no right there; and you know where the valleys are singing
for joy, though you hear them not--where there is provision for the
cattle on a hundred hills--where are the cottages of Christian men
on the green braes sheltered by the mountains--and where may stand,
beneath the granite rocks out of which it was built, the not unfrequent
House of God.

BULLER.

To-morrow we shall attend Divine Service--

NORTH.

At Dalmally.

BULLER.

I long ago learned to like the ritual of the Kirk. I should like to
believe in a high-minded purified Calvinist, who could embrace, in his
brotherly heart, a high-minded purified English Bishop, with all his
Episcopacy.

NORTH.

And why should he not, if he can recognise the Divine Spirit flowing
through the two sets of sensible demonstrations? He can; unless the
constitution of the Anglican Christian Religion wars, either by its
dogmas or by its ecclesiastical ordinances, against his essential
intelligence of Christianity.

BULLER.

And who shall say it does?

NORTH.

Many say it--not I.

BULLER.

And you are wise and good.

NORTH.

Many thousands--and hundreds of thousands, wiser and better. I can
easily suppose a Mind--strong in thought, warm in feeling, of an
imagination susceptible and creative--by magnanimity, study, and
experience of the world, disengaged from all sectarian tenets--yet
holding the absolute conviction of religion--and contemplating, with
reverence and tenderness, many different ways of expression which
this inmost spiritual disposition has produced or put on--having a
firmest holding on to Christianity as pure, holy, august, divine,
true, beyond all other modes of religion upon the Earth--partly from
intuition of its essential fitness to our nature--partly from intense
gratitude--partly, perhaps, from the original entwining of it with
his own faculties, thoughts, feelings, history, being. Well, he looks
with affectionate admiration upon the Scottish, with affectionate
admiration on the English Church--old affection agreeing with new
affection--and I can imagine in _him_ as much generosity required to
love his own Church--the Presbyterian--as yours the Episcopalian--and
that, Latitudinarian as he may be called, he loves them both. For
myself, you know how I love England--all that belongs to her--all that
makes her what she is--scarcely more--surely not less--Scotland. The
ground of the Scottish Form is the overbearing consciousness, that
religion is immediately between man and his Maker. All hallowing of
things outward is to that consciousness a placing of such earthly
things as interpositions and separating intermediates in that interval
unavoidable between the Finite and the Infinite, but which should
remain blank and clear for the immediate communications of the
Worshipper and the Worshipped.

BULLER.

I believe, sir, you are a Presbyterian?

NORTH.

He that worships in spirit and in truth cannot endure--cannot imagine,
that anything but his own sin shall stand betwixt him and God.

BULLER.

_That_, until it be in some way or another extinguished, shall and must.

NORTH.

True as Holy Writ. But intervening saints, images, and elaborate
rituals--the contrivance of human wit--all these the fire of the Spirit
has consumed, and consumes.

BULLER.

The fire of the Presbyterian spirit?

NORTH.

Add history. War and persecution have afforded an element of human hate
for strengthening the sternness----

BULLER.

Of Presbyterian Scotland.

NORTH.

Drop that word--for I more than doubt if you understand it.

BULLER.

I beg pardon, sir.

NORTH.

The Scottish service, Mr Buller, comprehends Prayer, Praise,
Doctrine--all three necessary verbal acts amongst Christians met, but
each in utmost simplicity.

BULLER.

Episcopalian as I am, that simplicity I have felt to be most affecting.

NORTH.

The Praise, which unites the voices of the congregation, must be
written. The Prayer, which is the burning towards God of the soul of
the Shepherd upon the behalf of the Flock, and upon his own, must be
unwritten--unpremeditated--else it is not Prayer. Can the heart ever
want fitting words? The Teaching must be to the utmost, forethought,
at some time or at another, as to the Matter. The Teacher must have
secured his intelligence of the Matter ere he opens his mouth. But the
Form, which is of expediency only, he may very loosely have considered.
That is the Theory.

BULLER.

Often liable in practice, I should fear, to sad abuse.

NORTH.

May be so. But it presumes that capable men, full of zeal, and
sincerity, and love--fervent servants and careful shepherds--have
been chosen, under higher guidance. It supposes the holy fire of the
new-born Reformation--of the newly-regenerated Church-----

BULLER.

Kirk.

NORTH.

Of the newly-regenerated Church, to continue undamped, inextinguishable.

BULLER.

And is it so?

NORTH.

The Fact answers to the Theory more or less. The original
Thought--simplicity of worship--is to the utmost expressed, when the
chased Covenanters are met on the greensward, between the hillside and
the brawling brook, under the coloured or uncoloured sky. Understand
that, when their descendants meet within walls and beneath roofs, they
_would_ worship after the manner of their hunted ancestors.

BULLER.

I wish I were better read than I am, in the history of Scotland, civil
and ecclesiastical.

NORTH.

I wish you were. I say, then, my excellent friend, that the Ritual and
whole Ordering of the Scottish Church is moulded upon, or issues out
of, the human spirit kindling in conscious communication of the Divine
Spirit. The power of the Infinite--that is, the Sense of Infinitude,
of Eternity--reigns there; and the Sense in the inmost soul of the
sustaining contact with Omnipotence, and self-consciousness intense,
and elation of Divine favour personally vouchsafed, and joy of
anticipated everlasting bliss, and triumph over Satan, death, and hell,
and immeasurable desire to win souls to the King of the Worlds.

BULLER.

In England we are, I am ashamed to say it, ill informed on----

NORTH.

In Scotland we are, I am ashamed to say it, ill informed on----

BULLER.

But go on, sir.

NORTH.

What place is there for Forms of any kind in the presence of these
immense overpowering Realities? For Forms, Buller, are of the
Imagination; the Faculty that inhales and lives by the Unreal. But some
concession to the humanity of our nature intrudes. Imagination may be
subordinated, subjugated, but will not, may not, forego all its rights.
Therefore, Forms and hallowing associations enter.

BULLER.

Into all Worship.

NORTH.

Form, too, is, in part, Necessary Order.

BULLER.

Perhaps, sir, you may be not unwilling to say a few words of our Ritual.

NORTH.

I tremble to speak of your Ritual; for it appears to me as bearing
on its front an excellence which might be found incompatible with
religious truth and sincerity.

BULLER.

I confess that I hardly understand you, sir.

NORTH.

The Liturgy looks to be that which the old Churches are, the Work of a
Fine Art.

BULLER.

You do not urge that as an objection to it, I trust, sir?

NORTH.

A Poetical sensibility, a wakeful, just, delicate, simple Taste, seems
to have ruled over the composition of each Prayer, and the ordering of
the whole Service.

BULLER.

You do not urge that as an objection to it, I trust, sir?

NORTH.

I am not urging objections, sir. I seldom--never, indeed--urge
objections to anything. I desire only to place all things in their true
light.

BULLER.

Don't frown, sir--smile. Enough.

NORTH.

The whole composition of the Service is copious and various. Human
Supplication, the lifting up of the hands of the creature knowing his
own weakness, dependence, lapses, and liability to slip--man's own
part, dictated by his own experience of himself, is the basis. Readings
from the Old and New Volume of the Written Word are ingrafted, as if
God audibly spoke in his own House; the Authoritative added to the
Supplicatory.

BULLER.

Finely true. We Church of England men love you, Mr North--we do indeed.

NORTH.

The hymns of the sweet Singer of Israel, in literal translation,
adopted as a holier inspired language of the heart.

BULLER.

These, sir, are surely three powerful elements of a Ritual Service.

NORTH.

Throughout, the People divide, the service with the Minister. They have
in it their own personal function.

BULLER.

Then the Homily, sir.

NORTH.

Ay, the Homily, which, one might say, interprets between Sunday and
the Week--fixes the holiness of the Day in precepts, doctrines,
reflections, which may be carried home to guide and nourish.

BULLER.

Altogether, sir, it seems a meet work of worshippers met in their
Christian Land, upon the day of rest and aspiration. The Scottish
worship might seem to remember the flame and the sword. The persecuted
Iconoclasts of two centuries ago, live in their descendants.

NORTH.

But the Ritual of England breathes a divine calm. You think of the
People walking through ripening fields on a mild day to their Church
door. It is the work of a nation sitting in peace, possessing their
land. It is the work of a wealthy nation, that, by dedicating a part of
its wealth, consecrates the remainder--that acknowledges the Fountain
from which all flows. The prayers are devout, humble, fervent. They are
not impassioned. A wonderful temperance and sobriety of discretion;
that which, in worldly things, would be called good sense, prevails
in them; but you must name it better in things spiritual. The framers
evidently bore in mind the continual consciousness of writing for
ALL. That is the guiding, tempering, calming spirit that
keeps in the Whole one tone--that, and the hallowing, chastening awe
which subdues vehemence, even in the asking for the Infinite, by those
who have nothing but that which they earnestly ask, and who know that
unless they ask infinitely, they ask nothing. In every word, the whole
Congregation, the whole Nation prays--not the Individual Minister; the
officiating Divine Functionary, not the Man. Nor must it be forgotten
that the received Version and the Book of Common Prayer--observe the
word COMMON, expressing exactly what I affirm--are beautiful
by the words--that there is no other such English--simple, touching,
apt, venerable--hued as the thoughts are--musical--the most English
English that is known--of a Hebraic strength and antiquity, yet lucid
and gracious as if of and for to-day.

BULLER.

I trust that many Presbyterians sympathise with you in these sentiments.

NORTH.

Not many--few. Nor do I say I wish they were more.

BULLER.

Are you serious, sir?

NORTH.

I am. But cannot explain myself now. What are the Three Pillars of
the Love of any Church? Innate Religion--Humanity--Imagination. The
Scottish worship better satisfies the first Principle--that of England
the last; the Roman Catholic still more the last--and are not your
Cathedrals Roman Catholic? I think that the Scottish and English,
better than the Roman Catholic, satisfy the Middle Principle--Humanity,
being truer to the highest requisitions of our Nature, and nourish our
faculties better, both of Will and Understanding, into their strength
and beauty. Yet what divine-minded Roman Catholics there have been--and
are--and will be!

BULLER.

Pause for a moment, sir,--here comes Seward.

NORTH.

Seward! Is he not with us? Surely he was, all hour or two ago--but
I never missed him--your conversation has been so interesting and
instructive. Seward! why you are all the world like a drowned rat?

SEWARD.

Rat I am none--but a stanch Conservative. Would I had had a
Protectionist with me to keep me right on the Navigation Laws.

NORTH.

What do you mean? What's the matter?

SEWARD.

Why, your description of the Pools in Cladich-Cleugh inspired me with a
passion for one of the Naïads.

NORTH.

And you have had a ducking!

SEWARD.

I have indeed. Plashed souse, head over heels, into one of the
prettiest pools, from a slippery ledge some dozen feet above the
sleeping beauty--were you both deaf that you did not hear me bawl?

NORTH.

I have a faint recollection of hearing something bray, but I suppose I
thought it came from the Gipsies' Camp.

BULLER.

Are you wet?

SEWARD.

Come--come--Buller.

BULLER.

Why so dry?

NORTH.

Sair drooket.

BULLER.

Where's your Tile?

SEWARD.

I hate slang.

BULLER.

Why, you have lost a shoe--and much delightful conversation.

NORTH.

I must say, Seward, that I was hurt by your withdrawing yourself from
our Colloquy.

SEWARD.

Sir, you were beginning to get so prosy----

BULLER.

I insist, Seward, on your making an apology on your knees to our Father
for your shocking impiety--I shudder to repeat the word--which you must
swallow--P--R--O--S--Y!

SEWARD.

On my knees! Look at them.

NORTH.

My dear, dearer, dearest Mr Seward--you are bleeding--I fear a
fracture. Let me----

SEWARD.

I am not bleeding--only a knap on the knee-pan, sir.

BULLER.

Not bleeding! Why you must be drenched in blood, your face is so white.

NORTH.

A _non sequitur_, Buller. But from a knap on the knee-pan I have known
a man a lamiter for life.

SEWARD.

I lament the loss of my Sketch-Book.

BULLER.

It is a judgment on you for that Caricature.

NORTH.

What caricature?

BULLER.

Since you will force me to tell it, a caricature
of----YOURSELF, sir. I saw him working away at it with a most
wicked leer on his face, while you supposed he was taking notes. He
held it up to me for a moment--clapped the boards together with the
grin of a fiend--and then off to Cladick-Cloock--where he met with
Nemesis.

NORTH.

Is that a true bill, Mr Seward?

SEWARD.

On my honour as a gentleman, and my skill as an artist, it is not. It
is a most malignant misrepresentation----

BULLER.

It was indeed.

SEWARD.

It was no caricature. I promised to Mrs Seward to send her a sketch of
the illustrious Mr North; and finding you in one of the happiest of
your many-sided attitudes----

NORTH.

The act is to be judged by the intention. You are acquitted of the
charge.

BULLER.

To make a caricature of YOU, sir, under any circumstances, and for any
purpose, would be sufficiently shocking; but HERE AND NOW, and that he
might send it to his WIFE--so transcends all previous perpetration of
_crimen læsæ majestatis_, that I am beginning to be incredulous of what
these eyes beheld--nay, to disbelieve what, if told to any human being,
however depraved, would seem to him impossible, even in the mystery of
iniquity, and an insane libel on our fallen nature.

SEWARD.

I did my best. Nor am I, sir, without hope that my Sketch-Book may
be recovered, and then you will judge for yourself, sir, if it be a
caricature. A failure, sir, it assuredly was, for what artist has
succeeded with YOU?

NORTH.

To the Inn, and put on dry clothes.

SEWARD.

No. What care I about dry or wet clothes! Here let me lie down and bask
in this patch of intenser sunshine at your feet. Don't stir, sir; the
Crutch is not the least in the way.

NORTH.

We must be all up and doing--the HOUR and the MEN.
The CAVALCADE. Hush! Hark! the Bagpipe! The Cavalcade can't be
more than a mile off.

SEWARD.

Why staring thus like a Goshawk, sir?

BULLER.

I hear nothing. Seward, do you?

SEWARD.

Nothing. And what can he mean by Cavalcade? Yet I believe he has the
Second Sight. I have heard it is in the Family.

NORTH.

Hear nothing? Then both of you must be deaf. But I forget--we
Mountaineers are Fine-Ears--your sense of hearing has been educated
on the Flat. Not now? "The Campbells are coming,"--that's the
march--that's the go--that's the gathering.

BULLER.

A Horn--a Drum, sure enough--and--and--that incomprehensible mixture of
groans and yells must be the Bagpipe.

NORTH.

See yonder they come, over the hill-top--the ninth mile-stone from
Inverary! There's the VAN, by the Road-Surveyor lent me for
the occasion, drawn by Four Horses. And there's the WAGGON,
once the property of the lessee of the Swiss Giantess, a noble Unicorn.
And there the SIX TENT-CARTS, Two-steeded; and there the
TWO BOAT-CARRIAGES--horsed I know not how. But don't ye see
the bonny BARGES aloft in the air? And Men on horseback--count
them--there should be Four. You hear the Bagpipe now--surely--"The
Campbells are coming." And here is the whole Concern, gentlemen, close
at hand, deploying across the Bridge.

BULLER.

Has he lost his senses at last?

SEWARD.

Have we lost ours? A Cavalcade it is, with a vengeance.

NORTH.

One minute past Seven! True to their time within sixty seconds. This
way, this way. Here is the Spot, the Centre of the Grove. Bagpipe--Drum
and Horn--music all--silence. Silence, I cry, will nobody assist me in
crying silence?

SEWARD AND BULLER.

Silence--silence--silence.

NORTH.

Give me the Speaking-Trumpet that I may call Silence.

SEWARD.

Stentor may put down the Drum, the Horns, the Fifes, and the Serpent,
but the Bagpipe is above him--the Drone is deaf as the sea--the Piper
moves in a sphere of his own--

BULLER.

I don't hear a syllable you are saying--ah! the storm is dead, and now
what a BLESSED CALM.

NORTH.

Wheel into line--Prepare to--

PITCH TENTS.

    _Enter the Field of the Sycamore Grove on Horseback--ushered
    by Archy M'Callum_--HARRY SEWARD--MARMADUKE
    BULLER--VALLANCE VOLUSENE--NEPOS
    WOODBURN. _Van, Waggon, Carriages, and Carts, &c., form
    a Barricade between the Rear of the Grove and the road to
    Dalmally._

Adjutant Archy M'Callum! call the Roll of the Troops.

ADJUTANT.

Peter of the Lodge, Sewer and Seneschal--_Here_. Peterson ditto,
Comptroller of the Cellars--_Here_. Kit Peterson, Tiger there--_Here_.
Michael Dods, Cook at that Place--_Here_. Ben Brawn, Manciple--_Here_.
Roderick M'Crimmon, King of the Pipes---_Here_. Pym and Stretch,
Body-men to the young Englishers---_Here_, _Here_. Tom Moody, Huntsman
at Under-cliff Hall, North Devon---_Here_. The Cornwall Clipper, Head
Game-keeper at Pendragon--_Here_. Billy Balmer of Bowness, Windermere,
Commodore--_Here_.

NORTH.

Attention! Each man will be held answerable for his subordinates. The
roll will be called an hour after sunrise, and an hour before sunset.
Men, remember you are under martial law. Camp-master M'Kellar--_Here_.
Let the Mid Peak of Cruachan be your pitching point. Old Dee-side Tent
in the centre, right in Front. Dormitories to the east. To the west
the Pavilion. Kitchen Range in the Rear. Donald Dhu, late Sergeant in
the Black Watch, see to the Barricade. The Impedimenta in your charge.
In three hours I command the Encampment to be complete. Admittance to
the Field on the Queen's Birth-day. Crowd! disperse. Old Boys! What do
you think of this? You have often called me a Wizard--a Warlock--no
glamour here--'tis real all--and all the WORK OF THE CRUTCH.
Sons--your Fathers! Fathers--your Sons. Your hand, Volusene--and,
Woodburn, yours.

SEWARD.

Hal, how are you?

BULLER.

How are you, Marmy?

NORTH.

On the Stage--in the Theatre of Fictitious Life--such a Meeting
as this would require explanation--but in the Drama of Real Life,
on the Banks of Lochawe, it needs none. Friends of my soul! you
will come to understand it all in two minutes' talk with your
Progeny. Progeny--welcome for your Sires' sakes--and your Lady
Mothers'--and your own--to Lochawe-side. I see you are two Trumps.
Volusene--Woodburn--from your faces all well at home. Come, my two old
Bucks--let us Three, to be out of the bustle, retire to the Inn. Did
you ever see Christopher fling the Crutch? There--I knew it would clear
the Sycamore Grove.


SCENE II.--_Interior of the Pavilion._

TIME--_Two_ P.M.

NORTH--SEWARD--BULLER.


SEWARD.

Still at his Siesta in his Swing-Chair. Few faces bear to be looked on
asleep.

BULLER.

Men's faces.

SEWARD.

His bears it well. Awake, it is sometimes too full of expression. And
then, how it fluctuates! Perpetual play and interchange as Thought,
Feeling, Fancy, Imagination----

BULLER.

The gay, the grave, the sad, the serious, the pathetic, the humorous,
the tragic, the whimsical rules the minute--

    "'Tis everything by fits, and nothing long."

SEWARD.

Don't exaggerate. An inapt quotation.

BULLER.

I was merely carrying on your eulogium of his wide-awake Face.

SEWARD.

The prevalent expression is still--the Benign.

BULLER.

A singular mixture of tenderness and truculence.

SEWARD.

Asleep it is absolutely saint-like.

BULLER.

It reminds me of the faces of Chantry's Sleeping Children in Litchfield
Cathedral.

SEWARD.

Composure is the word. Composure is mute Harmony.

BULLER.

It may be so--but you will not deny that his nose is just a minim too
long--and his mouth, at this moment, just a minim too open--and the
crow-feet----

SEWARD.

Enhance the power of those large drooping eyelids, heavy with
meditation--of that high broad forehead, with the lines not the
wrinkles of age.

BULLER.

He is much balder than he was on Deeside.

SEWARD.

Or fifty years before. They say that, in youth, the sight of his head
of hair once silenced Mirabeau.

BULLER.

Why, Mirabeau's was black, and my grandmother told me North's was
yellow--or rather green, like a star.

NORTH.

Your Grandmother, Buller, was the finest woman of her time.

BULLER.

Sleepers hear. Sometimes a single word from without, reaching the
spiritual region, changes by its touch the whole current of their
dreams.

NORTH.

I once told you that, Buller. At present I happen to be awake. But
surely a man may sit on a swing-chair with his eyes shut, and his mouth
open, without incurring the charge of somnolency. Where have you been?

SEWARD.

You told us, sir, not to disturb you till Two----

NORTH.

But where have you been?

SEWARD.

We have written our despatches--read our London Papers--and had a pull
in _Gutta Percha_ to and from Port Sonachan.

NORTH.

How does she pull?

BULLER.

Like a winner. I have written to the builder--Taylor of Newcastle--to
match her against any craft of her keel in the kingdom.

NORTH.

Sit down. Where are the Boys.

SEWARD.

Off hours ago to Kilchurn. They have just signalised--"TWO O'CLOCK. 1
SALMO FEROX, lb. 12-20 YELLOW-FINS, lb. 15-6 PIKE, lb. 36."

NORTH.

And not bad sport, either. They know the dinner hour? Seven sharp.

SEWARD.

They do--and they are not the lads to disregard orders.

NORTH.

Four finer fellows are not in Christendom.

SEWARD.

May I presume to ask, sir, what volumes these are lying open on your
knees?

NORTH.

THE ILIAD--and PARADISE LOST.

SEWARD.

I fear, sir, you may not be disposed to enlighten us, at this hour.

NORTH.

But I am disposed to be enlightened. Oxonians--and Double First-Class
Men--nor truants since--you will find in me a docile pupil rather than
a Teacher. I am no great Grecian.

BULLER.

But you are, sir; and a fine old Trojan too, methinks! What audacious
word has escaped my lips!

NORTH.

Epic Poetry! Tell but a Tale, and see Childhood--the harmless, the
trustful, the wondering, listen--"all ear;" and so has the wilder and
mightier Childhood of Nations, listened, trustful, wondering, "all
ear," to Tales lofty, profound--_said_, or, as Art grew up, _sung_.

SEWARD.

[Greek: EPE], Say or Tell.

BULLER.

[Greek: AEIDE], Sing.

NORTH.

Yes, my lads, these were the received formulas of beseeching with which
the Minstrels of Hellas invoked succour of the divine Muse, when their
burning tongue would fit well to the Harp transmitted Tales, fraught
with old heroic remembrance, with solemn belief, with oracular wisdom.
[GREEK: EPE], TELL, [Greek: EPOS], THE TALE. And when, step after step,
the Harp modelling the Verse, and the Verse charming power and beauty,
and splendour and pathos--like a newly-created and newly-creating
soul--into its ancestral Tradition--when insensibly the benign Usurper,
the Muse, had made the magnificent dream rightly and wholly her own
at last.--[Greek: EPOS], THE SUNG TALE. HOMER, to all following ages
the chief Master of Eloquence whether in Verse or in Prose, has yet
maintained the simplicity of _Telling_.

    "For he came beside the swift ships of the Achæans,
    Proposing to release his daughter, and bringing immense ransom;
    Having in his hand the fillet of the far-shooting Apollo,
    On the golden rod: and he implored of the Achæans,
    And the sons of Atreus, most of all, the two Orderers of the People."

These few words of a tongue stately, resplendent, sonorous, and
_numerous_, more than ours--and already the near Scamandrian Field
feels, and fears, and trembles. MILTON! The world has rolled round,
and again round, from the day of that earlier to that of the later
Mæonides. All the soul-wealth hoarded in words, which merciful Time
held aloft, unsubmerged by the Gothic, by the Ottoman inundation; all
the light shrined in the Second, the Intellectual Ark that, divinely
built and guided, rode tilting over the tempestuous waste of waters;
all the mind, bred and fostered by New Europe, down to within two
hundred years of this year that runs: These have put differences
between the ILIAD and the PARADISE LOST, in matter and in style, which
to state and illustrate would hold me speaking till sunset.

BULLER.

And us listening.

NORTH.

The Fall of Hector and of his Troy! The Fall of Adam and of his World!

BULLER.

What concise expression! _Multum in parvo_, indeed, Seward.

NORTH.

Men and gods mingled in glittering conflict upon the ground that
spreads between Ida's foot and the Hellespont! At the foot of the
Omnipotent Throne, archangels and angels distracting their native
Heaven with arms, and Heaven disburthening her lap of her self-lost
sons for the peopling of Hell!

SEWARD.

Hush! Buller--hush!

NORTH.

In way of an Episode--yes, an Episode--see the Seventh Book--our
Visible Universe willed into being!

SEWARD.

Hush! Buller--hush!

NORTH.

For a few risings and settings of yon since-bedimmed Sun--Love and
celestial Bliss dwelling amidst the shades and flowers of Eden yet
sinless--then, from a MORE FATAL APPLE, Discord clashing into
and subverting the harmonies of Creation.

    "Sin, and her shadow, Death; and Misery,
    Death's Harbinger."

The Iliad, indeed!

SEWARD.

I wish you could be persuaded, sir, to give us an Edition of Milton.

NORTH.

No. I must not take it out of the Doctor's hands. Then, as to Milton's
style. If the Christian Theologian must be held bold who has dared
to mix the Delivered Writings with his own Inventions--bold, too,
was he, the heir of the mind that was nursed in the Aristotelian
Schools, to unite, as he did, on the other hand, the gait of an
understanding accomplished in logic, with the spontaneous and unstudied
step of Poetry. The style of Milton, gentlemen, has been praised for
simplicity; and it is true that the style of the Paradise Lost has
often an austere simplicity; but one sort of it you miss--the proper
Epic simplicity--that Homeric simplicity of the _Telling_.

SEWARD.

Perhaps, sir, in such a Poem such simplicity could not be.

NORTH.

Perhaps not. Homer adds thought to thought, and so builds up. Milton
involves thought with thought, and so constructs. Relation is with
him argumentative also, and History both Philosophy and Oratory.
This was unavoidable. He brought the mind of the latter age to the
Form of Composition produced by the primitive time. Again, the style
is fitted to the general intention of a Poem essentially didactic
and argumentative. Again, the style is personal to himself. He has
learnedly availed himself of all antecedent Art--minutely availed
himself, yet he is no imitator. The style is like no other--it is
intensely and completely original. It expresses himself. Lofty,
capacious, acute, luminous, thoroughly disciplined, ratiocinative
powers wonderfully blend their action with an imagination of the most
delicate and profound sensibility to the beautiful, and of a sublimity
that no theme can excel.

SEWARD.

Lord Bacon, sir, I believe, has defined Poetry, Feigned History--has he
not?

NORTH.

He has--and no wonder that he thought much of "Feigned History"--for
he had a view to Epos and Tragedy--the Iliad and Odyssey--the
Attic Theatre--the Æneid--Dante--Ariosto--Tasso--the Romances of
Chivalry--moreover, the whole Immense Greek Fable, whereof part and
parcel remain, but more is perished. Which Fables, you know, existed,
and were transmitted in Prose,--that is, by Oral Tradition, in the
words of the relator,--long before they came into Homeric Verse--or any
verse. He saw, Seward, the Memory of Mankind possessed by two kinds
of History, both once alike credited. True History, which remains
True History, and Fabulous History, now acknowledged as Poetry only.
It is no wonder that _other_ Poetry vanished from importance in his
estimation.

BULLER.

I follow you, sir, with some difficulty.

NORTH.

You may with ease. Fabulous History holds place, side by side, with
True History, as a rival in dignity, credence, and power, and in
peopling the Earth with Persons and Events. For, of a verity, the
Personages and Events created by Poesy hold place in our Mind--not in
our Imagination only, but in our Understanding, along with Events and
Personages historically remembered.

SEWARD.

An imposing Parallelism!

NORTH.

It is--but does it hold good? And if it does--with what limitations?

SEWARD.

With what limitations, sir?

NORTH.

I wish Lord Bacon were here, that I might ask him to explain. Take
Homer and Thucydides--the Iliad and the History of the Peloponnesian
War. We thus sever, at the widest, the Telling of Calliope from the
Telling of Clio, holding each at the height of honour.

BULLER.

At the widest?

NORTH.

Yes; for how far from Thucydides is, at once, the Book of the Games!
Look through the Iliad, and see how much and minute depicturing of a
World with which the Historian had nothing to do! Shall the Historian,
in Prose, of the Ten Years' War, stop to describe the Funeral Games of
a Patroclus? Yes; if he stop to describe the Burying of every Hero who
falls. But the Historian in Prose assumes that a People know their own
Manners, and therefore he omits painting their manners to themselves.
The Historian in Verse assumes the same thing, and, _therefore_,
strange to say, he paints the manners! See, then, in the Iliad, how
much memorising of a whole departed scheme of human existence, with
which the Prose Historian had nothing to do, the Historian in regulated
Metre has had the inspiration and the skill to inweave in the narrative
of his ever-advancing Action.

BULLER.

Would his lordship were with us!

NORTH.

Give all this to--THE HEXAMETER. Remember always, my dear
Seward, the shield of Achilles--itself a world in miniature--a
compendium of the world.

SEWARD.

Of the universe.

NORTH.

Even so; for Sun, and Moon, and Stars are there, Astronomy and all the
learned sisterhood!

SEWARD.

Then to what species of narrative in prose--to one removed at what
interval from the history of the Peloponnesian War, belongs that scene
of Helen on the Walls of Troy? That scene at the Scæan gate? In the
tent of Achilles, where Achilles sits, and Priam kneels?

NORTH.

Good. The general difference is obviously this--Publicity almost
solely stamps the Thucydidean story--Privacy, more than in equal part,
interfused with Publicity, the Homeric. You must allow Publicity
and Privacy to signify, besides that which is done in public and in
private, that which proceeds of the Public and of the Private will.

SEWARD.

In other words, if I apprehend you aright, the Theme given being some
affair of Public moment, Prose tends to gather up the acts of the
individual agents, under general aspects, into masses.

NORTH.

Just so. Verse, whenever it dare, resolves the mass of action into
the individual acts, puts aside the collective doer--the Public,
and puts forward individual persons. Glory, I say again, to THE
HEXAMETER!

BULLER.

Glory to the HEXAMETER! The HEXAMETER, like the
Queen, has done it all.

NORTH.

Or let us return to the Paradise Lost? If the mustering of the
Fallen Legions in the First Book--if the Infernal Council held in
the Second--if the Angelic Rebellion and Warfare in the Fifth and
Sixth--resemble Public History, civil and military, as we commonly
speak--if the Seventh Book, relating the Creation by describing
the kinds created, be the assumption into Heroic Poetry of Natural
History--to what kind of History, I earnestly ask you both, does that
scene belong, of Eve's relation of her dream, in the Fifth Book,
and Adam's consolation of her uneasiness under its involuntary sin?
To what, in the Fourth Book, her own innocent relation of her first
impressions upon awaking into Life and Consciousness?

BULLER.

Ay!--to what kind of History? More easily asked than answered.

NORTH.

And Adam's relation to the Affable Archangel of his own suddenly-dawned
morning from the night of non-existence, aptly and happily crowned upon
the relation made to him by Raphael in the Seventh Book of his own
forming under the Omnipotent Hand?

SEWARD.

Simply, I venture to say, sir, to the most interior autobiography--to
that confidence of audible words, which flows when the face of a friend
sharpens the heart of a man--and Raphael was Adam's Friend.

NORTH.

Seward, you are right. You speak well--as you always do--when you
choose. Behold, then, I beseech you, the comprehending power of that
little magical band--_Our Accentual Iambic Pentameter_.

SEWARD.

    "Glory be with them, and eternal praise,
    The Poets who on earth have made us heirs
    Of Truth and pure Delight by heavenly lays!"

NORTH.

Glory to Verse, for its power is great. Man, from the garden in Eden,
to the purifying by fire of the redeemed Earth--the creation of things
Visible--Angels Upright and Fallen--and Higher than Angels--all
the Regions of Space--Infinitude and Eternity--the Universality of
Being--this is the copious matter of the Song. And herein there is
place found, proper, distinct, and large, and prominent, for that
whispered call to visit, in the freshness of morning, the dropping
Myrrh--to study the opening beauty of the Flowers--to watch the Bee
in her sweet labour--which tenderly dissipates from the lids of Eve
her ominously-troubled sleep--free room for two tears, which, falling
from a woman's eyes, are wiped with her hair--and for two more, which
her pitying husband kisses away ere they fall. All these things Verse
disposes, and composes, in One Presentment.

BULLER.

Glory to Verse, for its power is great--glory to _our Accentual Iambic
Pentameter_.

NORTH.

Let us return to the Iliad. The Iliad is a history told by a mind that
is arbiter, to a certain extent only, of its own facts. For Homer
takes his decennial War and its Heroes, nay, the tenor of the story
too, from long-descended Tradition. To his contemporary countrymen he
appears as a Historian--not feigning, but commemorating and glorifying,
transmitted facts.

SEWARD.

Ottfried Müller, asking how far Homer is tied up in his Traditions,
ventures to suspect that the names of the Heroes whom Achilles kills,
in such or such a fight, are all traditionary.

NORTH.

Where, then, is the _Feigned_ History? Lord Bacon, Ottfried Müller, and
Jacob Bryant, are here not in the main unagreed. "I nothing doubt,"
says Bacon, "but the Fables, which Homer having received, transmits,
had originally a profound and excellent sense, although I greatly doubt
if Homer any longer knew that sense."

BULLER.

What right, may I ask, had Lord Bacon to doubt, and Ottfried Müller to
suspect----

NORTH.

Smoke your cigar. Ottfried Müller----

BULLER.

Whew!--poo!

NORTH.

Ottfried Müller imagines that there was in Greece a pre-Homeric Age,
of which the principal intellectual employment was Myth-making. And
Bryant, we know, shocked the opinion of his own day by referring the
War of Troy to Mythology. Now, observe, Buller, how there is feigning
and feigning--Poet after Poet--and the Poem that comes to us at last is
the Poem of Homer; but in truth, of successive ages, ending in Homer----

SEWARD.

Who was then a real living flesh and blood Individual of the human
species.

NORTH.

That he was----

SEWARD.

And wrote the Iliad.

NORTH.

That he did--but how I have hinted rather than told. In the Paradise
Lost, the part of Milton is, then, infinitely bolder than Homer's in
the Iliad. He is far more of a Creator.

SEWARD.

Can an innermost bond of Unity, sir, be shown for the Iliad?

NORTH.

Yes. THE ILIAD IS A TALE OF A WRONG RIGHTED. Zeus, upon
the secret top of Olympus, decrees this RIGHTING with his
omnipotent Nod. Upon the top of Ida he conducts it. But that is done,
and the Fates resume their tenor. Hector falls, and Troy shall fall.
That is again the RIGHTING OF A WRONG, done amongst men. This
is the broadly-written admonition: "DISCITE JUSTITIAM."

SEWARD.

You are always great, sir, on Homer.

NORTH.

Agamemnon, in insolence of self-will, offends Chryses and a God. He
refused Chyseis--He robs Achilles. In Agamemnon the Insolence of
Human Self-will is humbled, first under the hand of Apollo--then of
Jupiter--say, altogether, of Heaven. He suffers and submits. And
now Achilles, who has no less interest in the Courts of Heaven than
Chryses--indeed higher--in overweening anger fashions out a redress
for himself which the Father of Gods and Men grants. And what follows?
Agamemnon again suffers and submits. For Achilles--Patroclus' bloody
corse! [Greek: Keitai Patroklos]--that is the voice that rings! Now he
accepts the proffered reconciliation of Agamemnon, before scornfully
refused; and in the son of Thetis, too, the Insolence of Human
Self-will is chastened under the hand of Heaven.

SEWARD.

He suffers, but submits not till Hector lies transfixed--till Twelve
noble youths of the Trojans and their Allies have bled on Patroclus'
Pyre. And does he submit then? No. For twelve days ever and anon he
drags the insensible corse at his horses' heels round that sepulchral
earth.

BULLER.

Mad, if ever a man was.

NORTH.

The Gods murmur--and will that the unseemly Revenge cease. Jove sends
Thetis to him--and what meeter messenger for minister of mercy than a
mother to her son! God-bidden by that voice, he submits--he remits his
Revenge. The Human Will, infuriated, bows under the Heavenly.

SEWARD.

Touched by the prayers and the sight of that kneeling gray-haired
Father, he has given him back his dead son--and from the ransom a
costly pall of honour, to hide the dead son from the father's eyes--and
of his own Will and Power Twelve Days' truce; and the days have
expired, and the Funeral is performed--and the pyre is burned out--and
the mound over the slayer of Patroclus is heaped--and the Iliad is
done--and this Moral indelibly writes itself on the heart--the words of
Apollo in that Council--

    [Greek: Tlêton gas Thymon Moisai Thnêtôsie edôchan.]

THE FATES HAVE APPOINTED TO MORTALS A SPIRIT THAT SHALL SUBMIT AND
ENDURE.

NORTH.

Right and good. [Greek: Tlêton] is more than "shall suffer." It is,
that shall accept suffering--that shall _bear_.

SEWARD.

Compare this one Verse and the Twenty-four Books, and you have the
poetical simplicity and the poetical multiplicity side by side.

BULLER.

Right and good.

NORTH.

Yes, my friends, the Teaching of the Iliad is Piety to the Gods--

SEWARD.

Reverence for the Rights of Men--

NORTH.

A Will humbled, conformed to the Will of Heaven--

BULLER.

That the Earth is justly governed.

NORTH.

Dim foreshadowings, which Milton, I doubt not, discerned and cherished.
The Iliad was the natural and spiritual father of the Paradise Lost--

SEWARD.

And the son is greater than the sire.

NORTH.

I see in the Iliad the love of Homer to Greece and to humankind. He
was a legislator to Greece before Solon and Lycurgus--greater than
either--after the manner fabled of Orpheus.

SEWARD.

Sprung from the bosom of heroic life, the Iliad asked heroic listeners.

NORTH.

See with what large-hearted love he draws the Men--Hector, and Priam,
and Sarpedon--as well as the Woman Andromache--enemies! Can he so paint
humanity and not humanise? He humanises _us_--who have literature
and refined Greece and Rome--who have Spenser, and Shakspeare, and
Milton--who are Christendom.

SEWARD.

He loves the inferior creatures, and the face of nature.

NORTH.

The Iliad has been called a Song of War. I see in it--a Song of Peace.
Think of all the fiery Iliad ending in--Reconciled Submission!

SEWARD.

"Murder Impossibility," and believe that there might have been an Iliad
or a Paradise Lost in Prose.

NORTH.

It could never have been, by human power, _our_ Paradise Lost. What
would have become of the Seventh Book? This is now occupied with
describing the Six Days of Creation. A few verses of the First Chapter
of Genesis extended into so many hundred lines. The Book, as it stands,
has full poetical reason. First, it has a sufficient motive. It founds
the existence of Adam and Eve, which is otherwise not duly led to. The
revolted Angels, you know, have fallen, and the Almighty will create a
new race of worshippers to supply their place--Mankind.

SEWARD.

For this race that is to be created, a Home is previously to be
built--or this World is to be created.

NORTH.

I initiated you into Milton nearly thirty years ago, my dear Seward;
and I rejoice to find that you still have him by heart. Between the
Fall of the Angels, and that inhabiting of Paradise by our first
parents, which is largely related by Raphael, there would be in
the history which the poem undertakes, an unfilled gap and blank
without this book. The chain of events which is unrolled would be
broken--interrupted--incomplete.

SEWARD.

And, sir, when Raphael has told the Rebellion and Fall of the Angels,
Adam, with a natural movement of curiosity, asks of this "Divine
Interpreter" how this frame of things began?

NORTH.

And Raphael answers by declaring at large the Purpose and the Manner.
The Mission of Raphael is to strengthen, if it be practicable, the
Human Pair in their obedience. To this end, how apt his discourse,
showing how dear they are to the Universal Maker, how eminent in his
Universe!

SEWARD.

The causes, then, of the Archangelic Narrative abound. And the personal
interest with which the Two Auditors must hear such a revelation
of wonders from such a Speaker, and that so intimately concerns
themselves, falls nothing short of what Poetry justly requires in
relations put into the mouth of the poetical Persons.

NORTH.

And can the interest--not now of Raphael's, but of Milton's "fit
audience"--be sustained throughout? The answer is triumphant. The Book
is, from beginning to end, a stream of the most beautiful descriptive
Poetry that exists. Not however, mind you, Seward, of stationary
description.

SEWARD.

Sir?

NORTH.

A proceeding work is described; and the Book is replete and alive with
motion--with progress--with action--yes, of action--of an order unusual
indeed to the Epos, but unexcelled in dignity--the Creative Action of
Deity!

SEWARD.

What should hinder, then, but that this same Seventh Book should have
been written in Prose?

NORTH.

Why this only--that without Verse it could not have been read! The
Verse makes present. You listen with Adam and Eve, and you hear the
Archangel. In Prose this illusion could not have been carried through
such a subject-matter. The _conditio sine quâ non_ of the Book was
the ineffable charm of the Description. But what would a series of
botanical and zoological descriptions, for instance, have been, in
Prose? The _vivida vis_ that is in Verse is the quickening spirit of
the whole.

BULLER.

But who doubts it?

NORTH.

Lord Bacon said that Poetry--that is, Feigned History--might be worded
in Prose. And it may be; but how inadequately is known to Us Three.

BULLER.

And to all the world.

NORTH.

No--nor, to the million who do know it, so well as to Us, nor the
reason why. But hear me a moment longer. Wordsworth, in his famous
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, asserts that the language of Prose
and the language of Verse differ but in this--that in verse there is
metre--and metre he calls an adjunct. With all reverence, I say that
metre is not an adjunct--but vitality and essence; and that verse, in
virtue thereof, so transfigures language, that it ceases to be the
language of prose as spoken, out of verse, by any of the children of
men.

SEWARD.

Remove the metre, and the language will not be the language of prose?

NORTH.

Not--if you remove the metre only--and leave otherwise the order of
the words--the collocation unchanged--and unchanged any one of the
two hundred figures of speech, one and all of which are differently
presented in the language of Verse from what they are in Prose.

SEWARD.

It must be so.

NORTH.

The fountain of Law to Composition in Prose is the Understanding. The
fountain of Law to Composition in Verse is the Will.

SEWARD.

?

NORTH.

A discourse in prose resembles a chain. The sentences are the
successive links--all holding _to_ one another--and holding one
another. _All is bound._

SEWARD.

Well?

NORTH.

A discourse in verse resembles a billowy sea. The verses are the waves
that rise and fall--to our apprehension--each by impulse, life, will of
its own. _All is free._

SEWARD.

Ay. Now your meaning emerges.

NORTH.

_E profundis clamavi._ In eloquent prose, the feeling fits itself into
the process of the thinking. In true verse, the thinking fits itself
into the process of the feeling.

SEWARD.

I perpend.

NORTH.

In prose, the general distribution and composition of the matter
belong to the reign of Necessity. The order of the parts, and the
connexion of part with part, are obliged--logically justifiable--say,
then, are demonstrable. See an Oration of Demosthenes. In verse, that
distribution and composition belong to the reign of Liberty. That order
and connexion are arbitrary--passionately justifiable--say, then, are
delectable. See an Ode of Pindar.

SEWARD.

Publish--publish.

NORTH.

In prose the style is last--in verse first; in prose the sense controls
the sound--in verse the sound the sense; in prose you speak--in
verse you sing; in prose you live in the abstract--in verse in the
concrete; in prose you present notions--in verse visions; in prose you
expound--in verse you enchant; in prose it is much if now and then you
are held in the sphere of the fascinated senses--in verse if of the
calm understanding.

BULLER.

Will you have the goodness, sir, to say all that over again?

NORTH.

I have forgot it. The lines in the countenance of Prose are austere.
The look is shy, reserved, governed--like the fixed steady lineaments
of mountains. The hues that suffuse the face of her sister Verse vary
faster than those with which the western or the eastern sky momently
reports the progress of the sinking, of the fallen, but not yet lost,
of the coming or of the risen sun.

BULLER.

I have jotted that down, sir.

NORTH.

And I hope you will come to understand it. Candidly speaking, 'tis more
than I do.

SEWARD.

I do perfectly--and it is as true as beautiful, sir.

BULLER.

Equally so.

NORTH.

I venerate Wordsworth. Wordsworth's poetry stands distinct in the
world. That which to other men is an occasional pleasure, or possibly
delight, and to other poets an occasional transport, THE SEEING
THIS VISIBLE UNIVERSE, is to him--a Life--one Individual Human
Life--namely, his Own--travelling its whole Journey from the Cradle to
the Grave. And that Life--for what else could he do with it?--he has
versified--sung. And there is no other such Song. It is a Memorable
Fact of our Civilisation--a Memorable Fact in the History of Human
Kind--that one perpetual song. Perpetual but infinitely various--as
a river of a thousand miles, traversing, from its birthplace in the
mountains, diverse regions, wild and inhabited, to the ocean-receptacle.

BULLER.

Confoundedly prosaic at times.

NORTH.

He, more than any other true poet, approaches Verse to Prose--never, I
believe, or hardly ever, quite blends them.

BULLER.

Often--often--often, my dear sir.

NORTH.

Seldom--seldom--seldom if ever, my dear sir. He tells his Life. His
Poems are, of necessity, an Autobiography. The matter of them, then,
is his personal reality; but Prose is, all over and properly, the
language of Personal Realities. Even with him, however, so peculiarly
conditioned, and, as well as I am able to understand his Proposition,
against his own Theory of writing, Verse maintains, as by the laws of
our insuppressible nature it always will maintain, its sacred Right and
indefeasible Prerogative.

To conclude our conversation--

BULLER.

Or Monologue.

NORTH.

Epos is Human History in its magnitude in Verse. In Prose, National
History offers itself in parallelism. The coincidence is broad
and unquestioned; but on closer inspection, differences great and
innumerable spring up and unfold themselves, until at last you might
almost persuade yourself that the first striking resemblance deceived
you, and that the two species lack analogy, so many other kinds
does the Species in Verse embosom, and so escaping are the lines of
agreement in the instant in which you attempt fixing them.

BULLER.

Would that Lord Bacon were here!

NORTH.

And thus we are led to a deeper truth. The Metrical Epos imitates
History, without doubt, as Lord Bacon says--it borrows thence its
mould, not rigorously, but with exceeding bold and free adaptations, as
the Iliad unfolds the Ten Years' War in Seven Weeks. But for the Poet,
more than another, ALL IS IN ALL.

SEWARD.

Sir?

NORTH.

What is the Paradise Lost, ultimately considered?

BULLER.

Oh!

NORTH.

It is, my friends, the arguing in verse of a question in Natural
Theology. Whence are Wrong and Pain? Moral and Physical Evil, as we
call them, in all their overwhelming extent of complexity sprung? How
permitted in the Kingdom of an All-wise and Almighty Love? To this
question, concerning the origin of Evil, Milton answers as a Christian
Theologian, agreeably to his own understanding of his Religion,--so
justifying the Universal Government of God, and, in particular, his
Government of Man. The Poem is, therefore, Theological, Argumentative,
Didactic, in Epic Form. Being in the constitution of his soul a Poet,
mightiest of the mighty, the intention is hidden in the Form. The
Verse has transformed the matter. Now, then, the Paradise Lost is
not a history told for itself. But this One Truth, in two answering
Propositions, that the Will of Man spontaneously consorting with God's
Will is Man's Good, spontaneously dissenting, Man's Evil. This is
created into an awful and solemn narrative of a Matter exactly adapted,
and long since authoritatively told. But this Truth, springing up
in the shape of narrative, will now take its own determination into
Events of unsurpassed magnitude, now of the tenderest individuality and
minuteness; and all is, hence, in keeping--as one power of life springs
up on one spot, in oak-tree, moss, and violet, and the difference of
stature, thus understood, gives a deep harmony, so deep and embracing,
that none without injury to the whole could be taken away.

BULLER.

What's all this! Hang that Drone--confound that Chanter. Burst, thou
most unseasonable of Bagpipes! Silence that dreadful Drum. Draw in your
Horns--

SEWARD.

Musquetry! cannon! huzzas! The enemy are storming the Camp. The Delhis
bear down on the Pavilion. The Life is in danger. Let us save the King.

NORTH.

See to it, gentlemen. I await the issue in my Swing-chair. Let the
Barbarians but look on me and their weapons will drop.

BULLER.

All's right. A false alarm.

NORTH.

There was no alarm.


BULLER.

'Twas but a SALUTE. THE BOYS have come back from
Kilchurn. They are standing in front beside the spoil.

NORTH.

Widen the Portal. Artistically disposed! The Whole like one
huge Star-fish. Salmo ferox, centre--Pike, radii--Yellow-fins,
circumference--Weight I should say the tenth of a ton. Call the
Manciple. Manciple, you are responsible for the preservation of that
Star-fish.

BULLER.

Sir, you forget yourself. The People must be fed. We are Seven. Twelve
are on the Troop Roll--Nine Strangers have sent in their cards--the
Gillies are growing upon us--the Camp-followers have doubled the
population since morn, and the circumambient Natives are waxing strong.
Hunger is in the Camp--but for this supply, Famine; _Iliacos intra
muros_ PECCATUR _et extra_; Dods reports that the Boiler is
wroth, the Furnace at a red heat, Pots and Pans a-simmer--the Culinary
Spirit impatient to be at work. In such circumstances, the tenth of a
ton is no great matter; but it is better than nothing. The mind of the
Manciple may lie at rest, for that Star-fish will never see to-morrow's
Sun; and motionless as he looks, he is hastening to the Shades.

NORTH.

Sir, you forget yourself. There is other animal matter in the world
besides Fish. No penury of it in camp. I have here the Manciple's
report. "One dozen plucked Earochs--one ditto ditto Ducklings--d. d.
d. March Chick--one Bubblyjock--one Side of Mutton--four Necks--six
Sheep-heads, and their complement of Trotters--two Sheep, just
slaughtered and yet in wholes--four Lambs ditto--the late Cladich
Calf--one small Stot--two lb. 40 Rounds in pickle--four Miscellaneous
Pies of the First Order--six Hams--four dozen of Rein-deer Tongues--one
dozen of Bears' Paws--two Barrels of----"

BULLER.

Stop. Let that suffice for the meanwhile.

NORTH.

The short shadow-hand on the face of Dial-Cruachan, to my instructed
sense, stands at six. You young Oxonians, I know, always adorn for
dinner, even when roughing it on service; and so, V. and W., do you.
These two elderly gentlemen here are seen to most advantage in white
neckcloths, and the OLD ONE is never so like himself as in a
suit of black velvet. To your tent and toilets. In an hour we meet in
the--DEESIDE.




INDEX TO VOL. LXV.


  Aculcho, storming of, 139.

  Africa, physical conformation of, 408.

  AFTER A YEAR'S REPUBLICANISM, 275.

  AGRICULTURE, SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL, 255.

  Albuquerque, minister to Pedro the Cruel, career of, 339, _et seq._
    --his fall, 343, _et seq._

  Alcherius, Jehan, the works of, on painting, 441, 442.

  Alexandropol, great fortress at, 582.

  ALGERIA, REVIEW OF WORKS ON THE WAR IN, 20.

  Alphonso, king of Castile, 337, 338.

  Alps, chain of the, 408.

  America, the colonisation of, 416.

  AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS, 190.

  ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAINTING, 436.

  Angels, the representation of, in early art, 182.

  Angoulême, the duchess d', 597.

  Anne, empress of Russia, cruelties of, 674.

  Apennines, chain of the, 408.

  Arabs, hatred of the, to the French, 25.

  ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS, 577.

  ARBOUVILLE'S VILLAGE DOCTOR, 542.

  ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS, 468.

  Arlingcourt, the vicomte d', "Dieu le Veut" by, 599.

  Armenian Highlands, the, 577.

  Arms, original connexion of all nobility with, 713.

  Army, proposed reduction of the, 360.

  ART AND ARTISTS IN SPAIN, 63.

  ART, SACRED AND LEGENDARY, 175.

  Art, peculiarities of the early history of, in England, 64
    --state of, during the middle ages, 436.

  Asia, the table-lands, &c. of, 408.

  Australia, physical conformation, &c., of, 414.

  AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY, 614.
    --Part II. 697.

  Austria, the revolutionary movement in, 2
    --reaction in, 4
    --her administration in Dalmatia, 204, 206
    --progress of conservatism in, 357
    --system, &c., of education in, 567, 569
    --composition, growth, &c. of the empire of, 614
    --character of the officers of her army, 204
    --ignorance in, regarding Hungary, 702.

  Austrian empire, statistics of the, 706.


  Bacon, lord, on history and poetry, 759, _et seq._

  Baden, statistics of education in, 568.

  Bairam, the feast of, in Egypt, 50.

  Bari, African kingdom of, 60.

  Bathyanyi, count Louis, Hungarian minister, 697, 698.

  Bavaria, system, &c., of education in, 568, 569.

  Beaton, cardinal, 114, 115
    --his murder, 116.

  BEATTIE'S LIFE OF CAMPBELL, review of, 219.

  Belgium, system, &c., of education in, 568, 569
    --its revolt from Austria, 615.

  Bengal, Macaulay's description of, 390.

  Beni-Abbez, extermination of the tribe of, 28.

  Biography, remarks on, 219.

  Black-hole of Calcutta, Macaulay's picture of the, 389.

  Blake the painter, 183.

  BLANC, A., HIS HISTORY OF CONSPIRACIES, &C., reviewed, 664.

  Blanche of Bourbon, marriage of Pedro the Cruel to, 345
    --her murder, 351.

  Blue Nile, the, 47.

  Bohemia, despotic power of Austria in, 615
    --its attempted revolt, 618.

  Bolognese MS. on painting, the, 442.

  Bolotnikoff, a Russian impostor, 669.

  Bonald, M. de, 537.

  Bonnetat, the Abbé, on the religious state of France, 539.

  BOOK OF THE FARM, review of the, 255.

  Bordeaux, the Duke de, his claim to the throne of France, 194
    --general inclination toward him, 284
    --Didier's account of him, 592, _et seq._

  Bordeaux, the duchess de, 598.

  Borgona, Juan de, 65.

  Boris Godunoff, usurpation of the Russian throne by, 666.

  Borneo, the island of, 415.

  Borrer's campaign in the Kabylie, review of, 20, 23.

  Bothwell, the duke of, his marriage to Mary, &c., 121.

  Bougie, French colony of, 30.

  Bourbon, isle of, bird resembling the Dodo found in, 96.

  Bourbons, era of the, in France, 6
    --reaction in France in their favour, 190
    --on their prospects there, 590.

  Bourgoing, M., on the policy, &c., of Russia, 709.

  Brandon, Charles, career of, 473.

  Bribery, parliamentary, under William III., 401.

  Brussels MS. on painting, the, 442.

  BUDDLE, T., LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN, by
    --Letter I., 679
    --Letter II., 683
    --Letter III., 688
    --Letter IV., 694.

  Bugeaud, marshal, his atrocities in Algeria, 21, 26, _et seq._

  Burke, E., on the religious spirit of England, 536.

  BURKE'S ANECDOTES OF THE ARISTOCRACY, review of, 468.

  BURKE'S CELEBRATED TRIALS, review of, 468.


  Cabardia, inroad of Chamyl into, 142.

  Cabezon, siege of, by Peter the Cruel, 352.

  Cabrera, renewed insurrection under, 248
    --his character, 250.

  Californian gold country, probable effects of the discovery of the,
      416, _et seq._

  Cambraso, Luca, 69.

  Cambridge university, reforms proposed at, 238.

  Camel, flesh of the, 57.

  CAMPBELL, BEATTIE'S LIFE OF, reviewed, 219.

  Canadas, revolutions in progress in, circumstances which have led to
      it, &c., 727.

  Canadian rebellion, causes, &c., of the, 727
    --compensation proposed to actors in, 736.

  Cano, Alonzo, the Spanish artist, 76.

  Capital, Prudhon on, 310.

  CARLISTS IN CATALONIA, the, 248.

  Castellane, general, on the atrocities in Algeria, 21.

  Cat, the Nubian, 54.

  Catalonia, the new Carlist outbreak in, 248.

  Cattle, on the management of, 266
    --names of, at different ages, 268.

  Caucasus, the, 409.

  CAUCASUS AND THE COSSACKS, the, 129.

  CAXTONS, the, Part IX. chap. xxxix., 33
    --chap. xl., 34
    --chap. xli., 36
    --chap. xlii., 39
    --chap. xliii., My father's crotchet on the Hygienic chemistry of
        books, 40
    --chap. xliv., 42
    --chap. xlv., 44
    --Part X. chap. xlvi., 147
    --chap. xlvii., 150
    --chap. xlviii., 151
    --chap. xlix. 156
    --chap. l., 158
    --chap. li., 160
    --Part XI. chap. lii., 287
    --chap. liii., 291
    --chap. liv., 292
    --chap. lv., 293
    --chap. lvi., 294
    --chap. lvii., 298
    --chap. lviii., 300
    --Part XII. chap. lix., 420
    --chap. lx., 422
    --chap. lxi., 424
    --chap. lxii., 426
    --chap. lxiii., 428
    --chap. lxiv., Letter from Pisistratus Caxton to Albert Trevanion,
        Esq., 430
    --Reply, 432
    --chap. lxv. 435
    --Part XIII. chap. lxvi., 637
    --chap. lxvii., 638
    --chap. lxviii., 639
    --chap. lxix., 640
    --chap. lxx., 644
    --chap. lxxi., 645
    --chap. lxxii., 647
    --chap. lxxiii., being a chapter on housetops, 648
    --chap. lxxiv., 650
    --chap. lxxv., 653
    --chap. lxxvi., 654
    --chap. lxxvii., 657
    --chap. lxxviii., 660
    --chap. lxxix., 661.

  Cellini, crucifix by, for the Escurial, 68.

  Chamyl Bey, the Caucasian chief, 130 note, 131, _et seq._, 139.

  Changarnier, general, 276, 277.

  Charles I., Macaulay's views on, 394.

  Charles II., picture of England under, 398.

  Chartists, revolutionary agitation of the, 2.

  Chasi Mollah, a Caucasian chief, 131.

  Chateaubriand, auguries of, relative to the restoration of the
      Bourbons, 196.

  Chateaubriand's Génie du Christianisme, on, 537, 538.

  Chemistry, importance of, to agriculture, 5.

  Chora-Beg, a Caucasian chief, 135.

  Christian art, superiority of, to Greek, 179.

  CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS, 742.

  Church, fostering of art by the, in Spain, 64.

  Circassians, sketches of the, and their struggles against Russia, 129.

  CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS, 727.

  Cladich-Cleugh, description of, 742.

  CLAUDIA AND PUDENS, 487.

  Clergy, the Armenian, 584.

  Clive, lord, Macaulay on, 387.

  Coats of arms, proposed restrictions regarding, 726.

  Cobden, falsification of the predictions of, as to the pacific
      character of the era, 5
    --his financial schemes, 362.

  Cocks, Mr, his translation of Quinet's Ultramontanism, 531, 532.

  Coello, Alonzo, the Spanish painter, 69--Claudio, 77.

  COLLEGE, the, a sketch in verse, 601.

  Collo dance, the, 209.

  Colonial government, defects in the existing system of, 524.

  Colonies, Whig policy regarding the, 15
    --threatened abandonment of them, 363.


  COLONISATION, Mr Wakefield's theory of, 509.

  Colonisation, remarks on, 416
    --French, in Algeria, 30, _et seq._

  Colours, early, used in painting, 449.

  Commercial policy, change in the system of, by the Whigs, 15.

  Commerce, English policy directed to the encouragement of, 10
    --its state, 374, _et seq._

  Committee of defence, the Hungarian, 698.

  Compensation bill, the Canadian, 736.

  Conservatism, reaction abroad in favour of, 529.

  Constitutional association of Montreal, the, 728.

  Continent, decreased consideration of Britain on the, 365.

  Cony, N., murder of, 480.

  COOPER, SIR ASTLEY, Part I., 491.

  Coronel, Alonzo, rebellion and death of, 343.

  Correggio, the angels of, 184.

  Corruption, system of, introduced by William III., 400, 401.

  Cossacks, sketches of the, 134, 135.

  Council of Trent, political influence of the, 533.

  Country gentlemen, proposed volunteer force from the, 718.

  COVENANTERS' NIGHT-HYMN, by [Greek: D], 244.

  CRAIK'S ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE, review of, 468.

  Creation, on the modern theories of, 406.

  Critical essay, the, introduced by the Edinburgh Review, 334.

  Croatia, the revolt of, against Hungary, 630.

  Croats, numbers, &c., of the, 703, 704.

  Crocodile, flesh of the, 57.

  Cromwell, examination of Macaulay's views regarding, 396.

  Cruachan, Ben, ascent of, &c., 744, _et seq._

  Currency, Whig policy regarding the, 15.

  Currents, oceanic, on, 411, _et seq._


  Dadian, Prince, degradation of, 144.

  DALMATIA AND MONTENEGRO, 202.

  Dances, national, on, 209.

  Daniloff, Demetrius, 672.

  Dargo, defeat of the Russians at, 140.

  Darien, the isthmus of, the projected canal at, 417.

  Delta, The Covenanters' Night-hymn by, 244
   --the sycamine, by, 274.

  Demetrius, the Russian impostor, career of, 666, _et seq._

  Democracy, spread of, in Canada, 729.

  Desjobert, A., on the war and the atrocities in Algeria, 21, 24.

  Didier's visit to the Duke de Bordeaux, review of, 590.

  DIES BOREALES. No. I. Christopher under Canvass, 742.

  Diet, the Hungarian, 620.

  Diocletian, the retreat of, 203.

  Discipline, the Russian system of, 144.

  D'Israeli, speech of, on the proposed reduction in the army,
      &c., 369, 371
    --on the state of trade, 376.

  Division of labour, Prudhon on, 309.

  DODO AND ITS KINDRED, THE, 81.

  Dolgorucki, prince, fortitude of, 675.

  Dugueselm, Bertrand, 355, 356.

  Durham, lord, policy, &c. of, in Canada, 733, 735, 740.

  Duvivier, general, on the atrocities in Algiers, 25.

  Dyeing, early history of, 448.


  Edinburgh Review, influence of the, on general literature, 383.

  Education, systems of, in various countries, 567, _et seq._

  Education committee, proceedings of the, in Scotland, 569.

  Education scheme, the Church of Scotland's, 573.

  Edward the Black Prince in Spain, 355.

  Edwards, signor, MS. of, on painting, 442.

  Egypt, sketches in, 47.

  Emigrant, value of a knowledge of agriculture to the, 263.

  Emigration, advantages of, to Great Britain, 509
    --duties of government regarding, 511.

  England, peculiarities of the early history of art in, 64
    --Macaulay's History of, reviewed, 383
    --capabilities of, for colonisation, 509
    --long resistance of, to the Papacy, 533.

  ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR REFORMS, THE, 235.

  English and French Revolutions, contrast between the, 536.

  English ritual, Christopher on the, 751.

  Epic, on the, its origin, characteristics, &c., 757, _et seq._

  Episcopacy, Christopher on, 749.

  Erachus, MS. of, on painting, 442.

  Erivan, fort of, 582, 583.

  Ernest, American thoughts on European revolutions by, 190
    --the reaction, or foreign conservatism, by, 529.

  Escoffier, captivity of, among the Arabs, 22.

  Escurial, the, 68.

  Eshmiadzini, convent of, 583, 584.

  Essay, remarks on the, 383.

  Ethnography, remarks on, 418.

  Europe, decreased consideration of Britain throughout, 365.

  EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS, AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON, 190.

  Evangelists, the early representations of the, 184.

  Exports, diminution in, 375, _et seq._


  Factor, necessary qualifications of the, 262.

  Fadrique, brother of Pedro the Cruel, sketches of, 339, _et seq._
    --his murder, 351.

  Family Compact party in Canada, the, 730.

  Farmer, obligations of the, to the man of science, 258.

  Farmers, formation of a volunteer force from among the, 718.

  Feodor, czar of Russia, 666.

  FEUDALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 718.

  Finance, Whig policy regarding, 15.

  Finances, the, 359.

  Financial Reform Association, schemes of the, 359.

  Foreign conservatism, on, 529.

  Form, relations of, to worship, 750, _et seq._

  France, the revolution in, 2
    --era of the restoration in, 6
    --progress of legitimism in, 190
    --an American on the state of, 194
    --after a year's republicanism, 275
    --conservative reaction in, 357, 529
    --legitimacy in, 590.

  Francis II., measures of, toward Hungary, 622, _et seq._

  Francis Joseph, the accession of, and his position toward the
      Hungarians, 700.

  Frankfort, the atrocities of the Red Republicans at, and their
      effects, 4.

  Frankfort parliament, degraded condition of the, 358.

  Free Church schools, undue favour shown by government to the, 569, 570.

  Free trade, principles of, as advocated by Adam Smith, 12.

  Free-trade system, influence of, on commerce, 374, _et seq._

  FRENCH CONQUERORS AND COLONISTS, 20.

  French Canadians, character, objects, &c. of the, 727.

  French revolution, influence of the, on English literature, 383.

  Frohsdorf, the Duke de Bordeaux at, 594.

  FUSTIAN, REV. CHARLES, LETTERS TO THE, Letter I., 679
    --Letter II., 683
    --Letter III., 688
    --Letter IV., 694.


  Gaddi, Agnolo, a mosaic painter, 445.

  Galitzin, prince, 673.

  Garci Laso, a Spanish noble, murder of, 341, _et seq._

  Geology, importance of, to agriculture, 256
    --on the modern theories of, 406.

  Georgia, struggle of the Circassians against, 129.

  Germany, the revolutionary fervour in, 2.

  Gertrude of Wyoming, publication of, 229.

  Glass-painting, on, 446.

  Glass trade, state of the, 378, 379.

  Godunof, the Russian usurper, 666.

  Godwin's Political Justice, remarks on, 305.

  Gold, expedition up the Nile in search of, 47
    --employment of, in mediæval painting, 447.

  Golden eagle, sketch of a, 747.

  Government, duties of, as regards emigration, 511.

  Grabbe, General, storming of Aculcho by, 139
    --operations of, in the Caucasus, 140.

  Great Britain, revolutionary agitation in, 2
    --reaction against it, 4
    --countenance given to revolution abroad by, 8
    --nature of the party contests in, 9
    --picture of, at the present time, 403
    --her capabilities for colonisation, 509.

  Great Rebellion, examination of Macaulay's views on the, 393.

  Greco, El, the Spanish painter, 66.

  Greek art, remarks on, and its religious character, 177
    --its inferiority to Christian, 179.

  Greek colonisation, system of, 513.

  Greek convent, a, 212.

  GREEN HAND, THE, Part II., 314.

  Gumri, fortress at, 582.

  Guzman, Leonora de, mistress of Alphonso of Castile, 339, _et seq._
    --her death, 340.


  Habitans of Canada, character, &c. of the, 727.

  Hallberg, the Baron von, 578.

  Hamilton, the Duke of, his duel with Lord Mahon, 479.

  Hastings' trial, Macaulay's sketch of, 388.

  Head, sir Francis, on Canada, 734.

  Hegel, errors of Prudhon regarding the system of, 308.

  Henry V., see Bordeaux.

  Henry of Trastamara, sketches of, 339, _et seq._

  Hermentschuk, a Caucasian village, desperate defence of, 131.

  Hermes and Moses, identity of, 178.

  Himalaya range, the, 408.

  Hind, Dr, his theory of colonisation, 512.

  Historical essay, remarks on the, 383.

  History and poetry, relations of, 759.

  Holland, system, &c., of education in, 568, 569.

  Homer, characteristics, &c. of, 757, _et seq._

  Horses, names of, at different ages, 268.

  Hoste, Sir William, his naval action at Lissa, 207.

  Hume, views of, on the Great Rebellion, 394.

  HUNGARY, relations of, to Austria, the recent transactions, &c., 614
    --Part II. 697.

  Hungary, statistics, population, &c. of, 702, _et seq._

  Hussein Khan, an Armenian chief, 583.


  Icebergs, sizes, &c., of, 411.

  Iliad, on the, its leading characteristics, &c., 757, _et seq._
    --its religious character, 762.

  Imports, manufactured, increase in, 377.

  Indian ocean, the, 413.

  Infantry, the Spanish and English, under Pedro the Cruel, 354.

  Infidelity, prevalence of, in France, 529, 539.

  Inglesmendi, origin of the name of, 355.

  Ireland, policy of the Whigs toward, 17.

  Isly, the battle of, 21, 22.

  Italy, the revolutionary movement in, 2
    --its arrestment in the North, 4.

  Ivan IV., or the Terrible, sketch of, 665.

  Ivan, a Cossack servant, sketches of, 583.

  Ivanowa, mistress of Peter the Great, 672.


  JACK MOONLIGHT, 606.

  JAMIESON'S SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART, review of, 175.

  Jeffrey, Lord, character of the writings of, 385.

  Jellachich, baron, 630, 697, _et seq._

  Jews, early toleration enjoyed by the, in Spain, 338, 353, _notes_.

  JOHNSTON'S PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, review of, 406.

  Joseph II., measures of, toward Hungary, 617.

  Judaism, connexion of, with the Grecian mythology, 178.


  KABYLE WAR, review of works on the, 20.

  Kabyles, account of the, 23.

  Kant, affinity claimed by Prudhon to, 307.

  Keks, the, a Nubian tribe, 57, 58.

  Kerka, falls of the, 211, 212.

  KIRKALDY OF GRANGE, memoirs of, reviewed, 112.

  Kirkaldy, sir James, 113.

  Kneves, sir Edmond, trial of, 477.

  Knighthood, the orders of, proposed restrictions regarding, 725.

  Knout, the, in Russia, 144.

  Knox, connexion of with the death of Beaton, 117.

  Konigsmark, count, career of, 471.

  Kossuth, the Hungarian leader, 697.


  Labour, Prudhon on, 306, 309.

  Lady of Shalott, Tennyson's, 458.

  Lafontaine, M., in Canada, 736.

  Lamberg, general, murder of, 698.

  Lamoricière, general, his proposed system of colonisation in Algeria, 30.

  Lance, superiority of the, to the sabre, 145.

  Land, rent and property of, Prudhon on, 312.

  Landlord, qualifications necessary for the, 262.

  Lara, Juan Nunez de, 340, _et seq._

  Last Supper, early paintings representing the, 185.

  League, the Manchester, 370.

  Leather, ancient employment of, for hangings, 448.

  Le Begue, Jehan, MS. of, on painting, 441.

  Legendary art, on, 175.

  LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE, 590.

  Legitimism, progress of, in France, 190.

  Leslie, Norman, death of, 119.

  Levis, the duke de, 594, 595.

  LIFE OF THE SEA, the, by B. Simmons, 482.

  Lissa, the naval action of, 207.

  Literature, influence of the French revolution on, 383.

  Liturgy, the English, Christopher on, 751.

  Lombardy, education in, 568
    --establishment of the Austrian despotic system in, 615
    --its revolt, 618.

  LONDON CRIES, by B. Simmons, 484.

  London university, Campbell's connexion with the, 230.

  Long parliament, examination of the conduct of, 394.

  Lotos Eaters, Tennyson's, 460.

  Louis Napoleon, as president, on, 282.

  Louis Philippe, state of France under, 6
    --the extent of his constitutional right, 194.


  MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 383.

  Macaulay, T. B., on the revolutionary aspect of the times, 5
    --remarks on his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 386.

  Machinery, Prudhon on, 310.

  Mackintosh, Sir James, his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 386.

  Magdalene, early representations of the, 186.

  Maistre, the count de, notices and extracts from the works of,
      191, 195, 198, 530, _et seq._, 532
    --his Considerations sur la France, 538.

  Maitland's History of the Dark Ages, remarks on, 439.

  Majjar races, numbers, &c., of, in Hungary, 703
    --language, the general introduction of, there, 704.

  Manners, ancient and modern, picture of, by Macaulay, 402.

  Manufactures, state of, 375, _et seq._
    --increased importation of, 377.

  Marciana MS. on painting, the, 442.

  Maria Coronel, the legend of, 349.

  Maria de Padilla, career of, 343, _et seq._

  Maria Theresa, devotion of the Hungarians to, 616.

  Marlborough, the duke of, Macaulay's account of, 399.

  Mary Queen of Scots, sketches of, 120, _et seq._

  Mary Tudor, career of, 473.

  Mauritius, the Dodo in, 84.

  Mazaros, Hungarian minister, 697.

  Mechanics, aid given by, to agriculture, 258.

  MEDECIN DU VILLAGE, translation of the, 542.

  Melgund, lord, his proposed changes on the Scottish system of
      education, 567, 569.

  MEMOIRS OF KIRKALDY OF GRANGE, 112.

  MERIMÉE'S PETER THE CRUEL, 337.

  MERRIFIELD'S ORIGINAL TREATISES ON PAINTING, review of, 436.

  Merritt, Mr, on the Canada compensation bill, 737.

  Meteorology, value of, to agriculture, 258.

  Methodists, influence, &c., of the, in Canada, 729.

  Metidja, the, in Algeria, 31, 32.

  Michailoff, defence of the fort of, 136.

  Middle ages, defence of the, 436.

  Military supremacy, establishment of, in France, 4, 7.

  Military tenure, origin of nobility in, 713.

  Militia, importance of a, 717.

  Milton, characteristics of the epic of, as distinguished from Homer,
      758, _et seq._

  Minto, lord, proceedings of, in Italy, 366.

  MODERN BIOGRAPHY, Beattie's Life of Campbell, 219.

  Mohun, lord, career of, 478.

  Monarchy, the elective, of Hungary, 619.

  Monastic institutions, value of, during the middle ages, 438.

  Money and capital, Prudhon on, 310.

  Monkey republic, a Nubian, 51.

  Monmouth, the duke of, his defeat at Sedgemoor, 393.

  Montagnards, party of the, in the French Assembly, 279, _et seq._

  Montemolin, the count de, movement in favour of, 249.

  Montenegro and Montenegrini, sketches of the, 214.

  Montesquieu, the deathbed of, 540.

  Montreal constitutional association, the, 728.

  MOONLIGHT MEMORIES, by B. Simmons, 613.

  Moore, Thomas, the reputation of, 453.

  Moors, early toleration shown the, in Spain, 338, note.

  Morales, the Spanish painter, 69.

  Moray, the regent, sketches of, 122.

  Morlacci, tribe of the, 205.

  Mosaic painting, on, 445.

  Moscow, massacre at, 669
    --capture of, by the Poles, 670.

  Moses, alleged identity of, with Hermes, 178.

  Mountain chains of the earth, the, 407.

  Mountaineer, character of the, 409.

  Mountford the actor, murder of, 478.

  Mudo, El, the Spanish painter, 69.

  Müller, Ottfried, on the Iliad, 761.

  Muntz, Mr, on the state of trade, 378.

  Murides, the, a class of Circassian fanatics, 131, 139.

  Murillo, the painter, 73
    --his paintings of angels, 184.

  Mythology, Grecian, connexion of, with Judaism, 177.


  Najera, the battle of, 355.

  Naples, the revolutionary movement in, 2
    --interference in the affairs of, by the ministry, 366.

  Narses, patriarch of Armenia, 587.

  National Assembly of France, the, 278.

  National debt, rise of the, under William III., 401.

  NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND, 567.

  National policy, characteristics of the English, 10.

  Navarete, Juan Fernandez, (El Mudo,) 69.

  Navigation, contributions of science to, 255.

  Navy, Whig policy regarding the, 15
    --proposed reductions in the, 360.

  Nelson, Dr Wolfred, 736
    --his career in Canada, &c., 738.

  New Guinea, island of, 415.

  New Zealand, island of, 415
    --character, &c., of its aborigines, 527.

  Nicholas, the emperor, 579, 581
    --example of summary justice by, 144
    --his interference in Hungary, 707, _et seq._

  NILE, WERNE'S EXPEDITION TOWARDS THE SOURCES OF, reviewed, 47.

  Noah, traditions regarding, in Armenia, 577, 578.

  Nobility, origin of, 713
    --proposed volunteer force from the, 718, _et seq._
    --territorial depression of, 723
    --proposed changes in the system of creating, &c., 724.

  Nobility, the Russian, servility of, 673, 674.

  Novogorod, massacre at, 665.

  Nubia, sketches in, 51.


  Oat, varieties of the, 269
    --meal, 271.

  Ocean, the, its physical conformation, &c., 410.

  Oil-painting, early history of, 449.

  OPENING OF THE SESSION, the, 357.

  Orloff, Alexis, 676.

  Otrepief, the Russian impostor, career of, 666
    --his death, 669.

  Oxford, proposed reforms at, 235, 243.


  Pacific character of the age, Cobden on the, 5.

  Paduan MS. on painting, the, 442.

  Paget, Mr, on the state of Hungary, 702.

  Painting, ancient practice of, 436.

  Palace of art, Tennyson's poem of the, 459.

  Pantheon, the, in the Escurial, 70.

  Papacy, formal organisation of the, by the council of Trent, 533.

  Paradise Lost, characteristics of, 758, _et seq._

  Paris, state of, during the revolution of 1848, 6, _et seq._
    --the affair of the 29th January at, 275.

  Parker, admiral sir William, at Messina, 367.

  Parliament, meeting and proceedings of, 357.

  Parochial school system of Scotland, review of the, 567.

  Party contests, nature of the, in England, 9.

  Passport system, the, 204.

  Patron saints, on, 177.

  Pauperism, emigration as a security against, 509.

  Pelenja, African town of, 60.

  Pembroke, the earl of, 479.

  Pennsylvania, system, &c., of education in, 567, 569.

  Pensioners, the corps of, 716.

  Percy, lady Elizabeth, career of, 471.

  Percys, origin of the, 469.

  Peter the cruel, sketches of the life, &c., of, 337.

  Peter the Great, sketches of, 671.

  Physical Atlas, Johnston's, review of, 406.

  Pigs, names of, at different ages, 269.

  Pipis, the town of, 579.

  Pius IX., commencement of revolutionary innovation by, 2
    --his overthrow, 4.

  Pleasures of Hope, publication of the, 228.

  POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART, the, 175.

  Poetry and history, relations of, 759.

  Poetry. The Covenanter's Night Hymn, by [Greek: D], 244
    --The Sycamine, by [Greek: D], 274
    --Life of the Sea, by B. Simmons, 482
    --London Cries, by the same, 484
    --Moonlight Memories, by the same, 613
    --The College, 601.

  Poles, massacre of, at Moscow, 669
    --and by the, 670.

  Political essay, new character given to the, by the Edinburgh
      Review, 384.

  Presbyterianism, Christopher on, 749, _et seq._

  Prince, colonel, on the Canada compensation bill, 739.

  Princess, Tennyson's, 463.

  Prometheus Vinctus, myth of the, 178.

  Property, Prudhon on, 307.

  PRUDHON, CONTRADICTIONS ECONOMIQUES, 304.

  Prussia, the revolutionary movement in, 2
    --reaction in, 4
    --system and statistics of education in, 567, _et seq._

  Pugatscheff, a Russian pretender, 675.

  Puseyism, letters on, 679.

  Pym, Sir Charles, murder of, 478.

  Pyrenees, range of the, 408.


  Quinet, Professor, 530
    --his Ultramontanism, 531, _et seq._


  Raffaelle, last supper by, 185.

  Rajewski, General, 137.

  Razzia, sketch of a, in Algeria, 27.

  REACTION, THE, or Foreign Conservatism, 529.

  Rebellion, the Canadian, causes, &c., of the, 727
    --compensation to actors in, 736.

  Red Republicans, conspiracy of the, on the 29th January, 275.

  Reform party in Canada, objects, &c., of the, 729.

  Reformation, influence of the, on the character of social conflicts, 8
    --in Scotland, sketches of its history, &c., 112, _et seq._
    --influence of its failure in France on French history, 535.

  Reforme, the, on the state of Paris, 7.

  Religion, on the relation between, and art, 175
    --subordination of art to, during the middle ages, 436
    --connexion of French history with, 529.

  Rembrandt, the religious paintings of, 183.

  Rent and property in land, Prudhon on, 312.

  Representation scheme, proposed new, in Canada, 740.

  Republicanism, France after a year's experience of, 275.

  Restoration, era of the, in France, 6.

  Revolution, countenance given to, by the Whigs, 8, 16
    --that of 1688, examination of Macaulay's views on, 398.

  REVOLUTIONS, THE YEAR OF, 1.

  Revolutions, the recent, thoughts of an American on, 190.

  Ribera, José de, El Spagnoletto, 77.

  Ricos Hombres of Spain, the, 337.

  Ricsay, Count Adam, 698.

  Ritual of the English Church, on the, 751.

  River systems of the earth, the, 409.

  Rodriguez, the Solitaire of, 94

  ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY, the, 664.

  Romanism, influence of the Council of Trent on, 533.

  Rome, commencement of the revolutionary agitation in, 2.

  Rosen, Baron, in the Caucasus, 131.

  Royalist tendency, progress of, in France, 190.

  Russia and the Circassians, sketches of the war between, 129
    --statistics, &c., of education in, 568, 569
    --the interference of, in Hungary, 706, _et seq._

  RUSSIAN HISTORY, sketches of, 664.


  Sabre and lance, comparative merits of the, 145.

  SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART, on, 175.

  Saddle-bag party in Canada, the, 730.

  St Andrews, siege of the castle of, 118.

  St Archangelo, convent of, 212.

  St Audemar, Petrus de, MS. of, on painting, 442.

  St Filomena, legend of, 187.

  St Nicholas, legend of, 187.

  St Paolo fueré-le-mura, church of, 185.

  Salona, the antiquities of, 208.

  Sass, General, in the Caucasus, 135.

  Say, J. B., on the division of labour, 309.

  Scardona, town of, 210.

  Science, obligations of agriculture to, 255.

  SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE, 255.

  Schilluks, race of the, 54.

  Schoolmasters of Scotland, the memorial of, 571.

  Sclavic races, numbers, state, &c., of, in Hungary, 703.

  Scotland, sketches of the history of, at the period of the
      Reformation, 112, _et seq._
    --the statistical accounts of, reviewed, 162
    --the system of national education in, 567.

  Scottish Kirk, Christopher on the, 749, _et seq._

  Secular education, insufficiency of, 569.

  Sedgemoor, battle of, Macaulay's picture of, 391.

  Serbe races of Hungary, the, 703.

  SESSION, OPENING OF THE, 357.

  Sheep, feeding of, on turnips, 265
    --names of, at different ages, 267.

  Shusky, Andrew, a Russian Boyar, death of, 665.

  Shusky, Basil, heroic courage of, 668
    --becomes Czar, 669.

  Sicily, the revolutionary movement at, 2.

  Sign, sketches at the city of, 213.

  Silk trade, state of the, 377.

  Simuel Levi, treasurer to Pedro the cruel, 347
    --his disgrace and death, 352.

  Simmons, B., Life of the Sea, by, 482
    --London Cries, 484
    --Moonlight Memories, 613.

  Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, remarks on, 164.

  SIR ASTLEY COOPER. Part I., 491.

  Sisters, the, Tennyson's poem of, 458.

  Slave-trade and slavery, policy of the Whigs regarding, 16.

  Slave-trade of Circassia, the, 137.

  Slovacks, numbers, feeling, &c., of the, in Hungary, 703, 712.

  Smith, Adam, free-trade principles as advocated by, 12.

  Smith, Sidney, his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 386.

  Solitaire, the, a congener of the Dodo, 94.

  Somerset, the proud duke of, 473.

  Spagnoletto, El, 77.

  Spain, the new Carlist movement in, 248
    --under Pedro the cruel, sketches of, 337
    --present state of our relations with, 365
    --the mountain chains, &c., of, 408.

  Spalato, sketches of, 207.

  SPANISH ART AND ARTISTS, 63.

  Stadion, Count, the Austrian minister, 701.

  Stanley, Lord, on the present position of the country, &c., 365, 569.

  STATISTICAL ACCOUNTS OF SCOTLAND, 162.

  Statistics, remarks on the study of, 162, _et seq._

  Stenka, Razin, a Russian robber, career of, 671.

  Stephen, the archduke, Palatine of Hungary, 697.

  STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM, vol. I., review of, 255.

  STIRLING'S ART AND ARTISTS OF SPAIN, review of, 63.

  Stourton, Lord, trial, and execution of, 477.

  Strathaven veal, fattening, &c., of, 273.

  STRICKLAND'S THE DODO AND ITS KINDRED, review of, 81.

  Suez, isthmus of, railway or canal for the, 418.

  Surgeon, Sir A. Cooper on the qualifications of the, 494.

  Sweden, education in, 569.

  SWORD OF HONOUR, the, chapter i., 98
    --chap. ii., 102
    --chap. iii., 103
    --chap. iv., 105
    --chap. v., 107.

  SYCAMINE, the, by [Greek: D], 274.

  SYSTÈME DES CONTRADICTIONS ECONOMIQUES, on the, 304.

  Szemere, the Hungarian minister, 697.


  Talking Oak, Tennyson's, on, 462.

  Tarrakanoff, the princess, adventures of, 676
    --her death, 678.

  Tartars, contests of the Circassians with the, 129.

  Taxation, change in the system of, by the Whigs, 16.

  Tcherkesses or Circassians, the, 130.

  Tello, brother of Pedro the cruel, sketches of, 340, 344, 345.

  TENNYSON'S POEMS, 453.

  Theotocopuli, the Spanish painter, 66.

  Thibet, the physical conformation of, 408.

  Thucydides and Homer, parallel between, 759.

  Thynne, Thomas, Esq., career of, 471.

  Tibaldi, Pellegrino, 69.

  Tilting festival in Dalmatia, a, 213.

  Titian, paintings executed for the Escurial by, 68
    --angels of, 184
    --alleged practice of, in painting, 450.

  Toledo, cathedral of, concentration of artistic skill on the, 65.

  Toro, capture of, by Pedro the cruel, 348.

  Tractarianism, letters on, 679.

  Trade, effects of the free-trade system on, 374, _et seq._

  Transcribers of the middle ages, the, 439, 444.

  Traü, town of, 210.

  Tridentine council, political influence of the, 533.

  Tristan, Luis, the painter, 67.

  Tshetshens, the, and their struggles against Russia, 130, 131, _et seq._

  Turkey, danger to, from Russian interference in Hungary, 709.

  Turnau, Baron, residence of, in Circassia, 132.

  Turnip, on the, 264.


  Ultramontanism, prospects, &c., of, in France
    --Quinet's work on, &c., 531, _et seq._

  Ulysses, Tennyson's, 461.

  United States, systems, statistics, &c., of education in, 568, 569.

  Universities, reforms proposed at the, 235.

  Urban population, disqualification of, to form a volunteer force, 718.


  Van Diemen's Land, physical conformation, &c., of, 415.

  Vegetable physiology, importance of, to agriculture, 257.

  Velasquez, the painter, 70.

  Vienna, suppression of the revolutionary movement in, 4
    --revolt of, connexion of the Hungarians with, 699
    --ignorance in, regarding Hungary, 702.

  VILLAGE DOCTOR, the, a tale, 452.

  Vision of Sin, Tennyson's poem called the, 459.

  Vissomaz, convent of, 211.

  Vitoria, combat at, in the time of Pedro the cruel, 354.

  Vladika of Montenegro, the, 216, _et seq._

  Volpato MS. on painting, the, 442.

  Volunteer force, proposals for a new, 717, _et seq._


  WAGNER'S CAUCASUS AND THE COSSACKS, review of, 129
    --his ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS, review of, 577.

  WAKEFIELD'S ART OF COLONISATION, review of, 509.

  Walckvogel or Dodo, the, 84.

  Wallace's Dirge, 227.

  Walpole, sir Robert, system of parliamentary corruption employed by, 401.

  War, necessity and advantages of, 716.

  Waste lands, colonial, necessity for proper distribution of, 511
    --Wakefield's proposed system regarding, 515.

  Wax, painting on, 447.

  WERNE'S EXPEDITION UP THE WHITE NILE, review of, 47.

  Wheat, varieties, &c., of, 270.

  Whigs, countenance given to revolution abroad by the, 8, 16
    --change of English policy introduced by, 12, _et seq._

  WHITE NILE, the, 47.

  WILKINSON'S DALMATIA AND MONTENEGRO, review of, 202.

  William III., policy pursued by, 400, _et seq._

  Williaminoff, General, 136.

  WILLIAMS' CLAUDIA AND PUDENS, review of, 487.

  Wordsworth, established reputation of, 453
    --remarks on, 765.

  Woronzoff, count, in the Caucasus, 131, 141.

  Wurtemberg, education in, 568.


  YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS, the, 1.


  Zurbaran, Francisco de, 76.


_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._


[Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]