BLACKWOOD’S
                          EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
             NO. CCCCLXI.      MARCH, 1854.      VOL. LXXV.




                               CONTENTS.


         DISRAELI: A BIOGRAPHY,                             255
         THE QUIET HEART.—PART IV.,                         268
         THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE PROTECTORATE IN TURKEY, 285
         THE TWO ARNOLDS,                                   303
         COUNT SIGISMUND’S WILL,                            315
         NEWS FROM THE FARM,                                329
         ALEXANDER SMITH’S POEMS,                           345
         THE EPIDEMICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES,                  352
         THE SONG OF METRODORUS,                            367
         THE NEW REFORM BILL,                               369


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           PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.




                              BLACKWOOD’S

                          EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

             NO. CCCCLXI.      MARCH, 1854.      VOL. LXXV.




                       DISRAELI: A BIOGRAPHY.[1]


Compliments are of various kinds. It is not always necessary that they
should assume a laudatory form—they may be conveyed quite as powerfully
through the medium of abuse. Some men there are whose eulogy is in
itself a disgrace. Few would have cared to see their characters upheld
in the columns of the _Age_ or the _Satirist_—fewer still would like to
hear a panegyric on their morals delivered from a hustings by the lips
of Mr Reynolds. If we had to choose between total obscurity, and a
reputation founded only upon the testimony of Mr Cobden, we should not,
for one moment, hesitate to embrace the first alternative. To be
designated in the polite circle of a sporting tavern as a “nobby cove,”
or a “real swell,” is not, according to our ideas, a high object of
ambition; and we should feel somewhat dubious of the real character of
the individual whose praise was in the mouths of all the cabmen.

On the contrary, there can be no doubt that abuse proceeding from
certain quarters is in itself a considerable recommendation, and may
even be matter of pride to the party who is made the subject of it. The
just Aristides never experienced a thrill of more agreeable complacency
than when, at the request of the illiterate Athenian, he wrote his own
name on the ostracising shell. We may rely upon it that Coriolanus felt
far more gratified than incensed when the howling and hooting of the
plebeians enabled him to deliver his stinging diatribe, and to express
the intensity of his scorn. Virgil regarded the low ribaldry of Mævius
as a direct acknowledgment of his literary accomplishments; and Cicero
in one of his speeches expresses himself as being under obligations to a
notorious blackguard, who had selected him as the object of his attacks.

Mr Disraeli, we think, lies under similar obligations, though the author
of the book before us is simply an ineffable blockhead. Mean, however,
as are his abilities, he has certainly contrived to strike out a
literary novelty; though it may be doubted whether his example, if
followed by men of average intellect, would tend to the improvement or
increase the delights of society. In the pages of a review or the
columns of a magazine, considerable freedom is used in discussing the
merits of eminent living literary or political characters. Such
criticisms or sketches are, no doubt, often tinted with party
colours—are sometimes rather severe—but are rarely, if ever, scurrilous.
But we do not remember any instance parallel to this, where a writer has
selected for his subject an eminent living character, and has proceeded
with deliberate, though most dull malignity, to rake up every particular
of his life which he dared to touch upon, to gather every scrap which he
either has or is supposed to have written from the years of his nonage
upwards, and then to lay before the public, under the title of a
biography, a ponderous volume of no fewer than 646 pages. Should this
example be followed, and the practice become general, it appears to us
that there will be strong necessity for revising the law of libel. We
have grave doubts whether, under any circumstances, one man is entitled
to take so gross a liberty with another. If each of us were to sit down
and compile biographies of his living neighbours, this would be no world
to live in. Either there would be an enormous increase of actions for
defamation, or the cudgel, horse-whip, and pistol, would be brought into
immediate requisition. Let us, however, concede that party animosity,
personal antipathy, or private hatred may, either singly or
collectively, be held to justify the perpetration of such an outrage—let
us suppose that there is such an accumulation of black bile and venom in
the interior of the unhappy human reptile that he must either give vent
to it or be suffocated—he is at least bound to put his name on the
title-page, so that the world may know what manner of man the deliberate
accuser is. For aught we are told to the contrary, this volume may have
been written by Jack Ketch or one of his subordinate assistants.
Evidently it is not written by one who possesses the ordinary feelings
of a gentleman, though it is possible that he may move in good society,
bear a respectable name, and be regarded by veteran red-tapists as a
young man of considerable promise. He is the counterpart of Randal
Leslie in _My Novel_—cold, selfish, and malignant, without a spark of
enthusiasm or a generous thought in his whole composition. Envy is the
grand passion of his mind; and, in this case, hatred co-operates with
envy. The object of this book is to run down Mr Disraeli on all points;
to exhibit him as an impostor in politics, a quack in literature, a
Maw-worm in religion, and a hypocrite in morals. We defy any one to
peruse twenty pages of the work without being convinced that such was
the intention of the author of _Disraeli, a Biography_; and yet the
skulking creature has not courage enough to show himself openly. He even
tries to assume a disguise so as to deceive those who might otherwise
have traced him to his hole. “Conscious,” says the cockatrice, “of no
motive but the public good, with little to hope or fear from any
political party, strongly attached to principles, but indulgent to mere
opinions, neither Whig nor Tory, but a respecter both of the sincere
Conservative and the sincere Liberal, I have no dread of the partisan’s
malice.” Mercy on us! who can this very mysterious person be? “No motive
but the public good!”—“little to hope or fear from any political
party!”—“neither Whig nor Tory!”—what sort of a politician is this? He
butters Mr Gladstone, he butters Lord John Russell, he butters Lord
Palmerston, he butters Mr Hume—his benevolence to every one except Mr
Disraeli is quite marvellous—but more especially doth he laud and
magnify the men who are now in power. “One of the humblest individuals
of this great empire has thought it necessary to enter his protest
against this new system of morality, which threatens to become generally
prevalent!” Humility!—morality!—Brave words, Mr Randal Leslie—but it
really was not worth while to add such hypocrisy to your other sins. We
know you a great deal better than you suppose; and your own past
history, insignificant though you are, has been too politically
profligate to escape reprobation. You say you are neither Whig nor Tory,
and, for once in your life, you speak the truth. But you were a Tory,
and you became a Whig, and you are now a placeman; and you would hold
that place of yours as readily under Mr Cobden as under Lord Aberdeen.
You were once a Peelite, but you had not even the decency to wait for
the fortunes of your chiefs. You lusted after office, and took the bribe
the instant it was tendered by the Whigs; and in consequence you are
universally looked upon and distrusted as the most venal, selfish, and
unprincipled young man of your generation. It would indeed be absurd in
you to entertain any “dread of the partisan’s malice.” You have placed
yourself in such a position that you may defy malice of any kind. Your
career, though obscure, has been so contemptible that your bitterest
enemy could not make you seem worse than you were. It must, however, be
allowed that you have materially added to your infamy by the present
publication.

We have thought it our duty, at the outset, to make these stringent
remarks, not because this writer has selected Mr Disraeli as the object
of his attack, but because we altogether disapprove of, and abominate,
this style of literary warfare. It is, thank heaven, as yet uncommon
among us; and the best way of preventing its occurrence is to make an
example of the caitiff who has introduced it. The idea, however, is not
altogether original. It was engendered in Holywell Street; from which
Paphian locality, as we are given to understand, various works,
professing to be “Private Histories,” and “Secret Memoirs” of eminent
living characters, were formerly issued; and this writer, being no doubt
familiar with that sort of literature, has thought proper to extend the
range of his license. We have, all of us, a decided interest in
maintaining the respectability of controversy. A public career does
indeed render men very amenable to criticism and comment; and it hardly
can be said that there is anything unfair in contrasting public
professions and public acts. A statesman, or even a less distinguished
politician, must be prepared to hear his former opinions set against
those which he now enunciates, and he may even consider it his duty
elaborately to vindicate the change. But to compile biographies of
living men—mixing up, as in this case, their mere literary effusions
with their political lives, and attempting, by distortion and base
inuendo, to render them contemptible in the eyes of the public—is an
outrage on common decency, and must excite universal scorn and disgust.

The moral perceptions of the man who could write a book like this must,
of course, be very weak; nevertheless, it is evident that even his
conscience gave him an occasional twinge, by way of reminding him of the
extreme dastardliness of his conduct. He could not but be aware that no
honourable or chivalrous opponent of Mr Disraeli could read this tissue
of malignity without experiencing a sensation of loathing; and,
therefore, he has attempted, at the very outset, to vindicate himself,
by representing Mr Disraeli as entitled to no quarter or courtesy, on
account of his addiction to personality and satire. It may be as well to
take down his own words, because we shall presently have occasion to
make a few observations connected with this charge.


  “I admit fully that, if any man be entirely destitute of all claim to
  indulgence, it is the subject of this biography. Personality is his
  mighty weapon, which he has used like a gladiator whose only object
  is, at all events, to inflict a deadly wound upon his adversary, and
  not like a chivalrous knight, who will at any risk obey the laws of
  the tournament. Mr Disraeli has been a true political Ishmael. His
  hand has been raised against every one. He has even run amuck, like
  the wild Indian.

  “Who can answer a political novel? Libels the most scandalous may be
  insinuated, the best and wisest men may be represented as odious, the
  purest intentions and most devoted patriotism may be maligned, under
  the outline of a fictitious character. The personal satirist is truly
  the pest of society, and any method might be considered justifiable by
  which he could be hunted down. It would, therefore, seem only a kind
  of justice to mete out to Mr Disraeli the same measure which he has
  meted out to others. As he has ever used the dagger and the bowl, why,
  it may be asked, should not the deadly chalice be presented back to
  him, and enforced by the same pointed weapon? This may be
  unanswerable; yet I hold that no generous man would encounter an
  ungenerous one with his own malice.”


Why not, Randal? If what you say regarding Mr Disraeli be true, you are
perfectly entitled to encounter him with his own weapons. You complain
of his having written political novels, in which certain characters,
whom you regard as sublime and pure, are represented in a different
light. Well, then, do you write a novel of the same kind, showing up Mr
Disraeli under a fictitious name, and we shall review it with all the
pleasure in the world. If it is clever, sparkling, and original, you
shall not want laudation. But you know very well that you could as soon
swim the Hellespont as compose two readable chapters of a novel—that you
have not enough of invention to devise a plot, or of imagination to
shadow forth a character; and, therefore, you are pleased to assume the
magnanimous, and to drivel about the dagger and the bowl. No one who
reads your book will believe that you would abstain from the use of any
weapon which you could wield against Mr Disraeli—(how should he, when
you glide before us as a masked assassin?)—but he will be at no loss to
divine the reason why you decline an encounter of wit. We are perfectly
sincere when we say that your intense dulness ought in some measure to
be accepted as an extenuation for your malevolence, for you have not art
enough to disguise or conceal the hatred which is rankling in your
breast.

But let us examine a little more narrowly into the charge preferred
against Mr Disraeli. It is said that personality is his weapon, which he
has used like a gladiator; and we understand the averment to be that
both his political speeches and his literary works display this
tendency. In considering this matter, it will be proper to separate the
two characters, and look first to the politician, and afterwards to the
novelist.

We shall at once admit that, in the House of Commons, Mr Disraeli is
feared as an antagonist. He possesses vast power of satire, a ready wit,
and has a thorough confidence and reliance in his own resources. He has
besides an intense contempt for that kind of cant in which it formerly
was the fashion to indulge—for the solemn airs of pompous mediocrity,
and for the official jargon and conventional hypocrisies of the Treasury
bench. When, in 1846, the late Sir Robert Peel abandoned the cause of
that party of which he was the accredited leader, he naturally became
the object of unsparing criticism and attack. But his offence was a very
grave one. It fully justified the taunt of Mr Disraeli, which this
writer affects to consider as remarkably offensive, that, “like the
Turkish admiral who, during the war in the Levant, had steered his fleet
into the port of the enemy, Sir Robert Peel had undertaken to fight for
this cause, and now assumed the right of following his own judgment.”
The comparison was certainly not a flattering one to the Prime Minister;
but it had this recommendation that it was strictly apposite, and that
no man could gainsay it. It is the height of absurdity to maintain that
personality could be, or ought to have been, excluded from the
discussions and debates that followed. Why, it was Sir Robert Peel
himself who, by his extraordinary change of policy, made this a personal
question, and brought it to a direct issue between the betrayer and the
betrayed. Are we really to be told at the present day that measures
alone should be discussed in the Houses of Parliament, and that all
commentary on the conduct and previous career of statesmen ought to be
avoided? Are we to be allowed no latitude of reference to former
speeches—no allusion to former protestations? Ought tergiversation to be
permitted to pass without notice or censure—ought duplicity to escape
exposure? If not, we boldly ask in what respect Mr Disraeli has sinned
so grievously as to merit the reproach of this Tartuffe? It may be said,
indeed, that he pushed his resentment of the unparalleled betrayal too
far; and we daresay, now that years have intervened, he may himself
regret the occasional acrimony of his remarks. That is the natural
feeling of every generous-minded man who has been compelled to take an
active share in public discussion; for it is impossible to restrain at
all times the excited passions, and sometimes the hour for calm
retrospection does not arrive, until the occasion of the original
offence has passed into matter of history. Mr Macaulay, in the preface
to the collected edition of his speeches, says with reference to this
very point: “I should not willingly have revived, in the quiet times in
which we are so happy as to live, the memory of those fierce contentions
in which so many years of my public life were passed. Many expressions
which, when society was convulsed by political dissension, and when the
foundations of government were shaking, were heard by an excited
audience with sympathy and applause, may, now that the passions of all
parties have subsided, be thought intemperate and acrimonious. It was
especially painful to me to find myself under the necessity of recalling
to my own recollection, and to the recollection of others, the keen
encounters which took place between the late Sir Robert Peel and
myself.” So it will ever be with the generous and high-spirited; but it
does not follow therefrom that the attacks were not deserved. Of course
such cold toads as Mr Randal Leslie cannot be expected to understand or
appreciate the feeling either of indignation or of regret. Having no
sympathy but for self, and possessing no clear discernment of the
difference between right and wrong, between candour and duplicity—having
been trained from their boyhood upwards to believe that falsehood,
trickery, and deceit, are component and necessary qualities of
statesmanship—they, naturally enough, stand aghast at the audacity which
tore the veil from organised hypocrisies, and hate the exposer with a
hatred more enduring than the love of woman. Hence this cant about
personality, which they talk of as if it were a new element in political
discussion. Now, the fact is, that no political discussion ever was
conducted, or ever will be conducted, without personality. You cannot
separate the idea from the man, the argument from him who uses it. The
first orator of antiquity, Demosthenes, was personal to a degree never
yet paralleled, as every one who has read his Philippics must allow. In
this he was imitated by Cicero, whose stinging invectives, as witness
the speeches against Catiline and Verres, have commanded the admiration
of the world. Chatham’s first speech in the House of Commons was a
purely personal one, no doubt provoked by his antagonist, but almost
witheringly severe. Canning and Brougham dealt largely both in satire
and personality—indeed, it would hardly be possible to find a speech of
the latter orator free from a strong infusion of that quality which the
moral Randal deplores. In our own time no great question has been
discussed without personality; and for this reason, that it would be
impossible to discuss it otherwise. No doubt personality may sometimes
be carried greatly too far. When Lord John Russell taunted Lord George
Bentinck with his former addiction to the turf, intending to convey
thereby an unworthy inuendo, he committed a serious fault, because he
violated gentlemanly decorum. When the late Sir Robert Peel accused Mr
Cobden of a desire to have him assassinated, he was not only
ultra-personal, but outrageously and unpardonably unjust. When the same
statesman could find no better answer to Mr Disraeli, than a charge that
the latter had at one time been willing to hold office under him, he
was, besides being directly personal, guilty of a breach of confidence.
We are aware it is the fashion among the present Ministry to protest
against personalities. Let us ask whether it was his administrative
talent or his practice in personal warfare that elevated Mr Bernal
Osborne to the post of Secretary to the Admiralty? Ministers are far
from objecting to a Spartacus, when they know they may reckon on his
assistance—it is only when a keen weapon is flashing on the other side
that they think it necessary to make an outcry. Party warfare we cannot
expect to see an end of; but, in the name of common sense, let us at
least eschew humbug. The House of Commons is, even now, a queer
assembly, and Lord John Russell may make it worse; still, let us believe
that the members collectively entertain that ordinary sense of propriety
that they will not permit anything to be uttered within the walls of St
Stephens, which calls for direct reprobation, without immediate
challenge, and without censure, if an apology is not made for the
intemperance. One of the principal duties of the Speaker is to repress
and check the use of unparliamentary language. If any accusation, not
falling under that restriction, is preferred, the members of the House
are the judges of its propriety, and may be expected, in the aggregate,
to enforce the rules which govern the conduct of gentlemen. It is,
therefore, most gross impertinence in Mr Randal Leslie to challenge what
Parliament has not challenged. Mr Disraeli’s present position, as the
leader of the largest independent, and most influential section of the
House of Commons, is the best answer to the insinuations of this
contemptible little snake, who, we apprehend, will not receive, from his
political superiors, the meed of gratitude which he expected for his
present unfortunate attempt. It is the misfortune of your Randal
Leslies, that they never can, even by blundering, stumble on the right
path. Set them to defend in writing some particular line of policy, and
the first six pages of their lucubrations will convince the impartial
reader that they are advocating something unsound or untrue, by dint of
their unnecessary affectation of candour. Set them to attack an
opponent, and they fail; because they cannot descry the points upon
which he is really vulnerable, and because they think indiscriminate
abuse is more effective than artistic criticism, of which latter branch
of accomplishment they are wholly incapable. This lad has not even the
talent to malign with plausibility. He calls Mr Disraeli “a true
political Ishmael.” What does the blockhead mean? Does he not know that
the individual whom he denominates Ishmael, is at this moment at the
head of the most powerful separate party in the British House of
Commons?

In justice to the leading members of the Coalition Cabinet, we shall
state our opinion, (not altogether unfortified by certain rumours which
have reached us), that they were unaware of this singularly silly
attempt, on the part of one of their subordinates, to attack an eminent
character in opposition, until the fool launched it from the press
before a disgusted public. Ill-judging Randal Leslie conceived that his
work would make a grand political sensation; so, after the manner of his
kind, he kept his secret to himself, and worked like a perfect
galley-slave, or like a thorough scavenger, at his vocation. Whatever Mr
Disraeli had said or written on politics, or any subject trenching upon
politics, from the period of his first publication down to his last
parliamentary speech, Randal had read and noted; and the poor knave at
last concluded that he had a good case to lay before the public. And
what does his political case, by his own account, amount to? Simply
this: That Mr Disraeli, from his very earliest years, has detested and
denounced the tenets of the Whig party; and that he has always supported
the cause of the people—not in the democratic, but in the real and
truthful sense of the word—against the villanies of organised
oppression, and the rapacity of manufacturing domination. But these
things belong rather to his literary than to his political character.
Randal thought he had made a great hit in bringing them forward. He must
have been very much amazed when an elder and more sagacious colleague
explained to him that, instead of throwing dirt upon the object of his
enmity, he had unconsciously been passing upon him a high encomium, such
as any statesman might be proud of for his panegyric; and that his work,
if generally read, would greatly tend to sap the faith in present
political combinations. After all, how stand the facts? Ten years ago Mr
Disraeli, a member of the Tory party, but not then greatly distinguished
as a politician, nor possessing that influence which hereditary rank and
high connection give to others, had the sagacity to discern that Sir
Robert Peel was not a safe leader, and the courage to make the avowal.
Randal quotes his language in 1844. “He had always acknowledged that he
was a party man. It was the duty of a member of the House of Commons to
be a party man. He, however, would only follow a leader who was prepared
to lead.” No doubt the lips of many a Tadpole and Taper curled with
derision at this audacious declaration of contempt for constituted
authority, on the part of a young man, the tenor of whose speeches they
could not rightly understand. He professed himself to be a Tory, but he
often uttered sentiments which seemed to them strongly to savour of
Radicalism. He did not scruple to avow his sympathy with the labouring
classes, his desire to see them elevated and protected, and his wish for
the adoption of a more genial, considerate, and paternal course of
legislation. He traced the agitation for the Charter to the
establishment of the supremacy of a middle-class government in the
country; and boldly announced his opinion that this monarchy of the
middle classes might one day shake our institutions and endanger the
throne. In particular he denounced centralisation—a great and growing
evil, to which he attributed much of the existing discontent. Such views
were of course unintelligible to the Tadpoles and Tapers—men who
considered statesmanship a science only in so far as it could insure
ascendancy to their party, and places to themselves. There were then a
good many veteran Tadpoles and Tapers; and Sir Robert Peel was doing his
best to educate a new generation of them to supply inevitable vacancies.
Naturally enough they regarded Mr Disraeli as a pure visionary; but
there were others upon whom his argument and example were not lost.
Young men began to consider whether, after all, they were doing their
duty by blindly submitting themselves to party domination, as rigid and
exacting as the most autocratic rule. They were desired, under very
severe penalties for rising politicians, not to venture to think for
themselves, but to do as the minister ordered. They were not to take up
their time in unravelling social questions—if they wanted mental
exercise, let them serve on a railway committee. There might be, and
doubtless was, a cry of distress and a wailing from without—but the
minister would see to that, settle everything by an increase of the
police force, or perhaps a coercion bill; and the Treasury whip would
give them due notice when they were expected to vote. In short, young
members of Parliament were then treated exactly as if they had been
children, incapable of forming an opinion; and they were told, in almost
as many words, that if they did not choose to submit themselves to this
dictation, the doors of the Treasury would remain closed against them
for ever. The effect of this insolence—for we can give it no other
name—was that a considerable portion of the young aristocracy rebelled.
They would not submit to such preposterous tyranny, and they cared not a
rush for any of the Ministerial threats. They saw that, in the country,
there was distress—that discontent and disaffection were very rife—and
that, in the very heart of England, a large body of the working
population were absolutely in a state of bondage. They could not find it
in their hearts to greet, with exultation, the announcement of increased
exports, whilst every year the condition of the producers seemed to be
becoming worse. Looking to the state, they saw two great parties under
autocratic chiefs, bidding against each other for popularity—that is,
power—and for office to their respective staffs, without any real regard
for the interest or improvement of the masses. That was not a spectacle
likely to find favour in the eyes of a young, ardent, and
generous-minded man; and accordingly from that time we may date the
formation of another party, still on the increase, and rapidly
augmenting, which, rejecting what was bad in the old Toryism, but
maintaining its better principle—resolute to preserve the constitution,
but cordially sympathising with the people—is preparing to encounter,
and will encounter with success, the cold-blooded democracy of
Manchester, which would destroy everything that is venerable, noble, or
dear to England, and establish on the ruins a serfdom of Labour, with
Capital as the inexorable tyrant. We do not say that Mr Disraeli is to
be regarded as the founder of that party. Young men professing
conservative opinions were beginning about that time to think
independently for themselves, and to doubt the authenticity and
soundness of tradition. The young Whigs, who were kept in much better
order by their seniors, stuck by their old political breviary; but the
young Tories would not. They were ready, if occasion required, to
maintain to the death the Monarchy, the House of Peers, and the Church;
but they could not, for the lives of them, understand that it was not
their duty to investigate, and if possible improve, the condition of the
working-classes. On the contrary, they regarded that as a distinct moral
duty, in which they were resolved to persevere, notwithstanding the
advice of their own political Gallios, or the example of their opponents
who were always ready, when the people asked for relief, to tender them
a stone. Mr Disraeli, however, has this credit, that he was the first,
in the House of Commons, to free himself from a debasing domination, and
to assert his absolute independence of the minister in thought and deed.
Of course he was never forgiven by the autocrat, nor will he be forgiven
by the men who still swear by their idol. But he went on undauntedly,
never fearing to say his thought; and barely two years had elapsed
before the great bulk of the Tory party—the Tapers and Tadpoles
excepted—had acknowledged the justness of his estimate as to the
trustworthiness of their former chief, and ranged themselves in
opposition to the late Sir Robert Peel.

It is not our intention to pronounce a panegyric upon Mr Disraeli. We
see no occasion for doing so, and we doubt if he would care to hear one.
But we confess that the impudence of this young whipper-snapper has
somewhat roused our bile. He reminds us of a wretched curtailed messan
whom we once saw introduced into a drawing-room. The creature, which, in
mercy to the future canine breed, ought to have been drowned in the days
of its puppydom, went sniffing about at the furniture, thrusting its
odious nose everywhere, and at last committed sacrilege by lifting its
leg against a magnificent china jar. Of course Nemesis was speedy. We
had the satisfaction of kicking the cur from the upper landing to the
lobby, by a single pedal application; and, beyond the hint gathered from
a dolorous howl, have no cognizance of its after fate. Mr Disraeli’s
present position in the House of Commons is the best possible answer to
“one of the humblest”—for which, read, meanest—“individuals of this
great empire.”

Randal, however, does not confine himself to a review of Mr Disraeli’s
political career. He must needs—though of all men the most unfitted for
the task, for he has no more notion of literature than a
Hottentot—attempt to criticise him as an author. Here he evidently
thinks that he can make out a strong case; and accordingly he goes over,
_seriatim_, the whole of the publications to which Mr Disraeli has set
his name, and one or two others which were not so authenticated. At
first sight it is not easy to understand why he should have given
himself so much trouble. Mr Disraeli’s earliest novel, _Vivian Grey_,
was written when the author was about the age of two-and-twenty, and, no
doubt, to the critical eye, it has many faults. But so have the early
productions of every master—not only in language, but in painting and
all other branches of art,—yet we forgive them all for the unmistakable
traces of real genius which are displayed. That early novel of Mr
Disraeli, though produced so far back as 1826, has never been forgotten.
It took its place at once as a decided work of genius; and, as such,
continued to be read before the author became a political character or
celebrity. And so it was, even in larger measure, with his next work,
_Contarini Fleming_. Now, it is of some importance to ask, _why_ these
books were popular? They certainly could not recommend themselves to the
old, as elaborate compositions, for they showed a lack of worldly
experience, and sometimes bordered on extravagance. But they recommended
themselves to the young, because they were brimful of a youthful spirit;
because they expressed, better perhaps than ever had been done before,
the daring, recklessness, and utter exuberance of youth; and because
even older men recognised in them the distinct image of passions which
they had once entertained, but from which they were divorced for ever.
Poor pitiful Randal, who even in his boyhood does not seem to have
experienced a single generous impulse, thinks that in these juvenile
pictures he can identify the future politician. He says, “It is
impossible, in perusing the book, not to connect Mr Disraeli with
Contarini Fleming;” and he then goes on gravely to argue that many of
the positions in the romance are objectionable. Because Mr Disraeli
makes his leading character talk extravagantly when in love—as what boy
under such circumstances does not talk extravagantly?—we are asked to
believe that the author is habitually addicted to fustian! Because
Contarini Fleming is represented at the head of a band of reckless
collegians, who, inspired by the “Robbers” of Schiller, betake
themselves to the woods, Randal politely insinuates that Mr Disraeli was
intended by nature for a bandit! He might just as well tell us that Miss
Jane Porter was intended for a Scottish chief! Such absolute trash as
this is really below contempt; nor would we have noticed it at all
except to show the animus of this singularly paltry critic. We shall
make no further allusion to his commentary on the early novels, beyond
remarking, that he crawls over every page of _Venetia_ and _Henrietta
Temple_, in the hope to leave upon them traces of his ugly slime.

It is, however, against the political novels that Mr Randal Leslie
chooses principally to inveigh. That he regards them as heterodox in
doctrine is not to be wondered at—that he cannot discriminate between
the sportive and the real is the result of his own narrow powers of
comprehension. But his chief cry, as we have remarked before, is against
personality, and he thus favours us with his ideas: “All men must
execrate the midnight stabber. And a midnight stabber is a man who, in a
work of fiction, endeavours to make a fictitious character stand for a
real one, and attributes to it any vices he pleases. Nothing can be more
unfair; nothing can be more reprehensible. Against such a system of
attack even the virtues of a Socrates are no protection,” &c. We see no
occasion for dragging Socrates into the discussion. Those twin sons of
Sophroniscus, Tadpole and Taper, are quite sufficient for our purpose in
discussing this point of literary personality. We are therefore given to
understand by Mr Leslie, that it is utterly unjustifiable to display, in
a work of fiction, any character corresponding to a real one. That,
certainly, is a broad enough proposition. According to this view, Virgil
was a midnight stabber, because it is notorious that the characters in
the Eneid were intended to represent eminent personages of Rome; and all
of them were not flatteringly portrayed—as, for instance, Drances, who
stands for Cicero. Spenser was a midnight stabber, in respect of Duessa,
intended for Mary Queen of Scots. Shakespeare was a midnight stabber, in
respect of Justice Shallow, the eidolon of Sir Thomas Lucy. Dryden was
an irreclaimable bravo; witness his Absalom and Achitophel. We are
afraid that even Pope must wear the badge of the poniard. Very few of
our deceased, and scarce one of our living novelists, can escape the
charge of satire and personality. If a man is writing about things of
the present day, he must, perforce, take his characters from the men who
move around him, else he will produce no true picture. Both Dickens and
Thackeray draw from life, and their sketches are easily recognisable.
There are certain characters in Mr Warren’s _Ten Thousand A-Year_, which
we apprehend nobody can mistake. In depicting, for example, the House of
Commons, would it be correct to paint that assembly, not as it is, but
as what it might be, if a total change were made in its members? If a
literary man has occasion, in a work of fiction, to sketch the Treasury
Bench, must he necessarily leave out the principal figures which give
interest to that Elysian locality? But is it really true that Mr
Disraeli has been so excessively licentious in his personality? Tadpoles
he has drawn, no doubt, and Tapers; but there are at least two dozen
gentlemen who have equal right to appropriate those designations to
themselves. He has given us two perfect types of a narrow-minded class,
but the class itself is numerous. The originals of Coningsby and
Millbank, if there were any such, are not likely to complain of their
treatment; and positively the only objectionable instance of personality
which we can remember as occurring in Mr Disraeli’s political novels, is
the character of Rigby. It is quite possible that Mr Disraeli might, if
he chose, give a satisfactory explanation of this departure from
decorum; for we are not of the number of those who profess, like Mr
Randal Leslie, to think that it is unlawful to retaliate with the same
weapon which has been used in assault. But the truth is, we care very
little about the matter. Let us grant that this one character of Rigby
is objectionable—does that justify this outrageous howl about perpetual
personalities? Where are the personalities in Sybil and Tancred? We may
be very dull, but we really cannot find them; and yet we have perused
both works more than once with great pleasure. Who are the leading
political characters whom Mr Disraeli is said to have sketched for the
purpose of misrepresenting their motives? Has he given us in his novels
a sketch of Wellington, of Peel, of Brougham, of Lord John Russell, of
Sir James Graham, of O’Connell, of Cobden, or of Hume? We never heard
that alleged; and yet we are told that his novels are full of outrageous
political libels! Why, if he had intended to be politically personal, he
could not by possibility have avoided introducing some of these men,
under feigned names, seeing that they have all played a conspicuous part
in the great drama of public life. He might, we think, have introduced
them, had he so pleased, without any breach of propriety; but it is
enough, in dealing with Mr Randal Leslie, to remark that he has not done
so, and consequently the whole elaborate structure of hypocrisy falls to
the ground.

It may be said that it was not worth our while to waste powder and shot
upon a jackdaw; nor, in all probability, should we have done so, were
this the sole chatterer of his species. But the splendid abilities and
political success of Mr Disraeli have created for him a host of enemies,
who seem determined, at all hazards, to run him down, and whose attacks
are not only malignant, but unintermitting. Some of these may be
regarded simply as the ebullitions of envy—the mutterings of discontent
against success. The feeling which prompts such attacks is anything but
commendable; but we are inclined to draw a distinction between that
class of writers, and another, whose enmity to Mr Disraeli may be traced
to more personal motives. The former may, perhaps, have no absolute
dislike to the man whom they are endeavouring to decry. They assail him
because he has risen so much and so swiftly above their social level;
and if he were to experience a reverse, their feeling towards him would
probably change. Theirs is just the sentiment of vulgar radicalism—that
which stimulates demagogues to attack the Church and the aristocracy.
Men of the literary profession are very liable to such influences, more
especially when one of their number passes into another sphere of
distinction. So long as Mr Disraeli confined himself to literary
pursuits, he might be regarded and dealt with as one of themselves: it
was his political career, and his accession to office as a Cabinet
Minister, which made the gap between him and the literary multitude. It
is much to be regretted, for the sake of literature itself, that any
such demonstrations of jealousy should be exhibited, but we fear there
is no remedy for it. Other times, besides our own, furnish us with
examples in abundance of this kind of unworthy detraction, which,
however, may not be tinged with absolute personal malice.

The author of this volume has nothing in common with the writers to whom
we have just alluded. In the first place, he has no pretensions whatever
to be considered as a literary man. His style is bald and bad; he is
wholly unpractised in criticism; and he commits the egregious blunder of
dealing in indiscriminate abuse. Notwithstanding all our admiration for
Mr Disraeli, we are bound to admit that some of his novels afford ample
scope for criticism; and that a witty and competent reviewer could
easily, and with perfect fairness, write an amusing article on the
subject. More than one excellent imitation of Mr Disraeli’s peculiar
style has appeared in the periodicals; and we have no doubt that even
the author of _Coningsby_ enjoyed a hearty laugh over the facetious
parodies of _Punch_. There is no kind of malice in the preparation or
issuing of squibs like these. We should all of us become a great deal
too dull and solemn without them; and they contribute to the public
amusement without giving annoyance to any one. But Randal Leslie is such
an absolute bungler that he is not contented with selecting the weak
points in Mr Disraeli’s works, but tries to depreciate those very
excellencies and beauties which have elevated him in the eyes of the
public. He cannot bear to think that Mr Disraeli should have credit for
having written even a single interesting chapter, and therefore he keeps
battering at the fabric of his fame, like a billy-goat butting at a
wall. Had Mr Randal Leslie possessed a little more real knowledge of the
world, or had his conceit been but one degree less than it is, he would
have paused before entering the literary and critical arena. He can talk
glibly enough about gladiators—was he not aware that a certain degree of
training is required, before a literary man becomes used to the practice
of his art? Apparently not; for anything so utterly contemptible, in the
shape of criticism, it never was our fortune to peruse. We conclude,
therefore, that whatever may have been the nature of the other “private
griefs” which stimulated this wretched onslaught on Mr Disraeli,
literary jealousy was not among the number. The frog may wish to emulate
the dimensions of the ox; but not even Esop has ventured to represent it
as emulous of the caroling of the lark.

We have no hesitation in stating our belief, that a certain party in the
State, to whom Mr Disraeli is peculiarly obnoxious, has addressed itself
deliberately to the task, through its organs, of running him down. The
Whigs, of course, regard him with no favour, for he has always been
their determined opponent; but we have no reason whatever to suppose
that their hostility would be carried so far as to induce them to join
in so very unworthy a conspiracy. But to the Peelites he has given
mortal umbrage. They cannot forget that he was the man who first
challenged the despotic authority of their chief in the House of
Commons, and set an example of independence in thought and action to
others of the Tory party. They cannot forget the conflicts in which he
was personally engaged with their leader; and they cannot forgive him
for the havoc which he made in the ranks of the pseudo-Conservatives. If
he and others had chosen to stifle their convictions, to lay aside all
considerations of honour and consistency, to submit to mysterious but
imperative dictation, and to become the passive tools of an autocratic
minister, the Conservatives might still have been in power, and the
red-tapists in possession of their offices. Not one of the latter class
but feels himself personally injured. The Tapers and Tadpoles had been
so long accustomed to the advent of quarter-day, that they regarded
their places almost in the light of patrimonial possessions; and bitter
indeed was their hatred of the man who had assisted to eject them from
their Goshen. Besides this, their vanity, of which they were not without
a large share, was sorely wounded by the manner in which they were
exhibited to the public view, and more so by the intense relish with
which the sketches were received. Mr Disraeli never made so happy a hit
as in his portraiture of these small, bustling, self-sufficient, and
narrow-minded officials, with their ridiculous notions about party
watchwords, political combinations, backstairs influence, and so forth;
nor was there ever a more terse or felicitous description of the then
existing Government, than that which he has put into the mouth of
Taper:—“A sound Conservative government—I understand: Tory men and Whig
measures.” These things belong to the past. They are, however,
intelligible reasons for the rancour which the remnants of the Peel
party, even when allied with the Whigs in power, exhibit towards Mr
Disraeli; and nothing since has occurred to mitigate the acerbity of
that feeling. But there are weighty considerations applicable to the
future. The Aberdeen Cabinet is composed of such heterogeneous materials
that it cannot be expected to hold long together. Even now there is
dissension within it; and, but for the expectation of an immediate and
inveterate war, which renders the idea of a change of government
distasteful to every one, men would consider it as doomed. In fact, the
alliance has never been other than a hollow one, and there is no real
cordiality or confidence among the chiefs. The Whigs are already looking
in the direction of the Radicals; the Peelites would very gladly gain
the confidence of the country gentlemen. They believe it not impossible
even yet, by making certain sacrifices and concessions, to reconstruct
the Conservative party; but Mr Disraeli is the obstacle, and their
hatred of him is even greater than their love of office. They would, in
1852, have opened a negotiation, provided he had been excluded; and they
entertain the same views in 1854. It is evident that Lord Aberdeen
cannot long remain as Premier. He is anything but personally popular; he
is now well advanced in years; and his conduct in the Eastern question
has not raised him in the estimation of the country. But then, failing
him, who is to be the leader of the Peelites in the House of Lords? Not
certainly the Duke of Newcastle, who has neither temper nor ability for
that duty; and they have no one else to put forward. Gladly would they
serve under Lord Derby; but the same Cabinet cannot hold Mr Disraeli and
Mr Gladstone.

Let them do their worst. It is not by publications of this kind, or
unscrupulous newspaper invectives, that they will accomplish their
object. Even the critic who has taken this book as a text for his
commentary in the _Times_, is constrained to acknowledge that the author
has sate down “to accumulate upon the head of his living victim all the
dislike, malevolence, and disgust he can get together in 650 octavo
pages.” We must say that it never was our lot to peruse a more
extraordinary article than that which we now refer to. The critic does
not even think it necessary to affect that he cares for public morality.
He dislikes the Protectionists, whose general ability he doubts, as much
as he abhors their tenets; and he thinks that Mr Disraeli ought to have
left their camp in 1848, immediately after the death of Lord George
Bentinck. We confess that we were at first a good deal startled at this
proposition, inasmuch as the course of conduct which is here indicated
would have laid Mr Disraeli open to such charges of perfidy as no
honourable man could endure; but, on looking a little further, we began
to see the drift of these observations. There are two detachments of
mischief-makers at work—the object of the one being to disgust the Tory
party with Mr Disraeli; that of the other being to disgust Mr Disraeli
with his party. We think it right, out of sheer regard for ethics, to
quote a sentence or two from the critical article in the _Times_:—

“For weeks,” says the critic, referring to the position of Mr Disraeli
in 1848, “did he suffer mortification, insult, and ingratitude from the
Protectionist party, with Lord Derby at its head; such as must have
roused a nobler soul to self-respect, and stung it with a consciousness
of intolerable wrong. What if, at that period of consummate baseness and
unblushing insolence, Mr Disraeli had stood apart from the conspirators,
and taken an independent place in the arena which he had already made
his own! Does he believe that the good-will of his countrymen would have
been wanting to him at that trying hour, and that the sympathies of Whig
and Tory would not have sustained him in the crisis? He will never
recover the consequences of the fault then committed. He stooped low as
the ground to conquer, and he failed. He might have vanquished nobly,
and held his head erect. By consenting to act with men who did not
hesitate to let him feel how much they despised him, he has, indeed,
tasted the sweets of office, and for a season held the reins of power.
But where is he now? Where might he have been, had he proudly taken his
seat in 1848, aloof from the false allies who had no belief in his
earnestness, no satisfaction in his company, and who hurled their
contempt in his teeth?”

It requires more than one perusal before the full meaning of this
passage can be comprehended. The critic first informs us, with a most
suspicious degree of circumstantiality as to details, that, after the
death of Lord George Bentinck, there was some indisposition to intrust
the leadership of the Protectionist party in the House of Commons to Mr
Disraeli, and then argues that he ought to have left them at once and
for ever! Beautiful, indeed, are the notions of morality and honour
which are here inculcated!

But how comes the writer in the _Times_ to be so intimately acquainted
with the secret councils of the Protectionist party, whom in the
aggregate he sneers at, terms “conspirators,” and accuses of “consummate
baseness and unblushing insolence?” What does he know, more than other
determined supporters of Sir Robert Peel, of what was passing in the
opposite camp? He tells us, speaking of 1845, that “in England the
injustice of the Corn Laws is felt at every hearth. Sir Robert Peel
seizes the opportunity to repair some of the errors of his former life,
and to establish his name for ever in the grateful recollection of his
countrymen.” The man who wrote these words never could have had any
trafficking with the Protectionists; he must have abhorred them
throughout; and yet the curious thing is, that he knows, or pretends to
know, a great deal more about them than an enemy could possibly have
done. For example, he says, in reference to the alleged unwillingness,
on the part of the Protectionists, to be led by Mr Disraeli, that
“almost in as many words Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, condescended to
convey the intelligence to the gifted subaltern, and to inform him that,
notwithstanding the transcendent services he had rendered, he had not
respectability enough for the place of honour he had earned.” This is
either false or true. If false, it is the most unblushing fiction we
ever remember to have met with; if true, we should like very much to
know how the writer came by his information.

Not less remarkable is the intimate knowledge which the critic affects
of Mr Disraeli’s private character. That he dislikes him is very
evident. He describes him as “Genius without Conscience;” says “he has
not a bad heart—he has no heart at all;” that he “will stand before
posterity as the great political infidel of his age, as one who believed
in nothing but himself;” and a great deal to the same purpose. He
denounces him as inconsistent; and yet, in the same breath, blames him
for not having abandoned his party on the impulse of a sudden pique. If
Iago were alive and a critic, we should expect from him just such an
article as that which appeared in the _Times_.

We end as we began. In this wicked and envious little world of ours, no
man of any note can hope to escape without abuse, which may be
formidable or not, according to the quarter from which it comes, and the
motives which called it forth. If more than the share commonly set apart
for public men has fallen upon Mr Disraeli, he may comfort himself with
the reflection that there is but one feeling on the part of the public
with regard to the conduct of his assailants; and we are greatly
mistaken if, by this time, the author of the _Literary and Political
Biography_ does not wish, in his secret heart, that he had never
addressed himself to his dirty task. As for other attacks, he is
certainly liable to these, both as a party leader and as an ex-minister.
No one knows better than Mr Disraeli that enmities may sometimes arise
from peculiar causes. Of this, indeed, he has given us, in one of his
earlier fictions, a very apt illustration, when he makes Ixion say: “I
remember we had a confounded poet at Larissa, who proved my family lived
before the Deluge, and asked me for a pension. I refused him, and then
he wrote an epigram asserting that I sprang from the veritable stones
thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha at the repeopling of the earth, and
retained all the properties of my ancestors!”




                            THE QUIET HEART.


                        PART IV.—CHAPTER XVIII.

“Eh, Menie, are you sure yon’s London?”

So asked little July Home standing under the shadow of the elm-trees,
and looking out upon the sea of city smoke, with great St Paul’s looming
through its dimness. July did not quite understand how she could be said
to be near London, so long as she stood upon the green sod, and saw
above her the kindly sky. “There’s no very mony houses hereaway,” said
the innocent July; “there’s mair in Dumfries, Menie—and this is just a
fine green park, and here’s trees—are you sure yon’s London?”

“Yes, it’s London.” Very differently they looked at it;—the one with the
marvelling eyes of a child, ready to believe all wonders of that
mysterious place, supreme among the nations, which was rather a superb
individual personage from among the Arabian genii than a collection of
human streets and houses, full of the usual weaknesses of humankind; the
other with the dreamy gaze of a woman, pondering in her heart over the
scene of her fate.

“And Randall’s yonder, and Johnnie Lithgow?” said July. “I would just
like to ken where; Menie, you’ve been down yonder in the town—where will
Johnnie and our Randall be? Mrs Wellwood down in Kirklands bade me ask
Randall if he knew a cousin of hers, Peter Scott, that lives in London;
but nobody could ken a’ the folk, Menie, in such a muckle town.”

“My dear Miss July, muckle is an ugly word,” said Miss Annie Laurie,
“and you must observe how nicely your brother and his friend speak—quite
marvellous for self-educated young men—and even Menie here is very well.
You must not say muckle, my love.”

“It was because I meant to say very big,” said July with a great blush,
holding down her head and speaking in a whisper. July had thrown many a
wandering glance already at Miss Annie, speculating whether to call her
the old lady or the young lady, and listening with reverential curiosity
to all she said; for July thought “She—the lady,” was very kind to call
her my dear and my love so soon, and to kiss her when she went away
wearied, on her first evening at Heathbank, to rest; though July could
never be sure about Miss Annie, and marvelled much that Menie Laurie
should dare to call any one in such ringlets and such gowns, aunt.

“You will soon learn better, my dear little girl,” said the gracious
Miss Annie, “and you must just be content to continue a little girl
while you are here, and take a lesson now and then, you know; and above
all, my darling, you must take care not to fall in love with this young
man whom you speak of so familiarly. He must not be Johnnie any more,
but only Mr Lithgow, your brother’s friend and ours—for I cannot have
both my young ladies falling in love.”

“Me!” July’s light little frame trembled all over, her soft hair fell
down upon her neck. “It never will stay up,” murmured July, with eager
deprecation, as Miss Annie’s eye fell upon the silky uncurled locks; but
it was only shamefacedness and embarrassment which made July notice the
descent of her hair—for July was trembling with a little thrill of fear
and wonder and curiosity. Was it possible, then, that little July had
come to sufficient years to be capable of falling in love?—and, in spite
of herself, July thought again upon Johnnie Lithgow, and marvelled
innocently, though with a blush, whether he “minded” her as she minded
him.

But July could not understand the strange abstraction which had fallen
upon her friend—the dreamy eye, the vacant look, the long intervals of
silence. Menie Laurie of Burnside had known nothing of all this new-come
gravity, and July’s wistful look had already begun to follow those
wandering eyes of hers—to follow them away through the daylight, and
into the dark, wondering—wondering—what it was that Menie sought to see.

Jenny is busied in the remote regions of the kitchen at this present
moment, delivering a lecture, very sharp, and marked with some
excitement, to Miss Annie Laurie’s kitchen maid, who is by no means an
ornamental person, and for that and many other reasons is a perpetual
grief to Miss Annie’s heart—so Jenny is happily spared the provocation
of beholding the new visitor who has entered the portals of Heathbank.
For a portentous shawl, heavy as a thundercloud, a gown lurid as the
lightning escaping from under its shade, and a new bonnet grim with
gentility, are making their way round the little lawn, concealing from
expectant eyes the slight person and small well-formed head, with its
short matted crop of curls, which distinguish Johnnie Lithgow. Johnnie,
good fellow, does not think his sister the most suitable visitor in the
world to the Laurie household; but Johnnie would not, for more wealth
than he can reckon, put slight upon his sister even in idea—so Miss
Annie Laurie’s Maria announces Miss Panton at the door of Miss Annie
Laurie’s drawing-room, and Nelly, where she failed to come as a servant,
is introduced as a guest.

“Thank’ye, mem,” said Nelly. “I like London very weel so far as I’ve
seen it—but it’s a muckle place, I dinna doubt, no to be lookit through
in a day—and I’m aye fleyed to lose mysel in thae weary streets; but you
see I didna come here ance errand to see the town, but rather came with
an object, mem—and now I’m to bide on to take care of Johnnie. My mother
down-by at hame has had mony thochts about him being left his lane, with
naebody but himself to care about in a strange place—and it’s sure to be
a comfort to her me stopping with Johnnie, for she kens I’m a
weel-meaning person, whatever folk do to me; and I would be real
thankful if ye could recommend me to a shop for good linen, for I have
a’ his shirts to mend. To be sure, he has plenty of siller—but he’s
turning the maist extravagant lad I ever saw.”

“Good soul! and you have come to do all those kind things for him,” said
Miss Annie Laurie: “it is so delightful to me to find these fine homely
natural feelings in operation—so primitive and unsophisticated. I can’t
tell you what pleasure I have in watching the natural action of a kind
heart.”

“I am much obliged to ye, mem,” said Nelly, wavering on her seat with a
half intention of rising to acknowledge with a curtsey this
complimentary declaration. “I was aye kent for a weel-meaning lass,
though I have my faults—but I’m sure Johnnie ought to ken how weel he
can depend on me.”

July Home was standing by the window—standing very timid and demure,
pretending to look out, but in reality lost in conjectures concerning
Johnnie Lithgow, whose image had never left her mind since Miss Annie
took the pains to advise her not to think of him. July, innocent heart,
would never have thought of him had this warning been withheld; but the
fascination and thrill of conscious danger filled July’s mind with one
continual recollection of his presence, though she did not dare to turn
round frankly and own herself his old acquaintance. With a slight
tremble in her little figure, July stands by the window, and July’s
silky hair already begins to droop out of the braid in which she had
confined it with so much care. A silk gown—the first and only one of its
race belonging to July—has been put on in honour of this, her first day
at Heathbank; and July, to tell the truth, is somewhat fluttered on
account of it, and is a little afraid of herself and the unaccustomed
splendour of her dress.

Menie Laurie, a good way apart, sits on a stool at her mother’s feet,
looking round upon all those faces—from July’s innocent tremble of shy
pleasure, to Johnnie Lithgow’s wellpleased recognition of his childish
friend. There is something touching in the contrast when you turn to
Menie Laurie, looking up, with all these new-awakened thoughts in her
eyes, into her mother’s face. For dutiful and loving as Menie has always
been, you can tell by a glance that she never clung before as she clings
now—that never in her most trustful childish times was she so humble in
her helplessness as her tender woman’s love is to-day. Deprecating,
anxious, full of so many wistful beseeching ways—do you think the mother
does not know why it is that Menie’s silent devotion thus pleads and
kneels and clings to her very feet?

And there is a shadow on Mrs Laurie’s brow—a certain something
glittering under Mrs Laurie’s eyelid. No, she needs no interpreter—and
the mother hears Menie’s prayer, “Will you like him—will you try to like
him?” sounding in her heart, and resolves that she will indeed try to
like him for Menie’s sake.

“Mr Home, of course, will come to see us to-night,” said the sprightly
Miss Annie. “My dear Mrs Laurie, how can I sufficiently thank you for
bringing such a delightful circle of young people to Heathbank? It quite
renews my heart again. You can’t think how soon one gets worn out and
weary in this commonplace London world: but so fresh—so full of young
spirits and life—I assure you, Mr Lithgow, yourself, and your friend,
and my sweet girls here, are quite like a spring to me.”

Johnnie, bowing a response, gradually drew near the window. You will
begin to think there is something very simply pretty and graceful in
this little figure standing here within shadow of the curtain, the
evening sun just missing it as it steals timidly into the shade. And
this brown hair, so silky soft, has slidden down at last upon July’s
shoulder, and the breath comes something fast on July’s small full
nether lip, and a little changeful flush of colour hovers about, coming
and going upon July’s face. Listen—for now a sweet little timid voice,
fragrant with the low-spoken Border-speech, softened out of all its
harshness, steals upon Johnnie Lithgow’s ear. He knows what the words
are, for he draws very near to listen—but we, a little farther off, hear
nothing but the voice—a very unassured, shy, girlish voice; and July
casts a furtive look around her, to see if it is not possible to get
Menie Laurie to whisper her answer to; but when she does trust the air
with these few words of hers, July feels less afraid.

Johnnie Lithgow!—no doubt it is the same Johnnie Lithgow who carried her
through the wood, half a mile about, to see the sunset from the Resting
Stane—but whether this can be the Mr Lithgow who is very clever and a
great writer, July is puzzled to know. For he begins to ask so kindly
about the old homely Kirkland people—he “minds” every nook and corner so
well, and has such a joyous recollection of all the Hogmanays and
Hallowe’ens—the boyish pranks and frolics, the boyish friends. July,
simple and perplexed, thinks within herself that Randall never did so,
and doubts whether Johnnie Lithgow can be clever, after all.


                              CHAPTER XIX.

“And July, little girl—you are glad to see Menie Laurie again?”

But July makes a long pause—July is always timid of speaking to her
brother.

“Menie is not Menie now,” said July thoughtfully. “She never looks like
what she used to look at Burnside.”

“What has changed her?” At last Randall began to look interested.

Another long pause, and then July startled him with a burst of tears.
“She never looks like what she used to look at Burnside,” repeated
Menie’s little friend, with timid sobs, “but aye thinks, thinks, and has
trouble in her face night and day.”

The brother and sister were in the room alone. Randall turned round with
impatience. “What a foolish little creature you are, July. Menie does
not cry like you for every little matter; Menie has nothing to trouble
her.”

“It’s no me, Randall,” said little July, meekly. “If I cry, I just canna
help it, and it’s nae matter; but, oh, I wish you would speak to
Menie—for something’s vexing _her_.”

“I am sure you will excuse me for leaving you so long,” said the
sprightly voice of Miss Annie Laurie, entering the room. “What! crying,
July darling? Have we not used her well, Mr Home?—but my poor friend Mrs
Laurie has just got a very unpleasant letter, and I have been sitting
with her to comfort her.”

Randall made no reply, unless the smile of indifference which came to
his lips, the careless turning away of his head, might be supposed to
answer; for Randall did not think it necessary to pretend any interest
in Mrs Laurie.

But just then he caught a momentary glimpse of some one stealing across
the farthest corner of the lawn, behind a group of shrubs. Randall could
not mistake the figure; and it seemed to pause there, where it was
completely hidden, except to the keen eye which had watched it thither,
and still saw a flutter of drapery through the leaves.

“Mem, if you please, Miss Menie’s out,” said Jenny, entering suddenly,
“and the mistress sent me with word that she wasna very weel hersel, and
would keep up the stair if you’ve nae objections. As I said, ‘I trow no,
you would have nae objections’—no to say there’s company in the house to
be a divert—and the mistress is far frae weel.”

“But, Jenny, you must tell my darling Menie to come in,” said Miss
Annie. “I cannot want her, you know; and I am sure she cannot know who
is here, or she would never bid you say she was out. Tell her I want
her, Jenny.”

“Mem, I have told you,” said Jenny, somewhat fiercely, “if she was ane
given to leasing-making she would have to get another lass to gang her
errands than Jenny, and I canna tell whatfor Miss Menie should heed, or
do aught but her ain pleasure, for ony company that’s here ’enow. I’m no
fit mysel, an auld lass like me, to gang away after Miss Menie’s licht
fit; but she’s out-by, puir bairn—and it’s little onybody kens Jenny
that would blame me wi’ a lee.”

She had reached the door before Randall could prevail with himself to
follow her; but at last he did hurry after Jenny, making a hasty apology
as he went. Randall had by no means paid to Jenny the respect to which
she held herself entitled: her quick sense had either heard his step
behind, or surmised that he would follow her; and Jenny, in a violent
fuff, strongly suppressing herself, but quivering all over with the
effort it cost her, turned sharp round upon him, and came to a dead
pause facing him, as he closed the door.

“Where is Miss Menie Laurie? I wish to see her,” said Randall. Randall
did not choose to be familiar even now.

“Miss Menie Laurie takes her ain will commonly,” said Jenny, making a
satirical curtsey. “She’s been used wi’t this lang while; and she hasna
done what Jenny bade her this mony a weary day. Atweel, if she had, some
things wouldna have been to undo that are—and mony an hour’s wark and
hour’s peace the haill house micht ha’e gotten, if she had aye had the
sense to advise with the like of me; but she’s young, and she takes her
ain gate. Poor thing! she’ll have to do somebody else’s will soon enough
if there’s nae deliverance; whatfor should I grudge her her ain the
noo?”

“What do you mean? I want to see Menie,” exclaimed Randall, with
considerable haste and eagerness. “Do you mean to say she does not want
to see me? I have never been avoided before. What does she mean?”

“Ay, my lad, that’s right,” said Jenny; “think of yoursel just, like a
man, afore ye gie a kindly thought to her, and her in trouble. It’s like
you a’; it’s like the haill race and lineage of ye, father and son. No
that I’m meaning ony ill to auld Crofthill; but nae doubt he’s a man
like the lave.”

Randall lifted his hand impatiently, waving her away.

“I wouldna wonder!” cried Jenny. “I wouldna wonder—no me. She’s owre
mony about that like her, has she?—it’ll be my turn to gang my ways, and
no trouble the maister. You would like to get her, now she’s in her
flower; you would like to take her up and carry her away, and put her in
a cage, like a puir bit singing-burdie, to be a pleasure to you. What
are you courting my bairn for? It’s a’ for your ain delight and
pleasure, because ye canna help but be glad at the sight of her, a
darling as she is; because ye would like to get her to yoursel, like a
piece of land; because she would be something to you to be maister and
lord of, to make ye the mair esteemed in ither folks’ een, and happier
for yoursel. Man, I’ve carried her miles o’ gate in thae very arms of
mine. I’ve watched her grow year to year, till there’s no ane like her
in a’ the countryside. Is’t for mysel?—she canna be Jenny’s wife—she
canna be Jenny’s ain born bairn? But Jenny would put down her neck under
the darling’s foot, if it was to give her pleasure—and here’s a strange
lad comes that would set away _me_.”

But Jenny’s vehemence was touched with such depth of higher feeling as
to exalt it entirely out of the region of the “fuff.” With a hasty and
trembling hand she dashed away some tears out of her eyes. “I’m no to
make a fule of mysel afore _him_,” muttered Jenny, drawing a hard breath
through her dilated nostrils.

Randall, with some passion, and much scorn in his face, had drawn back a
little to listen. Now he took up his hat hurriedly.

“If you are done, you will let me pass, perhaps,” he said angrily. “This
is absurd, you know—let me pass. I warn you I will not quarrel with
Menie for all the old women in the world.”

“If it’s me, you’re welcome to ca’ me names,” said Jenny, fiercely. “I
daur ye to say a word of the mistress—on your peril. Miss Menie pleases
to be her lane. I tell you Miss Menie’s out-by; and I would like to ken
what call ony mortal has to disturb the poor lassie in her distress,
when she wants to keep it to hersel. He doesna hear me—he’s gane the
very way she gaed,” said Jenny, softening, as he burst past her out of
sight. “I’ll no say I think ony waur of him for that; but waes me, waes
me—what’s to come out o’t a’, but dismay and distress to my puir bairn?”

Distress and dismay—it is not hard to see them both in Menie Laurie’s
face, so pale and full of thought, as she leans upon the wall here among
the wet leaves, looking out. Yes, she is looking out, fixedly and long,
but not upon the misty far-away London, not upon the pleasant slope of
green, the retired and quiet houses, the whispering neighbour trees.
Something has brought the dreamy distant future, the unknown country,
bright and far away—brought it close upon her, laid it at her feet. Her
own living breath this moment stirs the atmosphere of this still
unaccomplished world; her foot is stayed upon its threshold. No more
vague fears—no more mere clouds upon the joyous firmament—but close
before her, dark and tangible, the crisis and decision—the turning-point
of heart and hope. Before her wistful eyes lie two clear paths, winding
before her into the evening sky. Two; but the spectre of a third comes
in upon her—a life distraught and barren of all comfort—a fate
irrevocable, not to be changed or softened; and Menie’s heart is deadly
sick in her poor breast, and faints for fear. Alas for Menie Laurie’s
quiet heart!

She was sad yesterday. Yesterday she saw a cloudy sword, suspended in
the skies, wavering and threatening above her unguarded head; to-day she
looks no longer at this imaginative menace. From another unfeared
quarter there has fallen a real blow.


                              CHAPTER XX.

With the heat and flush of excitement upon his face, Randall Home made
his way across the glistening lawn, and through the wet shrubs—for there
had been rain—to that corner of the garden where he had seen Menie
disappear. Impatiently his foot rung upon the gravel path, and crushed
the fallen branches: something of an angry glow was in his eye, and
heated and passionate was the colour on his cheek.

“You are here, Menie!” he exclaimed. “I think you might have had
sufficient respect for me, to do what you could to prevent this last
passage of arms.”

“Respect!” Menie looked at him with doubtful apprehension. She thought
the distress of her mind must have dulled and blunted her nerves; and
repeated the word vacantly, scarcely knowing what it meant.

“I said respect. Is it so presumptuous an idea?” said Randall, with his
cold sarcastic smile.

But Menie made no answer. Drawing back with a timid frightened motion,
which did not belong to her natural character, she stood so very pale,
and chill, and tearful, that you could have found nowhere a more
complete and emphatic contrast than she made to her betrothed. The one
so full of strength and vigour, stout independence and glowing
resentment—the other with all her life gone out of her, as it seemed,
quenched and subdued in her tears.

“You have avoided me in the house—you will not speak to me now,” said
Randall. “Menie, Menie, what does this mean?”

For Menie had not been able to conceal from him that she was weeping.

“It is no matter, Randall,” said Menie; “it is no matter.”

Randall grew more and more excited. “What is the matter? Have you ceased
to trust me, Menie? What do you mean?”

“I mean nothing to make you angry—I never did,” said Menie, sadly. “I’m
not very old yet, but I never grieved anybody, of my own will, all my
days. Ill never came long ago; or, if it came, nobody ever blamed it on
me. I wish you would not mind me,” she said, looking up suddenly. “I
came out here, because my mind was not fit to speak to anybody—because I
wanted to complain to myself where nobody should hear of my
unthankfulness. I would not have said a word to anybody—not a word.
There was no harm in thinking within my own heart.”

“There is harm in hiding your thoughts from me,” said Randall. “Come,
Menie, you are not to cheat me of my rights. I was angry—forgive me; but
I am not angry now. Menie, my poor sorrowful girl, what ails you? Has
something happened? Menie, you must tell _me_.”

“It is just you I must not tell,” said Menie, under her breath. Then she
wavered a moment, as if the wind swayed her light figure, and held her
in hesitating uncertainty; and then, with a sudden effort, she stood
firm, apart from the wall she had been leaning on, and apart, too, from
Randall’s extended arm.

“Yes, I will tell you,” said Menie, seriously. “You mind what happened a
year ago, Randall; you mind what we did and what we said then—‘For ever
and for ever.’”

Randall took her hand tenderly into his own, “for ever and for ever.” It
was the words of their troth-plight.

“I will keep it in my heart,” said poor Menie. “I will never change in
that, but keep it night and day in my heart. Randall, we are far apart
already. I have a little world you do not choose to share: you are
entering a greater world, where I can never have any place. God speed
you, and God go with you, Randall Home. You will be a great man: you
will prosper and increase; and what would you do with poor Southland
Menie, who cannot help you in your race? Randall, we will be good
friends: we will part now, and say farewell.”

Abrupt as her speech was Menie’s manner of speaking. She had to hurry
over these disjointed words, lest her sobs should overtake and choke her
utterance ere they were done.

Randall shook his head with displeased impatience. “This is mere folly,
Menie. What does it mean? Cannot you tell me simply and frankly what is
the matter, without such a preface as this? But indeed I know very well
what it means. It means that I am to yield something—to undertake
something—to reconcile myself to some necessity or other, distasteful to
me. But why commence so tragically?—the threat should come at the end,
not at the beginning.”

“I make no threat,” said Menie, growing colder and colder, more and more
upright and rigid; “I mean to say nothing that can make you angry.
Already I have been very unhappy. I dare not venture, with our changed
fortunes, to make a lifelong trial—I dare not.”

“Your changed fortunes!” interrupted Randall. “Are your fortunes to-day
different from what they were yesterday?”

Menie paused. “It is only a very poor pride which would conceal it from
you,” she said at length. “Yes, they are different. Yesterday we had
enough for all we needed—to-day we have not anything. You will see how
entirely our circumstances are changed; and I hope you will see too,
Randall, without giving either of us the pain of mentioning them, all
the reasons which make it prudent for us, without prolonging the
conflict longer, to say good-by. Good-by; I can ask nothing of you but
to forget me, Randall.”

And Menie held out her hand, but could not lift her eyes. Her voice had
sunk very low, and a slight shiver of extreme self-constraint passed
over her—her head drooped lower and lower on her breast—her fingers
played vacantly with the glistening leaves; and when he did not take it,
her hand gradually dropped and fell by her side.

There was a moment’s silence—no answer—no response—no remonstrance.
Perhaps, after all, the poor perverse heart had hoped to be overwhelmed
with love which would take no denial: as it was, standing before him
motionless, a great faintness came upon Menie. She could vaguely see the
path at her feet, the trees on either hand. “I had better go, then,” she
said, very low and softly; and the light had faded suddenly upon Menie’s
sight into a strange ringing twilight, full of floating motes and
darkness—and those few paces across the lawn filled all her mind like a
life journey, so full of difficulty they seemed, so weak was she.

Go quickly, Menie—quickly, ere those growing shadows darken into a blind
unguided night—swiftly, ere these faltering feet grow powerless, and
refuse to obey the imperative eager will. To reach home—to reach
home—home, such a one as it is, lies only half a dozen steps away; press
forward, Menie—are those years or hours that pass in the journey? But
the hiding-place and shelter is almost gained.

When suddenly this hand which he would not take is grasped in his
vigorous hold—suddenly this violent tremble makes Menie feel how he
supports her, and how she leans on him. “I am going home,” said Menie,
faintly. Still he made no answer, but held her strongly, wilfully; not
resisting, but unaware of her efforts to escape.

“I have wherewith to work for you, Menie,” said the man’s voice in her
ear. “What are your changed fortunes to me? If you were a princess, I
would receive you less joyfully, for you would have less need of me.
Menie, Menie, why have you tried yourself so sorely—and why should this
be a cause of separating us? I wanted only you.”

And Menie’s pride had failed her. She hid her face in her hands, and
cried, “My mother, my mother!” in a passion of tears.

“Your mother, your mother? But you have a duty to me,” said Randall,
more coldly. “Your mother must not bid you give me up: you have no right
to obey. Ah! I see; I am dull and stupid; forgive me, Menie. You mean
that your mother’s fortunes are changed. She has the more need of a son
then; and my May Marion knows well, that to be her mother is enough for
me—you understand me, Menie. This does not change our attachment, does
not change our plans, our prospects in the slightest degree. It may make
it more imperative that your mother should live with us, but _you_ will
think that no misfortune. Well, are we to have no more heroics
now—nothing tragical—but only a little good sense and patience on all
sides, and my Menie what she always is? Come, look up and tell me.”

“I meant nothing heroic—nothing. What I said was not false, Randall,”
said Menie, looking up with some fire. “If you think it was unreal, that
I did not mean it—”

“If you do not mean it now, is not that enough?” said Randall, smiling.
“Let us talk of something less weighty. July says you do not look as you
used to do; has this been weighing on your mind, Menie? But, indeed, you
have not told me what the misfortune is.”

“We knew it only to-day,” said Menie. Menie spoke very low, and was very
much saddened and humbled, quite unable to make any defence against
Randall’s lordly manner of setting her emotion aside. “My father’s
successors were young men, and the price they paid for entering on his
practice was my mother’s annuity. But now they are both gone; one died
two years ago, the other only last week—and he has died very poor, and
in debt, the lawyer writes; so that there is neither hope nor chance of
having anything from those he leaves behind. So we have no longer an
income; nothing now but my mother’s liferent in Burnside.”

Menie Laurie did not know what poverty was. It was not any apprehension
of this which drew from her eyes those few large tears.

“Well, that will be enough for your mother,” said Randall. It was
impossible for Menie to say a word or make an objection, so completely
had he put her aside, and taken it for granted that his will should
decide all. “Or if it was not enough, what then? Provision for the
future lies with me—and you need not fear for me, Menie. I am not
quarrelsome. You need not look so deprecating and frightened: you will
find no disappointment in me.”

Was Menie reassured? It was not easy to tell; for very new to Menie
Laurie was this trembling humility of tone and look—this faltering and
wavering—as if she knew not to which side to turn. But Randall began to
speak, as he knew how, of her own self, and of their betrothing, “for
ever and for ever;” and the time these words were said came back upon
her with new power. Her mind was not satisfied, her heart was not
convinced, and very trembling and insecure now was her secret response
to Randall’s declaration that she should find no disappointment in him;
but her heart was young, and all unwilling to give up its blithe
existence. Instinctively she fled from her own pain, and accepted the
returning hope and pleasantness. Bright pictures rose before Menie, of a
future household harmonious and full of peace—of the new love growing
greater, fuller, day by day—the old love sacred and strong, as when it
stood alone. Why did she fear? why did a lurking terror in her heart cry
No, no! with a sob and pang? After all, this was no vain impracticable
hope; many a one had realised it—it was right and true for ever under
the skies; and Menie put her hand upon the arm of her betrothed, and
closed her eyes for a moment with a softening sense of relief and
comfort, and gentle tears under the lids. Let him lead forward; who can
tell the precious stores of love, and tenderness, and supreme regard
that wait him as his guerdon? Let him lead forward—on to those bright
visionary days—in to this peaceful home.


                              CHAPTER XXI.

Perhaps next to the pleasure of doing all for those we love best, the
joy of receiving all ranks highest. With her heart elate, Menie went in
again to the house she had left so sadly—went in again, looking up to
Randall, rejoicing in the thought that from him every daily gift—all
that lay in the future—should henceforth come. And if it were well to be
Menie’s mother—chief over one child’s heart which could but love—how
much greater joy to be Randall’s mother, high in the reverent thought of
such a mind as his! Now there remained but one difficulty—to bring the
mother and the son lovingly together—to let no misconception, no false
understanding blind the one’s sight of the other—to clear away all evil
judgment of the past—to show each how worthy of esteem and high
appreciation the other was. She thought so in her own simple soul, poor
heart! Through her own great affection she looked at both—to either of
them _she_ would have yielded without a murmur her own little prides and
resentments; and the light of her eyes suffused them with a circle of
mingling radiance; and sweet was the fellowship and kindness, pure the
love and good offices, harmonious and noble the life of home and every
day, which blossomed out of Menie Laurie’s heart and fancy, in the
reaction of her hopeless grief.

Mrs Laurie sits very thoughtful and still by the window. Menie’s mother,
in her undisturbed and quiet life, had never found out before how proud
she was. Now she feels it in her nervous shrinking from speech of her
misfortune—in the involuntary haughtiness with which she starts and
recoils from sympathy. Without a word of comment or lamentation, the
mere bare facts, and nothing more, she has communicated to Miss Annie;
and Mrs Laurie had much difficulty in restraining outward evidence of
the burst of indignant impatience with which, in her heart, she received
Miss Annie’s effusive pity and real kindness. Miss Annie, thinking it
best not to trouble her kinswoman in the present mood of her mind, has
very discreetly carried her pity to some one who will receive it better,
and waits till “poor dear Mrs Laurie” shall recover her composure; while
even July, repelled by the absorbed look, and indeed by an abrupt short
answer, too, withdraws, and hangs about the other end of the room, like
a little shadow, ever and anon gliding across the window with her
noiseless step, and her stream of falling hair.

Mrs Laurie’s face is full of thought—what is she to do? But, harder far
than that, what is Menie to do?—Menie, who vows never to leave her—who
will not permit her to meet the chill fellowship of poverty alone. A
little earthen-floored Dumfriesshire cottage, with its kailyard and its
one apartment, is not a very pleasant anticipation to Mrs Laurie
herself, who has lived the most part of her life, and had her share of
the gifts of fortune; but what will it be to Menie, whose life has to be
made yet, and whose noontide and prime must all be influenced by such a
cloud upon her dawning day? The mother’s brow is knitted with heavy
thought—the mother’s heart is pondering with strong anxiety. Herself
must suffer largely from this change of fortune, but she cannot see
herself for Menie—Menie: what is Menie to do?

Will it be better to see her married to Randall Home, and then to go
away solitary to the cothouse in Kirklands, to spend out this weary
life—these lingering days? But Mrs Laurie’s heart swells at the thought.
Perhaps it will be best; perhaps it is what we must make up our mind to,
and even urge upon her; but alas and alas! how heavily the words, the
very thought, rings in to Mrs Laurie’s heart.

And now here they are coming, their youth upon them like a mantle and a
crown—coming, but not with downcast looks; not despondent, nor afraid,
nor touched at all with the heaviness which bows down the mother’s
spirit to the very dust. Menie will go, then. Close your eyes, mother,
from the light; try to think you are glad; try to rejoice that she will
be content to part from you. It is “for her good”—is there anything you
would not do “for her good,” mother? It has come to the decision now;
and look how she comes with her hand upon his arm, her eyes turning to
his, her heart elate. She will be his wife, then—his Menie first, and
not her mother’s; but have we not schooled our mind to be content?

Yes, she is coming, poor heart! coming with her new hope glorious in her
eyes; coming to bring the son to his mother; coming herself with such a
great embracing love as is indeed enough of its own might and strength
to unite them for ever; and Menie thinks that now she cannot fail.

And now they are seated all of them about the window, July venturing
forward to join the party; and as nothing better can be done, there
commences an indifferent conversation, as far removed as possible from
the real subject of their thoughts. There sits Mrs Laurie, sick with her
heavy musings, believing that she now stands alone, that her dearest
child has made up her mind to forsake her, and that in solitude and
meagre poverty she will have to wait for slow-coming age and death. Here
is Randall, looking for once out of himself, with a real _will_ and
anxiety to soften, by every means in his power, the misfortunes of
Menie’s mother, and rousing himself withal to the joy of carrying Menie
home—to the sterner necessity of doing a man’s work to provide for her,
and for the new household; and all the wonder you can summon—no small
portion in those days—flutters about the same subject, little July Home;
and you think in your heart if you but could, what marvellous things you
_would_ do for Menie Laurie, and Menie Laurie’s mother; while Menie
herself, with a wistful new-grown habit of observation, reads
everybody’s face, and knows not whether to be most afraid of the
obstinate gloom upon her mother’s brow, or exultant in the delicate
attention, the sudden respectfulness and regard, of Randall’s bearing.
But this little company, all so earnestly engrossed—all surrounding a
matter of the vitallest importance to each—turn aside to talk of Miss
Annie Laurie’s toys—Miss Annie Laurie’s party—and only when they divide
and separate dare speak of what lies at their heart.

And Mrs Laurie is something hard to be conciliated. Mrs Laurie is much
inclined to resent this softening of manner as half an insult to her
change of fortune. Patience, Menie! though your mother rebuffs him, he
bears it nobly. The cloud will not lighten upon her brow—cannot
lighten—for you do not know how heavily this wistful look of yours, this
very anxiety to please her—and all your transparent wiles and
artifices—your suppressed and trembling hope, strikes upon your mother’s
heart. “She will go away—she will leave me.” Your mother says so, Menie,
within herself; and it is so hard, so very hard, to persuade the
unwilling content with that sad argument, “It is for her good.” Now,
draw your breath softly lest she hear how your heart beats, for Randall
has asked her to go to the garden with him, to speak of this; and Mrs
Laurie rises with a sort of desolate stateliness—rises—accepts his
offered arm, and turns away—poor Menie! with an averted face, and
without a glance at you.

And now there follows a heavy time—a little space of curious restless
suspense. Wandering from window to window, from table to table; striking
a few notes on the ever-open piano; opening a book now, taking up a
piece of work then, Menie strays about, in an excitement of anxiety
which she can neither suppress nor conceal. Will they be friends? such
friends—such loving friends as they might be, being as they are in
Menie’s regard so noble and generous both? Will they join heartily and
cordially? will they clasp hands upon a kindly bargain? But Menie
shrinks, and closes her eyes—she dares not look upon the alternative.

“Menie, will you not sit down?” Little July Home follows Menie with her
eyes almost as wistfully as Menie follows Randall and her mother. There
is no answer, for Menie is so fully occupied that the little timid voice
fails to break through the trance of intense abstraction in which her
heart is separated from this present scene. “Menie!” Speak louder,
little girl: Menie cannot hear you, for other voices speaking in her
heart.

So July steals across the room with her noiseless step, and has her arm
twined through Menie’s before she is aware. “Come and sit down—what are
they speaking about, Menie? Do you no hear me? Oh, Menie, is it our
Randall?—is it his blame?”

July is so near crying that she must be answered. “Nobody is to blame;
there is no harm,” said Menie, quickly, leading her back to her
seat—quickly with an imperative hush and haste, which throws July back
into timid silence, and sets all her faculties astir to listen, too. But
there comes no sound into this quiet room—not even the footsteps which
have passed out of hearing upon the garden path, nor so much as an echo
of the voices which Menie knows to be engaged in converse which must
decide her fate. But this restless and visible solicitude will not do;
it is best to take up her work resolutely, and sit down with her intent
face turned towards the window, from which at least the first glance of
them may be seen as they return.

No,—no need to start and blush and tremble; this step, ringing light
upon the path, is not the stately step of Randall—not our mother’s sober
tread. “It’s no them, Menie—it’s just Miss Laurie,” whispers little
startled July from the corner of the window. So long away—so long
away—and Menie cannot tell whether it is a good or evil omen—but still
they do not come.

“My sweet children, are you here alone?” said Miss Annie, setting down
her little basket. “Menie, love, I have just surprised your mamma and Mr
Randall, looking very wise, I assure you; you ought to be quite thankful
that you are too young to share such deliberations. July, dear, you must
come and have your lesson; but I cannot teach you to play that favourite
tune; oh no, it would be quite improper—though he has very good taste,
has he not, darling? But somebody will say I have designs upon Mr
Lithgow, if I always play his favourite tune.”

So saying, Miss Annie sat down before the piano, and began to sing, “For
bonnie Annie Laurie I’ll lay down my head and dee.” Poor Johnnie Lithgow
had no idea, when he praised the pretty little graceful melody and
delicate verses, that he was paying a compliment to the lady of
Heathbank.

And July, with a blush, and a little timid eagerness, stole away to Miss
Annie’s side. July had never before touched any instrument except Menie
Laurie’s old piano at Burnside, and with a good deal of awe had
submitted to Miss Annie’s lessons. It did seem a very delightful
prospect to be able to play this favourite tune, though July would have
thought very little of it, but for Miss Annie’s constant warnings.
Thanks to these, however, and thanks to his own kindly half-shy regards,
Johnnie Lithgow’s favourite tunes, favourite books, favourite things and
places, began to grow of great interest to little July Home. She thought
it was very foolish to remember them all, and blushed in secret when
Johnnie Lithgow’s name came into her mind as an authority; but
nevertheless, in spite of shame and blushing, a great authority Johnnie
Lithgow had grown, and July stood by the piano, eager and afraid,
longing very much to be as accomplished as Miss Annie, to be able to
play his favourite tune.

While Menie Laurie still sits by the window, intent and silent, hearing
nothing of song or music, but only aware of a hum of inarticulate
voices, which her heart longs and strains to understand, but cannot
hear.


                             CHAPTER XXII.

The music is over, the lesson concluded, and July sits timidly before
the piano, striking faint notes with one finger, and marvelling greatly
how it is possible to extract anything like an intelligible strain from
this waste of unknown chords. Miss Annie is about in the room once more,
giving dainty touches to its somewhat defective arrangement—throwing
down a book here, and there altering an ornament. Patience, Menie
Laurie! many another one before you has sat in resolute outward calm,
with a heart all a-throb and trembling, even as yours is. Patience;
though it is hard to bear the rustling of Miss Annie’s dress—the faint
discords of July’s music. It must have been one time or another, this
most momentous interview—all will be over when it is over. Patience, we
must wait.

But it is a strange piece of provocation on Miss Annie’s part, that she
should choose this time and no other for looking over that little heap
of Menie’s drawings upon the table. Menie is not ambitious as an
artist—few ideas or romances are in these little works of hers; they are
only some faces—not very well executed—the faces of those two or three
people whom Menie calls her own.

“Come and show them to me, my love.” Menie must not disobey, though her
first impulse is to spring out of the low opened window, and rush away
somewhere out of reach of all interruption till this long suspense is
done. But Menie does not rush away; she only rises slowly—comes to Miss
Annie’s side—feels the pressure of Miss Annie’s embracing arm round
her—and turns over the drawings; strangely aware of every line in them,
yet all the while in a maze of abstraction, listening for their return.

Here is Menie’s mother—and here again another, and yet another, sketch
of her; and this is Randall Home.

“Do you know, I think they are very like,” said Miss Annie: “you must do
my portrait, Menie, darling—you must indeed. I shall take no denial; you
shall do me in my white muslin, among my flowers; and we will put Mr
Home’s sweet book on the table, and open it at that scene—that scene,
you know, I pointed out to you the other day. I know what inspired him
when he wrote that. Come, my love, it will divert you from thinking of
this trouble—your mamma should not have told you—shall we begin now? But
Menie, dear, don’t you think you have put a strange look in this face of
Mr Randall? It is like him—but I would not choose you to do me with such
an expression as that.”

Half wild with her suspense, Menie by this time scarcely heard the words
that rang into her ears, scarcely saw the face she looked upon; but
suddenly, as Miss Annie spoke, a new light seemed to burst upon this
picture, and there before her, looking into her eyes, with the smile of
cold supervision which she always feared to see, with the incipient curl
of contempt upon his lip—the pride of self-estimation in his eye—was
Randall’s face, glowing with contradiction to all her sudden hopes. Her
own work, and she has never had any will to look at him in this aspect;
but the little picture blazes out upon her like a sudden enlightenment.
Here is another one, done by the loving hand of memory a year ago; but,
alas! there is no enchantment to bring back this ideal glory, this glow
of genial love and life that makes it bright—a face of the imagination,
taking all its wealth of expression from the heart which suffused these
well-remembered features with a radiance of its own; but the reality
looks out on Menie darkly; the face of a man not to be moved by womanish
influences—not to be changed by a burst of strong emotion—not to be
softened, mellowed, won, by any tenderness—a heart that can love,
indeed, but never can forget itself; a mind sufficient for its own rule,
a soul which knows no generous _abandon_, which holds its own will and
manner firm and strong above all other earthly things. This is the face
which looks on Menie Laurie out of her own picture, startling her heart,
half distraught with fond hopes and dreams into the chill daylight
again—full awake.

“I will make portraits,” said Menie, hastily, in a flood of sudden
bitterness, “when we go away, when we go home—I can do it—this shall be
my trade.”

And Menie closed the little portfolio abruptly, and went back to her
seat without another word; went back with the blood tingling through her
veins, with all her pride and all her strength astir; with a vague
impetuous excitement about her—an impulse of defiance. So long—so long:
what keeps them abroad lingering among these glistening trees?—perhaps
because they are afraid to tell her that her fate is sealed; and,
starting to her feet, the thought is strong on Menie to go forth and
meet them, to bid them have no fear for her, to tell them her delusion
is gone for ever, and that there is no more light remaining under the
skies.

Hush! there are footsteps on the path. Who are these that come together,
leaning, the elder on the younger, the mother on the son! With such a
grace this lofty head stoops to our mother; with such a kindly glance
she lifts her eyes to him; and they are busy still with the consultation
which has occupied so long a time. While she stands arrested, looking at
them as they draw near—growing aware of their full amity and union—a
shiver of great emotion comes upon Menie—then, or ever she is conscious,
a burst of tears. In another moment all her sudden enlightenment is
gone, quenched out of her eyes, out of her heart—and Menie puts the
tears away with a faltering hand, and stands still to meet them in a
quiet tremor of joy, the same loving Menie as of old.

“_My_ bairn!” Mrs Laurie says nothing more as she draws her daughter
close to her, and puts her lips softly to Menie’s brow. It is the seal
of the new bond. The mother and the son have been brought together; the
past is gone for ever like a dream of the night; and into the blessed
daylight, full of the peaceful rays God sends us out of heaven, we open
our eyes as to another life. Peace and sweet harmony to Menie Laurie’s
heart!

Put away the picture; lay it by where no one again shall believe its
slander true; put away this false-reporting face; put away the strange
clear-sightedness which came upon us like a curse. No need to inquire
how much was false—it is past, and we begin anew.


                             CHAPTER XXIII.

“Yes, Menie, I am quite satisfied.” It is Mrs Laurie herself who
volunteers this declaration, while Menie, on the little stool at her
feet, looks up wistfully, eager to hear, but not venturing to ask what
her conversation with Randall was. “We said a great many things, my
dear—a great deal about you, Menie, and something about our
circumstances too. The rent of Burnside will be a sufficient income for
me. I took it kind of Randall to say so, for it shows that he knew I
would not be dependent; and as for you, Menie, I fancy you will be very
well and comfortable, according to what he says. So you will have to
prepare, my dear—to prepare for your new life.”

Menie hid her face in her mother’s lap. Prepare—not the bridal garments,
the household supplies—something more momentous, and of greater
delicacy—the mind and the heart; and if this must always be something
solemn and important, whatever the circumstances, how much more so to
Menie, whose path had been crossed already by such a spectre? She sat
there, her eyes covered with her hands, her head bowing down upon her
mother’s knee; but the heavy doubt had flown from her, leaving nothing
but lighter cloudy shadows—maidenly fears and tremblings—in her way. Few
hearts were more honest than Menie’s, few more wistfully desirous of
doing well; and now it is with no serious anticipations of evil, but
only with the natural thrill and tremor, the natural excitement of so
great an epoch drawing close at hand, that Menie’s fingers close with a
startled pressure on her mother’s hand, as she is bidden prepare.

What is this that has befallen little July Home? There never were such
throngs of unaccountable blushes, such a suffusion of simple surprise.
Something is on her lips perpetually, which she does not venture to
speak—some rare piece of intelligence, which July cannot but marvel at
herself in silent wonder, and which she trembles to think Menie and
“a’body else” will marvel at still more. Withdrawing silently into dark
corners, sitting there doing nothing, in long fits of reverie, quite
unusual with July; coming forward so conscious and guilty, when called
upon; and now, at this earliest opportunity, throwing her arms round
Menie Laurie’s neck, and hiding her little flushed and agitated face
upon Menie’s shoulder. What has befallen July Home?

“Do you think it’s a’ true, Menie? He wouldna say what he didna mean;
but I think it’s for our Randall’s sake—it canna be for me!”

For July has not the faintest idea, as she lets this soft silken hair of
hers fall down on her cheek without an effort to restrain it, that
Johnnie Lithgow would not barter one smile upon that trembling child’s
lip of hers for all the Randalls in the world.

“He says he’ll go to the Hill, and tell them a’ at hame,” said July.
“Eh, Menie, what will they say? And he’s to tell Randall first of all. I
wish I was away, no to see Randall, Menie; he’ll just laugh, and think
it’s no true—for I see mysel it canna be for me!”

“It is for you, July; you must not think anything else; there is nobody
in the world like you to Johnnie Lithgow.” And slowly July’s head is
raised—a bright shy look of wonder gradually growing into conviction, a
sudden waking of higher thought and deeper feeling in the open simple
face; a sudden flush of crimson—the woman’s blush—and July withdrew
herself from her friend’s embrace, and stole a little apart into the
shadow, and wept a few tears. Was it true? For her, and not for another!
But it is a long time before this grand discovery can look a truth and
real, to July’s humble eyes.

But, nevertheless, it is very true. Randall’s little sister, Menie’s
child-friend, the little July of Crofthill, has suddenly been startled
into womanhood by this unexpected voice. After a severer fashion than
has ever confined it before, July hastily fastens up her silky hair,
hastily wipes off all traces of the tears upon her cheek, and is
composed and calm, after a sweet shy manner of composure, lifting up her
little gentle head with a newborn pride, eager to bring no discredit on
her wooer’s choice. And already July objects to be laughed at, and feels
a slight offence when she is treated as a child—not for herself, but for
him, whom now she does not quite care to have called _Johnnie_ Lithgow,
but is covetous of respect and honour for, as she never was for Randall,
though secretly in her own heart July still doubts of his genius, and
cannot choose but think Randall must be _cleverer_ than his less
assuming friend.

And in this singular little company, where all these feelings are astir,
it is hardly possible to preserve equanimity of manners. Miss Annie
herself, the lady of the house, sits at her little work-table, in great
delight, running over now and then in little outbursts of enthusiasm,
discoursing of Mr Home’s sweet book, of Mr Lithgow’s charming articles,
and occasionally making a demonstration of joy and sympathy in the
happiness of her darling girls, which throws Menie—Menie, always
conscious of Randall’s eye upon her, the eye of a lover, it is true, but
something critical withal—into grave and painful embarrassment, and
covers July’s stooping face with blushes. Mrs Laurie, busy with her
work, does what she can to keep the conversation “sensible,” but with no
great success. The younger portion of the company are too completely
occupied, all of them, to think of ordinary intercourse. Miss Annie’s
room was never so bright, never so rich with youthful hopes and
interests before. Look at them, so full of individual character,
unconscious as they are of any observation—though Nelly Panton, very
grim in the stiff coat armour of her new assumed gentility, sits at the
table sternly upright, watching them all askance, with vigilant unloving
eye.

Lithgow, good fellow, sits by Miss Annie. Though he laughs now and then,
he still does not scorn the natural goodness, the natural tenderness of
heart, which make their appearance under these habitual affectations—the
juvenile tricks and levities of her unreverent age. Poor Miss Annie
Laurie has been content to resign the reverence, in a vain attempt at
equality; but Lithgow, who is no critic by nature, remembers gratefully
her true kindness, and smiles only as little as possible at the
fictitious youthfulness which Miss Annie herself has come to believe in.
So he sits and bears with her, her little follies and weaknesses, and,
in his unconscious humility, is magnanimous, and does honour to his
manhood. Within reach of his kindly eye, July bends her head over her
work, glancing up now and then furtively to see who is looking at him—to
see, in the second place, who is noticing or laughing at her; and July,
with all her innocent heart, is grateful to Miss Annie. So many kind
things she says—and in July’s guileless apprehension they are all so
true.

Graver, but not less happy, Menie Laurie pursues her occupation by
July’s side, rarely looking up at all, pondering in her own heart the
many weighty things that are to come, with her tremor of fear, her joy
of deliverance scarcely yet quieted, and all her heart and all her mind
engaged—in dreams no longer, but in sober thought; sober
thought—thoughts of great devotion, of lifelong love and service, of
something nobler than the common life. Very serious are these
ponderings, coming down to common labours, the course of every day; and
Menie does not know the nature of her dreamings—they look to her so
real, so sober, and so true—and would scorn your warning, if you told
her that not the wildest story of Arabian genii was more romance than
those, her sober plans and thoughts.

Apart, and watching all, stands Randall Home. There is love in his
eye—you cannot doubt it—love, and the impulse of protection, the strong
appropriating grasp. There is something more. Look how his head rises in
the dimmer background above the table and the lights, above the little
company assembled there. With something like laughter, his eye turns
upon July—upon July’s wooer, his own friend—kindly, yet with a sense of
superiority, an involuntary elevation of himself above them both. And
this glance upon Miss Annie is mere scorn, nothing higher; and his eye
has scarcely had time to recover itself, when its look falls, bright and
softened, upon his betrothed; a look of love—question it not, simple
Menie—but it is calm, superior, above you still.


                             CHAPTER XXIV.

“They tell me it’s a haill month since it was a’ settled, but I hear
naething of the house or the plenishing, and no a word of what Jenny’s
to do. If they’re no wanting me, I’m no wanting them—ne’er a bit. It’s
aye the way guid service is rewarded; and whatfor should there be ony
odds with Jenny? I might have kent that muckle, if I had regarded
counsel, or thought of my ainsel; but aye Jenny’s foremost thought was
of them, for a’ such an ill body as she is now.”

And a tear was in Jenny’s eye, as she smoothed down the folds of Menie’s
dress—Menie’s finest dress, her own present, which Menie was to wear
to-night. And Menie’s ornaments are all laid out carefully upon the
table, everything she is likely to need, before Jenny’s lingering step
leaves the room. “I canna weel tell, for my pairt, what like life’ll be
without her,” muttered Jenny, as she went away. “I reckon no very muckle
worth the minding about; but I’m no gaun to burden onybody that doesna
want me—no, if I should never hae anither hour’s comfort a’ my days.”

And slowly, with many a backward glance and pause, Jenny withdrew.
Neglect is always hard to bear. Jenny believed herself to be left out of
their calculations—forgotten of those to whom she had devoted so many
years of her life; and Jenny, though she tried to be angry, could not
manage it, but felt her indignant eyes startled with strange tears. It
made a singular cloud upon her face this unusual emotion; the native
impatience only struggled through it fitfully in angry glimpses, though
Jenny was furious at herself for feeling so desolate, and very fain
would have thrown off her discomfort in a fuff—but far past the region
of the fuff was this her new-come solitude of heart. Her friends were
dead or scattered, her life was all bound up in her mistress and her
mistress’s child, and it was no small trial for Jenny to find herself
thus cast off and thrown aside.

The next who enters this room has a little heat about her, a certain
atmosphere of annoyance and displeasure. “I will be a burden”—unawares
the same words steal over Mrs Laurie’s lip, but the sound of her voice
checks her. Two or three steps back and forward through the room, a long
pause before the window, and then her brow is cleared. You can see the
shadows gradually melting away, as clouds melt from the sky, and in
another moment she has left the room, to resume her place down stairs.

This vacant room—nothing can you learn from its calm good order, its
windows open to the sun, its undisturbed and home-like quiet, of what
passes within its walls. There is Menie’s little Bible on the table; it
is here where Menie brings her doubts and troubles, to resolve them, if
they may be resolved. But there is no whisper here to tell you what
happens to Menie, when, as has already chanced, some trouble comes upon
her which it is not easy to put away. Hush! This time the door opens
slowly, gravely—this time it is a footstep very sober, something
languid, which comes in; and Menie Laurie puts up her hand to her
forehead, as if a pain was there; but not a word says Menie Laurie’s
reverie—not a word. If she is sad, or if she is merry, there is no way
to know. She goes about her toilette like a piece of business, and gives
no sign.

But this month has passed almost like age upon Menie Laurie’s face. You
can see that grave thoughts are common now, everyday guests and friends
in her sobered life, and that she has begun to part with her romances of
joy and noble life—has begun to realise more truly what manner of future
it is which lies before her. Nothing evil, perhaps—little hardship in
it; no great share of labour, of poverty, or care—but no longer the
grand ideal life, the dream of youthful souls.

And now she stands before the window, wearing Jenny’s gown. It is only
to look out if any one is visible upon the road—but there is no
passenger yet approaching Heathbank, and Menie goes calmly down stairs.
As it happens, the drawing-room is quite vacant of all but Nelly Panton,
who sits prim by the wall in one corner. Nelly is not an invited guest,
but has come as a volunteer, in right of her brother’s invitation, and
Miss Annie shows her sense of the intrusion by leaving her alone.

“Na, I’m no gaun to bide very lang in London,” said Nelly. “Ye see, Miss
Menie, you’re an auld friend. I’m no so blate, but I may tell you. I
didna come up here ance errand for my ain pleasure, but mostly to see
Johnnie, and to try if I couldna get ony word of a very decent lad, ane
Peter Drumlie, that belangs about our countryside. We were great
friends, him and me, and then we had an outcast—you’ll ken by
yoursel—but we’ve made it up again since I came to London, and I’m gaun
hame to get my providing, and comfort my mother a wee while, afore I
leave her athegither. It’s a real duty comforting folk’s mother, Miss
Menie. I’m sure I wouldna forget that for a’ the lads in the world.”

“And where are you to live, Nelly?” Nelly’s moralising scarcely called
for an answer.

“We havena just made up our minds; they say ae marriage aye makes mair,”
said Nelly, with a grim smile. “Miss Menie, you’ve set us a’ agaun.”

Perhaps Menie did not care to be classed with Nelly Panton. “July Home
will be a very young wife,” she said; “I think your brother should be
very happy with her, Nelly.”

“I wouldna wonder,” said Nelly, shortly; “but you see, Miss Menie, our
Johnnie’s a well-doing lad, and micht ha’e looked higher, meaning nae
offence to you; though nae doubt it’s true what Randall Home said when
he was speaking about this. ‘Lithgow,’ says he (for he ca’s Johnnie by
his last name—it’s a kind o’ fashion hereaway), ‘if you get naething
with your wife, I will take care to see you’re no cumbered with onybody
but hersel;’ which nae doubt is a great comfort, seeing there micht ha’e
been a haill troop of friends, now that Johnnie’s getting up in the
world.”

“What was that Randall Home said?” Menie asked the question in a very
clear distinct tone, cold and steady and unfaltering—“What do you say he
said?—tell me again.”

“He said, Johnnie wouldna be troubled with nane of her friends,” said
Nelly; “though he has her to keep, a bit wee silly thing, that can do
naething in a house—and nae doubt a maid to keep to her forby—that he
wouldna have ony of her friends a burden on him; and a very wise thing
to say, and a great comfort. I aye said he was a sensible lad, Randall
Home. Eh, preserve me!”

For Randall Home stands before her, his eyes glowing on her with haughty
rage. He has heard it, every single deliberate word, and Randall is no
coward—he comes in person to answer for what he has said.

Rise, Menie Laurie! Slowly they gather over us, these kind shadows of
the coming night; no one can see the momentary faltering which inclines
you to throw yourself down there upon the very ground, and weep your
heart out. Rise; it is you who are stately now.

“This is true?”

She is so sure of it, that there needs no other form of question, and
Menie lays her hand upon the table to support herself, and stands firmly
before him waiting for his answer. Why is it that now, at this moment,
when she should be most strong, the passing wind brings to her, as in
mockery, an echo of whispering mingled voices—the timid happiness of
July Home? But Menie draws up her light figure, draws herself apart from
the touch of her companions, and stands, as she fancies she must do
henceforth, all her life, alone.

“This is true?”

“I would disdain myself if I tried to escape by any subterfuge,” said
Randall, proudly; “I might answer that I never said the words this woman
attributes to me; but that I do not need to tell you. I would not
deceive you, Menie. I never can deny what I have given expression to;
and you are right—it is true.”

And Randall thinks he hears a voice, wavering somewhere, far off, and
distant like an echo—not coming from these pale lips which move and form
the words, but falling out upon the air—faint, yet distinct, not to be
mistaken. “I am glad you have told me. I thank you for making no
difficulty about it: this is very well.”

“Menie! you are not moved by this gossip’s story? This that I said has
no effect on you? Menie! Is a woman like this to make a breach between
you and me?”

In stolid malice, Nelly Panton sits still, and listens with a certain
melancholy enjoyment of the mischief she has made, protesting, under her
breath, that “she meant nae ill; she aye did a’thing for the best;”
while Randall, forgetful of his own acknowledgment, repeats again and
again his indignant remonstrance, “a woman like this!”

“No, she has no such power,” said Menie firmly—“no such power. Pardon
me—I am wanted to-night. My strength is not my own to be wasted now; we
can conclude this matter another time.”

Before he could say a word, the door had closed upon her. There was a
bustle without, a glimmer of coming lights upon the wall. In a few
minutes the room was lighted up, the lady of the house in her presiding
place—and Randall started with angry pride from the place where he
stood, by the side of Nelly Panton, whose gloomy unrelieved figure
suddenly stood out in bold relief upon the brightened wall.

Another time! Menie Laurie has not gone to ponder upon what this other
conference shall be—she is not by her own window—she is not out of
doors—she has gone to no such refuge. Where she never went before, into
the heart of Miss Annie’s preparations—into the bustle of Miss Annie’s
hospitality—shunning even Jenny, far more shunning her mother, and
waiting only till the room is full enough, to give her a chance of
escaping every familiar eye. This is the first device of Menie’s mazed,
bewildered mind. These many days she has lived in hourly expectation of
some such blow; but it stuns her when it comes.

Forlorn! forlorn! wondering if it is possible to hide this misery from
every eye—pondering plans and schemes of concealment, trying to
invent—do not wonder, it is a natural impulse—some generous lie. But
Menie’s nature, more truthful than her will, fails in the effort. The
time goes on, the lingering moments swell into an hour. Music is in her
ears, and smiling faces glide before her and about her, till she feels
this dreadful pressure at her heart no longer tolerable, and bursts away
in a sudden passion, craving to be alone.

Another heart, restless by reason of a gnawing unhappiness, wanders out
and in of these unlighted chambers—oftenest coming back to this one,
where the treasures of its life rest night by night. This wandering
shadow is not a graceful one—these pattering, hasty footsteps have
nothing in them of the softened lingering tread of meditation. No, poor
Jenny, little of sentiment or grace embellishes your melancholy—yet it
is hard to find any poem so full of pathos as a desolate heart, even
such a one as beats in your homely breast to-night.

Softly—the room is not vacant now, as it was when you last entered here.
Some one stands by the window, stooping forward to look at the stars;
and while you linger by the door, a low cry, half a sigh, half a moan,
breaks the silence faintly—not the same voice which just now bore its
part so well below;—not the same, for that voice came from the lips
only—this is out of the heart.

“Bairn, you’re no weel—they’ve a’ wearied you,” said Jenny, stealing
upon her in the darkness: “lie down and sleep; it’s nae matter for the
like of me, but when you sigh, it breaks folk’s hearts.”

The familiar voice surprised the watcher into a sudden burst of childish
tears. All the woman failed in this great trial. “Oh, Jenny, dinna tell
my mother!” Menie Laurie was capable of no other thought.




           THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE PROTECTORATE IN TURKEY.


Before many weeks shall have gone over, perhaps while these sheets are
passing through the press, we shall be able to judge of the accuracy of
Lord Ellenborough’s opinion, as expressed in the House of Lords on the
6th February, that we are on the eve of one of the most formidable wars
that ever this country was engaged in. Yes; within a short period from
the present date much will be known; the Russian problem will be near
its solution. The mystery of that force, which is said to be
irresistible, and of those resources said to be inexhaustible, will be
laid bare to the world. We shall know if all that we have been told of
that vast power which has kept Europe in awe, is real; if the colossal
idol which all have gazed on with a feeling that cannot be accurately
described, does not stand on feet of clay. We confess that recent events
have somewhat weakened the general faith in the overwhelming strength of
Russia, and people begin to have some doubt whether the world has not
been imposed upon. With her vast territorial extent, including nearly
one-seventh part of the terrestrial portion of the globe and one
twenty-seventh of its entire surface, and her varied population,
comprising nearly one-ninth of the human race, she has spoken as if she
could domineer over all Europe; and until the Pruth was passed, and the
Danube became once more the theatre of battle, mankind seemed, if not
entirely to admit, at least unwilling to dispute the claim. The combats
of Oltenitza and Citale have, we suspect, disturbed that belief. Foreign
and all but hostile flags have, within the last few weeks, floated
almost within sight of Sebastopol; the squadrons of England and France
have swept the hitherto unapproachable Euxine, from the Thracian
Bosphorus to Batoun, and from Batoun back to Beicos Bay, and her fleet
has not ventured to cross their path. Should Austria, listening to her
evil genius, prove false to her own interests, we believe that the
anticipations of the noble Lord referred to will be realised. Should she
consult her own safety, and make common cause with those whose warlike
preparations are not for aggression, but defence, we still incline to
the opinion that hostilities may be limited to their original theatre—to
be temporarily arrested, if not closed, by diplomatic intervention. The
unsuccessful issue, at least to the date at which we write, of Count
Orloff’s mission, gives us some hope that such will be the case; but a
very short time will enable us to judge whether the advance of a _corps
d’armée_ to the Servian frontier is to aid Russian aggression, or to
act, if necessary, against it.

An aggressive spirit has invariably marked the policy of Russia from the
time of Peter the Great. Long harassed by internal enemies, and
sometimes struggling for existence, she at length was freed from the
dangers which had menaced her from abroad. By a fortunate concurrence of
circumstances, the moment when her government became constituted, and
began to enjoy its liberty of action, the neighbouring states, from the
Baltic to the Caspian, entered into their period of weakness. The wild
ambition and the mad enterprise of Charles XII. occasioned the decline
of Sweden. The chivalrous monarch, the conqueror of Narva, the
vanquished of Pultova, perished in the ditch of Frederickshall. Peter
triumphed over his most formidable enemy; and, if he did not from that
moment begin his aggression in the Ottoman territory, he was at all
events no longer embarrassed by the dangerous diversions in the north.
There still, however, remained an obstacle to his designs on those
magnificent possessions of the Osmanlis, which have at all times
possessed the fatal privilege of attracting the cupidity of the northern
barbarian. There still remained Poland; but her anarchy, her internal
convulsions, inseparable from her anomalous institutions, proved to be
no less profitable to the Muscovite than the madness of the Scandinavian
hero; and from the day of her dismemberment, Turkey became the permanent
object of the ambition which, even as we write, threatens to convulse
Europe.

It rarely happens that up to the close of a long war the original cause
of quarrel continues the same. The first dissension disappears as war
progresses, and, in the numerous complications which hostilities give
rise to, the belligerents themselves either forget, or do not assign the
same importance to the question which originally arrayed them in arms
against each other. Though the war between Russia and Turkey has not yet
a remote date, and though hostilities have not yet been formally
declared between Russia and the Western Powers, notwithstanding the
recall of their respective ambassadors, we still fear that the public is
beginning to lose sight of the primary grounds of quarrel between the
Czar and the Sultan, and which has led to the present state of things.
The pretext put forward by Russia for intervention in the Ottoman empire
is her desire to “protect” the ten millions of Christians of the Greek
Church who are subjects of the Porte; these ten millions professing the
same faith as the subjects of the Emperor of Russia, and living under
the tyrannous rule of an infidel government. We admit the plausibility
of that claim, and we are aware how easily the generous sympathies of a
Christian people can be roused in favour of such a cause. We can
appreciate the feelings of those who are persuaded that the moment has
at length arrived when the Cross shall be planted on the mosques of
Stamboul, and the orthodox believer take the place of the Mussulman. The
claim to a Protectorate over ten millions of suffering Greeks in the
European territory of the Sultan has been described as a cover, under
which Russia aims at the possession of Constantinople, and, in fact, at
the extension of her dominion from the Carpathian to the Danube, and
from the Danube to the Sea of Marmora; but the Czar has solemnly and
repeatedly declared that he had no such ambition, and that the sole
motive which actuated him was to protect a population who professed the
self-same religion as himself, he being the visible head of the Eastern
Church, and recognised as such by the Eastern or Greek Christians; and
the refusal of the Porte to grant that Protectorate is the primary cause
of the war. Without examining whether any, or what conditions would
justify a foreign government in imposing its protection on the subjects
of an independent state, we may be permitted to say something of the
nature of the religion whose champion the Czar professes to be; of the
alleged homogeneity of the Eastern and Russian Churches, for on this the
whole question turns; and of the advantages likely to accrue to the
Greeks from Russian protection.

Among the many errors likely to be dissipated by the minute discussion
which the Eastern question has undergone in the public press of this and
other countries, not the least is that which has reference to the
Emperor of Russia as the natural Protector of the Christian communities
of the East. The hardihood with which this claim has been constantly put
forward, and the silent acquiescence with which it seems to have been
admitted by those who should know better, have imposed upon the world.
Even now, they who resist the formal establishment of the influence of
Russia over the internal affairs of Turkey, do so more by reason of the
political consequences of that usurpation to the rest of Europe, than
with the thought of disputing the abstract right of the head of the
“Orthodox Faith” to the Protectorate he lays claim to. These
pretensions, like many others we could mention, will not stand the test
of examination. We do not learn, on any satisfactory evidence, that the
Christian populations of the Ottoman empire have, during the last ten
months, received with sympathy or encouragement the prospect of Russian
protection; nor have they, so far as we know, exhibited any very earnest
longing for the introduction of the knout as an element of government.
The population of independent Greece may, and, we have no doubt, do,
indulge in the harmless dream of a new Byzantine empire to be raised on
the ruins of that which Mahomet II. won from their fathers; and they
would doubtless rejoice that the domination of the Osmanlis were put an
end to by Russia, or any other power, on condition of being their
successors, as they were their predecessors. We believe that to this
sort of revolution the aspirations of the Greeks are limited. But that
people dispute the claim of the Czar to the Pontificate of the “Orthodox
Faith,” and reject the idea of a temporal submission to him. The Greek
Church, however, does not constitute the only Christian community of the
Ottoman empire. Other congregations are to be found there, subjects also
of the Porte, and who have not less claim to the protection of the
various states of Europe, when protection is needed; but who still less
desire that Russia should be their sole protector.

The points of difference between the Greek and Latin Churches are
familiar to the world. But it may not be so generally known that, while
the Russian branch of the former professes to preserve the Byzantine
dogmas as its basis, the condition of its hierarchy, and the mechanism
of its discipline, have become so altered with the lapse of years, that,
at the present day, there exists no identity in this respect that would
justify the head of the Russian Church in his pretensions to a temporal
or spiritual protectorate over that church whose administrator and head
is the Patriarch of Constantinople. Besides the difference of language,
which is not without its importance—the one speaking Greek, the other
Sclavonic—the Church of Constantinople still boasts that she has
preserved her Patriarch, who is independent of secular interference in
spirituals, while no such privilege belongs to Russia. A serious
difference, too, exists between the Russian and Greek Churches (and one
which would create new schisms and new convulsions) on the important
question of baptism. Converts are admitted into the pale of the former
from other communities, when they have been already baptized, without
the obligation of again receiving the sacrament; while the Church of
Constantinople makes the repetition of the sacrament indispensable in
similar cases. The difference of church government is of the greatest
importance: the Greeks have never admitted that the Holy Synod of St
Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, represents in any sense the
spiritual authority which he forcibly overthrew. The substitution of the
chief of the state for it was never pretended to be otherwise than for
political purposes, and as a means of realising the ambitious and
aggressive designs of the Czar; and, while we do not deny the success it
has met with, we believe that, since that event, the Russian clergy, as
a body, has become the most ignorant and the most servile of any
ecclesiastical corporation that now exists. The edict of Peter the Great
admits the merely temporal object he had in view. “A spiritual
authority,” it states, “which is represented by a corporation, or
college, will never excite in the nation so much agitation and
effervescence as a single chief of the ecclesiastical order. The lower
classes of the people are incapable of comprehending the difference
between the spiritual and secular authority. When they witness the
extraordinary respect and honour which encompass a supreme pontiff,
their admiration and wonder are so excited, that they look upon the
chief of the Church as a second sovereign, whose dignity is equal, or
even superior, to that of the monarch himself; and they are disposed to
attach to the ecclesiastical rank a character of power superior to the
other. Now, as it is incontestable that the common people indulge in
such reflections, what, we ask, would be the case if the unjust disputes
of an arbitrary clergy were added to light up a conflagration?” At the
time this edict was issued, the Russian Church had already lost its
patriarch. Full twenty years had elapsed since that event; and if ever
the mitre of a prelate rivalled the diadem of an emperor, it was not in
the reign of Peter that such an instance was to be found. No serious
antagonism of the kind did or could exist in Russia; and the real object
of the abolition of the patriarchate was, to combine with the absolutism
of the sovereign the prestige of spiritual supremacy—that the Czar might
not only say, with Louis XIV., “The State! _I_ am the State;” but also,
“The Church! I am the Church.”

The Holy Synod of St Petersburg is, it is true, composed of some of the
highest dignitaries of the Russian Church, (taken from the monastic
order); but these are appointed by the secular authority; are presided
over by a layman who represents the Czar, and whose _veto_ can suspend,
or even annul, the most solemn resolutions of the Synod, even when
_unanimously_ adopted. The person who occupied for years, and who, we
believe, still occupies the important post of President of the Supreme
Ecclesiastical Council, which regulates and decides on all matters
concerning the discipline and administration of the Church of Russia, is
a general of cavalry—General Protuson! The body thus controlled by a
military chief, may be increased in numbers, or reduced, according to
the pleasure of the Czar; but those who ordinarily constitute that
Ecclesiastical Board are the metropolitan of St Petersburg, the
archbishops, a bishop, the Emperor’s confessor, an archimandrite (one
degree lower than a bishop), the chaplain-general of the naval and
military forces, and an arch-priest. But, whatever be the rank, the
learning, or the piety of the Synod, one thing must be well understood
by them;—they must never dare to express an opinion, or give utterance
to a thought, in opposition to the Czar. The edicts of the Synod bear
the imperial impress; they are invariably headed with this _formula_,
“By the most high will, command, and conformably to the sublime wishes
of his Majesty, &c. &c.” If it be alleged that the authority of the Holy
Synod, with its bearded, booted, and _sabred_ president, relates merely
to the temporal administration of the Church, and that should a question
of dogma arise recourse would be had to an _Œcumenical Council_,
composed of all the churches of the Oriental rite, we reply that the
superintendence of the Synod is _not_ confined to points of mere
administration or discipline. The canonisation of a saint, for instance,
is not a matter of mere administration. When a subject is proposed for
that distinction—and the Russian Hagiology is more scandalously filled
than the Roman in the worst times of the Papacy—it is the Synod, that
is, the Emperor, who decides on the claims to worship of the unknown
candidate, whose remains may have been previously sanctified by the
gross superstition of a barbarous peasantry. It is true that, in
consequence of some notorious criminals having, not many years ago, been
added to the list of orthodox saints, the Emperor, since the discovery
of this, has manifested considerable repugnance to exercising this
important part of his pontifical functions. He has, on recent occasions,
refused his _fiat_ of canonisation. A few years ago, some human bones
were dug up on the banks of a stream in the government of Kazan, which,
for some reason or other, were supposed to possess miraculous powers. A
cunning speculator thought it a regular godsend; and petitions were
forthwith sent to St Petersburg claiming divine honours for the unknown.
The petitions were repeatedly rejected, but as often pressed on the
Emperor. His Pontifical Majesty, who was assured, on high authority,
that the claims of the present candidate were quite as well founded as
those of many in the _Hagiology_, at last consented to issue his order
of canonisation, but roundly swore that he would not grant another
saintship as long as he lived. Yet it is not doubted that the
opportunity offered by the present “holy war” of continuing the sacred
list will be made use of unsparingly.

In other Churches the sacerdotal character is indelible; it is conferred
by the ecclesiastical authority, and whether by the imposition of hands,
or any other formality, cannot be destroyed even where the party is
suspended from his sacred functions, or prohibited altogether from
performing them. But neither suspension, nor degradation, can be
considered as a matter of mere administration, or ordinary discipline;
and the Emperor’s military representative has it in his power to decide
on the degradation of any clergyman, and to completely efface the
sacerdotal character acquired by ordination.

But, supposing the improbable event of an _Œcumenical Council_, in which
the various Churches of the East should enter as component parts, in
what manner, we may be permitted to ask, would the Russians claim to be
represented? Would the Patriarch of Constantinople, or those of Antioch,
Jerusalem, and Alexandria, who are under his spiritual jurisdiction, and
who pronounce the Muscovite Church as, if not heretical, at least
schismatical, submit to be presided over by an aide-de-camp of the Czar;
or would they recognise, in favour of his Majesty, the quality of
impeccability, or infallibility, which they refuse to the head of the
Latin Church?

With that complete dependence in spiritual as in temporal government on
the chief of the State, and that debasing servitude of the Russian
Church, may be compared with advantage the immunities and privileges of
the Church of Constantinople even under the Mussulman government. Its
Patriarch is the chief of the Greek communities, the president of their
Synod, and the sovereign judge, without interference on the part of the
Sultan’s authority, of all civil and religious matters relating to these
communities which may be brought before it. The Patriarch, and the
twelve metropolitans who, under his presidency, compose the Synod, or
Grand Council of the Greek _nation_, are exempt from the _Haratch_, or
personal impost. The imposts the Greek _nation_ pays to the government
are apportioned, not by the Mussulman authorities, but by its own
archbishops and bishops. Those prelates are _de officio_ members of the
municipal councils, by the same right as the Turkish governors and
muftis. The cadis and governors are bound to see to the execution of the
decisions or judgments of the bishops, in all that relates to their
dioceses respectively; and to enforce the payment of the contributions
which constitute the ecclesiastical revenues. The clergy of the Greek
Church receive from each family of their own communion an annual
contribution, for the decent maintenance of public worship. They
celebrate marriages, pronounce divorces, draw up wills, and from all
these acts derive a considerable revenue; and, in certain cases, they
are authorised to receive legacies bequeathed for pious objects. For
every judgment pronounced by their tribunals, the Patriarch and
metropolitans are entitled to a duty on the value of the property in
litigation, of ten per cent. They have the power of sentencing to fine,
to imprisonment, to corporal punishment, and to exile, independently of
the spiritual power they possess, and which they not rarely exercise, of
excommunication. The Patriarch and the prelates are paid a fixed
contribution by the priests to whom the higher functions of the ministry
are confided; and these, in turn, receive a proportional amount from the
clergy under their immediate superintendence. The incomes of the
Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, of the thirty-two
archbishops, and the one hundred and forty bishops of the Ottoman
empire, are paid out of these public contributions.

These immunities present, as we have said, a striking contrast with the
condition of the orthodox Church in Russia. A Church so endowed, and
with powers over the millions who belong to its communion, would
naturally tempt an ambitious sovereign to become its master under the
name of Protector. We discard completely any inquiry into the relative
merits of the two communities; but we think it must be evident to any
impartial mind, that the protectorate of the Czar, in his character of
head of the orthodox faith, would make him the supreme ruler over the
Ottoman empire in Europe.

We do not mean to allege that the immunities of the Christian population
have been faithfully respected by the pashas, the cadis, or other agents
of the Porte. We admit that most of what has been said of the
intolerance and the corruption of Turkish officials is true, and that
acts of oppression and cruelty have been perpetrated, which call for the
severest reprehension, and require the interference of the Christian
governments of Europe. But what we dispute is, the exclusive right of
the Emperor of Russia to such intervention or to such protectorate.

The Church of Constantinople regards that of St Petersburg as
schismatical, however nearly they approach in some respects; and so far
from acknowledging a right of Protectorate, either in the Synod or the
Emperor, she claims over her younger and erring sister all that
superiority which is imparted by primogeniture. She would reject the
claim of Russia to supremacy, and refuse to be administered by a servile
Synod, with a nominee of the Czar for President. To submit to that
Protectorate would be to admit foreign authority; that admission would
involve the loss of her Patriarch, the evidence of her independence; and
to this conviction may be traced the indifference of the Greek
population to Russian influence, and the co-operation its clergy has
given to the Porte.

But, scattered amid the immense population which are subject to the
Sultan, may be found communions not belonging to the Confession of
Photius as adopted by the Eastern Churches, and still less to the
schismatical branch of it which is known as the Russian Church. These
communions have no relation, affinity, or in fact anything whatever in
common with the Synod of St Petersburg, or the Czar, whom they regard as
a spiritual usurper, and the creed he professes as all but heretical.
The Eutychian Armenians amount to no less than 2,400,000 persons, of
whom nearly 80,000 are actually united to the Latin Church; but,
whatever be the difference in dogma or ceremonial between them, they
unite in opposition to the Synod of St Petersburg, and in submission to
the Porte. There are moreover, upwards of a million of Roman Catholics
and united Greeks—that is, Greeks who admit the supremacy of the Pope,
while observing their own ceremonial, and who, it will not be
questioned, have an equal right to protection, where protection is
requisite. We can easily understand the interference of the European
powers on behalf of those communities among whom are to be found persons
of the same religious belief as themselves; but we cannot understand on
what grounds an _exclusive_ claim is put forward by a power which can
have no sympathy with them, and which has destroyed the most important
link that connected the Church of St Petersburg with that of the
Patriarch. The possession of Constantinople by the Russians would, we
are convinced, be followed by the destruction of the independence of the
Eastern Church, the substitution of some Russian general or admiral,
Prince Menschikoff perhaps, or Prince Gortschakoff, or whoever may
happen to be the favourite of the day, for the venerable Patriarch; and
by the most cruel persecution, not perhaps so much from religious
intolerance, as for the same reasons assigned by Peter the Great for his
abolition of the patriarchal dignity. The treatment of the united Greeks
of the Russian empire, the Catholics of Poland and of the Muscovite
provinces, is sufficient to show to those who, _now_ at all events, live
tranquilly under the rule of the Sultan, what they have to expect from
the tolerance, the equity, or the mercy of such a Russian Protector.
One-fourth of the Latin population ruled over by the Czar is made up of
various religious sects and forms of worship—Catholicism, Lutheranism,
Calvinism, Mahometanism, Judaism, Lamaism, Schamaism, &c. In theory
these different persuasions have a right to toleration; but in practice
the case is different. The jealousy of the Czars, and their
determination to reduce all that comes within their grasp to the same
dead level of servitude, cannot endure a difference of any kind,
religious or political; and pretexts are never wanting for persecutions,
which have been compared to those of the worst days of the Roman
emperors. The Baltic provinces, Lithuania and Poland, testify to the
truth of these allegations. It appears clear, then, that the Christian
communities of the Ottoman empire do not require the protection or
domination of Russia, which would crush all alike.

We beg to point out another, and a material error into which the
generality of people have fallen with reference to the Christian
population of Turkey in Europe. The oppression of a Christian people by
a misbelieving despotism is sufficient, of itself, to enlist the
sympathies of a civilised and tolerant nation; and the fact of that
oppression being practised by a small minority over a multitude
composing three-fourths of the population of the Ottoman empire in
Europe, is denounced as a monstrous anomaly; and the public indignation
has been roused at the idea of scarcely three millions and a half of
Turks grinding to the dust more than ten millions of Christians. We
execrate religious oppression as much as any one can do; and whether the
persecuted be numerous or few, one or one thousand, the crime is, in
principle, the same. But we can show that, in the present instance, the
aggravating circumstance of so great a difference in numbers does not
exist. Those who speak of ten millions of Greek Christians being
oppressed by three millions of Turks, forget, or may not be aware, that
Moldavia and Wallachia, known as the Danubian Principalities, and now
“protected” to the utmost by synods of another kind from that of St
Petersburg—by military tribunals, and martial law—contain a population
of above four millions, all of whom, with the exception of about fifty
thousand Hungarian Catholics, are members of the Greek, though not of
the Russo-Greek Church. Now, the Moldo-Wallachians are, in their
domestic administration, independent of the Porte, the tie which
attaches them to it—the payment of a comparatively small tribute—being
of the slenderest kind. The Principalities are governed by their own
princes or hospodars, formerly named for life, and, since the convention
of 1849 between Russia and the Porte, for seven years; they are selected
from among their own boyards, and receive investiture only from the
Sultan. The Moldo-Wallachian army is recruited from the Moldo-Wallachian
population, and is organised on the Russian plan, with Russian
staff-officers. In neither of the three provinces is there a Turkish
garrison, nor a Turkish authority of any kind, nor a single Turkish
soldier; there is consequently no Turkish oppression or persecution.
Servia, with a population of about a million, mostly Christians of the
Greek communion, is equally independent of the Porte. The Turks have, it
is true, a garrison in Belgrade, limited, by treaty with Austria, to a
certain force; and Belgrade itself is the residence of a Pasha; but,
beyond this trifling military occupation, the acknowledgment, as a
matter of form, of the supremacy of the Sultan, and a small tribute in
money, nothing else is left them. And, as in the case of the Danubian
provinces, the internal government is entirely in the hands of the
Servians themselves. The liberal institutions established in Servia by
Prince Milosch Obrenowitsch, were not disturbed or interfered with by
the Porte, to which they gave no umbrage, but were overthrown by Russian
intrigue. In Servia no oppression, no persecution, is or can be
practised by the Turks, who are powerless. Thus, we have about five
millions of population to be deducted from the ten millions said to be
mercilessly oppressed, outraged, and persecuted by Mussulman
bigotry;—and also said to be eager for the religious Protectorate of
Russia.

The Danubian Principalities were formerly governed by princes called
_waywodes_, who were appointed by the Sultan. Those waywodes, it is
true, exercised every species of oppression; but our readers will
perhaps be surprised when they learn that these provincial tyrants were
_not_ Mussulmans: they were _Christians_, and Christians of the same
communion as the people whom they ruled over; and they were selected
because they were Christians, to administer Christian dependencies. The
waywodes were Fanariote Greeks, and denizens of Constantinople. We do
not deny that the Turkish government were bound to see that their
provinces were properly administered; but they were powerless to repress
these abuses, as they were powerless to repress the abuses in the
Turkish Pashalicks.

The influence of Russia for a long time, and particularly for the last
twenty-five years, has been paramount in the Danubian Principalities. We
have shown that the Moldo-Wallachians, with a slight exception, prefer
the Greek rite; but there is no evidence that they have any religious
sympathies with the Church of which the Emperor of Russia is the head.
The Moldo-Wallachians also regard the Russian dogmas as schismatic, and
recognise only the religious supremacy of the Patriarch of
Constantinople. In Paris there is a Russian chapel for the use of the
Russian embassy, the residents of that nation, and the few subjects of
Independent Greece who may think it proper, or useful, to attend Russian
worship. The Moldo-Wallachians who also reside in the French capital
have been often pressed to attend that chapel, with a view, no doubt, to
establish in the eyes of the world a homogeneity which in reality does
not exist. As a proof of the antipathy between the two communions, we
quote a passage from a discourse delivered on the occasion of the
opening of a temporary place of worship for the Moldo-Wallachians by the
Archimandrite Suagoano. To those who still believe that there exists the
bond of a common faith between the Church of Constantinople and that of
St Petersburg, and that the Moldo-Wallachians, or the Greeks of the
Ottoman empire, desire a Russian Protectorate, we recommend the perusal
of the following, which was pronounced to a numerous congregation in the
beginning of January last. “When we expressed a desire,” said the
archimandrite, “to found a chapel of our own rite, we were told that a
Russian chapel already existed in Paris, and we were asked why the
Roumains (Moldo-Wallachians) do not frequent it? What! Roumains to
frequent a Russian place of worship! Is it then forgotten that they can
never enter its walls, and that the Wallachians who die in Paris,
forbid, at their very last hour, that their bodies should be borne to a
Muscovite chapel, and declare that the presence of a Russian priest
would be an insult to their tomb. Whence comes this irreconcilable
hatred? That hatred is perpetuated by the difference of language. The
Russian tongue is Sclavonic; _ours_ is Latin. Is there in fact a single
Roumain who understands the language of the Muscovites? That hatred is
just; for is not Russia our mortal enemy? Has she not closed up our
schools, and debarred us from all instruction, in order to sink our
people into the depths of barbarism, and to reduce them the more easily
to servitude? On that hatred I pronounce a blessing; for the Russian
Church is a schism which the Roumains reject; because the Russian Church
has separated from the great Eastern Church; because the Russian Church
does not recognise as its head the Patriarch of Constantinople; because
it does not receive the Holy Unction of Byzantium; because it has
constituted itself into a Synod of which the Czar is the despot; and
because that Synod, in obedience to his orders, has changed its worship,
has fabricated an unction which it terms holy, has suppressed or changed
the fast days, and the Lents as established by our bishops; because it
has canonised Sclavonians who are apocryphal saints, such as Vladimir,
Olga, and so many others whose names are unknown to us; because the rite
of Confession, which was instituted to ameliorate and save the penitent,
has become, by the servility of the Muscovite clergy, an instrument for
spies for the benefit of the Czar; in fine, because that Synod has
violated the law, and that its reforms are arbitrary, and are made to
further the objects of despotism. These acts of impiety being so
notorious, and those truths so known, who shall now maintain that the
Russian Church is not schismatic? Our Councils reject it; our canons
forbid us to recognise it; our Church disavows it; and all who hold to
the faith, and whom she recognises for her children, are bound to
respect her decision, and to consider the Russian rite as a schismatic
rite. Such are the motives which prevent the Roumains from attending the
Russian chapel in Paris!” This address was received with enthusiasm by
the assemblage. Letters of felicitation have been received by the
archimandrite from his unhappy brethren of the Principalities, who are
driven with the bayonet to the churches to chant _Te Deum_ for Russian
victories; and, impoverished as they are, the prelates and priests of
Wallachia send their mites to Paris, to aid in the construction of a
true Greek church.[2]

It would be unjust to charge any religious community with the
responsibility of the crimes or vices of individual members. The police
offices and law courts in our own country occasionally disclose cases of
moral depravity among members of the clerical profession; but these
cases are few, we are happy to say, in comparison with the number of
pious and learned men that compose the body. Nor do we pronounce a
sweeping anathema on the Russo-Greek Church, because, with the exception
of, as we are informed, a few of the superior dignitaries, no
ecclesiastical corporation can produce more examples of gross ignorance
and vicious habits. The degradation, the miserable condition of the mass
of the Russian clergy, the pittance they receive from the State, being
insufficient to keep body and soul together, and the almost total want
of instruction, are, no doubt, the cause of this state of things.
Marriage is a primary and indispensable condition for the priesthood;
and the death of the wife, unless where a special exemption is accorded
by the Synod or the Emperor, involves not merely the loss of his
sacerdotal functions, but completely annuls the priestly character. The
widowed priest returns to a lay condition from that moment; he may
become a field labourer, or a valet; a quay porter, or a groom; a
mechanic, or a soldier of the army of Caucasus; but his functions at the
altar cease then, and for ever. The irregularities which in Russia, as
elsewhere, prevailed in the monastic establishments, afforded a pretext
to that rude reformer, Peter the Great, for abolishing the greater
number of them. Their immense wealth, the gifts of the piety or the
superstition of past ages, was a temptation which the inexorable despot
could not resist; and having once acquired a taste for plunder, he
appropriated not only monastic property, whilst abolishing monasteries,
but filled the imperial treasury with the confiscated wealth of the
secular clergy. What Peter left undone Catherine II. completed. During
the reign of that Princess, whose own frailties might have taught her
sympathy for human weaknesses, the whole of the remaining immovable
property of the Church was seized. The correspondent and friend of
Voltaire and the Encyclopedists filled with joy the hearts of the
philosophers of Paris, by the appropriation of the resources of
superstition, which she devoted to the realisation of her ambitious
projects, or to recompense richly the services of her numerous
favourites. Miserable pittances were allotted to the functionaries to
whom that great wealth had belonged; but the distractions of love and
war too often interfered with the payment of even those pittances. In
Moscow, St Petersburg, and some other large cities, there are still,
perhaps, a few benefices which afford a decent subsistence to the
holders; but the stipends, even when augmented by the _casuel_, the
chance and voluntary contribution paid by individuals for special
masses, and certain small perquisites for funerals, &c., are
insufficient to maintain, in anything approaching to comfort, a single,
much less a married clergyman. There appears to be some difference of
opinion among the best authorities on the exact stipends received by the
higher clergy. The income of the senior metropolitan, the first
dignitary of the orthodox church, including all sources of revenue, has
never been estimated at more than from £600 to £700 per annum; that of
the other metropolitans, at about £160; of an archbishop, £120; of a
bishop, £80; of an archimandrite, the next in rank after a bishop, from
£40 to £50. The wooden hut inhabited by a parish priest is not superior
to that of the poorest of his parishioners, and the spot of land
attached is cultivated by his own hands. The destitute condition of the
inferior clergy has many times been brought under the notice of the
government, and commissioners have been named to examine into the
complaints, but without producing any result.

Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary that the clergy should
become degraded in the eyes of the people, and be regarded, when not in
the performance of their sacred functions, as objects of derision and
contempt. With starvation at home, they are forced to seek in the houses
of others what their own cannot supply; to satisfy the most pressing
wants of nature, they submit to scoff and insult; and wherever feasting
is going on, the priest is found an unbidden, and in most instances an
unwelcome guest. This state of life leads to vagrant, idle, and
dissolute habits, and it is declared, on what appears to be competent
authority, that intemperance is the general characteristic of the lower
clergy of Russia. Intemperance easily leads to other vices. According to
official reports laid before the Synod, there were, in the single year
1836, 208 ecclesiastics degraded for _infamous crimes_, and 1985 for
crimes or offences less grave. In that year the clergy comprised 102,456
members;—the number degraded and sentenced by the tribunals was
therefore about two per cent. In 1839, the number of priests condemned
by the tribunal was one out of twenty; and during the three years from
1836 to 1839 inclusive, the cases were 15,443, or one-sixth of the
whole. A good deal of scandal, as well there might be, was occasioned by
the reports of the Synod, and that body received a hint to be more
discreet in exposing to the sneers of the heterodox the state of the
orthodox church. It attempted, in a subsequent report, to explain away
or palliate those disorders. “If such things,” says the Synodical Report
of 1837, “cannot be entirely avoided by reason of the vast extent of the
empire; of the want of seminaries, attendance at which has been only
recently obligatory; of the little instruction received by the clergy,
who in this respect are, as it were, in a state of infancy—so much so,
that one old barbarism has not yet disappeared—nevertheless, the same
clergy has exhibited rich examples of ancient piety and severity of
morals.” Dr Pinkerton assures us that there are to be found among the
families of the parochial clergy, a degree of culture and good manners
peculiar to themselves. If we can rely on accounts more recent, and
quite as good, these are but rare exceptions; and we fear that matters
are pretty much the same as when Coxe was in Russia, and many of the
parish priests were so ignorant as to be unable to read, even in their
own language, the gospel they were commissioned to preach. M. de
Haxthausen, whose testimony is entitled to great respect, says,
“Ecclesiastics of merit are rare in the country. The greater number of
the old popes are ignorant, brutal, without any instruction, and
exclusively given up to their personal interests. In the performance of
religious ceremonies, and in the dispensation of the sacraments, they
have often no other object in view than to obtain presents. They have no
care about the spiritual welfare of their flocks, and impart neither
consolation nor instruction to them.” This ignorance, added to relaxed
morals, accounts for their want of influence with the people, who are in
the habit of treating them with the most contemptuous familiarity. The
lower classes have special sarcasms and insulting proverbs applicable to
their popes.

The higher ranks of the Russian clergy are principally, we believe
exclusively, taken from the _Tschernoi Duhovenstvo_, or black
clergy—monks who live in convents, and pass their lives in the practice
of religious observances. Their superiority to the secular clergy is in
all respects considerable, and whatever of instruction exists among the
priesthood must be sought for in the retreats of the Basilians—the only
order of monks, we believe, in Russia. They live, however, apart from
the people; they have no direct intercourse with them; they are
ignorant, or regardless, of their material or moral wants; and for them
they feel no sympathy or affection. It must not be supposed that this
superiority over the parochial or secular clergy, in station or morals,
implies independence, separately or collectively. Their dependence on
the government differs not in the least from that of the most ignorant
village pope, or of the meanest serf. The high functionaries and
dignitaries of the Church are, as we have already observed, taken from
the monastic body; and as the Synod, or, which is all the same, the
Emperor, can deprive an ecclesiastic of his functions, and degrade him
to a lay condition, the metropolitan archbishop, or bishop, who cares to
keep his mitre, has no other choice than to be the docile and zealous
agent of the Autocrat. Since the time of Peter the Great, the whole body
of the Russian clergy, from the highest to the lowest, have lain
grovelling in the dust at the feet of every tyrant with the title of
Czar or Czarina; and no other corporation in the world that we have any
knowledge of, lay or clerical, equals it in hopeless servitude. Taught
from their infancy to regard the Czar as the sole dispenser of good and
evil, and firmly believing that every people on the earth trembles at
his name, they scarcely make any distinction between him and the Deity;
and in their public and private devotions their adoration is divided,
perhaps not equally, between God and the Emperor. Those names are
mingled together in the first lessons they learn, and their awe of the
mortal ruler is more intense than their love for the Creator. Those
ideas are transmitted by the priests to their children; and as the ranks
of the clerical body are filled up almost exclusively from the families
of the popes, ignorance and slavishness become as traditional and as
hereditary as the office for which they are indispensable. The jealous
fears of the Autocrat prevent grafting on the old stock, and he suffers
no innovation of any kind to animate that torpid mass of bondage.

In alluding to the social degradation of the Russian clergy, it is but
fair to admit that there are certain privileges attached to that body
which are not accorded to the rest of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects.
The Czar, out of his mere motion, and by special favour, the value of
which is no doubt properly appreciated by the persons interested, has
made a difference in the punishments inflicted on laymen and on
clergymen. The Russian priest is not liable to be scourged to death by
the _knout_; nor to be beaten to a jelly by a club, like the other
members of the orthodox faith. Yet this privilege, we fear, is more
specious than real. It does not survive the sacerdotal character; and as
this may be suspended or annihilated at the pleasure of the Synod, or at
the death of the _popess_, the exemption from the _knout_ and the
_baten_ is an extremely uncertain privilege. The rule of the Russian
Church, which makes the priestly character, indelible in other
communions, to depend on so frail a tenure as the life of the partner,
is most curious, and must perpetuate those vices which we have already
noticed. The pastor who loses his wife must at once abandon his sacred
functions, and set himself to some other pursuit, if he be still in the
force of health and manhood; if he be aged or infirm, his lot is hard
indeed. When the sacerdotal office is forfeited by some very grave
offence, hard labour for life, or the distractions of a campaign in the
Caucasus in one of the condemned regiments, with glimpses of the
_knout_, form the hopeless future of the unhappy wretch who, but a few
months before, was dispensing the sacraments at the altar. We may add,
that the wives and widows of the priests, and their young children,
enjoy, by a pious dispensation of the head of the Church of Russia, an
exemption from the _knout_. The children, moreover, are exempt from the
payment of imposts and military enlistment.

The sects that have started into life since the seventeenth century are
comprised by the established or official church of Russia in the
sweeping designation of _roskolnicki_, or _schismatical_; but the term
is rejected with indignation by the parties to whom it is applied. They
refuse, as a base and groundless calumny, the term _schismatical_, and
claim for their own special qualification that of _Starowertzi_, or
_Ancient believers_. They have also, no less than their predecessors,
been the object of the severity of the government. Every opportunity has
been laid hold of to crush them; and in the revolt of the Strelitz, not
only were ruinous fines imposed on them, but many of their leaders were
imprisoned, exiled, hanged, or poniarded, by order of Peter I. Severity
being of no avail, milder measures were resorted to. A compromise was
proposed in the reign of Catherine II., and after a show of examination,
several of their less objectionable doctrines were allowed to pass
muster as orthodox, and the variations in their liturgy received, on
condition that their priests submitted to receive orders from the
prelates of the Synod. As an additional inducement, they were promised
that ordination should be conferred according to the sectarian, and not
the established rite; that their usages should be respected, and no
interference take place in the education of their clergy. But so great
was the animosity that no concession could win, no kindness soften them,
and the experiment of gaining over this stray flock to the fold failed
totally. At an earlier period _Starowertzi_ convents were erected in the
deep recesses of the forests in the northern provinces of Russia. These
convents were soon demolished, and their prelates and abbots banished,
or otherwise removed. Yet for many years their religious necessities
were supplied by priests ordained by the _Starowertzi_ bishops; and,
since their death, pastors are recruited from the many seceders from the
orthodox church. In spite of the difficulties the sect has to contend
with, and the incessant vigilance and rigour of the authorities, it
possesses a mysterious influence, which is said to be felt even in the
councils of the empire. It is believed that no important reform is ever
attempted, no change in the internal administration of the country takes
effect, until the opinions of the chiefs of this formidable party are
ascertained, and the impression likely to be made upon the mass of their
followers. In all social relations, in all matters connected with
everyday life and business, it is affirmed that the _Starowertzi_ are
trustworthy and honourable. They are not habitually mendacious or
deceitful, like the more civilised classes of his Imperial Majesty’s
subjects; and the more closely the lower orders resemble the
_Starowertzi_ the better they are. In education they are also superior
to the mass of the Russians. Among them there are few who have not
learned to read and write, though even in the acquisition of this
elementary instruction their religious prejudices prevail. They make use
only of the Sclavonic dialect, the modern Russian being regarded as
heretical. They are familiar with the Bible, and commit some portions of
it to memory, which they recite with what the French would term
_onction_; neither are they despicable opponents to encounter on the
field of theological controversy. One of the principal seats of
_Starowertzism_ was in the midst of those vast and dismal swamps which
extend towards the Frozen Ocean, on the European side of the great Oural
chain, and on the banks of the river which discharges its waters into
the Caspian; in the government of Saratoff, more than four hundred miles
to the south-east of Moscow; and among the Cossack tribes that wander
near the Volga and the Terek, close to the military line which extends
in front of the Caucasus, are to be found numerous disciples. But for
many years the great centre of _Starowertzism_ was on the Irghis. On its
banks four great monasteries once rose, and their inmates found a
never-failing supply from the deserters of the army, and the fugitives
from the wilderness and the knout of Siberia. Priests of the official
church, excited by fanaticism or degraded for their vices, and monks
expelled from their convents, were received with open arms as welcome
converts. Their numbers increased so rapidly as to give serious alarm to
the governors, and in 1838 a _razzia_ was proclaimed against these
religious fortresses. Strong bodies of troops were sent against them;
the convents were pillaged, and then given to the flames, and the
inmates were either sent to the army, or driven into the impenetrable
wilds of Siberia. The doctrines of the sect have chiefly spread in the
rural districts, and among the lower classes of tradesmen. In the
convents for females (for _Starowertzism_ has also its nuns), the only
occupation consists in multiplying copies of their liturgy, for no
religious work is allowed to be printed. The _Starowertzi_ divide the
inhabitants of the earth into three great classes—the _Slaves_, by them
termed _Slovaise_, or _Speakers_; the _Nemtzi_, or _Mutes_, whom they
regard as little above heathens; and all the Orientals are, without
distinction, called by the general designation of Mussulmans. The rite
of baptism is performed by immersion—they admit the validity of no
other; but in no case do they recognise it when administered by the
orthodox Russian, and all converts must be rebaptised before admission.
It is a curious fact, almost incredible, were we not assured of its
exactness on good authority, that though their spiritual directors
belong mostly to the scum of the Russian clergy—degraded priests or
monks—the _Starowertzi_ are the least immoral of all the sects into
which the orthodox church has been broken up.

The sect which more closely approximates in fundamentals to the
established church is that which terms itself the _Blagosslowenni_ (the
_Blessed_); and so slight is the difference between them, that in the
official nomenclature they are designated as the _Jedinowertzi_, or the
_Uniform Believers_. In essential points of doctrine the difference is
not great, in some almost imperceptible, though the ceremonial varies
notably from that which is recognised by the Holy Synod. They make the
sign of the cross in a different manner from the orthodox. They denounce
the shaving the beard as a sin of the greatest enormity. Some other
peculiarities are worth noting: they repeat the name of Jesus in three
distinct parts; walk in procession in their places of worship from right
to left, and, taking their ground on the text of Scripture which says
that that which enters at the mouth is not sinful, but that which issues
from it, they denounce the practice of smoking as a crime. There is
another point, which we fear would be unpopular among our
fellow-subjects in Ireland: the _Blessed_ attribute a diabolical origin
to that useful root the potato, and, what we believe has been
strenuously maintained, though in a different spirit, by some Irish
antiquarian, they pretend to prove that the potato was actually the
fruit with which Eve was easily seduced by the wily serpent, and which
our first mother persuaded her confiding husband to partake of. This
sect reprobates the reforms attempted by Peter I., and they are not to
this day reconciled to the Emperor Nicholas for not wearing the costume,
and bearing the title of the _Belvi Tzar_, or the _White Czar_.

The _Starrobriadtzi_, or the _Observers of the ancient rite_, are an
offshoot of the _Starowertzi_, but are still more exclusive and
intolerant, and much more hostile to the official church. The scum of
the orthodox priesthood are sure to find a welcome with them, and the
more degraded they are the better. Every candidate for admission must
formally recant his previous heresy—for such they term the orthodox
dogma.

The most numerous of all these sects is one which is termed the
_Bespopertchine_ (_Without priests_). They not only reject ordination as
conferred by the orthodox bishop, but dispense altogether with clergy as
a distinct body. The sect is subdivided into several fractions, each
known by the name of its founder, such as the _Philipperes_, the
_Theodosians_, the _Abakounians_, &c., &c. They anticipate a general
conversion of the reprobates,—that is, all who are not of their sect,
whether Christian or Infidel—by reason or by force; and believe that the
time is at hand when the errors of Nicon, the Luther of the Russo-Greek
church, will be solemnly abjured by Russia; that a regenerated order of
ecclesiastical superintendents will come from the East, when their own
sect, the only true church of God, will reign triumphant wherever the
name of Russia is heard. The reign of Antichrist began with Nicon; it
still subsists, and will endure until the advent of the Lord, who is to
smite the unbelievers, and scatter the darkness that envelopes the
earth. Though a regularly ordained priesthood is not recognised, yet a
sort of religious organisation is admitted by the Philippon section of
it. Instead of the popes of the orthodox church, they have a class of
men whom they term _Stariki_, or _Elders_, and who are selected from a
number of candidates. The ceremony of installation consists in a few
words of prayer, and the _accolade_ in the presence of the congregation.
The elders, who are distinguished by a particular costume, have no
regular stipend, but subsist entirely on alms. In case of misconduct,
they are not only deprived of their office, but expelled altogether from
the community. The Philippons retain the rite of confession; but the
avowal of their sins is made, not to a living man, but to an image,
which acts by way of conductor to the pardon which is sent down from
heaven. An elder, however, stands by as a witness of the confession and
forgiveness; and while the long story of offences, mortal or venial, is
unfolded, his duty consists in crying out at regular intervals, “May
your sins be forgiven!” The simple exclamation, in the presence of three
witnesses, that a man takes a woman to wife, is the only ceremony
required for marriage, nor is it indispensable that the elder should be
present. The portion of the Bible translated by Saint Cyril is the only
part of it they retain. Their doctrine of the procession of the Holy
Ghost is the same as that of the Greek Church. They believe that the
souls of the dead are sunk in a profound lethargy from the moment they
quit the body until the general judgment, to which they will be summoned
by the archangel’s trumpet. On that awful day the souls of the wicked
only are to resume their bodies, and pass into eternal fire. Their
fasts, which comprise a third of the year, are of the strictest. They
rigorously abstain from malt liquors; and though, on certain specified
occasions, wine is permitted, yet the moderate draught must be
administered from the hand of one of their own sect. In the matter of
oaths they are quite as rigid as the Society of Friends. They are
distinguished by no family name, but only by that received at their
birth. Their differences are all settled before a tribunal composed of
an elder and two or three of the sect, who must, however, be fathers of
families; and from this decision there is seldom an appeal. Between
husband and wife a complete community of goods exists, and the surviving
partner inherits all.

The Theodosians do not much differ from the Philippons. Their women,
however, have a separate place of worship from the men, where the
service is celebrated by ancient maidens, called _Christova Neviestu_,
or the _Betrothed of Christ_. The Theodosians have a large hospital in
the city of Moscow, with two magnificent churches. The former affords
accommodation for more than a thousand patients. Communism has
penetrated into all these sects. Among the subdivisions of the great
sect of the _Starowertzi_ marriage is not regarded as a bond which lasts
for life, or which can only be severed by divorce. A man and woman agree
to live together for one or more years, as it may suit their
convenience. They separate on the expiry of their contract, and become
free to receive a similar offer from any one else, while the issue of
such temporary marriages belongs to the public, without any special
notice from the parents.

The _Douchobertzi_, or _Wrestlers in Spirit_, are, like the _Malakani_,
or _Drinkers of Milk_, divided into seven fractions, and are remarkable
for their hostility to the official church. Their doctrines consist of
the leading points of the old heresies, and they constitute a
theological system more developed, though not more uniform, than any of
the previous sects. Some of their doctrines are so vague, and so
inconsistent, that what is regarded as fundamental in one district, or
even in one village, is considered as corrupt or as unimportant in
another not perhaps a league off. Different from the _Starowertzi_, who
strictly adhere to traditional observances, they are incessantly making
innovations in the fundamental doctrines of the orthodox church. The
_Starowertzi_ are particularly scrupulous about form and ceremonial; the
_Douchobertzi_, on the contrary, reject all forms of worship, and
spiritualise the church. The influence of these spiritualists is not yet
felt to any considerable extent in Russia. Though offshoots of the
_Malakani_, or _Milk Drinkers_, these two sects hate each other most
cordially.

The use of milk preparations during Lent, and on days of rigid
abstinence, explains the name by which the _Malakani_ are known to their
adversaries, but the designation by which they describe themselves is
_Istinie Christiane_, or _True Christians_. They are of modern date, and
first became known in the middle of the last century, when they appeared
in the government of Tambon. They soon spread into neighbouring
governments, and their most successful proselytism has been among the
peasantry. Three large villages in the Taurida are entirely peopled by
this sect. Like the Latin Church, they admit seven sacraments, but they
receive them only in spirit. As with them the “church” is merely a
_spiritual_ assemblage of believers, they have no temples for the
celebration of divine worship. Images they do not tolerate, and swearing
on any account, or in any form, is severely interdicted. One of their
leading doctrines is, that with them alone Jesus Christ will reign on
the earth. A precursor of that spiritual millennium, who assumed to be
the prophet Elias, appeared in 1833. He exhorted the _Malakani_ to
prepare, by rigid fasting and mortification, for the advent of the
Saviour, which would take place in two years. A brother fanatic or
accomplice, under the biblical appellation of Enoch, went on a similar
mission, to announce the tidings to the barbarians of western Europe.
When the duty of the original impostor, whose real name was Beloireor,
was accomplished, he announced his approaching return to heaven in a
chariot. Thousands of the _Malakani_ assembled to witness the ascent of
the prophet, who presented himself to the kneeling multitude clothed in
flowing robes of white and blue, and seated in a car drawn by white
steeds. The new Elias rose, spread out his arms, and waved them up and
down, as a bird his wings when preparing to mount into the sky. He
bounded from his chariot, but instead of soaring gracefully to the
clouds, fell heavily and awkwardly in the mire, and killed a woman who
stood by clinging to the wheels. The multitude had fasted, prayed, wept,
and watched, and their imaginations had become excited to the highest
pitch. Enraged at the disappointment, or convinced of the imposture of
the prophet, they rose against him, and would have slain him, had he not
contrived to escape the first burst of their fury. He was afterwards
caught, and, with more judgment than could be expected from them, they
contented themselves with handing him over to the tribunals to pay the
penalties of imposture. He endured a long imprisonment; but neither his
disgrace nor the fear of the knout prevented him from predicting to the
last day of his existence the near advent of the millennium. His
persistence conciliated former, and obtained him new disciples. They
became more numerous after his death; but the scene of their labours was
changed; they were forced to emigrate to Georgia, where they still carry
on their propagandism.

It is a curious fact that, when Napoleon invaded Russia, the great
captain was regarded by the _Malakani_ as “the Lion of the Valley of
Josaphat,” whose mission was to overthrow the “false emperor,” and
restore to power the “White Czar.” A numerous deputation from the
government of Tambon, preceded by heralds clothed in white, was sent
forth to meet him. Their privilege did not protect them. Napoleon, or
his marshals, had no great sympathy with fanatics; they were considered
as prisoners of war: one only escaped, the others were never heard of
again.

The _Douchobertzi_ are the _illuminati_ of Russia, and the term applied
to them by the common people is _Yarmacon_, or Free Masons. Though this
sect really dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, it affects
to trace its origin to a very remote period, claiming as its founders
the youths who were flung into the furnace by order of Nebuchadnezzar.
The corruption and fall of the soul of man, long previous to the
creation of the material world, forms the basis of their faith. The “Son
of God” means the universal spirit of humanity; and the assumption of
the form of man was in order that each individual member of mankind
might also possess the attributes of the Son of God. The _Douchobertzi_
admit that in the person of Christ the world has been saved; but the
Christ whose death is recorded in Holy Writ was not the real Redeemer;
it was not He who made atonement for man; that belongs only to the
_ideal_ Christ. Forms of worship, and, of course, temples, are rejected
by them. Each member of the sect is himself a temple, where the
“Eternal” loves to be glorified, and man is at once temple, priest, and
victim; or, in other words, the heart is the altar, the will the
offering, and the spirit of man the pontiff. They are all equal in the
sight of God, and they admit the supremacy of no creature on the earth.
The more rigorous of the _Douchobertzi_ carry their severity of morals
to an extreme, and with them the most innocent and most necessary
recreations are heinous crimes. But the majority pass to the other
extreme, and strange stories are told of the orgies practised in secret
under the guise of devotional exercises. The _Douchobertzi_, like other
fanatics, expect the triumph of their own sect over the world. Even now
the fulness of time is nigh at hand; and when the awful moment comes,
they will rise in their accumulated and resistless force, and spread
terror over the earth. _Their_ chief will be the only potentate who
shall reign in unbounded power, and all mankind will gather round the
footsteps of his throne, bow their heads to the dust, veil their eyes
before the glory that flashes fiercely from his brow, and proclaim his
boundless power and his reign without end. But this triumph must be
preceded by a season of trial and sorrow. Their Czar must previously
undertake a mighty struggle against all misbelievers. It will be
terrible, but brief; the _Douchobertzi_ shall, of course, win the
victory, and, in the person of their chief, mount the throne of the
world to reign for ever and for ever! The Russian authorities have
repeatedly attempted to crush a sect whose tendencies are so menacing;
but the task is difficult against a body who have no acknowledged
leader, no priesthood, and no place of worship. Among the few puritans
who take no pains to conceal their doctrines, they have to a certain
extent succeeded. One of the most eminent of them was a man named
Kaponstin, who was reverenced as a divinity. In consequence of some
dissensions with the _Malakani_, to whom he originally belonged, he
separated from them, preached new and still more extravagant doctrines.
Numerous proselytes quitted with him their old villages, and took up
their abode in the Taurida. There they founded nine villages, which a
few years ago contained a population of nine thousand souls, professing
the more rigid doctrines of the _Douchobertzi_. Kaponstin had been a
sub-officer in the imperial guard, was of studious habits, and of the
most scrupulous exactness in the performance of his military duties. His
fanaticism came on him all of a sudden. One day, in the guardroom, he
stood up among the soldiers, whom he had previously won over to his
doctrine, and summoned them to fall down on the ground and adore him, as
he was the _Christ_—a command which most of them instantly obeyed.
Kaponstin was degraded from his rank, and committed to prison; but on
its being found that he was totally unfitted for a military life, he was
released, and he at once resumed his preachings. Kaponstin taught that
the Divine soul of Christ had, from the beginning of the world, dwelt in
a succession of men, who alone were, each in turn, the true heads of the
church. As mankind degenerated, and became unworthy of the sacred
deposit, false popes usurped the dignity and attributes of the Son of
God. The _Douchobertzi_ were now the sole and true guardians of the
treasure which especially dwelt in him as the incarnation of the sect.
His followers believed him at his word, and fell down and worshipped
him. Kaponstin again attracted the attention of the authorities, and was
again thrown into prison. A large sum of money, the produce of the
contributions of hundreds of thousands, was offered as a bribe to the
gaoler—and when did a Russian functionary refuse a bribe? He regained
his liberty, fled to the forests, was once more hunted down, but baffled
the vengeance of his pursuers. He shut himself up in a cavern in the
remote districts of the Taurida, and under the vigilant eye of his
followers, by none of whom his secret was revealed, passed there the
remaining years of his life, preaching, believed, and adored. His
retreat the police did not or would not discover; when he died is known
only to a few. The mantle of Kaponstin was assumed by his son, who
proved himself unworthy of wearing it. At the age of fifteen he was
received by his father’s disciples as his true successor, and the Christ
of the _Douchobertzi_. At his installation the grand council of the sect
assembled, and the first resolution adopted was that ten concubines
should be allotted to their youthful prophet, Hilarion Kaponstin. He did
not merit the reverence paid him, nor did he inherit a particle of the
intellect or the courage of his father. From the day of his installation
he gave himself up to the most debasing sensuality. The father had
instituted a council, composed of forty members, twelve of whom
represented the apostles. This council took advantage of the incapacity
of its boy-prophet, and from being merely a legislative, assumed the
functions of an executive power, which it exercised most tyrannically.
It soon became the scourge of the community. As the members of the
council were only divine by reflection, it was no crime to shake off its
usurped authority, and the sect rose in rebellion. The tyrants were
seized, tried in secret conclave, and sentence of death pronounced
against them, for usurpation and cruelty. A lonely isle near the mouth
of the Malotschua was selected for the execution, and there they
suffered the last penalty. There, also, during the two years which
followed that event, more than five hundred members of the sect were put
to death, suspected of having revealed the secrets of its orgies. They
were drowned in the stream, or perished by the halter or the knife; at
all events, they disappeared, and were never more heard of. These
doings, even in that remote district, could not long be kept secret. The
police bestirred themselves; the isle where so many deeds of murder had
taken place was visited, and closely searched; and numerous bodies that
had apparently been buried alive, carcasses strangled or hacked to
pieces, and mutilated limbs, were found in abundance. Some years were
spent in the inquiry, and the issue was, that at the close of 1839 the
government ordered the complete expulsion of the _Douchobertzi_ of the
Malotschua. Many withered and perished amid the snows of the Caucasus.
Their nominal chief, Hilarion Kaponstin, died in 1841, at Achaltisk, in
Georgia, leaving behind him two infants, in whom the _Douchobertzi_
still hope to see their Christ revived.

Those we have sketched are but a few specimens of the long catalogue of
sects who disavow the dogmas of the Church of St Petersburg, and
denounce its Holy Synod. There are others that work in obscurity, but
with perseverance, and gradually, but steadily, sap its foundations.
Most of those doctrines lead to the complete disruption of all moral
bonds, and the dissolution of society; and sensuality, plunder, and
cruelty seem to pervade the gloomy reveries in which the Russian peasant
indulges. We have reason to believe that the stirring of that dangerous
spirit which aims at the overthrow of all authority, has given serious
uneasiness to the Russian government; and that the conspiracies which
have more than once been found to exist in the army, are traceable to
that dark and stern fanaticism! Education, of course, is the remedy for
the evil. In Russia, however, the maxim of Bacon is reversed, and there
_ignorance_, not _knowledge_, is believed to be power. If education once
teach the Russian serf to regard the Czar as less than the Deity, how
long would that despotism endure?

Such, then, is the “orthodoxy” which the Czar would extend over southern
Europe, whose doctrines and whose unity he would impose on Greece; and
such the religious protectorate with which the Greek Christians, the
subjects of the Porte, are menaced. Those pretensions have no
foundation, no justification, in civil or religious law; they are not
based on the laws of any civilised community. The orthodox Church of
Russia is but the erring offspring of the Church of Constantinople; and
she is branded on the forehead by that Church with schism. It was from
the Church of Constantinople that, down to the fifteenth century, she
received her patriarchs, who never advanced pretensions to equality with
the Byzantine pontiffs. What they might have attained to, it is now
useless to inquire, for the link which bound that Church to her parent
was, as we have shown, severed for ever by Peter the Great. By the same
right as the Czar, the sovereign of France might claim a protectorate
over the Catholics of Belgium or Northern Germany; or call upon the
Autocrat himself to render an account of the Poles, or others of his
Catholic subjects. Russia has no claim to eminence in piety, in
learning, in antiquity, in superior morality, or in extent of privilege.
Her Church has been for years forced to maintain a separate struggle
against sects more or less hostile to her Synod, and to her temporal
authority. Each prelate, each dignitary of her establishment, is, with
respect to the Czar, precisely what the meanest serf is to his lord, and
the mass of her priests are sunk in ignorance. The question of the Holy
Shrines is invariably the mask assumed by Russia to cover her designs in
the East. The right on which the nations of the West claim to protect
the Cross from the Infidel dates from the Crusades. Among the hosts
which the enthusiasm and eloquence of the Hermit sent forth to do battle
with the Mussulman, and to liberate from the cruel yoke of the
misbelievers the land which witnessed the mystery of the Redemption, the
name of Russia is not to be found. These barbarians had then their necks
bowed under the rule of the Tartars; they were then crowding to the
tents of the Khans, kissing the hoofs of their masters’ horses, or
presenting, as slaves, the draught of mares’ milk, too happy if
permitted to lick from the dust the drops that fell from the bowl.

Perhaps we ought to offer an apology for the length of this paper. But
we were desirous of showing, _first_, that the homogeneity of the
Russian and Eastern Churches, on which the Czar lays his strongest claim
to the protectorate he demands, has no foundation in fact, and that the
Christian communities on which he would impose his protection deny the
orthodoxy of his faith, and regard him as the usurper of spiritual
power; _second_, that the doctrines of the Synod of St Petersburg are
denounced by Russians themselves, and the establishment opposed by a
formidable sectarianism, and that that Church is itself rather in a
condition to require protection against its internal enemies than to
afford it to others; _third_, that even supposing the Russian and
Eastern Churches to be identical, the protectorate in question would, in
consequence of the temporal privileges preserved by the Patriarch of
Constantinople, as already noticed, be the positive introduction of a
dangerous foreign influence in the domestic administration of the
Ottoman empire, and that the Sultan would thereby become the vassal of
the Czar; _fourth_, that as there are numerous Christian subjects of the
Sublime Porte who do not belong to the Greek communion, their protector,
where protection is needed, cannot be the Czar; and, _fifth_, that the
semi-independent Moldo-Wallachians also disavow the doctrines of the
Russian Church, and reject her protection.

We do not pretend to speak with enthusiasm of the Ottomans, but it must
be admitted, that what has occurred since the commencement of the
present quarrel is not to their disadvantage. Unlike the Czar, the
Sultan has made no appeal to the mere fanaticism of his people, nor has
he attempted to arouse the fierceness of religious hatred against the
_Giaour_, which he might have done. His appeal has been to their feeling
of nationality—such an appeal as every government would make in similar
circumstances. Nor are the events which have taken place on the Danube
likely to inspire the world with contempt for Ottoman valour and
patriotism. If left alone to struggle with their powerful adversary, the
Turks must succumb; but in the present campaign they have, at all
events, proved themselves to be good soldiers.

The momentous question of a general war is, at the moment we write these
lines, trembling in the balance; and the decision is with Austria. But
whatever be the phase into which the great Eastern question is about to
enter, we have one decided opinion on the policy of Russia. It is thus
explained, not by a hostile or a foreign writer, but by a Russian
historian, the eloquent Karamsin, in the following brief sentences: “The
object and the character of our military policy has invariably been, to
seek to be at peace with everybody, and _to make conquests without war_;
always keeping ourselves on the defensive, placing no faith in the
friendship of those whose interests do not accord with our own, and
losing no opportunity of injuring them, without _ostensibly_ breaking
our treaties with them.”




                          THE TWO ARNOLDS.[3]


Nature, it would seem, has fortunately provided against the simultaneous
development of kindred genius and intellect amongst human families.
Such, at least, is the general rule, and it is a beneficent one. For if
a sudden frenzy were to seize the whole clans of Brown, or Smith, or
Campbell, or Thomson—were the divine afflatus breathed at once upon the
host, more numerous than that of Sennacherib, of the inheritors of the
above names, undoubtedly such a confusion would ensue as has not been
witnessed since the day of the downfall of Babel. Passing over three of
these great divisions of the human race, as located in the British
Islands, let us confine our illustration simply to the sons of Diarmid.
Without estimating the number of Campbells who are scattered over the
face of the earth, we have reason to believe that in Argyllshire alone
there are fifty thousand of that name. Out of each fifty, at least
twenty are Colins. If, then, a poetical epidemic, only half as
contagious as the measles, were to visit our western county, we should
behold the spectacle of a thousand Colin Campbells rushing frantically,
and with a far cry towards Lochow, and simultaneously twangling on the
clairshach. Fame, in the form of a Druidess, might announce, from the
summit of Kilchurn Castle, the name of the one competitor who was
entitled to the wreath; but twice five hundred Colins would press
forward at the call, and the question of poetic superiority could only
be decided by the dirk. Fortunately, as we have already observed, nature
provides against such a contingency. Glancing over the cosmopolitan
directory, she usually takes care that no two living bards shall bear
precisely the same appellation; and if, sometimes, she seems to permit
an unusual monopoly of some kind of talent in the same family or sept,
we almost never find that the baptismal appellations correspond. Thus,
in the days of James I., there were no less than three poetical
Fletchers—John, the dramatist; Phineas, the author of the _Purple
Island_; and Giles, the brother of Phineas. Also there were two
Beaumonts—Francis, the ally of the greater Fletcher, and Sir John, his
brother. In our own time, the poetic mantle seems to have fallen
extensively on the shoulders of the Tennysons. Besides Prince Alfred,
whom we all honour and admire, and to whom more than three-fourths of
our young versifiers pay homage by slavishly imitating his style, there
was Charles, whose volume, published about the same time as the
firstling of his brother, was deemed by competent judges to exhibit
remarkable promise; and within the last few months, another
Tennyson—Frederick—has bounded like a grasshopper into the ring, and is
now piping away as clearly as any cicala. And here, side by side, amidst
the mass of minstrelsy which cumbers our table, lie two volumes, on the
title-page of each of which is inscribed the creditable name of Arnold.

We have not for a considerable time held much communing with the rising
race of poets, and we shall at once proceed to state the reason why.
Even as thousands of astronomers are nightly sweeping the heavens with
their telescopes, in the hope of discovering some new star or wandering
comet, so of late years have shoals of small critics been watching for
the advent of some grand poetical genius. These gentlemen, who could
not, if their lives depended on it, elaborate a single stanza, have a
kind of insane idea that they may win immortal fame by being the first
to perceive and hail the appearance of the coming bard. Accordingly,
scarce a week elapses without a shout being raised at the birth of a
thin octavo. “Apollodorus, or the Seraph of Gehenna, a Dramatic Mystery,
by John Tunks,” appears; and we are straightway told, on the authority
of Mr Guffaw, the celebrated critic, that:—“It is a work more colossal
in its mould than the undefined structures of the now mouldering
Persepolis. Tunks may not, like Byron, possess the hypochondriacal
brilliancy of a blasted firework, or pour forth his floods of radiant
spume with the intensity of an artificial volcano. He does not pretend
to the spontaneous combustion of our young friend Gander Rednag (who, by
the way, has omitted to send us his last volume), though we almost think
that he possesses a diviner share of the poet’s ennobling lunacy. He
does not dive so sheer as the author of _Festus_ into the bosom of far
unintelligibility, plummet-deep beyond the range of comprehension, or
the shuddering gaze of the immortals. He may not be endowed with the
naked eagle-eye of Gideon Stoupie, the bard of Kirriemuir, whose works
we last week noticed, and whose grand alcoholic enthusiasm shouts ha,
ha, to the mutchkin, as loudly as the call of the trumpet that summons
Behemoth from his lair. He may not, like the young Mactavish, to whose
rising talent we have also borne testimony, be able to swathe his real
meaning in the Titanic obscurity of the parti-coloured Ossianic
mysticism. He may not, like Shakespeare, &c. &c.” And then, having
occupied many columns in telling us whom Mr Tunks does _not_ resemble,
the gifted Guffaw concludes by an assurance that Tunks is Tunks, and
that his genius is at this moment flaring over the universe, like the
meteor-standard of the Andes!

Desirous, from the bottom of our heart, to do all proper justice to
Tunks, we lay down this furious eulogium, and turn to the volume. We
find, as we had anticipated, that poor Tunks is quite guiltless of
having written a single line of what can, by any stretch of conscience,
be denominated poetry—that the passages which Guffaw describes as being
so ineffably grand, are either sheer nonsense or exaggerated
conceits—and that a very excellent young man, who might have gained a
competency by following his paternal trade, is in imminent peril of
being rendered an idiot for life by the folly of an unscrupulous
scribbler. Would it be right, under those circumstances, to tell Tunks
our mind, and explain to him the vanity of his ways? If we were to do
so, the poor lad would probably not believe us; for he has drunk to the
dregs the poisoned chalice of Guffaw, and is ready, like another Homer,
to beg for bread and make minstrelsy through innumerable cities. If we
cannot hope to reclaim him, it would be useless cruelty to hurt his
feelings, especially as Tunks is doing no harm to any one beyond
himself. So we regard him much as one regards a butterfly towards the
close of autumn, with the wish that the season of his enjoyment might be
prolonged, but with the certainty that the long nights and frosty
evenings are drawing nigh. Little, indeed, do the tribe of the Guffaws
care for the mischief they are doing.

Or take another case. Let us suppose the appearance on the literary
stage of a young man really endowed with poetic sensibility—one whose
powers are yet little developed, but who certainly gives promise,
conditionally on proper culture, of attaining decided eminence. Before
we know anything about him, he is somehow or other committed to the
grasp of the Guffaws. They do not praise—they idolise him. All the
instances of youthful genius are dragged forth to be debased at his
feet. He is told, in as many words, that Pope was a goose, Chatterton a
charlatan, Kirke White a weakling, and Keats a driveller, compared with
him,—at any rate, that the early effusions of those poets are not fit to
be spoken of in the same breath with what he has written at a similar
age. There are no bounds to the credulity of a poet of one-and-twenty.
He accepts the laudation of those sons of Issachar as gospel, and,
consequently, is rather surprised that a louder blast has not been blown
through the trumpet of fame. His eulogists are so far from admitting
that he has any faults, that they hold him up as a pattern, thereby
exciting his vanity to such an extent that an honest exposition of his
faults would appear to him a gross and malignant outrage. It is really
very difficult to know what to do in such cases. On the one hand, it is
a pity, without an effort, to allow a likely lad to be flyblown and
spoiled by the buzzing blue-bottles of literature; on the other, it is
impossible to avoid seeing that the mischief has been so far done, that
any remedy likely to be effectual must cause serious pain. To tie up a
Guffaw to the stake, and to inflict upon him condign punishment—a
resolution which we intend to carry into effect some fine morning—would
be far less painful to us than the task or duty of wounding the
sensitiveness of a youth who may possibly be destined to be a poet.

Setting, for the present, the Guffaws, or literary Choctaws, aside, we
have a word to say to a very different class of critics, or rather
commentators; and we desire to do this in the utmost spirit of kindness.
Whether Aristotle, who could no more have perpetrated a poem than have
performed the leger-de-main of the Wizard of the North, was justified in
writing his “Poetics,” we cannot exactly say. More than one of his
treatises upon subjects with which he hardly could have been practically
conversant, are still quoted in the schools; but we suspect that his
authority—paramount, almost, during the middle ages, because there were
then no other guides, and because he found his way into Western Europe
chiefly through the medium of the Moors—is fast waning, and in matters
of taste ought not now to be implicitly received. Aristotle, however,
was a great man, far greater than Dr Johnson. The latter compiled a
Dictionary; Aristotle, by his own efforts, aspired to make, and did
make, a sort of Encyclopædia. But he composed several of his treatises,
not because he conceived that he was the person best qualified to be the
exponent of the subject, but because no one really qualified had
attempted before him to expound it. We have seen, and perused with real
sorrow, a recent treatise upon “Poetics,” which we cannot do otherwise,
conscientiously, than condemn. The author is no doubt entitled to praise
on account of his metaphysical ability, which we devoutly trust he may
be able to turn to some useful purpose; but as to poetry, its forms,
development, machinery, or application, he is really as ignorant as a
horse. It is perfectly frightful to see the calmness with which one of
these young students of metaphysics sits down to explain the principles
of poetry, and the self-satisfied air with which he enunciates the
results of his wonderful discoveries. Far be it from us, when “our young
men dream dreams,” to rouse them rudely from their slumber; but we hold
it good service to give them a friendly shake when we observe them
writhing under the pressure of Ephialtes.

It is one thing to descant upon poetry, and another to compose it. After
long meditation on the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion that
very little benefit indeed is to be derived from the perusal of
treatises, and that the only proper studies for a young poet are the
book of nature, and the works of the greatest masters. To that opinion,
we are glad to observe, one of our Arnolds seriously inclines.
Matthew—whom we shall take up first, because he is an old
acquaintance—has written an elaborate preface, in which he complains of
the bewildering tone of the criticism of the present day. He remarks
with perfect justice, that the ceaseless babbling about art has done an
incalculable deal of harm, by drawing the attention of young composers
from the study and contemplation of their subjects, and leading them to
squander their powers upon isolated passages. There is much truth in the
observations contained in the following extract, albeit it is in direct
opposition to the daily practice of the Guffaws:—


  “We can hardly, at the present day, understand what Menander meant
  when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy, that
  he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he
  had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would
  have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant
  things which arose under his pen as he went along. We have poems which
  seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and passages; not
  for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics who
  seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions,—to the
  language about the action, not to the action itself. I verily think
  that the majority of them do not in their hearts believe that there is
  such a thing as a total-impression to be derived from a poem at all,
  or to be demanded from a poet; they think the term a commonplace of
  metaphysical criticism. They will permit the poet to select any action
  he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided he
  gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with a
  shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is, they permit him to
  leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies
  their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. Of his neglecting to
  gratify these there is little danger; he needs rather to be warned
  against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone; he needs
  rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to everything
  else; so to treat this, as to permit its inherent excellencies to
  develop themselves, without interruption from the intrusion of his
  personal peculiarities—most fortunate when he most entirely succeeds
  in effacing himself, and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it
  did in nature.”


It would be well for the literature of the age if sound criticism of
this description were more common. Mr Arnold is undoubtedly correct in
holding that the first duty of the poet, after selecting his subject, is
to take pains to fashion it symmetrically, and that any kind of ornament
which tends to divert the attention from the subject is positively
injurious to the poem. This view, however, is a great deal too refined
for the comprehension of the Guffaws. They show you a hideous misshapen
image, with diamonds for eyes, rubies stuck into the nostrils, and
pearls inserted in place of teeth, and ask you to admire it! Admire
what? Not the image certainly, for anything more clumsy and absurd it is
impossible to imagine: if it is meant that we are to admire the jewels,
we are ready to do so, as soon as they are properly disposed, and made
the ornaments of a stately figure. The necklace which would beseem the
bosom of Juno, and send lustre even to the queen of the immortals,
cannot give anything but additional hideousness to the wrinkled folds of
an Erichtho. Mr Arnold, who has inherited his father’s admiration for
ancient literature, makes out the best case we remember to have seen, in
vindication of the Greek drama. It is as follows:—


  “For what reason was the Greek tragic poet confined to so limited a
  range of subjects? Because there are so few actions which unite in
  themselves, in the highest degree, the conditions of excellence; and
  it was not thought that on any but an excellent subject could an
  excellent poem be constructed. A few actions, therefore, eminently
  adapted for tragedy, maintained almost exclusive possession of the
  Greek tragic stage; their significance appeared inexhaustible; they
  were as permanent problems, perpetually offered to the genius of every
  fresh poet. This too is the reason of what appears to us moderns a
  certain baldness of expression in Greek tragedy; of the triviality
  with which we often reproach the remarks of the chorus, where it takes
  place in the dialogue; that the action itself, the situation of
  Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmæon, was to stand the central point of
  interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal; that no accessories were
  for a moment to distract the spectator’s attention from this; that the
  tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down, in order not to
  impair the grandiose effect of the whole. The terrible old mythic
  story on which the drama was founded, stood, before he entered the
  theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator’s mind; it
  stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end
  of a long and dark vista: then came the Poet, embodying outlines,
  developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously
  thrown in: stroke upon stroke the drama proceeded; the light deepened
  upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the rivetted gaze
  of the spectator; until at last, when the final words were spoken, it
  stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty.”


This is indeed criticism worth listening to, and the style of it is not
less admirable than the matter. We do not, however, entirely go along
with Mr Arnold in his decided preference for the antique drama. We never
arise from the study of Greek tragedy without the impression that it is
deficient in richness and flexibility. This, we think, is to be
attributed in a great measure to its form, which is not natural; the
members of the chorus being neither altogether actors, nor altogether
disinterested spectators. They are interlopers between the audience and
the actors, and detract from the interest of the latter by requiring and
receiving explanation. That at least is our feeling after the perusal of
Greek tragedy, but it by no means follows that the same impression was
produced on the minds of a Greek audience. We agree with Professor
Blackie that the grand works of the Attic three are to be regarded
rather as operas than as tragedies, according to our modern acceptance
of the term—that they were framed purposely for musical accompaniment
and effect—and that, failing these, it is impossible for us to form an
adequate estimate of their power in exciting sympathy or awakening
emotion. “The man,” says the translator of Æschylus, “must certainly be
strangely blinded by early classical prepossessions, if he fails to feel
that, as a whole, a Greek tragedy, when set against the English
composition of the same name, is exceedingly narrow in its conception,
meagre in its furniture, monotonous in its character, unskilful in its
execution, and not seldom feeble in its effect.” Most true—and for this
reason, that the writer of English tragedy seeks no other vehicle of
thought or idea than language; so that, except for scenic display, his
play will give as much pleasure to, and produce nearly the same effect
upon the mind, if read silently in the closet, as if brought upon the
stage. It is not necessary, in order to appreciate Shakespeare, that we
should have seen his dramas represented in the pomp and magnificence of
the theatre. Whereas the Greek artist had to deal with the more complex
material of words and music. Take away the latter, and you frustrate
half his design; because he did not mean the words of the chorus to be
studied as poems—he meant them to be heard with the full accompaniment
of music. Those who are in the habit of frequenting the modern opera
will readily understand our position. What can be finer than _Norma_, as
represented on the stage, when Grisi or Caradori assumes the part of the
prophetess, imprecates vengeance on the perfidious Pollio, and implores
the forgiveness of the father? Higher tragedy than that can hardly be
conceived—the effect upon the audience of the combined music and action
is as powerful as though they had been listening to the greatest
masterpiece of Shakespeare. But take the libretto of _Norma_—divest
yourself of the musical association—study it in the closet—and we answer
for it that no exercise of imagination on your part will enable you to
endure it. And why is this? Simply because it was constructed as an
opera, and because, by withdrawing the music, you destroy more than half
the charm.

In dramatic compositions, where language alone can be employed as the
vehicle of thought or sentiment, it is absolutely necessary that the
expression should be bolder, the style more vivid, and the range of
illustration larger than is requisite in the other kind where music is
brought in aid of language, or rather where language is employed to
assist the force of music. It seems therefore preposterous and contrary
to reason, to expect that we should take as much delight or derive as
high intellectual gratification from the bare perusal of a Greek
skeleton play, as must have been felt by an Attic audience who witnessed
its representation as a gorgeous national opera. It is even a greater
artistical mistake to suppose that we should copy it implicitly. Alfieri
indeed did so; but it is impossible to read one of his plays without
experiencing a most chilly sensation. We entirely concur with what Mr
Arnold has said regarding the importance of subject, symmetry, and
design; but we differ from him as to the propriety of adhering to the
nakedness of the Greeks. Let him compare—so far as that can be done with
due allowance for the difference being narrative and dramatic poetry—the
style of his early favourite Homer with that of Sophocles, and we think
he will understand our meaning.

We confess to have been so much pleased with Mr Matthew Arnold’s
preface, that we turned to his poetical performances with no slight
degree of expectation. As we have already hinted, he is an old
acquaintance, for we reviewed him in the Magazine some four or five
years ago, when he appeared in the suspicious character of a _Strayed
Reveller_. We then pointed out what we thought to be his faults, warned
him as strongly as we could against his imitative tendencies, and, we
hope, did justice to the genius which he evidently possessed and
occasionally exhibited. Certainly we did not indulge in ecstasies; but
we believed him capable of producing, through culture and study,
something greatly superior to his early attempts, and we did not
hesitate to say so. Since then, we are given to understand that he has
published another volume of poems, which it was not our fortune to see;
and the present is, with some additions, a collection of those poems
which he considers to be his best, and which were contained in his
earlier volumes. It is a hopeful sign of Mr M. Arnold that he is
amenable to criticism. More than one of the poems which we noticed as
absolutely bad, are omitted from the present collection; and therefore
we are entitled to believe that, on mature consideration, he has
assented to the propriety of our judgment. This is a good feature; for
poets generally seem possessed with a tenfold share of stubbornness,
and, like mothers, who always lavish their affections upon the most
rickety of their offspring, are prompt to defend their worst effusions
with almost superhuman pertinacity. It is because we feel a decided
interest in Mr Arnold’s ultimate success that we again approach his
poetry. We cannot conscientiously congratulate him on a present
triumph—we cannot even say that he has improved upon his earliest
effort; for the “Forsaken Merman,” which we noticed years ago, in terms
of high commendation, is still the one gem of his collection; but we
think that he may improve, and must improve, if he will only abandon all
imitation, whether ancient or modern—identify himself with his
situation—trust to natural impulse—and give art-theories to the winds.
What he has to do is to follow the example of Menander, as quoted by
himself. Let him, by all manner of means, be deliberate in the formation
of his plan—let him fix what he is going to do, before he does
anything—but let him not forget (what we fear he now forgets or does not
know), that, in execution, the artist must beat on his own anvil, sweat
at his own fire, and ply at his own forge. The poem of a master should
bear as distinct and unmistakable marks of the hand that produced it, as
a picture of Titian or Velasquez, a statue of Phidias, an altar-rail of
Quentin Matsys, or a goblet of Benvenuto Cellini. Heaven only knows how
many thousands of imitators have followed in the wake of these and other
great original artists; but who cares for the imitations? No one, unless
they are so good that they can be palmed off on purchasers under cover
of the mighty names. Admit them to be imitations, and the merest tyro
will hesitate to bid for them. It does seem to us that men of letters
are slower than any other description of artists in perceiving the
baneful effects of imitation. They do not appear to see this obvious
truth, that, unless they can transcend their model, they are
deliberately courting an inferior place. If they can transcend it, then
of course they have won the day, but it must be by departing from, not
by adhering to, the peculiarities of the model.

In so far as Mr Matthew Arnold is concerned, we do not intend these
remarks to be applicable to his Greek choric imitations. We spoke of
these before, and are willing to take them as classical experiments.
Goethe, in his old age, was rather fond of this kind of amusement; and
it came gracefully from the octogenarian, who, having won his fame as a
Teuton, might in his latter days be allowed to indulge in any Hellenic
exercitations. And as old age is privileged, so is extreme youth. The
young student, with his head and imagination full of Sophocles and
classical theories, even though he may push the latter beyond the verge
of extravagance, is always an interesting object to the more experienced
man of letters. Enthusiasm is never to be despised. It is the sign of a
high and ardent spirit, and ought not to be met with the drenching
operation of the bucket. But Mr M. Arnold is now considerably past his
teens. He is before the public for the third time, and he still parades
these Greek imitations, as if he were confident of their worth and power
as English poems. So be it. We have nothing in regard to them to add to
what we said before, except that a much higher artist than Mr M. Arnold
must appear, before the British public will be convinced that such
hobbling and unrhymed versification ought to supersede our own
beautifully intoned and indigenous system of prosody.

Of the new poems contained in this collection, the most ambitious is
entitled “Sohrab and Rustum, an Episode.” We like episodes, because they
have the advantage of being short, and, moreover, if well constructed,
are as symmetrical as poems of greater pretension. The story is a simple
one, and yet contains in itself the elements of power. Sohrab, the son
of the great Persian hero Rustum, by a princess of Koordistan, has never
seen his father, but, like Telemachus, is in search of him. Being with
the Tartar army during a campaign against the Persians, he conceives the
idea of challenging the bravest champion of that host to single combat,
in the hope that, if he is victor, Rustum may hear of and acknowledge
him. If slain—

             “Old man, the dead need no one, claim no kin.”

The challenge is given; but Sohrab was already known far and wide as a
handy lad with the scimitar, and a powerful hurler of the spear;
therefore the Persians, with their usual want of pluck, were exceedingly
unwilling to encounter him. We subjoin Mr Arnold’s account of the
panic:—

          “But as a troop of pedlars from Cabool
          Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus,
          That vast sky-neighbouring mountain of milk snow,
          Winding so high, that, as they mount, they pass
          Long flocks of travelling birds dead on the snow,
          Choked by the air; and scarce can they themselves
          Slake their parch’d throats with sugar’d mulberries—
          In single file they move, and stop their breath,
          For fear they should dislodge the o’erhanging snows—
          So the pale Persians held their breath with fear.
            And to Ferood his brother chiefs come up
          To counsel: Gudurz and Zoarrah came,
          And Feraburz, who rul’d the Persian host
          Second, and was the uncle of the king.”

Not one of these fellows with the jaw-breaking names could muster
courage to come forth, like Goliath, against the dauntless David of the
Tartars. Gudurz, however, bethinks him that Rustum had arrived in the
camp the evening before, and of course he was the very man for the
occasion; so he visits him immediately after breakfast. All heroes feed,
or ought to feed, voraciously; and judging from appearances, Rustum was
qualified to compete at a game of knife and fork with Achilles.

             “And Gudurz entered Rustum’s tent, and found
             Rustum: his morning meal was done, but still
             The table stood beside him, charged with food;
             A side of roasted sheep, and cakes of bread,
             And dark-green melons.”

Possibly from the effects of repletion, Rustum for some time refuses to
accept the championship, but is at last taunted into action and takes
the field, but determines to fight unknown. We ought to mention here
that Rustum, so far from suspecting his relationship with Sohrab, is
unaware that he has any son at all. We must draw on Mr Arnold’s verse
for the exordium to the combat.

       “Like some young cypress, tall, and dark, and straight,
       Which in a queen’s secluded garden throws
       Its slight dark shadow on the moonlit turf,
       By midnight, to a bubbling fountain’s sound—
       So slender Sohrab seem’d, so softly rear’d.
       And a deep pity entered Rustum’s soul
       As he beheld him coming; and he stood,
       And beckoned to him with his hand, and said:—
       ‘O thou young man, the air of heaven is soft,
       And warm, and pleasant; but the grave is cold.
       Heaven’s air is better than the dead cold grave.
       Behold me: I am vast, and clad in iron,
       And tried; and I have stood on many a field
       Of blood, and I have fought with many a foe:
       Never was that field lost, or that foe saved.
       O Sohrab, wherefore wilt thou rush on death?
       Be govern’d: quit the Tartar host, and come
       To Irun; and be as my son to me,
       And fight beneath my banner till I die.
       There are no youths in Irun brave as thou.’

       “So he spoke mildly: Sohrab heard his voice,
       The mighty voice of Rustum; and he saw
       His giant figure planted on the sand,
       Sole, like some single tower, which a chief
       Has builded on the waste in former years
       Against the robbers; and he saw that head,
       Streak’d with its first grey hairs: hope fill’d his soul;
       And he ran forwards, and embrac’d his knees,
       And clasp’d his hand within his own and said:—
       ‘Oh, by thy father’s head! by thine own soul!
       Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?’

       “But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth,
       And turn’d away, and spoke to his own soul:—
       ‘Ah me! I muse what this young fox may mean.
       False, wily, boastful are these Tartar boys.
       For if I now confess this thing he asks,
       And hide it not, but say—_Rustum is here_—
       He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes,
       But he will find some pretext not to fight,
       And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts—
       A belt or sword perhaps—and go his way.
       And on a feast-day in Afrasiab’s hall,
       In Samarcand, he will arise and cry—
       “I challenged once, when the two armies camp’d
       Beside the Oxus, all the Persian lords
       To cope with me in single fight: but they
       Shrank; only Rustum dared: then he and I
       Changed gifts, and went on equal terms away.”
       So will he speak, perhaps, while men applaud.
       Then were the chiefs of Irun shamed through me.’

       “And then he turn’d, and sternly spake aloud:—
       ‘Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus
       Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call’d
       By challenge forth: make good thy vaunt, or yield.
       Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst fight?
       Rash boy, men look on Rustum’s face and flee.’”

Then follows the combat, Homerically intermingled with a great deal of
talk between the champions, until Sohrab falls mortally wounded by his
father’s spear. Then come the explanations, and Rustum knows that he has
slain his son.

          “And with a heavy groan, Rustum replied:—
          ‘Oh that its waves were flowing over me!
          Oh that I saw its grains of yellow silt
          Roll tumbling on the current o’er my head!’

          “And with a grave mild voice, Sohrab replied:
          ‘Desire not that, my father; we must live.
          For some are born to do great deeds, and live,
          As some are born to be obscured, and die.
          Do thou the deeds I die too young to do,
          And reap a second glory in thine age.
          Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine.
          But come: thou seest this great host of men
          Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not these:
          Let me entreat for them: what have they done?
          They followed me, my hope, my fame, my star.
          Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.
          But me thou must bear hence, not send with them,
          But carry me with thee to Seistan,
          And place me on a bed, and mourn for me,
          Thou, and the snow-hair’d Zal, and all thy friends.
          And thou must lay me in that lovely earth,
          And heap a stately mound above my bones,
          And plant a far-seen pillar over all:
          That so the passing horsemen on the waste
          May see my tomb a great way off, and say—
          _Sohrab, the mighty Rustum’s son, lies there,
          Whom his great father did in ignorance kill_—
          And I be not forgotten in my grave.’
          And with a mournful voice Rustum replied:—
          ‘Fear not; as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son,
          So shall it be: for I will burn my tents,
          And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me,
          And carry thee away to Seistan,
          And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee,
          With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends.
          And I will lay thee in that lovely earth,
          And heap a stately mound above thy bones,
          And plant a far-seen pillar over all;
          And men shall not forget thee in thy grave.
          And I will spare thy host: yea, let them go:
          Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace.
          What should I do with slaying any more?’”

Real poetry, we are sorry to say, is now so scarce among us, that we
cannot afford to dismiss any promising aspirant with a sneer. From the
foregoing extracts it will be seen that Mr M. Arnold, in opposition to
the tenets of that school of bardlings so copiously beslavered by
Guffaw, has adopted, in this poem, a simple and even severe method of
expression. He is now writing after Homer—not, indeed, slavishly, but on
the Homeric principle; and the question now arises, whether or not he
has succeeded. Our opinion is that this poem is highly creditable as an
attempt in the right direction—that it is infinitely superior to the
turgid trash with which we have been, of late years, inundated—but that
it has not merit enough to confer lasting distinction on the author. Mr
Arnold, we are aware, has been told the reverse; and as the sugared cup
is always more palatable than that which contains an ingredient of
bitter, he may possibly be inclined to prefer sweet panegyric to sincere
though wholesome criticism. But we are not writing for him alone; we are
attending to the poetical reputation of the age. In this composition, as
it appears to us, Mr Arnold again suffers through imitation. He is
writing, with deliberate intention, Homerically—that is, he has been
keeping Homer in his eye, instead of rivetting it on his subject. Now
this is a great mistake. The peculiar manner of a poet depends upon the
age in which he lives. There is an enormous gap in world-history between
“the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” and Mr Matthew Arnold, who
dates from “Fox How, Ambleside,” A.D. 1853; and it is a sheer
impossibility that the two can naturally express themselves alike. What
was nature in the one, is affectation in the other. Homer expressed
himself simply, because he was addressing a simple audience; and also
because his hearty, noble, and grand organisation made him superior to
rhetorical conceits or affectation. Arnold also expresses himself
simply; but he does so, not from native impulse or inspiration, but
because he is aware of Homer’s charm. But he frustrates his own
intention by deliberately copying Homer, and making his readers
painfully aware of it. A true, or at all events a very accomplished
poet, would not have committed this error. Let any man, of really
cultivated taste in poetry, read the “Hyperion” of Keats, and the “Morte
D’Arthur” of Tennyson—both of them splendid poems, and distinguished by
severe simplicity of language—and then compare them with this effusion
of Mr Arnold. We cannot for one moment doubt the verdict. Keats and
Tennyson saw the principle, but they kept themselves away from
imitation, gave their genius full play, and achieved magnificent
results. Mr Arnold, recognising the principle, cannot divert his eye
from the model, adopts the peculiarities of that, and fails. In fact,
imitation is his curse. We said so more than four years ago, and we now
repeat it. So strong is his tendency that way, that he cannot, within
the limits of a composition of moderate length, confine himself to the
imitation of a single renowned poet, but makes patchwork by copying the
peculiarities, even though they are acknowledged blemishes, of another.
Thus we find, nearly at the commencement of the poem which we are now
discussing, the following passage:—

       “The sun, by this, had risen, and clear’d the fog
       From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands:
       And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed
       Into the open plain; so Haman bade;
       Haman, who next to Peran Wisa ruled
       The host, and still was in his lusty prime.
       From their black tents long files of horse they stream’d:
       As when, some grey November morn, the files,
       In marching order spread, of long-neck’d cranes,
       Stream over Casbin, and the southern slopes
       Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,
       Or some from Caspian reed-bed, southward bound
       For the warm Persian sea-board: so they stream’d.
       The Tartars of the Oxus, the king’s guard,
       First, with black sheepskin caps, and with long spears;
       Large men, large steeds; who from Bokhara come
       And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.
       Next the more temperate Toorkmans of the south,
       The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
       And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands;
       Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink
       The acrid milk of camels and their wells.”

The description—or catalogue—is twice as long as the foregoing extract,
but we cannot afford to multiply quotations. The student of Milton will
readily recognise the source of this inspiration, and will regret that
those very passages, which every sound judge (if he be not an arrant
pedant or a schoolmaster) would wish to be excised from the pages of the
“Paradise Lost,” should have been selected for imitation by a young
modern poet.

Further, Mr Arnold errs in being unnecessarily minute. Here again he may
plead the Homeric example; but we reply, as before, that Arnold is not
Homer. That style of description, which Delille happily characterises as
“peindre les ongles,” is not only tedious but puerile, and sometimes has
a ludicrous effect. Take, for example, the following detailed account of
the toilet of an old Tartar gentleman:—

            “So said he, and dropp’d Sohrab’s hand, and left
            His bed, and the warm rugs whereon he lay,
            And o’er his chilly limbs his woollen coat
            He pass’d, and tied his sandals on his feet,
            And threw a white cloak round him, and he took
            In his right hand a ruler’s staff, no sword;
            And on his head he placed his sheepskin cap,
            Black, glossy, curl’d, the fleece of Kara-Kul;
            And raised the curtain of his tent, and call’d
            His herald to his side, and went abroad.”

Now, supposing that Mr Arnold had to describe the uprising of a modern,
would he consider it necessary to favour us with a description of the
emergence from the blankets, the deposition of the nightcap, the wrestle
into the nether integuments, the shaving-jug, the razor, and all the
rest of it? We beg to assure him that this passage, so far from being
vigorous, is pure slip-slop; and we are convinced that, on reflection,
he will admit the justice of the stricture. For example; how infinitely
more terse and satisfactory is the one line which Shakespeare puts into
the mouth of poor Ophelia—

               “Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes!”

What the mischief do we care for the texture of the stockings, or the
peculiar method of investiture? Is it necessary to enter into details
regarding the boots, and to specify whether they were Wellingtons or
Bluchers? That there are, in this episode, some fine, and one or two
noble passages, we are very glad to acknowledge, but it is by no means
perfect as a whole. Indeed, even if the bulk of it had been faultless,
the termination would have spoiled it as a poem; for Mr Arnold has been
induced, through some extraordinary hallucination, to destroy the effect
of the catastrophe, by superadding a needless piece of description. We
sincerely regret this; because the catastrophe, when it does come (and
it ought to have arrived sooner) is very fine; and no artist could have
desired a better termination than the picture of Rustum watching by his
dead son—

            “And night came down over the solemn waste,
            And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair,
            And darken’d all; and a cold fog, with night,
            Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose,
            As of a great assembly loosed, and fires
            Began to twinkle through the fog: for now
            Both armies moved to camp, and took their meal:
            The Persians took it on the open sands
            Southward; the Tartars by the river marge,
            And Rustum and his son were left alone.”

Here the poem ought to have ended; but Mr Arnold wishes to try his hand
at that very ancient and hackneyed subject, the description of the
course of a river; and, the Oxus being conveniently near, he embarks on
a voyage for the Arab Sea.

          “But the majestic river floated on,
          Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
          Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
          Rejoicing, through the hush’d Chorasmian waste,
          Under the solitary moon: he flow’d
          Right for the Polar star, past Orgunjè,
          Brimming, and bright, and huge: there sands begin
          To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
          And split his currents; that for many a league
          The shorn and parcell’d Oxus strains along
          Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles—
          Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
          In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,
          A foil’d circuitous wanderer:—till at last
          The long’d-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
          His luminous home of waters opens, bright
          And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bath’d stars
          Emerge, and shine upon the Arab Sea.”

Not at all bad as a piece of versification, but utterly to be condemned
in the place where it is introduced.

In spite of one or two beautiful passages—the best being the description
of the children at play in the third part—we cannot enthusiastically
admire the poem of “Tristram and Iseult.” It is sickly, feverish, and
withal terribly disjointed—affording no trace of that symmetry of
design, the lack of which in modern poetry Mr Arnold has very justly
deplored. Neither can we say much for the “Church of Brou,” in which, by
the way, Mr Arnold has attempted an elaborate description of a painted
window, very dull of tint, indeed, when we compare it with the gorgeous
masterpiece in “The Eve of St Agnes.” On the whole, we are disappointed
with this volume, because we really think that Mr M. Arnold might have
done much better. That he has the power is quite evident; that many of
the poetical views he enunciates are sound, we have already
acknowledged; but, somehow or other, he neither exerts the power
continuously, nor adheres in practice to his views. We have a strong
impression that he composes too coldly and phlegmatically, and without
allowing the proper scope to his imagination. That is always a bad
method. The inspiration of the poet is not by any means a mere figure of
speech; it must be realised, if great effects are to be produced.
Verses—ay, and good verses too—may be written to almost any extent,
without the composer experiencing anything like a thrill of emotion; but
verses so produced are not of the nature of true poetry. Grand harmonies
suggest and develop themselves only when the mind is in an exalted
state; and at such times the poet cares nothing for the rules of art. If
he stops to consider these, he instantaneously loses the inspiration.

We cannot, as yet, congratulate Mr M. Arnold on high success; but we
augur well of him for the future, and shall be delighted to pay him a
more decided and satisfactory tribute whenever he will allow us to do
so. Come we now to the second Arnold—Edwin, of University College,
Oxford.

Judging from external evidence, we should say that Edwin is some years
younger than Matthew, and he is fortunately, as yet, altogether free
from poetical theories. Song comes to him as naturally as it does to the
bird on the bough. He cannot help expressing his thick-thronging and
always graceful fancies in verse; and he frequently does so with the
true minstrel spirit. That he should be occasionally a little
extravagant is to be expected. All very young poets are so, and we like
them the better for it; for why should they affect the solemn airs and
sententious pomposity of their seniors? Edwin Arnold is just now in the
very parterre of poesy—culling flowers with a liberal hand, and binding
them into a nosegay fit for the acceptance of his lady-love. Our pen
would prove faithless to our fingers should we attempt to disentangle
that pretty posy, which early genius lays at the feet of beauty. Why
should we review his poems, after the manner of the cold critics,
carping at what is enthusiastic, and triumphing over errors, from which
older brethren of the lyre are by no means exempt? If he chooses, in
imitation of “Burleigh Hall,” to renew the story of the Falcon-Feast,
long since told by Boccaccio, and from him dramatised by Barry Cornwall,
why should we point to faults which, in a year or so, he will discover
of his own accord? Never again, we are certain, will he, in a love
story, libel his hero and his heroine as he has done in four lines of
that ballad—

                   “So for one who loved him never
                     Slew he what had loved him well:
                   Giannetta, silent ever,
                     Feasted till the sunlight fell;”

—thereby implying that the owner of the falcon was a brute, and his
mistress a deliberate _gourmande_, gloating over the trail! The story,
even as told by the Florentine, has always seemed to us hideously
unnatural. The man who could sacrifice, in cold blood, a dumb creature
that loved him, would not hesitate, under temptation, to lay a
sacrilegious hand on the weazand of his father; and we pray Mr Edwin
Arnold to consider what kind of sympathy we should feel for Ulysses, if
his first act, on his return to Ithaca, had been to drive his falchion
into the heart of old Argus, who, for so many years, had been lying
neglected at the gate, pining for his master’s return. Let us rather
give a specimen or so of the better style of our youthful poet. We begin
with the first poem.

             “Oh! was there ever tale of human love
             Which was not also tale of human tears?
             Died not sweet Desdemona? Sorrowed not
             Fair, patient Imogene? and she whose name
             Lives among lovers, Sappho silver-voiced,
             Was not the wailing of her passionate lyre
             Ended for ever in the dull, deaf sea?
             Must it be thus? Oh! must the cup that holds
             The sweetest vintage of the vine of life
             Taste bitter at the dregs? Is there no story,
             No legend, no love-passage, which shall veil
             Even as the bow which God hath bent in heaven
             O’er the sad waste of mortal histories,
             Promising respite to the rain of tears?”

A very pretty commencement to a pretty poem; the subject of which,
however, must be considered as rather ticklish. It is curious that
Edwin, as well as Matthew, has tried his hand at the painted window,
which we wish he had not done, as the plagiary from Keats is evident:—

           “They sleep: the spangled night is melting off,
           And still they sleep: the holy moon looks in,
           In at the painted window-panes, and flings
           Ruby, blue, purple, emerald, amethyst,
           Crystal and orange colours on their limbs;
           _And round her face a glory of white light,
           As one that sins not_; on the tapestries
           Gold lights are flashing like the wings of angels,
           Bringing these two hearts to be single-hearted.”

O Edwin! what could tempt you to charge your pallet with so many
colours? Don’t you see how ill they assort together, giving the
impression of a mashed rainbow?—and how dreadfully out of place are the
flashing gold lights! They should be “lying,” Edwin, not “flashing;” for
the holy moon is looking in, and all within the chamber should be
repose. Pray you observe the exquisite toning of Keats in that passage
with which you are already familiar, but the extreme beauty of which you
do not yet thoroughly comprehend.

            “Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
            And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
            As down she knelt for Heaven’s grace and boon;
            Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
            And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
            And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
            She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
            Save wings, for heaven.—”

Keats gives the colours in which an angel should be painted—yours, Mr
Edwin, are too tawdry even for the coat of Harlequin.

So many of these poems come under the general title of “Occasional,”
that we have some difficulty in finding a proper one for extract. Our
favourite, on the whole, is “Quentin Matsys,” and from it we select a
specimen.

        “She was a painter’s daughter,—bold for love
        He told his earnest suit, and prayed her hand
        In words that his full heart made eloquence.
        Silent the father heard; there as he sate
        In jewelled silks, and velvets furbelow’d,
        With works of mighty masters on the wall,
        And all his art’s appliances about him,
        A stern smile curled his pale patrician lip,
        And cold and slow the cruel sentence came:
        ‘A painter’s daughter may not wed a smith;
        Paint me like this and these, and thou shalt have her.’
        Died then his love? Listen! The maiden wept
        Such pearly tears, that in his bursting heart
        Grew up strange hopes. Alas! to few is given
        The magic skill that burns in life-like hues,
        A speaking lip, an eye that beams and loves,
        A moving majesty like nature’s own,
        Save that this may not die: it is a gift
        Higher and holier than a common man
        May dare to reach at; oh! by what right, then,
        Dared he to dream of it? by what right! Love’s!—
        The love that lifts a peasant to a king,
        The love that knows no doubting! Well he knew—
        Too well for his fond hopes—that brawny arms
        Guide not the pencil, and that smithy strokes
        Fix not the fancies of a painter’s mind;
        But still for that. To gaze into the eyes
        That sparkled all for him was inspiration
        Better than painter’s best: long days and nights
        He strove as only lovers strive; at last
        The passport to the haven of his hopes
        Came in a touch, as if some angel hand
        Had dipt his brush in life; and as the form
        His fancy pictured, slowly—slowly grew,
        And woke into broad being, then at last
        He knew that he had won his golden prize—
        That she was his for ever.
                            Antwerp’s bells
        Rung out right merrily one sunny day;
        Blue kirtles, and bright hose, and brighter faces,
        Rhenish and sack, dancing and songs were there,
        Feasting and music, and mad revelry,
        And all to keep the wedding:—cavaliers
        And highborn ladies stood to see them pass,
        He, Quentin Matsys, and his blooming bride!”

Well then, after having given these extracts, we may be asked whether we
think that Mr Edwin Arnold is really and truly a poet? Look, our dear
sir, we beseech you, at that splendid gamecock—how glossy in his
plumage, how quick in his eye, how massive in his neck, and how powerful
in his limbs! There he walks, proud as the sultan at the head of his
seraglio, the pride of his master’s heart, the terror of every recreant
dunghill within a circle of a couple of miles. Some few months ago he
was a mere chicken, whom you might have devoured with parsley-sauce
without experiencing a pang of remorse. Before that he lay in an
egg-shell. Now, had you looked either on the egg or on the chicken, you
could not have stated with propriety that either was a gamecock—and yet
there undeniably goes the finest ginger-pile in the parish. So is it
with Mr Edwin Arnold. He may not be entitled yet to the high and sacred
name of a poet—for he is still exercising himself in verse, and has not
attained the possession of a distinguishing style of his own; but he
shows excellent symptoms of breeding, and we doubt not will, in due
time, advance a valid claim to the laurels. This, moreover, is to be
said in his favour, that he is not treading in the footsteps of the
“intense” school, and that he always writes intelligibly—a virtue which
we observe a good many modern poets hold utterly in derision. Let him go
on in his vocation, cultivating his taste, improving his judgment,
observing nature, and eschewing gaudy ornament—and he may hope to win a
name which shall be reverenced, when those of the utterers of fustian
and balderdash, dear to the heart of Guffaw, are either wholly
forgotten, or remembered only with ridicule.




                        COUNT SIGISMUND’S WILL.


The theatrical season in Paris, now at its height, has not yet been
marked by the production of any particularly successful pieces. At about
this time last year, the clever comedy of _Lady Tartuffe_ afforded
agreeable occupation to the critics, and abundant amusement to the town.
At the Gymnase, the _Fils de Famille_, of which two versions have since
been produced upon the London stage, and _Philiberte_, a sparkling
three-act comedy in verse, full of wit, but rather _Régence_ in its tone
and style, nightly filled the house with select and gratified audiences.
_L’Honneur et l’Argent_, M. Ponsard’s respectable and proper, but, in
our opinion, wearisome play, had a triumphant run at the Odeon; whilst,
at the Vaudeville, the _Lady with the Camelias_, who, objectionable
though she was in some respects, was certainly, as far as talent went,
immeasurably superior to her various imitators and successors, drew all
Paris to her seductive boudoir. This winter no play of decided merit and
importance has been produced at any theatre. In more than one instance,
attempts have been made to proclaim the success of a piece immense, when
in reality it was most moderate; and, at the Gymnase, _Diane de Lys_ has
really had a considerable run; but this has been owing to extraneous
circumstances, and to the excellence of the acting, much more than to
any intrinsic merits of the play, which derived a sort of scandalous
interest from a generally-credited report that the author, Alexander
Dumas the younger, had merely dramatised an adventure of his
own—altering, however, the catastrophe; for the play closes with the
death of the lover, shot by the offended husband. Rumour went so far as
to point to a foreign lady of rank as the original of the _Duchess
Diana_, and the playwright was blamed for his indiscretion. Whether
there were grounds for such censure, or whether the tale was a mere
ingenious invention, industriously circulated by the author’s friends to
give a spurious popularity to a rather amusing but very worthless piece,
it is hard to decide—the one case being quite as probable as the other.
The Gymnase, however, boasts of its _Diana_ as a signal triumph—which
she may be to its treasury, although in other respects she does the
theatre no great credit, beyond displaying an excellent cast and
admirable acting. That agreeable theatre needs something to console it
for the loss of its most valuable and accomplished comedian, Bressant,
summoned by the higher powers from the scene of his numerous triumphs to
the classic boards of the _Française_. There he had the good taste to
make his first appearance in a play of Molière’s in preference to the
less sterling class of comedy with which he is more familiar; and, both
by his acting, and by the enthusiastic greeting he met from a crowded
house, he at once proved himself a valuable accession to the talent and
popularity of the first French theatre. That establishment just now has
greater need of good new plays than of good new actors. It is
unfortunate in its authors, and the drama droops under the imperial
régime. Alexander Dumas—whose outrageous vanity and fanfaronades, daily
displayed in the columns of the new journal, the _Mousquetaire_, which
he owns and edits, have lately made him the laughingstock of
Paris,—after writing two five-act historical plays in about as many days
each, and having them both accepted by the committee, but prohibited
before performance—probably because the authorities did not think the
most important theatre in France a fit stage for such mountebank feats
of rapid writing—has been fain to console himself (supposing his
egregious self-conceit not to have set him above all need of
consolation) by the cordial reception of a one-act comedy called
_Romulus_, which has both humour and character. He has boasted of this
little success almost as much as of the merits of his two great
failures, the interdicted plays; has published the piece (the idea of
which is derived from a passage in one of Auguste La Fontaine’s tales)
in the _feuilleton_ of his paper, where he also printed monstrous
stories about his having written it in some wonderfully short space of
time. But this clever silly man has made himself such a reputation as a
Munchausen that none now believe him; and, moreover, it is very well
known in Paris that the piece in question was planned, and in great part
written, by an accomplished French actor, much esteemed in England, to
whose cultivated taste and extensive reading some of the best dramatists
of the day have on various occasions been indebted for advice and
assistance, which they have not all been so slow as Mr Dumas to
acknowledge.

The expectations of many persons, conversant with the relative merits of
the principal living writers for the French stage, were lately raised
high by the announcement of a five-act comedy from the united pens of
two of the most successful of these, Messrs Emile Augier and Jules
Sandeau. Both of these gentlemen have distinguished themselves as
dramatists, although M. Sandeau is perhaps best known as the author of
some very clever and agreeable novels. Indeed, since the regretted
decease of Charles de Bernard, few have been more successful in that
branch of literature. His style is that in which modern French writers
have best succeeded—the _roman de mœurs_, or novel of society, whose
attraction and interest depend rather upon accurate delineation and
delicate satire of the habits, follies, and foibles of the time, than in
startling situations and complicated intrigues. The late Charles de
Bernard, to whose charming talent we some years ago devoted an article,
and whose collected works have just received the well-deserved honour of
posthumous republication, was an adept in the style, and was also one of
the most inventive writers of his day. Most of his novels and tales
display, in addition to a refined and extensive knowledge of French
society and character, much ingenuity of plot and originality of
incident. Of the same school, Jules Sandeau has more pathos and
sentiment, less originality and wit. Like that of most novelists who are
also dramatists, his dialogue is terse, spirited, and life-like,
although less pointed and sparkling than that of the author of
_Gerfaut_. Occasionally he reminds us of that clever whimsical writer,
Alphonse Karr, but of Karr in his happiest moods, when he abjures
triviality, and produces such novels as _Genevieve_ and _La Famille
Alain_. One of the favourite stock-pieces at the _Comédie Française_,
_Mademoiselle de la Seiglière_, is by Sandeau, founded on his own novel
of the same name. Another of his tales, _La Chasse au Roman_, he
dramatised conjointly with Augier, and the piece brought out the other
day, _La Pierre de Touche_—The Touchstone—is also founded on a novel by
Sandeau, entitled _Un Héritage_. How is it, many have asked, that, with
an excellent subject—that of a highly popular romance—to work upon, M.
Sandeau and the witty and experienced author of _Gabrielle_,
_Philiberte_, and other justly successful plays, have produced a comedy
which has been more or less hissed every night of its performance, and
which, instead of awakening the sympathies or exciting the admiration of
the public, has produced an impression so manifestly unfavourable, that
the authors deemed it necessary to publish a letter in explanation and
vindication—a letter the publishers of the play have reproduced in the
form of a preface? Before replying to this question, or sketching the
plot of the play, we will give a slight outline of the novel on which it
is founded. Our readers will hardly have forgotten another of M.
Sandeau’s novels, _Sacs et Parchemins_, of which we some time ago gave
an account.[4] Those who have read, with the amused interest it could
hardly fail to excite, M. Sandeau’s account of the vaulting ambition of
the retired draper Levrault, and of the desperate and ludicrous
expedients of the ruined Viscount de Montflanquin, in his French Wolf’s
Crag, will not be unwilling to follow the same writer upon German
ground, to the ancient castle of Hildesheim, and into the humble abode
of Franz Müller, the musician of Munich. We will briefly glance at the
spirited and characteristic opening chapters of _Un Héritage_.

It was a great day for Master Gottlieb Kaufmann, notary in the little
German town of Mühlstadt. Count Sigismund Hildesheim was just dead, and
his will was to be opened in presence of his assembled relatives.
Gottlieb, attired in suitable sables, the silver buckles of his shoes
replaced by others of burnished steel, fidgetted to and fro between his
study and his office, his office and his drawing-room, scolding his
clerks, sending away clients, and watching the clock, whose lazy hands,
he thought, crept more slowly than usual round the dial. Noon was the
hour fixed for the reading of the will, and as yet it was but nine. It
was an anxious morning for the worthy notary. The very pig-tail that
dangled from his nape quivered with impatience. The cause of his
excitement was his doubt whether the heir to the castle and fine estate
of Hildesheim would continue to employ him. There were other notaries at
Mühlstadt, and all were eager to secure so rich a client. Master
Gottlieb had spared no pains to retain the lucrative employment. His
drawing-room chairs, stripped of the cases that usually protected them
from the pranks of the flies, were drawn round a table spread with an
old scarlet velvet cover; near this table, another chair, elevated upon
a temporary platform, seemed to preside over the absent assembly. From
time to time, Master Gottlieb seated himself in it, studied his gestures
and attitude, and contemplated his reflection in a glass, endeavouring
to combine regret and obsequiousness in the expression of his habitually
jovial physiognomy. His face was to do double duty—to deplore the
departed and offer his services to the survivors. Further to propitiate
the clients he desired to secure, Master Gottlieb—himself of a convivial
turn, fond of a cool bottle and a merry catch—had prepared, in an
adjoining room, an elegant collation. On a cloth of dazzling whiteness
were temptingly displayed cold meats, fragrant fruits, and antique
flasks, dim with venerable dust. The notary had spared nothing worthily
to honour the memory and regale the heirs of the departed Count.

Count Sigismund Hildesheim had passed, almost from his youth upwards,
for an oddity, an original, slightly crazed, and only just sane enough
to be intrusted with the guidance of himself and his affairs. In reality
he was none of those things, but a misfortune in early life, acting upon
a singularly sensitive and impressionable nature, had decided his whole
destiny. As a youth, at the university of Heidelberg, he shunned the
society of the students, and, of an evening, instead of devoting himself
to beer, tobacco, roaring songs and political theories, he loved to walk
out and watch the sunset from the summit of the beautiful hills that
enclose the valley of the Neckar. Returning home, on a May night, from
one of these solitary rambles, his attention was arrested, as he passed
through the outskirts of the town, by a fresh and melodious voice,
proceeding from a window decked and entwined with flowers. The song was
one of those wild and plaintive ditties, often of great antiquity, heard
in remote mountain districts, seldom written, but orally transmitted
from generation to generation. Surprised and charmed, Sigismund paused
and listened; then he cast a curious glance into the room. A young girl
was seated at a piano, and by the light of a lamp he distinguished her
to be of great beauty. Thenceforward, every evening, on his return from
his walks, the pensive student lingered at that window. He was seldom
disappointed; most evenings the young girl was at her piano; and the
song that at first had fascinated him was evidently her favourite. At
last—how this came about it is immaterial to inquire—instead of pausing
at the window, Sigismund went in at the door, and became a constant
visitor to Michaële and her mother.

The dwelling of the widow and her child was humble, but elegant in its
poverty. War, which had robbed them of a husband and father, had left
them but a scanty pension for their support. Sigismund was as much
attracted by the mother’s kind and graceful manners as he had been
enchanted by the daughter’s bright eyes and sweet voice. He had lost his
own mother when an infant; his father’s harsh and haughty character had
repelled his affection. He found a home, congenial to his tastes and
sympathies, in the secluded cottage in Heidelberg’s suburbs, and there
he and Michaële formed plans of future happiness undisturbed by fear of
obstacles to their union. But Michaële’s mother, who at first partook
their hopes, could not repress forebodings of evil when she remembered
that Sigismund was the heir of an ancient and wealthy family. Her fears
proved too well founded. When Sigismund, on quitting the university,
spoke to his father of his projects, he encountered an insurmountable
opposition, and was compelled to postpone them. As often as he could
escape from Hildesheim he hurried to Heidelberg, to pass a few days of
mingled grief and joy. Michaële never complained; she had always smiles
and loving words to welcome Sigismund, but in his absence and in secret
she pined away. At last his father died. A week after his funeral the
young count was at Heidelberg. It was too late. Michaële was given up by
the physicians; three days afterwards she breathed her last. More than
once, during those three days of cruel anguish, the dying girl made
Sigismund play the melody that had been the origin of their
acquaintance, and which they both passionately loved. Often, in happier
times, they had sung it together, with joy and gratitude in their
hearts. It was an air that Michaële had learned when a child, in the
mountains of the Tyrol. It had fixed itself indelibly in her memory, and
when she died, in Sigismund’s arms, the sweet melody was hovering on her
lips.

There is something rather German than French in the strain of the early
chapters of _Un Héritage_, but they are a mere prologue to the book, and
are unheeded by the dramatist. After the death of his betrothed, Count
Sigismund abandoned himself to the most passionate and despairing grief.
He remained at Heidelberg with Michaële’s mother, who would not quit the
spot where she had dwelt with her daughter. She did not long survive her
bereavement. Sigismund followed her to the grave, and returned to
Hildesheim, where he lived in complete retirement, avoiding intercourse
with his neighbours. He would not be consoled, and lived alone with his
sorrow. When this became calmer, he opened his piano and would have
played the Tyrolese air he and his departed love had so often repeated.
But in vain did he rack his memory and try every note of the instrument.
The melody had fled, and would not return. It had departed with the soul
of her from whom he had learned it. His long paroxysm of grief had
utterly driven it from his recollection.

What does M. Sandeau now, but send his melancholy hero forth, a pilgrim
over hill and dale, in quest of the lost melody so inextricably
intertwined with the memory of her he had so tenderly and deeply loved.
After innumerable efforts to seize the fugitive sounds, after bursts of
impatience, anger, almost of frenzy, the enthusiastic Sigismund
departed, wandering in search of an old song. The idea is fantastical;
it may be deemed far-fetched; but it certainly is not unpoetical.

“He set out for the Tyrol; on the summit of the mountains, in the depths
of the valleys, he listened to the songs of the shepherds: no voice
repeated the air Michaële sung. After traversing Switzerland and Italy
he returned to Germany, and his gentle, touching monomania then assumed
a new form. He travelled on foot, like a poor student, listening to
every fresh young voice that met his ear as he passed through the
villages; in cities, on the public squares, when he saw a crowd gathered
round a band of itinerant singers, he joined it, and stirred not from
the place until the _alfresco_ minstrels had exhausted their musical
store. Whilst thus persisting in the pursuit of this Tyrolese air, which
fled before him as did Ithaca from Ulysses, it will easily be understood
that he paid little attention to the management of his estate. Before
commencing his travels, which had lasted several years, he had installed
in his castle two old cousins of his mother, Hedwige and Ulrica von
Stolzenfels.”

Hereabouts M. Sandeau shelves sentiment and the pathetic, and strikes
into a vein akin to satire, in which, as he showed us in _Sacs et
Parchemins_, and some others of his books, he is by no means less happy.
The two old Stolzenfels are a capital sketch. In the whole course of
their lives, prolonged to a period it would be ungallant to guess at,
they had had but one affection—for a scamp of a nephew, who had ruined
them, but whom they still idolised, although hopeless of his conversion
to better courses. For this handsome, reckless officer, whose
innumerable follies were redeemed, in their partial eyes, by his good
looks and prepossessing manners, they had emptied their purses, sold
their diamonds, and left themselves with an income barely sufficient for
their support. They would not have given a copper to a beggar; for
Captain Frederick they would have stripped themselves of their last
dollar, and have deemed themselves more than repaid by a visit from him
in his fulldress of captain of hussars. When Sigismund offered them
apartments in his castle, they gladly accepted them, at first merely as
a comfortable home free of cost; but when they observed his absence of
mind and his total neglect of his affairs, they formed other projects.
By nature and habit haughty and sour to everybody but their beloved
hussar, they forced themselves to be gentle and humble with Sigismund.
Under pretence of watching over his interests, they gradually assumed
the whole management of his house, and soon it might have been supposed
that he was the guest and that they were his hostesses. When he set out
upon his rambles, Frederick, who was in garrison in a neighbouring town,
installed himself at the castle and disposed of everything as though it
had been his patrimony, keeping horses, dogs, and huntsmen continually
on their legs. The servants, accustomed to obey the two old ladies, and
seeing that they obeyed their nephew, obeyed him likewise. Meanwhile
Hedwige and Ulrica built castles in the air for their darling; or, it
should rather be said, they grasped in imagination the one already built
on the broad domain of Hildesheim. Sigismund, they were convinced, could
not live long, leading the strange, wandering, unhappy life he did. Why
should he not leave part of his property to Frederick? Why not all? How
could it be better bestowed? The hussar, to do him justice, entered into
none of their schemes. He drank Sigismund’s wine, thinned his preserves,
knocked up his horses, and cared for little besides. When Sigismund came
home for a few days, the captain made no change in his habits, and the
count, for his part, in no way interfered with them.

To the infinite consternation of the old maids, there one day arrived at
the castle a distant relative of Sigismund’s father, of whom they had
heard nothing for many years, and whom they sincerely trusted had
departed for a better world. Had a thunderbolt dropped into their aprons
they could hardly have been more thunderstruck. Major Bildmann, who had
always been rather a loose character, had just lost his last ducat at
the gaming-table. In this extremity, Dorothy, his wife, could think of
nothing better than to have recourse to Count Sigismund. She was careful
not to speak to him of her husband’s irregularities, and concocted a
little romance about faithless trustees and insolvent bankers, which
Sigismund implicitly believed. He was touched by the tale of her
misfortunes.

“My mother’s two cousins,” he said, after listening in silence, “occupy
the right wing of the castle; come and install yourself with the major
in the left wing. There will still be plenty of room for me.”

Dorothy took him at his word. A week afterwards she returned with Major
Bildmann, and with little Isaac, an abominable brat whom she had
forgotten to mention. This mattered not. Sigismund had again quitted the
castle in pursuit of his chimera.

The consternation of a pair of magpies, disturbed in the plucking of a
pigeon by the sudden swoop of a leash of sparrow-hawks, may give some
idea of the feelings of Ulrica and Hedwige at this intrusion upon their
territory. There was deadly hatred between the right wing and the left.
When Sigismund returned home he did not observe this. The two maiden
ladies certainly insinuated that the Bildmanns were no better than they
should be; and the Bildmanns scrupled not to declare that the
Stolzenfels were no great things; but Sigismund, whilst they spoke, was
thinking of his Tyrolese air, and when they paused, he thanked them for
having made his house the asylum of every domestic virtue.

Leaving the inmates of Hildesheim to their dissensions and illusions,
and passing over a few chapters, we seek a contrast in an humble
dwelling in Bavaria’s art-loving capital. It is the abode of Franz
Müller, the musician, Edith his wife, and Spiegel their friend. Franz
and Spiegel had been brought up together, and had passed the flower of
their youth in poverty, working and hoping. Franz studied music, Spiegel
was passionately fond of painting; art and friendship scared
discouragement from their doors. For the space of three years they
wandered on foot, knapsack on shoulder and staff in hand, through
Germany and the Tyrol, stopping wherever the beauty of the country
tempted them, and purveying, each in his own manner, for the wants of
the community. Sometimes Spiegel painted a few portraits, at others
Müller gave lessons in singing or on the piano; or when they arrived in
a town on the eve of a great festival, he offered to play the church
organ at the next day’s solemnity. Art and liberty was their motto. In
the course of their wandering existence they visited the most beautiful
valleys, the most picturesque mountains, opulent cities, splendid
picture galleries, and amassed a treasure of reminiscences for future
fireside conversation. They resolved never to marry, lest domestic cares
should interfere with their enthusiastic pursuit of art. Spiegel kept
his word, but Franz, in a little Tyrolese town, saw and loved Edith. In
vain did the painter draw an alarming picture of the inconveniences of
matrimony; Franz married, and thenceforward his friend deemed him lost
to art. It was reserved for the gentle Edith to convince Spiegel of the
contrary, and to tame his somewhat wild and vagabond nature. When first
the newly-married pair settled at Munich, he seldom went to see them,
but gradually his visits became more frequent, until one day, he hardly
knew how, he found himself dwelling under their roof. In a small house
Müller had taken, he had reserved a bedroom and studio for his friend.
In that modest abode, situated outside Munich, between a front court
whose walls disappeared under a drapery of vines and a little garden
crowded with sweet flowers, happy years flew by. Happy, but not
prosperous. At first Spiegel had painted pictures, with two or three of
which he was tolerably satisfied, whilst Franz pronounced them
masterpieces. But they found no purchasers, and the artist, once so
ambitious, cheerfully resigned his hopes of fame, and gave drawing
lessons. Müller had composed sonatas and a symphony; they were as
unsuccessful as Spiegel’s pictures. Vanquished by the innumerable
barriers that interpose between a poor and unknown musician and the
public, he, too, submitted to give lessons. With strict economy they
managed to live, but they laid by nothing; and Müller was often uneasy
when he thought of the future, and of the two beautiful children Edith
had born him.

“One evening, during Spiegel’s absence from Munich, Franz came home with
a more care-laden brow than usual, and Edith sat down to the piano and
sang a favourite air, which had more than once dispelled his momentary
melancholy. The window was open, and her voice, fresh, pure, and
sonorous, was audible outside the house. Franz listened, his gloom
gradually softening into reverie, whilst Herman and Margaret rolled upon
the carpet like kittens at play. That young woman, whose fair hair fell
in abundant tresses upon her bare shoulders—those two fine children,
joyously gambolling—the dreamer, whose hand sustained his thoughtful
brow, composed a charming picture. Suddenly a stranger appeared, and
paused upon the threshold of the apartment. He had entered so gently,
that none had heard his steps or now observed his presence. Edith
continued her song; the intruder listened motionless, and in apparent
ecstasy, whilst silent tears coursed down his pale cheeks prematurely
furrowed by pain or sorrow.”

At the stranger’s entreaty, Edith again and again repeated the song,
which was from her native Tyrol. He listened with deep emotion. By
ordinary persons he might have been deemed mad or intrusive, and
received accordingly; but he had had the good fortune to fall amongst
artists. He passed the evening with them, conversing as kindly and
familiarly as though they had been old friends. He found means to draw
out Franz, to make him speak of himself, his hopes and wishes, his
discouragements and disappointments, his long-cherished desire for fame,
his uneasiness about the prospects of his children. Then he asked him to
play a piece of his own composition. Müller played one of his best
sonatas, to which the stranger listened with the attention of a judge
who will not lightly decide. The piece played out, he seemed thoughtful,
but said nothing. Poor Müller, who had expected applause, consoled
himself by thinking that the eccentric stranger did not understand
music. Instead of praising the fine composition he had just heard, the
unbidden guest, so kindly welcomed, turned to Edith and asked her for a
copy of the Tyrolese air. She had never seen it noted, she said, and
doubted that it ever had been, but Franz would note it for him. “Most
willingly” was the reply of the good-tempered artist, who could not
repress a smile at the ill success of his own performance. In a very few
minutes he had covered a sheet of music-paper with spots and scratches.
Edith graciously offered it to the stranger. He seized it with an
expression of grateful joy, glanced hastily over it, pressed Edith’s
hand to his lips, cast an affectionate glance at the children, and left
the house, as he had entered it, swift and noiseless as a shadow. He had
not mentioned his name; his kind hosts had not inquired it; they never
saw him again.

On a certain evening, Count Sigismund returned to Hildesheim Castle,
after one of his long absences, his countenance lighted up with a
mysterious joy. He spoke to no one, put aside the servants who crowded
round him, and shut himself up in his apartment. Soon his piano was
heard resounding under his fingers; he at last had found the air he so
long had sought. But he did not long enjoy his victory. He had worn
himself out in pursuit of his mania. One morning, subsequent to a night
during great part of which the piano had been continually heard, a
servant entered his room. Sigismund was still seated at the instrument,
one hand resting on the keys, the other hanging by his side, his eyes
closed, his mouth half open and smiling. He seemed to sleep, but he was
dead.

There were present at the reading of Count Sigismund von Hildesheim’s
last will and testament the two ladies Stolzenfels; Major Bildmann, a
brokendown gambler of braggadocio air and vinous aspect; his wife
Dorothy, whose thin pale lips, and sharp, hooked nose, gave her no small
resemblance to a bird of prey; and their son Isaac, a horrible urchin
with the profile of a frog and a head of scrubby white hair, who, having
been ordered by his mother to behave decorously and look sorrowful, had
given his features a sulky twist, which considerably augmented their
naturally evil expression. The opposed camps of Bildmann and Stolzenfels
observed each other with dislike and distrust. After some waiting, the
gallop of a horse was heard, and Captain Frederick entered, whip in
hand, and his boots covered with dust. All who were interested being
thus assembled, Master Gottlieb broke the seals of the will, which the
count had deposited in his keeping a month before his death. Divested of
customary formalities and of preliminary compliments to the family, the
contents of the document were in substance as follows:—

“My mother’s two cousins, Hedwige and Ulrica von Stolzenfels, have at
all times shown me the most disinterested affection. To leave me more
leisure and liberty, they have kindly taken the management of my house,
and have superintended, with unceasing zeal and activity, that of my
estates. Frederick, by his youth and gaiety, has enlivened my dwelling.
To him I am indebted for the only cheerful moments I for many years have
known. Since their establishment under my roof, the Stolzenfels have
proved themselves my affectionate and devoted friends; their conduct has
excited my admiration and respect, and I desire they should know that I
duly appreciate it.”

About this time Hedwige and Ulrica seemed to grow several inches taller,
and cast a triumphant glance at the major and Dorothy. As to Frederick,
who, since the reading began, had been sketching with the point of his
horse-whip, upon the dusty surface of one of his boots, a likeness of
Master Gottlieb, he gave the last touch to his work, and commenced upon
the other foot the portrait of Isaac. The notary continued.

“The straightforward frankness and integrity of Major Bildmann have
been, I here declare, a great consolation to me, after the deceptions of
all kinds that I experienced in my youth. Mrs Bildmann has vied with my
mother’s cousins in zeal and devotedness. The complete absence of all
self-interested views has given a noble and affecting character to their
rivalry. In return for so much attention and care, they neither asked
nor expected other reward than my affection. The Bildmanns have an equal
right with the Stolzenfels to my gratitude.”

This became puzzling. A division of the property was the most natural
inference. Master Gottlieb, dubious where to seek the rising sun, smiled
benignly on all around. Urged by the impatient hussar, he resumed the
reading of the will.

“At Munich, at No 9, in the street of the Armourers, lives a young
musician, Franz Müller by name. He has hitherto contrived, by hard work,
by giving lessons, to support his wife and children, who tenderly love
him. But Müller is no ordinary musician; and his genius, to develop
itself, needs but leisure. It is to him, Franz Müller, residing at
Munich, at No 9, in the street of the Armourers, that I bequeath my
entire property.”

It is highly improbable that Master Gottlieb’s peaceable parlour had
ever before been the scene of such an uproar as this paragraph of the
will occasioned. The major, Dorothy, and the two old maids, were for
attacking the document on the ground of the testator’s insanity; but
Frederick, who could not restrain his laughter at this eccentric close
to an eccentric life, firmly opposed this, and the bullying major
quailed before his resolute tone and mien. Franz Müller not being
present, Master Gottlieb no longer troubled himself to smile on anybody;
but, in an authoritative tone, called attention to the closing passages
of the will.

“Desiring,” the singular document proceeded, “to insure, after my death,
the welfare of my farmers and servants, which I feel that I have
neglected too much during my life, I make it a condition of my bequest
that Franz Müller shall inhabit the castle for nine months of every
year, and dismiss none of my people. As to my dear relatives, the
Stolzenfels and the Bildmanns, nothing is to be changed in their manner
of life, and they are to inhabit the castle as heretofore. Wishing to
insure their independence, it is my will that Müller shall annually pay
to Ulrica von Stolzenfels one thousand florins; to Hedwige von
Stolzenfels one thousand florins; to Frederick von Stolzenfels one
thousand florins; to Major Bildmann two thousand florins, with
reversion, in case of his death, to Dorothy Bildmann. And that he should
take from his first year’s revenue a sum of ten thousand florins, the
interest on which is to be allowed to accumulate until the majority of
Isaac, to whom interest and capital are then to be paid over.

“I give to Frederick von Stolzenfels the free use of my horses and dogs,
with right of chase over my estates.

“I annex to the present will a Tyrolese air; I desire that it may be
engraved on my tomb and serve as my epitaph.”

After listening to this strange document, which they declared worthy to
have proceeded from a lunatic asylum, the ladies had no appetite for
Master Gottlieb’s collation. The major would gladly have tried the
contents of the cobwebbed bottles, but his wife dragged him away.
Frederick sprang upon his horse and galloped off, taking with him upon
his boots the portraits of Isaac and the notary. This functionary,
finding himself deserted by his guests, called in his head clerk to help
him to drink the health of the absent legatee.

Poor, well-meaning, simple-minded Count Sigismund would have turned in
his grave had he known all the mischief and unhappiness, envy, hatred,
and discord, of which his extraordinary will sowed the seed and gave the
signal. The journey from Munich to Hildesheim was, for Franz and Edith,
a series of enchanting dreams. There was but one drawback to their joy;
Spiegel had refused to accompany them. “No more drudgery, no more
lessons!” Müller had enthusiastically exclaimed, when a letter from
Master Gottlieb, expressing a hope of the continuance of the Hildesheim
patronage, and enclosing a copy of the will, tied with blue ribbons,
confirmed the intimation of good fortune he had already gleaned from a
newspaper paragraph. “The world belongs to us; we are kings of the
earth! You shall paint pictures, I will compose symphonies and operas;
we will fill Germany with our fame.” And he formed innumerable projects.
Their life thenceforward was to be a fairy scene, a delightful and
perpetual alternation of refined enjoyments and artistic toil. Edith
partook her husband’s enthusiasm; Spiegel at first said nothing, and
when he did speak he gave his friends to understand that he could not
share their prosperity. He did not like new faces; he preferred the
cottage at Munich to the abode of a castle, and was proof against all
entreaties. Franz and Edith secretly resolved to buy the little house as
a gift to their friend. In nine months they would return to see him, and
perhaps, when they again set out for Hildesheim, he would consent to
accompany them. Whilst preparing for departure, and burning useless
papers, Franz laid his hand upon the only symphony he had found time to
write. Carefully turning over its leaves, with a disdainful air, he was
about to toss it into the fire, when Spiegel seized his arm and rescued
the composition.

Müller had written to the Hildesheim steward to announce his arrival,
and to forbid all pomp, ceremony, and public rejoicings on the occasion.
He thought his instructions too literally carried out, when, upon
reaching, some hours after nightfall, the huge gates of the castle, all
decorated with stags’ horns, boars’ tusks, and wolves’ heads, he found
no servant to receive him, not a light on the walls or in the windows,
not a torch in the gloomy avenues of the park. After the postilion had
cracked his whip and wound his horn for the better part of half an hour,
a glimmering light appeared, a clanking of keys was heard, and the
gates, slowly opening, disclosed the sour visage of Wurm the steward,
muttering maledictions on the untimely visitors. Upon learning who they
were, and at the rather sharp injunction of Müller, who was exasperated
at the delay, he made what haste he could to awaken the servants, and
ushered his new master and mistress into their apartments—immense rooms,
nearly bare of furniture; for, even during Sigismund’s lifetime, the
Stolzenfels and Bildmann, taking advantage of his frequent absence of
mind, and from the castle, had stripped that part of the edifice he had
reserved for his own use. Edith mentally contrasted the vast gloomy
halls with her snug abode at Munich, and thought it would have been but
kind had the ladies Stolzenfels and Mrs Bildmann been there to receive
her. But a night’s rest, a brilliant morning, and the view of the
immense lawns and rich foliage of the park, effaced the first unpleasant
impression, and, having previously sent to know when they could be
received, she and her husband presented themselves in the apartments of
Hedwige and Ulrica. On their entrance, the two old ladies, who were
seated in the embrasure of a window, half rose from their seats, resumed
them almost immediately, and pointed to chairs with a gesture rather
disdainful than polite. Poor Edith, who, in the innocence of her heart,
had expected smiling countenance and a friendly welcome, felt herself
frozen by their vinegar aspect. She turned red, then pale, and knew not
what to say. Müller, without noticing the ladies’ looks, recited a
little speech he had prepared for the occasion, expressive of his
gratitude to Count Sigismund for having bequeathed him, in addition to
his estates, his amiable family. He begged and insisted that they would
change nothing in their mode of life, &c. &c. Why should they change
anything? was Ulrica’s sharp and haughty reply; the count had left them
by his will what he had given them in his lifetime; they had their
rights and asked nothing beyond them. Hedwige pitched it in rather a
lower key. Their tastes were very simple. They had sought neither
applause nor luxury at Hildesheim. Count Sigismund had always put his
carriage and horses at their disposal. Müller hoped they would continue
to make use of them. They were lovers of solitude, Hedwige continued, of
silence and meditation. With Count Sigismund’s consent they had planted
a quickset hedge round a little corner of the park—not more than two or
three acres. It would pain them, she confessed, to give up this little
enclosure, whither they repaired to indulge their evening reveries.
Franz eagerly assured them that none should disturb them in their
retreat. Having obtained these assurances, and repelled, with chilling
stiffness, Edith’s warm-hearted advances, the amiable spinsters relapsed
into silence, which all their visitors’ efforts were insufficient to
induce them to break, until the upset of a table of old china,
occasioned by the gambols of Herman and a black cat, effectually roused
them from their assumed apathy. The Müllers beat a retreat and went to
call on Major Bildmann and his wife, whom they surprised in the midst of
a domestic squabble—a circumstance of itself sufficient, had others been
wanting, to secure them a surly reception. Franz’s mild and gentle
bearing encouraged the major to assume his most impertinent tone, whilst
his falcon-faced spouse ventured offensive inuendoes as to the real
motives of Count Sigismund’s will—inuendoes whose purport was utterly
unsuspected by the pure-hearted Müllers. Here, too, there was an
enclosure in the case, where the major cultivated the flowers his dear
Dorothy preferred, and where the infant Isaac loved to disport himself.
As an old soldier, Major Bildmann added, he loved the chase, which was
the image of war. The count had allowed him the range of his preserves.
Müller eagerly confirmed him in all his privileges. On quitting the
Bildmann wing he found Wurm waiting for him to pass the servants in
review. He made them an affecting little speech, by which they seemed
very little affected. Then Wurm named them. There were Mrs Bildmann’s
waitingmaid and the major’s valet, the servants of the ladies
Stolzenfels, the cooks of the right and left wings, Isaac’s nurse, Major
Bildmann’s butler, Captain Frederick’s grooms and huntsmen, &c. &c.
Müller inquired for his own servants—those that had been Count
Sigismund’s. They were all before him. The two wings had swallowed up
the body. Wurm felt secretly surprised at a musician’s needing servants
when the count had done without them. Müller dryly informed him that
Count Sigismund’s servants were his, and that he made him responsible
for their attention to his service. He said nothing to Edith of this
strange scene, and tried to dissipate the painful impressions she had
brought away from their two visits, by praising the major’s military
frankness and the aristocratic bearing of the sisters. But he was at a
loss to explain why the apartments of the Stolzenfels and Bildmanns were
richly and sumptuously furnished and decorated, whilst those the owners
of the castle occupied exhibited little beside bare walls. Meanwhile the
right and left wings, between whom there had been a sort of hollow
alliance since the reading of the will, assembled in conclave. Never was
there such a voiding of venom. The self-same idea had occurred to all
these disappointed and charitable relations. Edith’s beauty at once
explained the count’s frequent absence from home and his unjust will.
She was the syren that had led him astray. Little Margaret was his very
image. It was a crying shame, a burning scandal. The old maids clasped
their hands and rolled their eyes. Ulrica was for attacking the will on
the ground of immoral influence and captivation. The major had always
been of the same opinion, but Frederick would not agree, and nothing
should induce the major to fight a member of his family. The fact was,
notwithstanding his Bobadil airs, Major Bildmann had very little fancy
for fighting with anybody. The council broke up, all its members
declaring they would quit the castle sullied by the presence of these
adventurers—all fully resolved to remain and to wait the course of
events.

We must compress into a few lines the leading incidents of the second
half of _Un Héritage_. Müller had not been a month at the castle, when
great annoyances succeeded to the petty disagreeables he had encountered
on his first arrival. Master Wolfgang the Hildesheim lawyer was his evil
genius. There was a certain lawsuit, that had already lasted through
three generations, in which, as Count Sigismund’s heir, he found himself
entangled. The whole matter in dispute was but half an acre of land,
which Müller would gladly have abandoned, but Wolfgang proved to him, as
clear as day, the impropriety of so doing, the disrespect to the memory
of the late count, and so forth—and, the most cogent argument of all, he
exhibited to him the sum total of the costs he would have to pay if he
admitted himself vanquished. It was an alarming figure, and ready money
was not abundant with Müller, whom the Stolzenfels and Bildmanns dunned
for their first year’s annuity and for the legacy to little Isaac; who
had to pay for extensive repairs of the castle, for the costly mausoleum
which, in the first effusion of his gratitude, he had ordered for Count
Sigismund, and various other charges. So the lawsuit went on—the delight
of Master Wolfgang, and a daily drain upon Müller’s purse. The harvest
was bad, the farmers asked for time, and grumbled when worse terms than
their own were proposed to them. Careless Count Sigismund had spoiled
all around him by letting them do as they liked, and Müller’s greater
activity and vigilance, and his attempts to check fraud and peculation,
speedily earned him the ill-will of the whole neighbourhood.
Gentle-hearted Edith, anxious to expend a portion of her sudden wealth
in improving the condition of the poor, was soon disgusted by their
ingratitude, and was utterly at a loss to understand the chilling looks,
ironical smiles, and mysterious whisperings of which she was the object
whenever she went beyond the limits of her own park, to which she soon
confined herself. Her servants showed no sense of the kindness with
which she treated them; they, too, had adopted and spread the vile
rumours first set abroad by the malice of the two vixen spinsters and of
the Bildmanns, with respect to the count’s real motives for bequeathing
his estates to the Müllers. Fortunately it was impossible for Edith, who
was purity itself, ever to suspect the real cause of the ill-will shown
to her. Captain Frederick, when his regimental duties permitted him to
visit the castle, discovered at a first interview, with a rake’s usual
clear-sightedness in such matters, the utter falseness of the injurious
reports in circulation. He became a constant visitor to the Müllers, and
was in fact their only friend and resource in the solitude in which they
lived; for the neighbouring squires, the _hobereaus_ of the country
around, had not returned Müller’s visits, nor taken any notice of him
beyond attacking him at law; some upon a question of water-power, which
he had innocently diminished by winding a stream that ran through his
grounds, others for damage done to their fields, by the trespasses of
the Hildesheim hounds, followed by Captain Frederick and his huntsmen.
Nor was this all—there was discord yet nearer home: Müller’s children,
having trespassed upon the Bildmanns’ private garden, were brutally
ejected by the major, whom Müller angrily reproached. The major bullied
and insisted upon satisfaction, which Franz, exasperated by a long
series of annoyances, was perfectly willing to give him, and a duel
would have ensued had not the major, when he saw that the musician, as
he contemptuously called him, meant to fight, sent an apology. It was
accepted, but next day Müller ordered his three gardeners to root up and
clear away the hedges of the Stolzenfels and Bildmann enclosures. The
knaves remonstrated and finally refused, and, when dismissed, they
refused to go, alleging that the late count’s will deprived Müller of
the power of sending them away. More work for the lawyers. Müller sent
for labourers, and the hedges disappeared. Notices of action from the
ladies Stolzenfels and Major Bildmann. The villain Wolfgang chuckled and
rubbed his hands, upon which he had now six lawsuits for Müller’s
account. In the count’s crack-brained will, drawn up by himself, without
legal advice, the letter was everywhere at variance with the spirit.
Müller’s apartment was encumbered with law papers; he could not sit down
to his piano, to seek oblivion of his cares in his beloved art, without
being interrupted by Wolfgang’s parchment physiognomy. As for
composition, it was out of the question: he had no time for it, nor was
his harassed mind attuned to harmony. He became morose and fanciful,
jealous of the hussar’s attention to Edith, who, for her part, grieved
to see her husband so changed, and sighed for the cottage at Munich,
where Spiegel, meanwhile, had worked hard, had sold some pictures, had
paid the rent that Franz, in the midst of his troubles, had forgotten to
remit to him, and had purchased, with the fruits of his own toil and
talent, the little dwelling of which, when their prosperity first burst
upon them, the Müllers had planned to make him a present. The contrast
was striking between anticipation and realisation.

No schoolboy ever more eagerly longed for “breaking-up” day, than did
Müller for the termination of his nine month’s compulsory abode at
Hildesheim. It came at last, and he and Edith and their children were
free to quit the scene of strife and weariness, and to return to Munich
and to Spiegel. On making up the accounts of the year, Müller found
that, out of the whole princely revenue of the estates, he had but a
thousand florins left. He had lived little better than at Munich (much
less happily), and had committed no extravagance; annuities, legacies,
repairs, monument, did not account for half the sum expended; all the
rest had gone in law expenses. There remained about enough to pay
travelling charges to Munich. Müller sent for Wolfgang, forbade him to
begin any new lawsuit in his absence, and departed. He found a warm
welcome at the cottage. Spiegel received his friends with open arms, and
three happy months passed rapidly away. Upon the last day, when Edith
and Franz were looking ruefully forward to their return to Hildesheim’s
grandeur and countless disagreeables, Spiegel insisted upon their
accompanying him to the performance of a new symphony, concerning which
the musical world of Munich was in a state of considerable excitement.
The piece, it was mysteriously related, was from the pen of a deceased
composer, was of remarkable originality and beauty, and had been
casually discovered amongst a mass of old papers. The concert-room was
crowded. At the first bars of the music, Müller thought he recognised
familiar sounds, and presently every doubt was dissipated. It was his
own composition—the despised symphony he had been about to destroy, but
which Spiegel had rescued. The audience, at the close of each part, were
rapturous in their applause. When the finale had been played, the
composer’s name was called for with acclamations. The leader of the
orchestra advanced, and proclaimed that of Franz Müller.

A few days later, Master Gottlieb the notary received a letter from the
lord of Hildesheim. “According to the stipulations of the will,” Müller
wrote, “I am bound to inhabit the castle of Hildesheim for nine months
in the year. I remain at Munich and forfeit my right to the property.”
Forthwith began a monster lawsuit, one of the finest Master Wolfgang had
known in the whole course of his experience. It was between the
Bildmanns and the Stolzenfels. It lasted ten years. The major and
Dorothy died before it was decided, Isaac fell from a tree, when
stealing fruit, and broke his neck. The Stolzenfels triumphed. The
hussar redoubled his extravagance. The estate, already encumbered with
law expenses, was sold to pay his debts. Ulrica and Hedwige died in
poverty.

It ought surely not to have been difficult for practised dramatists to
construct a pleasant and piquant comedy out of the leading idea and
plentiful incidents of this amusing novel, which is by no means the less
to be esteemed because it boldly deviates from the long-established
routine, which demands a marriage as the wind-up of every book of the
class. It is much more common in France than in England for play-writers
to seek their subjects in novels of the day, and it is then customary,
often indispensable, to take great liberties both with plot and
characters, and sometimes to retain little besides the main idea of the
book. Upon that idea there is of course no prohibition against
improving, but authors who vary it for the worse, manifestly do
themselves a double injury, because the public, familiar with the merits
of the book, are disgusted to find it deteriorated in the play. They
look for something better, not worse, in the second elaboration of the
subject, and certainly they have a right to do so, and to be
dissatisfied when the contrary is the case. In the present instance, a
most unpleasant play has been based upon a good novel. In Emile Augier,
M. Sandeau has taken to himself a dangerous _collaborateur_. He should
have dramatised _Un Héritage_ unassisted—as he dramatised, with such
happy results, his novel of _Mademoiselle de la Seiglière_. That is a
most successful instance of the French style of adaptation to the stage.
There, too, as in the present case, great liberties have been taken. In
two out of the four acts, scarcely anything is to be traced of the
novel, which has as tragical an ending as the comedy has a cheerful and
pleasant one. But the whole tenor of the play was genial and
sympathetic. In the _Pierre de Touche_, as the present comedy is called,
the reverse is the case, and no wonder that its cynical and exaggerated
strain jarred on the feelings of the usually quiet audience at the
_Française_, and elicited hisses rarely heard within those decorous
walls, where silence and empty benches are the only tokens the public
usually give of its disapprobation. From our acquaintance with M.
Sandeau’s writings, we do not think that he would of himself have
perpetrated such a repulsive picture of human nature as he has produced
in combination with M. Augier. They have obliterated or distorted most
of the best features of the novel. In _Un Héritage_, the character of
Franz Müller is at once pleasing and natural. He is not represented as
perfect—he has his failings and weaknesses like any other mortal, and
they are exhibited in the book, although we have not, in the outline we
have traced of it, had occasion to give them prominence. But his heart
is sound to the last. Wealth may momentarily bewilder, but it does not
pervert him. He is true to his affections, and has the sense and courage
to accept honourable toil as preferable to a fortune embittered by
anxiety and dissension. The reader cannot help respecting him, and
feeling pained at his countless vexations and annoyances. No such
sympathy is possible with the Franz of the play, who is the most
contemptible of mortals. A more unpleasant character was probably never
introduced into any book, and it is untrue to nature, for it has not a
single redeeming point. The authors have personified and concentrated in
it the essences of heartlessness, selfishness, and of the most paltry
kind of pride. Somewhat indolent, and with a latent spark of envy in his
nature, the needy artist, converted into a millionaire, suddenly
displays his evil instincts. Their growth is as supernaturally rapid as
that of noxious weeds in a tropical swamp. The play opens in the cottage
at Munich. Edith, Franz’s cousin, is not yet married to him. An orphan,
she had been brought up by his father, at whose death Franz took charge
of her. She was then a child, and Franz and Spiegel hardly perceived
that she had become a woman until they were reminded of it by the
passion with which she inspired both of them. Spiegel, a noble
character, generously sacrifices to his friend’s happiness his own
unsuspected love. Edith (the names are changed in the play, but we
retain them to avoid confusion) is affianced to her cousin, and on the
eve of marriage. Just then comes the fortune. The authors have
substituted for the Bildmanns and Stolzenfels an elderly spendthrift
baron and an intriguing margravine and her pretty daughter. The love
passages in the life of the deceased count are cancelled, and he is
represented as an eccentric old gentleman, passionately fond of music,
and cherishing a great contempt for his very distant relations, to whom
he leaves only a moderate annuity. They have scarcely become acquainted
with Franz when they discern the weak points in his character and
conspire to profit by them. Treated with cutting contempt, as a mere
_parvenu_, by the haughty nobility of Bavaria, Franz’s pride boils over,
and he consents to be adopted by the baron and converted into the
Chevalier de Berghausen, at the immoderate price of the payment of the
old _roué_ nobleman’s debts. He finds Spiegel a wearisome Mentor; to his
diseased vision Edith appears awkward contrasted with the courtly dames
he now encounters. Their marriage is postponed from week to week, by
reason of the journeys and other steps necessary to establish Franz in
the ranks of the nobility of the land. Titled, and with armorial
bearings that date from the crusades, how much more fitting an alliance,
the baron perfidiously suggests, would be that of the margravine, who
graciously condescends to intimate her possible acceptance of him as a
son-in-law. We are shown the gangrene of selfishness and vanity daily
spreading its corruption through his soul. He quarrels with his honest,
generous friend, slights his affianced bride, and finally falls
completely into the clutches of the intriguers who beset him. His very
dog, poor faithful Spark, (his dog and Spiegel’s)—which, as the painter,
with tears in his eyes and a cheek pale with anger and honest
indignation, passionately reminds him—had slept on his feet and been his
comfort and companion in adversity—is killed by his order because he did
not appreciate the difference between castle and cottage, but took his
ease upon the dainty satin sofas at Hildesheim as upon the rush mat at
Munich. Edith, compelled to despise the man she had loved, preserves her
womanly dignity, and breaks off the projected marriage just as the last
glimmer of honour and affection are on the point of being extinguished
in her cousin’s bosom by the dictates of a despicable vanity. The
curtain falls, leaving him in the hands of his hollow friends, and
allowing the spectator to foresee the union of Edith and Spiegel. Not
one kindly touch of natural feeling redeems Franz’s faithlessness to his
friend, and to his love his ingratitude—for he would many a day have
been hungry, if not houseless, but for the generous toil of Spiegel, who
had devoted himself to the drudgery of teaching, that Franz might have
leisure to mature the genius for which his partial friend gave him
exaggerated credit—his false pride and his ridiculous vanity. He is left
rich, but miserable. That which he has wilfully lost can be dispelled
neither by the enjoyments wealth procures, nor by the false friends who
hang on him but to plunder him. In their vindication, the authors insist
on “the terrible morality” of their _denouement_. We admit it, but do
not the less persist in the opinion that their play, although by no
means devoid of wit and talent, leaves a most painful and disagreeable
impression upon the mind. It presents the paradoxical and complicated
phenomenon of a comedy which has been censured by press and public and
yet continues to be performed; which draws tolerably numerous audiences,
and is invariably received with symptoms of disapprobation.




                         NEWS FROM THE FARM.[5]


“The Ayrshire Ploughman,” glorious Burns, tells us that the muse of his
country found him, as Elijah did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her
inspiring mantle over him. Grateful Caledonia sent her inspired child to
an excise office! and in the discriminating patronage the wits of Grub
Street found material for interminable sneers. Did the Southerns,
however, reward the author of the “Farmer’s Boy,” and indicate their
appreciation of the many fine passages that grace his “News from the
Farm,” by a wiser or more generous patronage? The minister of the day
(Lord Sidmouth, if we remember rightly) did bestow upon the poet some
most paltry and ungenial office; but alas! poor Bloomfield died
neglected in the straits of penury, and under the clouds of dejection.
It had been better indeed, in every way, could it have been so arranged
that the marvellous Robin should have been allowed to sing his lyrics

                   ——“in glory and in joy,
             Following his plough upon the mountain side,”

and that Bloomfield had been permitted to indite more “News from the
Farm” amid the pleasant rural scenes that nursed his pastoral muse. But
the patronage of genius has never been successful. Unusual peril seems
the heritage of high gifts, and to minister rightly to such a man as
Burns or Bloomfield is no easy task. It is not so with ordinary men,
whose intellectual and imaginative powers harmonise with the common
duties of their station, and raise no splendid incongruities to be
subdued and regulated. But it is not with inspired ploughmen that our
country gentlemen and tenant-farmers are called upon to deal, but with
men of common clay—with the brawny peasants who till their fields and
tend their herds, and whose toil has turned the sterile North into a
garden of Ceres. Have our agricultural labourers been neglected—have
their physical wellbeing and their moral and educational training been
overlooked and left uncared for, while the classes above them and around
them have had their comforts and privileges, moral and social,
infinitely multiplied? This were indeed sad “news from the farm;” but
although this were unhappily proved to be true, we are not then prepared
to pronounce sweeping censure upon the parties apparently most nearly
implicated in the degradation of our rural population. Many, very many,
of the owners and occupants of the soil, we know, are deeply alive to
the duties which they owe to the labouring poor who live under them, and
discharge them to the best of their ability, although not, it may be, to
the extent their benevolent wishes would desire. The question that may
be raised on such a subject is not, Have our rural labourers been left
stationary while the classes above them have all been elevated in their
social condition? but rather, Are they worse off, and do they enjoy
fewer advantages, than those in the same class of life—the industrious
poor who inhabit our large cities and manufacturing towns and villages?
Is the ploughman in his bothy unfurnished with table or chair, and the
peasant in his “clay-built biggin,” damp and smoky though it be, more
miserably accommodated with the comforts and conveniences of life than
the haggard sons of toil, who are doomed to burrow in the murky lanes
and blind alleys of our teeming seats of merchandise? Does the brawny
arm and ruddy complexion of the ploughman bespeak deficient food or
raiment, and manifest such dubious symptoms of health as the pinched
countenance and pallid complexion of the attenuated artisans who live in
“populous city pent?” Yes, responds promptly the inhabitant of the city;
but that robust health is not due to the miserable bothy and the mud
cabin, but to the pure air of the country, and the breezy gales of
incense-breathing morn, and the healthful toil of the open field, which
are the unchartered boons of a gracious Heaven, and in no respect the
gifts of the lords of the soil. In the rejoinder of Mr Urbanus there is
no doubt substantial truth; but that very rejoinder, perhaps, contains
an explanation of the neglect pointed at. The robust health of the
peasant has not admonished the country gentleman of duty neglected, and
no emaciated frame and loopholed raggedness have appealed to his
sympathies and rebuked his indifference. The opulent inhabitants of our
cities have been addressed in a different strain, and the deadly typhus
and the inscrutable plague of Asia have been the stern preachers to
which they have been doomed to listen. If they have led the van in
reformatory and sanitary measures for improving the social condition of
the industrious poor, it is not very evident that their philanthropy has
been quite spontaneous, or that it has been altogether uninfluenced by
considerations suggested by a regard to their own personal safety and
selfish interest. Those who may be disposed to range the country against
the town, or curious to strike the balance of merit in the field of
philanthropic enterprise betwixt our merchant princes and our country
gentlemen, may prosecute such inquiries as have been indicated if they
please; but for ourselves, we have no taste for such unprofitable
investigation, and would rather lend a helping hand to a most
interesting movement that has been lately originated towards improving
the social condition of our agricultural labourers—a most loyal and
peaceful race, forming, upon the whole, the best-conditioned part of the
industrious classes of the kingdom.

Thanks to the Rev. Harry Stuart, of Oathlaw, if not for having
originated the movement, for having at least given it a most
unquestionable impetus, and for indicating the direction which it ought
to take. We have read his _Agricultural Labourers_, &c., with remarkable
interest and pleasure—a pleasure very different, and we believe much
higher, than the most elaborate writing of the most brilliant
pamphleteer could have given us. Mr Stuart, indeed, has nothing of the
_littérateur_ about him, and his style is the very reverse of artistic.
He tells us that his appeal has been “got up in great haste,” but we
scarcely think it could have been better had more time been devoted to
its composition. It had been no improvement, in our estimation, had his
Essay been tricked out in rhetorical embroidery, and been embellished
with well-poised and finely-polished periods. We are quite sick of the
flash and sparkle of the journalists, of their stilted eloquence and
startling antithesis. The editor of every country newspaper writes
nowadays as grandly as Macaulay, and apes to the very life “the
long-resounding march and energy divine” of Burke and Bolingbroke. It is
really a relief in these times to be spoken to in plain, natural,
homespun English. When an honest gentleman has anything of importance to
communicate, for ourselves we are very well pleased that he should use
the vernacular, and address us in simple Anglo-Saxon. This is exactly
what Mr Stuart has done. He writes from a full heart, and is manifestly
so possessed with his theme that he has had no time to think of the
belles-lettres and the art rhetorical. The minister of Oathlaw is
peradventure no popular orator, and has never probably paraded himself
on the platform, and his name is in all likelihood unknown to the
sermon-fanciers of Edinburgh, but nevertheless he is quite a pastor to
our taste. Living without pride amongst his people, going from house to
house, knowing well the trials of every household, a patient listener to
the homely annals of the poor, catechising the young, exhorting the
unruly, helping the aged to trim their lamps and gird up their loins, we
can understand how well and how quietly this worthy clergyman discharges
the duties of the pastorate, reaping a nobler guerdon in the love of
those amongst whom he lives and labours than ever the noisy trump of
fame blew into ambition’s greedy ear. We rejoice to think that there are
many such pastors in our country parishes, who, with their families,
constitute sympathetic links of kindly communication betwixt the rich
and the poor, and from whom, as from centres of civilisation, are shed
on all around the gentle lights of literary refinement and Christian
charity. These are the men who form the strength of our Established
Church, and not her doctors and dignitaries; and, indeed, over our
retired rural parishes it is evident that nothing but an endowed
resident parochial clergy can permanently exert the beneficent influence
of the pastoral office.

The origin of Mr Stuart’s address he states as follows: He became a
member of the Forfarshire Agricultural Association upon the
understanding, that the improvement of the social condition of the
agricultural labourers was to be one of the objects to which the
Association should direct its attention. Such seems to have been the
intention of the society, or at least its committee were so ready to
welcome the idea, that they forthwith asked Mr Stuart to address them
upon the subject, and he did so accordingly. His auditors were so
pleased, and, it may be, so instructed, that they requested the author
to publish his address; and under the auspices of the Forfarshire
Association it has been given to the world.

We have often thought that each of our counties has a distinct character
of its own, and is distinguished by features peculiar to itself. While
the Forfarshire coast has its populous towns, the seats of mercantile
enterprise, and of thriving manufactures, the county has likewise been
long eminent for its agriculture. By the symmetry and beauty of his
Angusshire “doddies,” Hugh Watson of Keillor has made the county famous
for its cattle. In Forfarshire, Henry Stephens practised the art which
he has so admirably illustrated in his book. The son of a small farmer
in this county, while a student at college, invented and elaborated,
without aid or patronage, in a rude workshop, that reaper which American
ambition has now so covered with fame. Forfarshire gentlemen, although
non-resident, are not disposed to forget the claims of their native
county, and by means of “the Angusshire Society” they annually
distribute among its schools numerous prizes, thus countenancing the
cause of education throughout the county, stimulating its ingenious
youth to exertion, and animating its teachers in their honourable toil.
And now the Forfarshire Agricultural Society, under the mild appeals of
the Pastor of Oathlaw, have led the way in organising an association for
raising the social condition of the agricultural labourers of the
kingdom. So all hail to old Angus!—and may her proprietors, pastors, and
tenant-farmers long be eminent in their spheres of duty, and cordially
unite in the field of benevolent enterprise.

Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has been extensively read by landed proprietors and
the better classes of our farmers. We wish it were universally so by
these parties; and we wish, too, it were read and inwardly digested by
the factors and agents to whom our large proprietors have committed the
conduct of their business, and the care of their properties, and the
welfare of those who cultivate them. It is impossible to read the
speeches of the most interesting meeting held here on the 10th January
last, and presided over by his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, without
feeling that Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has literally proved “news from the
farm” to very many of the owners and occupiers of the soil—the very
parties who ought to know best the habits and discomforts of our
agricultural labourers. It is very remarkable, indeed, that the Duke of
Buccleuch seems accurately informed upon the subject; that he has
personally inspected the dwellings of the agricultural labourers on his
estate; and that he has personally issued instructions regarding the
improvement of their cottages. Considering the territorial extent of his
Grace’s estates, and the varied and momentous interests that claim and
receive his Grace’s attention, his conduct and example, as well as his
benevolent and patriotic words, will carry a severer reproof to those
landowners who shall hereafter continue indifferent to the comfort and
welfare of the labourers, than the most biting speech of the most
pungent pamphleteer. Why, it may be asked, has Mr Stuart been left to
make such a discovery? Why did the tenant-farmers, who are daily
witnessing with their own eyes the discomforts of the agricultural
labourers, who are most deeply interested in their physical and moral
condition, and to whom Providence has more immediately committed the
care of their interests—why did they not complain, and call for some
amelioration of an evil so discreditable? But the fact is, that such men
as Messrs Watson, Finnie, Cowie, and many others we might name, have
never ceased to avail themselves of every opportunity of directing
attention to the condition of our agricultural labourers, but they have
heretofore, for the most part, addressed themselves to unprepared and
reluctant audiences. Moreover, for many years our tenant-farmers have
been struggling with such difficulties of their own, as have left them
little time or inclination for devising expedients for improving the
condition of their labourers. And it is likewise to be remembered that
many of the farmers are themselves so little elevated above the
peasantry in point of education and habits and domestic tastes, that it
would be idle to expect that they should see any necessity for elevating
the condition of the agricultural labourers.

This class of tenants must consider the present movement as fantastic,
and absurd, and uncalled for, and they will prove, we fear, the greatest
obstructives in the way of its success. So that if the truth is to be
spoken, many proprietors would require first to improve the habits and
elevate the character of their tenantry, before they attempt to elevate
the social condition of their agricultural labourers. The nearer the
tenant approaches the labourer in point of education and social habits,
the more careless and indifferent is the former to the comforts of the
latter, and the less inclined to ameliorate his condition. We think it
by no means an impossible thing that there are not a few farmers
throughout Scotland who are looking upon the present movement in behalf
of our rural labourers not only as savouring of idle sentimentalism, but
who are contemplating it with a jealous eye, as an attempt of the
proprietors to place the condition of the servant upon the same platform
with that of the master. There is, indeed, a class of small farmers,
highly estimable and worthy, and quite fit, in respect of capital, for
their position, who cultivate their possessions by means of their own
families, aided by perhaps one or two servant-lads. In these cases the
servants live truly as members of the family, and are treated as such;
and this is the farm-service which, above all others, virtuous and
thoughtful parents desire for their children.

The tenant-farmers are, probably, likewise prepared to rebut any charge
of indifference brought against them, by stating that they have found so
great difficulty in getting proper house-accommodation for their own
families, and suitable and enlarged farm-buildings to enable them
satisfactorily to carry on the business of the farm, and to meet the
requirements of an improved husbandry, that the idea of asking a better
style of cottages for their labourers would have been Utopian. The
farmer, too, has but a temporary interest in the land, and but a
temporary connection with the agricultural labourers upon his farm; and
with more immediate wants and difficulties of his own to contend with,
to suppose that he should expostulate with a reluctant proprietor, and
set himself devotedly to improve and remodel the houses of his
labourers, is to expect from him an extent of philanthropic enthusiasm
quite uncommon, and, therefore, quite unreasonable. The landowner
occupies a very different position—but, however inexplicable it may
seem, he has not hitherto had his attention directed to the cottages of
the labouring poor upon his estate. This confession of previous
ignorance was ingenuously made by the speakers at the Edinburgh meeting,
and we believe that they did not misrepresent the information upon the
subject that had hitherto generally prevailed among the landed
proprietors of Scotland. Lord Kinnaird, at a meeting of the “Dundee
Model Lodging-House Association,” on 13th January, expressed himself as
follows: “Until he had read that pamphlet (Mr Stuart’s), he had had no
right idea of the bothies on his estate. Thinking such a matter was an
arrangement purely between the farmer and his labourers, he had not
visited them till lately; but having now done so, he felt they were a
reproach to him, and must be improved.” And yet Lord Kinnaird resides
for the most part upon his estate—he takes an anxious and most kindly
interest in the moral, educational, and physical wellbeing of the people
who live upon it,—and having such an acknowledgment from a nobleman so
benevolent and active, the irresistible inference is, that other
proprietors in his position are not only ignorant of the bothies, but of
the condition of the cottages upon their properties.

It appears from Mr Stuart, that the parochial clergy, the body to which
he belongs, have for many years had their attention anxiously directed
towards the case of the agricultural labourers. He tells us that the
synods of Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, and Angus and Mearns have
instituted inquiries regarding their condition—these inquiries being
chiefly intended, as might have been expected, to ascertain the moral,
religious, and educational state of our labourers, although the effects
of the bothy system and of feeing-markets upon the social condition of
servants are likewise investigated. Through the courtesy of a clerical
correspondent, we have before us reports from twenty-seven parishes in
Morayshire, in answer to a series of questions circulated by the synod
of Moray in 1848, as well as a copy of the _Elgin Courant_, April 1848,
containing a very full discussion by that ecclesiastical court on the
moral and social condition of the agricultural labourers of that
province. The synod of Angus and Mearns instituted an investigation of
the same kind some fifteen years ago, and a most elaborate report, based
upon the information collected, was drawn up. Measures were suggested
for elevating the condition of the farm-servants; and in some counties
pastoral addresses were read from the pulpits of the Established Church
upon the subject. It appears, however, that this agitation of the
question by the Church met with no countenance or encouragement from the
laity. We know, indeed, that Sir John Stuart Forbes, and two or three
other proprietors, took _then_ an interest in the inquiry, and were
alive to its importance—but, generally speaking, the proprietors and
farmers seem to have been quite unprepared to take up the subject.

It is very curious, nevertheless, to observe that the very evils pointed
out by Mr Stuart in his pamphlet, and the very remedies suggested by
him, are all embraced and expounded in the reports of the ecclesiastical
courts now before us.[6] It is a remarkable instance, apparently, of the
well-known mental phenomenon, that the mind previously must have
undergone some preparation for the reception of the truth, before the
truth can suitably affect it. Mr Stuart has had the sagacity, or good
fortune, to fix upon the opportune moment for making his appeal, and to
find a benevolently disposed auditory. He has done what his brethren, in
synods assembled, could not do. He has effectually hit the nail upon the
head—and we hope he will reiterate the blow again and again, until he
sees the objects of his benevolent wishes in some good measure obtained.

It appears to us that on such a subject as the present every thing
approaching to exaggeration should be most anxiously avoided. There is a
danger, now that the attention and interest of the public have been so
awakened, that overdrawn pictures of the degraded condition of our
Scottish peasantry will be indulged in; and this is all the more likely,
as proving acceptable to the democratic classes, and as reflecting
disgrace on the character of landed proprietors. In point of fact, we
believe that it is unquestionable that our rural population, both in
respect of their sanitary and moral condition, occupy a position very
superior to that of the manufacturing classes of our towns. By the
census of 1841, for every two deaths in agricultural districts there
were more than three in our towns; and in towns exclusively
manufacturing, such as Leeds and Birmingham, there were seven deaths for
every two in agricultural localities. Glasgow is the only Scottish town
where the statistics of mortality are noted, and there ten would die out
of a population of three hundred, while out of the same number in
agricultural counties there would be only three deaths. In the matter of
moral statistics by the same census the commitments in manufacturing
districts, compared with agricultural, were as five to one. We believe
the statistics of drunkenness would report likewise in favour of the
superior sobriety of our rural population, so that our agricultural
labourers, it seems, are truly more healthy, more sober, more virtuous,
at least in the eye of the criminal law, than those of the labouring
classes in our towns. We believe that the agricultural labourers are
better fed and better clothed, and, in many aspects of the case, as well
housed as the labouring classes in our large towns and cities. In this
fashion, if he pleases, the landowner may evade all appeals to his
benevolence, and may scornfully reject all reproachful insinuations of
having neglected the condition of the labouring poor upon his estates.
He may well inquire how far he has contributed to raise the poor on his
estate to a higher social condition in respect of health and sobriety,
when contrasted with the poor of our towns; and if this has not been so
much the necessary result of their circumstances and manner of life,
that a very slender portion of the merit can be appropriated by him. The
opulent inhabitants of our cities are not bound by any especial tie of
social duty to the degraded and dissipated poor of the cities. They are
not their tenants, nor are they engaged in their employment. Though
living in close proximity with them, the rich are, for the most part,
profoundly ignorant of the condition of their poorer fellow-citizens,
who breathe the mephitic exhalations of unventilated lanes, and whose
homes are but dismal cellars, into which the meridian sun, struggling
through dense masses of hovering vapour, fails to transmit anything
stronger than a murky twilight.

If the country gentleman can persuade himself that he holds no nearer
relationship to the tenantry and labourers upon his estate, than the
wealthy citizen does to the industrious poor who live within the same
municipal bounds, but who otherwise are totally unconnected with them,
it would be unreasonable to expect from such a one those expressions of
regret which have fallen so gracefully from the lips of others, or that
he will find any difficulty in escaping all appeals addressed to him,
not only as he is not conscious of having overlooked any duty, but
because he is prepared to deny that he has any duty to discharge in the
matter. Or if the country gentleman can take up the very elevated
position which a certain school of economists have of late been
expounding and pressing upon his attention, then he will have reached a
region so pure, and so superterrestrial as to be infinitely raised above
all vulgar care about the comfort and welfare of those who till the
glebe and tend the herds of that “dim spot which men call earth.”
According to this high philosophy, the landowner is taught to look upon
his land as a mere article of commerce, and that the great question with
him ought to be to discover how, with the least possible outlay, he can
raise from it the greatest possible revenue. To examine into the
condition of the cottages upon the estate—to build new ones, and to
improve the old—to do this personally, or, as that may be impossible, to
order it to be done by some competent and responsible party—all this
seems out of his department as the owner of the land and the recipient
of the rent. If the farmer is content that his labourers should live in
miserable hovels, where their physical energies must be debilitated, and
where the decencies of their moral condition must suffer wrong, where
their fitness for their daily toil is being impaired by the discomforts
of their homes, and where, from the same cause, the period in the
ploughman’s life of complete capability for his work must infallibly be
abridged, what signifies all this to the landowner? His political
economy saves him from all compunction. If the thews and sinews of the
ploughman, by such treatment, become prematurely useless, it matters
not—the wheels and pinions can be replaced, and other thews and sinews
will be found to work the work. It is a devout hallucination upon the
part of Mr Stuart to fancy that he can persuade such a landowner as
this, that, on mere pecuniary grounds, it would prove a wise economy in
him to build new cottages and to remodel the old, and to improve and add
to the bothy accommodation. Mr Stuart’s argument on such a subject would
necessarily be largely leavened with moral considerations, which the
economics of the landlord did not embrace, and the mere money-profit
looms dubiously in the distance. Mr Stuart would have no chance with
such a stern philosopher as this, who could demonstrate by an
irrefragable arithmetic that he could do the thing cheaper! We are sorry
to think that any such party should be in the position of a landed
proprietor. ’Tis a pity such a man had not had his money invested in the
Three per Cents, or in a street of three-storeyed tenements suitable to
accommodate the middle classes of society, who would take care of
themselves, and, peradventure, of the laird likewise. We know no
situation in human life so enviable as that of a country gentleman. His
privileges are manifold, and his appropriate recreations and pleasures
exquisite. His peculiar duties are indeed very responsible, but they are
deeply interesting and delightful. Surely a country gentleman is knit by
dearer and more sacred ties to the people that live upon his estate, and
that cultivate his fields, than the rich man of the city to the poor
artisan, to whom he is united by the accident of his living in the
neighbouring street. Nay, we hope that no country gentleman would care
to be thought actuated by no warmer or kindlier feelings towards the
pendiclers and poor cottagers that dwell on his estate, than the potent
noblesse of the cotton-mills can reasonably be expected to be towards
the shadowy troops of sallow girls that, like so many animal automata,
ply their nimble fingers o’er the power-looms and spinning-jennies of
their tall-chimneyed temples. If the accursed commercial element is
henceforth to be the sole ruling motive in the management of landed
property, the country gentleman will speedily sink to the level of a
commercial gentleman. The charms of his position will die away—the
honours now so spontaneously rendered to him will be withheld—and the
ancestral influence of his house and name will become the poet’s dream.
We have contrasted the condition of the labouring poor in the country
with that of the labouring poor in the town, but there can be no just
comparison betwixt the position of a landed proprietor, and the duties
which it entails towards the agricultural labourers on his property, and
the position of a mill-spinner towards the people whom he employs; and
we should be sorry if any landowner should seek in this way to vindicate
his subsequent neglect of the duties which Providence has manifestly
laid upon him. If our landed proprietors are not imbued with some just
sense of the responsibilities of their station, and actuated by some
steadfast determination to practise self-denial in other matters, that
they may improve the condition of the industrious poor upon their
properties, we despair utterly of any permanent practical good resulting
from the present movement. If our farmers are, as a body, not prepared
at present heartily to enter upon the work of reformation, we have to
thank one class of politicians who have for years been industriously
indoctrinating the farmer with the dogma that his business, in its
highest phase, was just the manufacture of certain agricultural products
from the soil. The farmer long listened in wonder to the lecturer, not
knowing well what the high-sounding philosophy might mean. But he at
last embraced the doctrine, and he now, we fear, too often entertains
the feelings which the doctrine was so likely to engender. As a
manufacturer, the farmer cannot for his life see that he has any more
concernment than any other manufacturer with the condition, character,
and habits of his operatives. For a year he hires them, and they go, and
he sees them no more. The root of the evil Mr Stuart correctly traces up
to the altered feelings and conduct of proprietors and tenants towards
their dependants.

Mr Stuart, in speaking of our agricultural labourers, “as things were”
some sixty years ago, adverts to a period when the servants lived in
family with their masters—when the master sat patriarchally at the head
of his table, surrounded by his children and domestics, and when all
knelt at the same family altar to offer up the evening prayer. The
social characteristics of the people of that day were excellent; but
their creature comforts were few, and their agriculture wretched. It was
the era of run-rig, of outfield and infield—the former being scourged as
the common foe—while on the latter our agricultural sires practised high
farming. During the summer the men were half idle, and in the winter
they were wholly so, saving that occasionally in the forenoon that
venerable implement the flail, wielded by a lusty arm, might be heard
dropping its minute-guns on the barn-floor. The women wrought the work
in summer, and plied the wheel in winter. We are old enough to remember
the spinning-wheel, and are disposed to echo the sentiment of the poet—

             “Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend,
               Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute;
               And care a comforter that best could suit
             Her froward mood, and softliest reprehend.”

Mr Stuart reverts to this bygone age in a strain of tenderness; but he
faithfully depicts its grievous physical disadvantages as they were
experienced by the poor. There is a dash of romance in Mr Stuart’s
genial nature, and he has interwoven his narrative with some quaint
old-world reminiscences; but his excellent sense conducts him always to
the sound conclusion. He does not idly sigh for that which has passed
away; and he sees that the habits of a former age, if they could be
recalled, would not suit the taste of the present generation, nor meet
the exigencies of the existing agriculture. In certain districts of
Aberdeenshire and elsewhere, the farm-servants may be said yet to live
in the family—that is, they get their food in the kitchen, and by the
kitchen-fire they sit in the winter evenings until they retire to their
beds, which are generally in the stable. But the master and his family
are meanwhile in the parlour. The master’s restraining presence is not
in the kitchen; and upon the testimony alike of farmers and of
clergymen, now lying upon our table, the results of the system are so
deplorable, that bothies are asked for and preferred as the least of two
evils.

In portraying the progress of agricultural improvement, Mr Stuart
discovers the origin of the bothy and bondager systems. The throwing two
or three farms into one, and the gradual decay of the cot-houses, and
the aversion of the proprietor to build new ones, from a mistaken
economy, originated both modes of accommodating farm-servants. But if
such were the causes of the evil, its cure is self-evident. We have only
to retrace our steps, and we will recover the position which we have
abandoned. It took, however, half a century to develop the evil, and not
in a day can we hope to see the remedy accomplished. In building more
cottages, then, you take the sure way of mitigating the evils of both
systems; and by proceeding in this work, if you do not ultimately
exterminate the evil, you will so circumscribe and diminish it that it
must become all but innocuous. The practice of enlarging farms has gone
far enough, but if the expense of their subdivision were not
intolerable, we would not in this item undo what we have done. There can
be no doubt that our large farmers have been the great improvers; not
only have they led the way in improving the cultivation of the soil and
the stock of the country, but they have been the parties who have
introduced to public notice the new manures, and the new and better
implements of husbandry, and to them we now look as indispensable and
powerful auxiliaries in elevating the social condition of the labourers.
On the large farm, all that is wanted is a proportionate increase of
cottages to accommodate the staff of agricultural servants, with a few
houses on the outskirts of the farm for jobbers and day-labourers, whose
assistance, with that of their families, may be got at a busy season on
the farm.

At all times, and in all places, and by all sorts of people, the bothy
is condemned. Mr Stuart condemns it, and laments the evils which it
originates, and the habits which it induces, and the immoralities which
it cherishes; but we are sorry to think that he writes so hopelessly
about the possibility of its extinction. We would have been better
pleased had he pronounced its doom, and had he proclaimed against it, in
unmistakable accents, a war of extermination, gradual but sure, and
inexorable. It merits nothing but hearty and unhesitating condemnation.
We are well acquainted with bothy economics, and we never knew but one
that was even decently conducted. Mr Stuart seems to think the evil
necessary and irremovable, and that the only thing left to the
philanthropist is to mitigate its horrors. But why so? The bothy system
is partial and local. There are large provinces of the kingdom where it
is totally unknown. We have the ocular demonstration, then, that it is
not indispensable. But Mr Stuart says, that in escaping Charybdis, you
sail the good ship Agriculture straight into the boiling quicksand of
Syrtis—that, the bothy abandoned, you irretrievably encounter the evils
of the bondager system. We are humbly of opinion, however, that our
excellent friend somewhat overstates the evils of this latter system.
There are inconveniences and disadvantages connected with it, but these
are not for a moment to be compared with the discomforts, and with the
temptations to nocturnal rambling and loose living, with which the bothy
system is so beset. The bondager system does not affect young ploughman
lads in the slightest degree; it is limited to young women, and to them
the system is the same as domestic service in the farmer’s house, when
field-work is associated with that service. But Mr Stuart seems to
confound the bondager with the cottage system, while in reality they
have no necessary connection. There are two bugbears in the way of
abolishing the bothy—the one the landlords, and the other the tenants.
The landlord is alarmed at the expense of building the necessary
cottages. This will be got over. The tenant is alarmed at the expense of
maintaining the ploughman in the cottage when built—a most remarkable
mistake. But so it is that, be-north the Forth, many farmers, from long
habit, and from ignorance of the cottage system as it exists in the
Border counties, have become so wedded to the bothy, that in
accomplishing its abolition we expect more resistance from them than
from landlords. The model bothy, in mere material accommodation, will
effect nothing unless it has separate apartments, furnished with fire
and light, and other necessary appliances; and if it be so, where will
be its superior economy to either landlord or tenant, when contrasted
with the expense of a separate cottage? Abrogate the bothy system
entirely, for otherwise moralists may lament in vain, and parents bewail
the ruined virtue of their children.

Considering apparently the system too firmly rooted to admit of
eradication, Mr Stuart strenuously inculcates the instant improvement of
the bothy accommodation. But if he succeeds, will he not have
stereotyped the bothy as a permanent part of the economy and
constitution of the farm; and what, then, has been achieved? The
physical discomforts of the bothy will have in a good measure
disappeared, but the place is not disinfected of the moral contagion
which the system communicates. Let half-a-dozen of ploughman lads be
associated in a bothy, and however tidy and snug and commodious the
apartments, yet when their age and circumstances are remembered—when it
is considered that they are without a head, to control, counsel, and
direct them, that each is his own master—we confess that to us it seems
chimerical to expect that any desirable measure of decency, or sobriety,
or order, will prevail within the walls of the bothy. It is in vain to
tell a well-disposed lad that he can escape the pollution of a wicked
associate in the bothy, by retiring to his own apartment. How can he sit
there on a winter evening (winter is the season when bothy wickedness
takes its swing), unaccommodated as it is either with fire or light? We
fear, therefore, that the “model bothy” even would not arrest or
extinguish the moral mischief that emanates from this system. It is
remarkable that the speakers at the Edinburgh meetings do not say that
they contemplate the improvement of the bothy system. Their resolution
to encourage the multiplication of suitable cottages for the labourers
on the farm, they saw, involved in due time the extinction of the bothy
system. Moreover, we fancy that neither the Duke of Buccleuch nor the
Marquis of Tweeddale has a single bothy upon their estates, unless one
for the journeymen gardeners in the vicinity of their residences. Once
erect a sufficiency of cottages, and the unmarried lads will find a
sister, or aunt, or some female relative to keep house for them. Having
such an object before them, they will be taught habits of economy, and
will save money, that they may be ready to furnish a cottage. Once in
it, they have a home and property, and will become attached to their
situation. The bothy turns ploughmen into _nomads_, and gives them
restless, undomestic, and migratory habits. Erect a sufficiency of
cottages, and the bothy will die a natural death. No proprietor or
tenant will erect or maintain a bothy for a solitary ploughman, who
happens to have no female friend who can cook his food and keep his
cottage. Infallibly he will find other accommodation. The boy, to whom
the bothy is a very school of corruption, ought to live in family with
the master, and it should be the master’s duty to watch over his morals,
and to aid in some manner in his education. If he is a parent, let him
say how he would like his own boy, when he leaves the paternal roof, to
be neglected, tempted, corrupted.

Mr Stuart quotes from Mr Laing’s book on Norway a description of the
Norwegian _borststue_ or bothy, which is commodious and comfortable, and
well supplied with all conveniences; and then he asks, “Now, I would
hold such to be a model bothy; and cannot the farming in Scotland afford
to give what it affords to give in Norway?” No doubt of it, provided you
demonstrate that the bothy is indispensable; but to that premise we
demur. Mr Laing communicates nothing to us of the moral effects of the
_borststue_, which would be modified by the social habits of the people,
and by the degree of kindly intercourse subsisting between master and
servant. But in fact the example of Norway, neither in the matter of
cottages nor bothies, is truly applicable to our country. In Norway the
cottage is a loghouse, and costs nothing but the nails and the
window-glass, while every Norwegian knows enough of loghouse-carpentry
to erect a cottage for himself. With regard to the _borststue_, there is
a necessity for it in Norway that does not exist here. The outdoor
farm-work, which meets with but partial interruptions in our climate, is
at an absolute standstill in Norway for six months of the year, from the
severity of a protracted winter. The result is, that the outdoor work
must be accomplished during a few weeks in spring, and of course a more
numerous staff of servants must be maintained than with us; for, from
the military and passport system prevailing in Norway, it is impossible
to summon in an additional supply of workers to suit the emergency. The
tenant-farmer is thus more dependent on the agricultural labourers; and
we believe that there prevails in Norway more of that friendly
interchange of sympathy and of kindness between master and servant than
now unhappily characterises our social condition, which, nevertheless,
sweetens all toil, and turns aside the poisoned arrow of temptation, and
plucks the sting from suffering, whether experienced in Scottish bothy
or Norwegian _borststue_. For ourselves, we have only one prescription
for the bothy system, and that is, raze it. The system is too pregnant
with all moral evil to be temporised with. We cannot consent to any
parley, to negotiate for delay, and to write protocols anent its
possible improvement. We are almost certain that the minister of Oathlaw
agrees with us, but that he has thought it prudent to soften his voice
when speaking of the bothy, in the fear that it would alarm his auditors
at the revolutionary extent of his demands. But now that he has caught
the ear of the noble and the good of the land, and awakened in generous
hearts so magnanimous a response, let the lute become a trumpet in his
hand, and let him blow a blast so loud and clear as shall scatter this
disgrace of Scottish agriculture to the winds of heaven.

Most earnestly do we press upon our readers that our Scottish peasantry,
and agricultural labourers, and common ploughmen, are highly deserving
of consideration and kindness, and of every attempt that can be made to
increase their comforts and to ameliorate their moral and social
condition. There is an incredible and most criminal ignorance not only
among the higher, but among the middle classes of society, regarding at
once the habits and hardships of this important class of the community.
The newspaper paragraphist, in his select vocabulary, describes the
ploughman as a clown, a clodpole, a lout. That smart draper, with the
exquisitely-tied cravat and his inimitably arranged hair, all redolent
of musk, smiles complacently when he sees John the hind rolling along
the pavement on his huge hobnailed boots, and considers him the very
impersonation of stolidity. John’s dress is appropriate, however, to his
calling, and to see the draper in pumps and silk stockings floundering
through a new-ploughed field, or picking his steps daintily through a
feeding-byre, where the musk must yield to the ammonia, would, we fancy,
be a phenomenon not less provocative of laughter. Nothing is so
ridiculous as the very prevalent idea that our Scottish agricultural
labourers are a stupid race. They are shrewd, sagacious, and intelligent
about _their own business_; and because they are so, they are
continually being drafted away to England and Ireland. The employments
of a common ploughman are various, and of a nature calculated to
cultivate his powers of observation and of thought. Mr Stephens, after
describing the extent of observation, of judgment, and of patience,
required in a good ploughman, adds—“To be so accomplished implies the
possession of talent of no mean order.”—_Book of the Farm_, vol. i. p.
163. Talent necessary for a ploughman! exclaims the incredulous and
amazed citizen, and fancies that the author must speak ironically. Nay;
he never wrote soberer truth in his lifetime, and in your ignorance you
wonder.

There is another reason why not only the comforts, but why the moral and
intellectual powers of the agricultural labourer should be cared for.
The common ploughman has committed to his trust property which, on a
very moderate computation, may be valued at £100. This property, of a
nature so likely to receive injury from carelessness and inattention, is
daily in his hands, and under his charge, and at his mercy. We need
scarcely add, too, how deeply he may in other respects injure his
employer, as, for instance, by the imperfect ploughing or careless
sowing of a field. To what common servant, in any sphere of life, is
property so valuable so exclusively intrusted? It is plain that a party
so confided in, as a ploughman must be, ought not to have his sense of
responsibility and of moral obligation blunted and impaired by barbarous
neglect. Hitherto our agricultural labourers have not occupied
themselves with discussing “the rights of labour and the duties of
capital.” But if landlords and tenants are resolved to consider the
whole management of land as a mere matter of commerce, we cannot see why
these operatives should not be led to philosophise as well as others.
The labourer may apply in all equity that principle to his own case
which the landlord and tenant are severally applying to theirs. The
severance between employer and employed has of late been developed to an
extent never before witnessed in any age, and it threatens, at this
moment, to throw a terrific chasm athwart the whole structure of
society. Not only among mill-masters and men, but among many other
classes very differently circumstanced, have we witnessed combination
and counter-combination, and their disastrous consequences. A slight
agrarian grumbling might possibly do good; and, from all that we can
learn, there is a sulky discontent slumbering in many an honest fellow’s
bosom, that could easily be fanned, by a skilful experimenter, into a
visible flame. It will be better, in every respect, to anticipate and
ward off the evil. Its causes and its cure have been well expounded by
Mr Stuart. But if our agricultural labourers are too patient sufferers
to complain, too sensible to imbibe the pestilent doctrines of Messrs
Newton and Cowel, and too wide apart to have it in their power to
combine, whether for good or for evil—and if, on these accounts, there
is no ground for alarm, is it wise, is it kind of you, to take advantage
of their peaceful dispositions, and of their powerlessness to unite in
proclaiming their wrongs, and in vindicating their rights? There is a
remedy within the reach of many of them, and of which they are silently
availing themselves. They can emigrate. They are doing so quietly,
determinedly. They are not absolutely _astricti glebæ_. The canker of
neglect is eating away the ties that bind them to their Fatherland.
Multitudes of the best of them have gone, and thousands would follow if
they had the means. Emigration, if it proceeds unchecked, will render
“strikes” unnecessary, even if we are inclined to consider such things
as visionary and impossible among an agricultural population.

They who have not read Mr Stuart’s appeal, may conclude, from the
professed object of that Association to which his appeal has conducted,
that he has inculcated nothing more than the improvement of existing
cottages, and the building of many new ones more commodious and
comfortable. His philanthropy, however, is more comprehensive. With an
excursive pen he reviews the whole moral, educational, and social
characteristics of the agricultural labourer’s condition, and sketches
the remedies for its various evils. When, therefore, Mr Stuart merely
proposed at the meeting of the 10th January, as the main feature of the
proposed Association, the establishment of an office in Edinburgh for
the reception of plans and models, and improved fittings and furnishings
for cottages, accessible to all inquirers, it seemed to us, retaining as
we did a delightful reminiscence of his pamphlet, a most impotent
conclusion. He appeared to have descended from the high moral arena into
the mortar-tub, and we were in terror lest some journalist, in a
slashing leader, should cover his scheme with inextinguishable
burlesque. It seemed likewise a mystery to us how there could be such
extreme difficulty in erecting a commodious and comfortable cottage, as
that an office in our metropolis should be required for the exhibition
of right models. It might have looked that, instead of a labourer’s
cottage, it was a medieval temple of most intricate composite that was
required, and for the conception of which the genius of Scottish
architecture was unequal without the aid of unusual patronage. We
feared, too, that the Association might be described by some malignant
pen as a company of Scottish proprietors resolving to raise the
marketable value of their estates by adding to the buildings thereupon.
Such silly caricatures might perhaps have been anticipated, and in fact
some small sneers were dropped by one or two of the Radical newspapers;
but the admirable tone of the speeches at the meeting, when the
Association was formed, seemed for the time to have stayed the old
hatred of the democratic press towards our landed proprietors. That our
readers may understand correctly the intentions and views of “The
Association for promoting improvement in the dwellings and domestic
condition of agricultural labourers in Scotland,” we recommend to their
perusal the report of the committee now published, and which we hope may
be widely circulated. The noblemen and country gentlemen composing the
Association have combined, _not_ for the purpose of raising their
rentals, but for the purpose of improving the domestic condition of the
agricultural labourers, by improving their dwellings. They have united
together for the purpose of directing attention to the subject, and of
encouraging and aiding others in removing an evil which they candidly
confess they have hitherto overlooked and neglected. The evil is of long
standing and of gigantic dimensions, and it has been felt that the
benevolent zeal and efforts of individuals required to be concentred
into the potent agency of one national association, to effect its
abatement and to work out its final extinction. In the matter of house
accommodation for our agricultural labourers, while on many estates a
very great deal has been done to improve it, yet very generally over the
kingdom it is a notorious fact that no improvement in their dwellings
has taken place for the last half-century. One article of furniture in
the cottages of our Scottish peasantry has excited the indignation of
all but those who repose their weary limbs on it—we refer to the
box-bed. The medical faculty time immemorial have denounced it as a very
“fever case.” Mr Stuart and his reverend brethren have lamented the
stifling insalubrity of the formidable structure. Fine ladies and
gentlemen have wondered at the stupid attachment of the Scottish peasant
to a dormitory so barbarous. The Duke of Buccleuch has solved the
riddle. He tells us, that when he ordered the box-bed to be taken out of
the cottage down came the roof! And thus that which has been the stay
and support of many a tottering tenement has been most ignorantly
condemned. Nor is this all. So very damp and cold are too many of the
cottages, that in order to exclude these evils in some measure by night,
the box-bed is indispensable during eight months of the year; and we
predict that unless comfortable cottages, rightly roofed, lathed, and
floored are erected, the box-bed will prove stronger than Mr Stuart, and
will retain its hold on the affections of the labourer, upholding at
once its own position and the roof of the dwelling that affects to
shelter it from the elements. That there is likewise a lack of cottages
in our agricultural districts is unquestionable. They have been allowed
to decay and disappear, from economical considerations entirely
delusive, to an extent extremely prejudicial. The diminished population
of our rural parishes proves the fact; and if any one will contrast the
census papers of 1841 with those of 1851, which exhibit the number of
the inhabited houses in the several counties of Scotland, they will find
a demonstration that may probably startle them. The Association takes it
for granted that an improved domestic condition will follow in the wake
of improved dwellings being given to the poor, and no thoughtful and
observing person will doubt this. It has been beautifully said, “Between
physical and moral delicacy a connection has been observed, which,
though founded by the imagination, is far from being imaginary. Howard
and others have remarked it. It is an antidote against sloth, and keeps
alive the idea of decent restraint and the habit of circumspection.
Moral purity and physical are spoken of in the same language; scarce can
you inculcate or command the one, but some share of approbation reflects
itself upon the other. In minds in which the least germ of Christianity
has been planted, this association can scarce fail of having taken root:
scarce a page of Scripture but recalls it.” It is of the very essence of
every good system to develop the virtues necessary to its success; and
to the humanising influence of a comfortable and commodious cottage, old
habits of filthiness and sloth would gradually yield, and would every
day become a lessening evil. Such cottages would secure at once the
services of the best class of workmen, and thus a mercenary
self-interest would find it to its advantage to follow where benevolence
had led the way. The influence of example upon the rich, and the
influence of superior house-accommodation upon the social condition of
the poor, must be gradual. This has been duly contemplated.

It is scarcely necessary, we fancy, to expound this part of the case. It
is now pretty generally understood. If, however, any of our readers have
not considered this subject, or continue to entertain some lingering
doubts regarding the effects of improved house-accommodation upon the
social, sanitary, and moral condition of the people, we most anxiously
recommend to their perusal Dr Southwood Smith’s “Results of Sanitary
Improvement, illustrated by the operation of the metropolitan societies
for improving the dwellings of the industrious classes, &c.” The
pamphlet costs twopence, and it may take a quarter of an hour to read
it; but never, we believe, were statistics ever given to the world so
surprising and so encouraging,—matter at once so suggestive of deep
thought, and so animating to the aspirations of practical philanthropy.
Lord Shaftesbury is at present circulating this most pregnant epitome of
the effects of sanitary improvement among the parochial boards of
Scotland. It is a most seasonable missive—vindicating the speculations
of Mr Stuart, and placing on the basis of demonstration the certainty of
the effect of the intended operations of the Duke of Buccleuch’s
association. The pecuniary element will be thought our main difficulty,
but we are quite satisfied that the tendency is to exaggerate it. Be it
remembered that we want no _cottages ornées_, and (with your leave, Mr
Stuart) no model bothies, but merely warm, dry, convenient houses for
honest ploughmen to live in. Let wealthy proprietors, if they please,
adorn their estates with picturesque villas, crowned with projecting
roofs and ornamental chimneys; but the Association over which the Duke
of Buccleuch presides does not desire a single sixpence to be spent
which will not contribute to the comfort of the cottage. The reformatory
change may proceed by degrees, and in no one year need the outlay be
serious; but on this part of the subject we refer our readers to the
views of Sir Ralph Anstruther, as contained in his speech on the 10th
January, and more fully explained in his letter (_Courant_, January
20th). While the Association professes, in the mean time (and we think
wisely and judiciously), to limit its attention to the improvement of
the dwellings of agricultural labourers, and thereby to raise their
domestic condition, it seems evident that the basis of its operations
may be easily extended, and that the benevolent object in view will
almost naturally widen that basis. That object is to ameliorate the
domestic condition of the labourer; but if other causes as well as that
of improved house-accommodation will contribute towards the wished-for
amelioration, these, it may be expected, in due time will come to be
embraced within the benevolent range of its fostering influence. To
prevent misapprehension and remove ignorance, we would respectfully
suggest the propriety of the Association instituting a statistical
inquiry into the physical, moral, and educational condition of the
agricultural labourers of the kingdom. Such statistics would form a
valuable supplement to the agricultural statistics collected under the
instruction of Mr Hall Maxwell. Information seems necessary to enable
the Association rightly to exercise its influence, even in improving the
dwellings of the poor. In some parts of the west of Scotland a sort of
mud cottage is raised at an expense of £3! and a fit model for one
county may be utterly unfit for another. All requisite information we
believe could be obtained, by addressing a schedule of inquiry to the
parochial clergy, who are manifestly ready to lend their aid. In any
event, our landed proprietors cannot well afford to have more “news from
the farm” thrust upon them by the spontaneous exertions of volunteer
philanthropists. The public, indeed, seem to have been infinitely
surprised that our landed proprietors should have been so ignorant of
the condition of the dwellings and of the circumstances of the people
upon their estates; and the inference is, that there must have been
something grievously wrong in the management of their affairs. No man,
of course, can expect that the proprietor of a large landed estate
should know minutely the condition of every cottage on it, and the
discomforts of its poor inhabitant. But the ignorance confessed goes
greatly beyond this. It was surely the more immediate duty of the
tenant-farmer to have protected his dependants, and to have represented
their disadvantages to the proprietor. And what has the factor been
doing in the mean time? General Lindsay, at the meeting of the 10th
January, in a speech overflowing with admirable feeling, said, that “the
factor was afraid of increasing his expenditure.” Quite right; but why
was he not afraid, too, of misrepresenting the kindly feelings of his
constituent towards the industrious poor upon his estate—of concealing
from him knowledge which, if he wished to do his duty, it was
indispensable for him to possess—of alienating from him and his house
the love and veneration of _his people_—of rendering his privileges
odious now, and of imperilling his position on any coming convulsion of
the commonwealth? We have not only now the evil of non-resident
proprietors, but, in many cases, the evil of non-resident factors. The
door of communication betwixt landlord and tenant is thus effectually
shut up; and the poor cottager, who was wont to have access even to “his
honour,” finds things so altered that an audience with the factor is
become impossible. The accountant is as ignorant as his constituent “of
the dwellings and domestic condition of the agricultural labourers,” and
thus there is a complete abnegation of all the peculiar duties and
responsibilities which Providence has manifestly laid on the owners of
land. It is impossible to deny, on the other hand, that very many of the
tenant-farmers, imitating the manners of their betters, have become
sadly neglectful of the duties which they owe their dependants. To give
as little and get as much as he can, is now, in too many cases, the
short and simple rubric of that code which guides the landlord in his
contract with the tenant. The tenant extends the principle, and looks
upon the labour of his ploughman as a mere purchaseable article, that
supplements the deficiency of machinery, and is necessary to guide the
muscular energies of the horse. With the ploughman, however, the sale of
his labour is the sale of himself—the devotion of his sentient nature,
with feelings, affections, sympathies, as lively as those of his master,
and with a pride and self-esteem as sensitive to unkindness and wrong.
It was in every respect seemly that the present movement should
originate with the proprietors, for the house-accommodation must plainly
be given by them; but now that they have intimated, in so kind words,
their good wishes and benevolent intentions, we hope the farmers will
consider whether expressions of “repentance” for the past are not due
from them as well as from others, and whether works “meet for
repentance” should not instantly be undertaken by them. Because the
landlord has made his “confession,” it is conceivable that the tenant
may now fancy that nothing remains but that he should make a clamorous
onset on the laird for more cottages. We hope he will not be
unreasonable, but will perceive that he must put his own shoulder to the
work, and be prepared to make some sacrifices, and to practice some
self-denial. We fear that some of the tenantry require to be instructed,
stimulated, and watched in discharging that part of the duty which falls
to them in promoting the desired reformation. We are quite of the
opinion of the Duke of Buccleuch, that more cottages should not be let
with the farm than the number necessary to accommodate the servants
requisite for the work of the farm. The other cottagers should rent
their holdings immediately from the landlord.

We know no class of workmen who have so few holidays, and so few
opportunities for rational recreation, as our ploughmen. They may have
the right to go to some annual feeing-market, and out of this solitary
feast the poor fellows try naturally to extract as much pleasure as they
can, turning the day into a carnival of many-coloured evil. All other
classes of workpeople have their occasional holiday—their trip by an
excursion-train—the Saturday afternoon, in a slack season, to see
friends and kindred; but no such pleasures fall to the ploughman’s lot.
In the winter, indeed, he is on “short time,” but what is done to make
his evening hours pleasant, profitable, instructive? In the agricultural
world we shall certainly have no “lock-out,” and perhaps no “strike,”
but it may be wise, at least, to anticipate possible contingencies by
acts of kindness and of well-considered indulgence. The yawning gulf
betwixt the high and the low of the land is the most ominous evil of
these times, and should be bridged over by sympathetic communication
whilst it can. The wintry neglect of his superiors is worse to be borne
by the labourer than the cold of his miserable cottage. Let us listen to
Mr Stuart on an evil which seems to have entered like iron into his
kindly soul. Addressing landlords, he says—


  “Let their visits and their smile be frequently seen in the house of
  the poorest cottar, although he be but a hired labourer; for not fifty
  years ago, that same man would have been a crofter, or a small farmer,
  waiting on ‘his honour,’ and welcomed by ‘his honour,’ with his rent
  or his bondage. That he is not so now, is owing more to ‘his honour’s’
  change of customs for his own profit, than to the cottar’s own fault,
  or to the profit of the cottar’s own social position and feelings. Let
  there be some upmaking, then, for this change, so far as such things
  can be made up for, not in the shape of money, but in that which his
  forefathers valued much more than money, and which he will value as
  highly again, if ‘his honour’ will only but give him time and means
  whereby he may recover his self-esteem and his proper training; and
  one of the most powerful and most valued of all these means would, in
  a little time, be ‘his honour’s’ friendly visits to his humble
  dwelling.”


Now that the Scottish people know that the Duke of Buccleuch finds time
to inquire personally into the condition of the peasantry on his
estates, no proprietor, however ancient his lineage and proud his name,
will be excused who fails to go and do likewise, or who fails at least
to acquaint himself with the condition of the labourers who cultivate
his fields. Personal inquiry we would recommend, although it should not
lead to the rendering of one cottage more comfortable than it was
before. We recommend it for the proprietor’s own behoof. “The most
certain softeners of a man’s moral skin, and sweeteners of his blood,
are, I am sure, domestic intercourse in a happy marriage, and
_intercourse with the poor_,” writes Arnold; and, as if he had felt the
virtue flowing out of such intercourse, he repeats the thought thus in
another place, “Prayer, and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the
two great safeguards of spiritual life.” One-half the world does not
know how the other half lives, and one-half of the bitternesses of human
life arises from our not understanding one another. Little do the great
ones of the earth know how much they lose by avoiding kindly
acquaintance with poor and humble neighbours.

We know of no public meeting that has taken place in our time, where the
speeches delivered possessed a higher moral value than those that fell
from the speakers at the meeting of the 10th January last. The
turbulent, disrupted, and gloomy condition of the manufacturing classes,
rendered them admirably seasonable. They have shed a benignant influence
over the agricultural community. They have awakened hopes that were
growing faint, and fine old Scottish feelings that were dying out, and
have proved a healing anodyne to a wound that was rankling in many a
bosom. The opening speech of the noble chairman we have read more than
once, and ever with renewed delight. Many an honest labourer has read it
too, with glistening eye and joyful heart, and its perusal has prepared
him for fighting more heroically the battle of his life. Some of the
sentiments of the noble Duke we cannot withhold from our columns:—


  “He thought it would not be disputed that, generally speaking,
  throughout Scotland, the habitations of these labourers were very
  defective, especially in those accommodations for comfort and
  delicacy. In former days the farm-servant was accommodated in the
  farmer’s house, where he took his meals, and so was under the moral
  control of his employers. But now the farm-labourer was put into a
  bothy, generally a most wretched place to live in, and often the worst
  building on the farm. He could not blink the question involved in the
  subject. They had not come there to bandy compliments to one another,
  but to speak the truth. It might be said to him and those who came
  there to find fault with the present system: You ought to come with
  clean hands, and be able to say that all the bothies on your estate
  were such as they ought to be. He confessed with shame that he could
  show as bad specimens on his property as could be found in Scotland.
  He would not conceal it that the condition of many of the cottages on
  his estate was as bad as could be. How this state of things had arisen
  it was not difficult to see.... He examined a number of their cottages
  himself, and found many of them quite in a falling-down state. In one
  of them, when he took a box-bed out of it, down came the roof. Such
  things would be found not so very uncommon if these cottages were
  looked into. Then what an evil effect such houses had upon the moral
  feelings of those who occupied them! Many of the persons who lived in
  them were highly educated, and it might well be conceived that a
  person of refinement living in a place fit for a pig would be
  discontented, as well as unhappy. How could they expect, when they saw
  men, women, and children all living and sleeping in one apartment,
  that they could be otherwise than demoralised? Could they wonder that
  all their delicacy of feeling was destroyed? Mothers had said to him,
  how could they bring up their daughters with respectability when there
  was not that separation of rooms which there ought to be? Then there
  was a great disinclination on the part of the tenantry to the landlord
  taking these cottages into his hand. They said they must have every
  single thing under their own control. It was all very well for them to
  say that as regarded the lodgment of their domestic and special
  farm-servants, but it did not follow that it was absolutely necessary
  that all the cottages of the agricultural labourers should belong to
  the farmer. He did not think that it was right that the farm-labourer
  should be bound down to work for one man only. But the person who
  really benefited by the landlord taking the cottage into his own hands
  was the farm-labourer himself; and he had seen the moral effect
  produced by providing better houses for this class of labourers, in a
  quarter where thieving and poaching had formerly been the disgrace of
  the people; but since their houses were improved, there was a great
  and beneficial reformation in these respects. It was really gratifying
  to see the change which took place in the feelings of these people
  towards their landlord, when they knew he was taking an interest in
  their welfare. Here, when he passed, they showed they regarded him as
  their friend, and were not filled with unpleasant suspicions about
  him.”


The gems in the ducal coronet never emitted a tenderer or more
fascinating ray than when its noble owner entered the lowly cottage on
his mission of kindness, and since the preceding sentiments were spoken,
we believe that from many a Scottish heart the fervent prayer has been
sent to heaven’s gate, that “the good Buccleuch” may long be spared to
his country.




                      ALEXANDER SMITH’S POEMS.[7]


Some time ago a volume of poems appeared, over which there arose a great
roar of critical battle, like the conflict over the dead Valerius, when
“Titus pulled him by the foot, and Aulus by the head.” Many hailed the
author as a true poet, and prophesied his coming greatness; others
fastened on obvious defects, and moused the book like Snug the joiner
tearing Thisbe’s mantle in his character of lion. Now that the hubbub
has subsided, our still small voice may be heard.

The poet in question has at once deprecated and defied criticism in a
sonnet, (p. 232).

              “There have been vast displays of critic wit
            O’er those who vainly flutter feeble wings,
            Nor rise an inch ’bove ground,—weak poetlings!
            And on them to the death men’s brows are knit.
            Ye men! ye critics! seems’t so very fit
            They on a storm of Laughter should be blown
            O’er the world’s edge to Limbo? Be it known,
            Ye men! ye critics! that beneath the sun
            The chiefest woe is this,—when all alone,
            And strong as life, a soul’s great currents run
            Poesy-ward, like rivers to the sea,
            But never reach’t. Critic, let that soul moan
            In its own hell, without a kick from thee.
            Kind Death, kiss gently, ease this weary one!”

Alexander Smith is partly right and partly wrong. It is true that,
throned in his judicial chair, the critic, more intent on displaying his
own powers than on doing justice to his subject, is apt to drop the mild
and equal scales, and brandish the trenchant glittering sword. He ought
to say in his heart, Peradventure there shall be found ten fine lines in
this book—I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

But, on the other hand, there is a class to which forbearance would be
misapplied and criminal. It would too much resemble our prison
discipline, where Mr William Sykes, after a long course of outrages on
humanity, is shut up in a palace, treated like a prodigal son, and
presently converted to Christianity. An absurd monomaniac, who, like
Joanna Southcote, mistaking a dropsical disorder for the divine
afflatus, and demanding worship on no better grounds than the greatness
of his own blown conceit, may, by mere force of impudent pretension,
induce a host of ignorant followers to have faith in him, ought to be
exposed and ridiculed. Not savagely, perhaps, for the first offence; the
pantaloons should be loosed with a paternal hand, and the scourge mildly
applied. If he still persists in misdoing, it should be laid on till the
blood comes.

But Alexander Smith is far from coming under the latter denomination. A
writer, especially a young writer, should be judged by his best; and
there is enough excellence in the volume to cover many more sins than it
contains, though they are numerous. And while it is a mistake to suppose
that a fine poetic soul, however sensitive, will “let itself be snuffed
out by an article,” yet there have been instances where undue severity
has defrauded a writer of his just fame for many a long year; and though
the critic, in the end, has been compelled to render up the mesne
profits of applause, yet that is small consolation for the sense of
wrong, and the deprivation of merited influence and reputation.

While foreign writers sketch us as the most matter-of-fact and
pudding-eating of peoples—while we pique ourselves on sturdy John
Bullism, and cheerfully accept the portrait of an absurd old gentleman
in a black coat, and a broad-brimmed hat and gaiters, with his hands in
his well-filled breeches pockets, as a just impersonation of the genius
of the nation, it is an obvious fact that a poet never had such a
certainty of being appreciated in England as now. Fit audience is no
longer few. Let him sound as high a note as he can for the life of him,
he will yet find echoes enough to constitute fame. There are homes in
England almost as common as hothouses, where fine criticism is nightly
conversation—where appreciators, as true as any who review in
newspapers, hail a good and great writer as a personal friend. Here may
be found all the elements necessary for the recognition of merit and the
detection of imposture. Sturdy good sense refuses to believe in gaudy
pretension; keen logic exposes emptiness; enthusiastic youth glows at
the high thought, the splendid image; and the soft feminine nature
responds, with ready tears and unsuppressed sighings, to all legitimate
appeals to the heart.

With such tribunals more plentiful than county courts, a man is no
longer justified in decrying fame, or appealing for justice to
posterity. It must be an untoward accident, indeed, that cheats an
author of his due, when so many are eager to exchange praise for his
fine gold. The demand for excellence in authorship exceeds the supply;
and there are plenty of keen readers who, having traversed the realms of
English poesy, yet thirst for fresh fields and pastures new. Therefore,
if an ardent spirit finds the world deaf to his utterances, let him
search uncomplainingly for the fault in his own mind, and never rashly
conclude that for his fondly believed-in powers of thought and
expression there is, as yet, no sympathetic public. Especially in poetry
is the appetite of the time unsatisfied; mediocrity, which should be
inadmissible, is indulgently received, and the poets of established
reputation are on every shelf. Editions of Shakespeare appear in
perplexing numbers, and the rusty armour in which a champion for his
text appears, is contended for as if it were the heaven-forged panoply
of Achilles.

Mr Smith leaves his feelings on the subject of fame open to doubt. One
might almost fancy him a poet who, having desired fame too ardently in
his hot youth, had discovered its emptiness in riper age. A sonnet is
devoted to the depreciation of fame; whereas Walter, in the Life-drama,
is more than enthusiastic to achieve it. We have no doubt the ardent
wishes which Mr Smith expresses through his hero are genuine, and that
the philosophy of the sonnet is a philosophy he only fancies he has
acquired. Combativeness may inspire the soldier to achievement, rivalry
the statesman; both may be, in some measure, indifferent to other fame
than the applause of their contemporaries. But it is in vain for the
poet to express indifference to the opinion of the world and of
posterity. Why has he written, except that thoughts bearing his impress
may sound in the ears of the future, and that the echoes they arouse may
convey to him, in his silent resting-place, tidings of the cheerful day,
assuring him of a tenure in the earth he loved, and a lasting position
among the race who were his brothers? What would not man do to secure
remembrance after death? For this Erostratus burnt Diana’s temple; for
this the Pyramids were built, and built in vain; for this kings have
destroyed nations; for this the care-worn money-getter gives his life to
the founding of a wealthy name; and if a man may gain it more
effectually by the simple publishing of thoughts, whose conception was
to him a pleasure, let him be thankful that what all so ardently desire
was granted to him on such easy terms, and that he may continue to be a
real presence on this earth, when most of his contemporaries are as
though they had never been.

Taking it for granted, then, that when a young poet publishes a work
wherein the hero expresses an ardent desire for fame, the poet is
himself speaking through the character, it will be interesting to see
how he proposes to achieve it. Mr Smith tells us, through his hero, that
his plan for immortalising himself is “to set this age to music.” That,
he says, is the great work before the poet now.

To set this age to music!—’tis a phrase we have heard before of late
years. Never was an age so intent upon self-glorification as this. Like
the American nation, it spends half its time looking in the glass; and,
like it, always with the same loudly-expressed approbation of what the
mirror reveals. It has long been its habit to talk its own praises, and
now they must be sung. When polkas were first introduced, many familiar
sounds were parodied, to give character to tunes of the new measure.
Among these was the Railway-polka, in which the noise of the wheels and
the clatter of machinery were admirably imitated; while a startling
reality was given to the whole, by the occasional hoarse scream of the
engine. Now, we fear that the effort of a poet to set the age to music
would result in something resembling the railway polka—something more
creditable as a work of ingenuity than of art, and embodying more
appeals to the sense than to the heart or the imagination. To him who
stands apart from the rush and roar, the many voices of the age convey a
mingled sound that would scarcely seem musical even to the dreaming ear
of a poet.

We see the spirit of the middle ages—the spirit of religious intolerance
and superstitious faith—of deepest earnestness, and of bigotry springing
out of that earnestness—reflected in Dante’s page. Spenser shows us the
days of the plume and the spear, when the beams of chivalry yet gilded
the earth, when the motto of noble youth was—God and my lady. Another
phase of the same era—the era of romantic discovery and adventure, when
there were yet fairies on the green, and enchanted isles in the
ocean—reappears in the works of Shakespeare. Pope has fixed for ever the
time of courtliness, of external polish and artificial graces—the time
when woman was no more divine—when Una had degenerated into Chloe—when
love had given place to intrigue, devotion to foppery, faith to
reasoning; yet a pleasant and graceful time. And it is no wonder that
the poet, now, feeling that he too possesses “the vision and the faculty
divine,” should long to leave his name, not drifting over space, but
anchored firmly on the times he lived in.

But none of these old poets went to work with the deliberate intention
of setting his age to music. Where that, so far as we can see the
meaning of the phrase, has been done, it is because the poet lived so
much among the characteristic men and scenes of his age, that his mind,
more impressionable and more true in its impressions than others, was
imbued with its spirit, and moulded to its forms; so that, whatever his
mind transmitted was coloured by those hues, and swayed by those
outlines. The poet did not hunt about for the characteristics of his
age, and then deliberately embody them: he chose a congenial theme when
it offered itself, and it, unconsciously to him, became a picture of a
phase of the time. When our age, too, is set to music, if ever, it will
be in this way.

If ever—For ages of the world, as worthy of note perchance as this, and
more rich in materials for poetry, have passed away without being set to
music. Every great change of society, and of mankind’s opinions, does
not necessarily call for a poet to sing it. It may be more suitably
reproduced through some other medium than verse—in newspapers, for
instance, or in advertising vans. Of course, no man in his senses would
say a word against this age of ours; he could expect nothing less than
to be immediately bonneted, like an injudicious elector who has hissed
the popular candidate; yet we would have liked Alexander Smith to
indicate the direction in which he intends to seek his materials. Does
he see anything heroic in an ardent desire to secure ease and comfort at
the cost of many old and once respectable superstitions, such as honour
and duty? Can he throw over the cotton trade “the light that never was
on sea or shore?” Or, is popular oratory distinguished by “thoughts that
breathe and words that burn?” Will the railway station and the electric
telegraph figure picturesquely in the poet’s dream? Yet, when the age is
set to music, these chords will be not the most subdued in the
composition. Mr Macaulay said about as much as could be said for the
spirit of the age, when he drew a contrast in popular prose between the
present and the past. Had he tried the subject in poetry, he would have
found the task much less congenial than when he sung so manfully “how
well Horatius kept the bridge, in the brave days of old.”

Alexander Smith has one characteristic in common with Tennyson, the
author of _Festus_, and some other poets of the time. All seem to have
great power in the regions of the dreary. Their gaiety is spasmodic;
when they smile, ’tis like Patience on a monument, as if Grief were
sitting opposite. If this is their way of setting the age to music,
’tis, if most musical, yet most melancholy. Tennyson, who possesses the
power of conveying the sentiment of dreariness beyond most poets that
ever lived, generally selects some suitable subject for the exercise of
it, such as _Mariana in the Moated Grange_; but Mr Smith’s hero, and
Festus, are miserable from choice, and revel in their unaccountable woe,
like the character in Peacock’s novel, whose notion of making himself
agreeable consists in saying, “Let us all be unhappy together.” Not
thus, O Alexander! sounds the keynote of the genial soul of a great
poet.

Our author’s notion of what constitutes a crushing affliction is
altogether peculiar. A particular friend of his hero, after becoming
quite blasphemous because he wanted “to let loose some music on the
world,” and couldn’t (p. 137), commits suicide on a mountain, though
whether by rope, razor, or prussic acid, we are not informed. However,
being deranged, he no doubt received Christian burial. And Mr Smith,
speaking for himself in the sonnet already quoted, says that—

                                “Beneath the sun
            The chiefest woe is this—When all alone,
            And strong as life, a soul’s great currents run
            Poesy-ward, like rivers to the sea,
            But never reach it.”

The chiefest woe!—the chiefest, Alexander! Neither Job nor Jeremiah have
enrolled it among human afflictions. Is there no starvation, nor pain,
nor death in the world? Is the income-tax repealed? We appeal from
Alexander in travail of a sonnet, with small hope of safe delivery, to
Alexander in the toothache, and we are confident he will change his
opinion. Let him look at Hogarth’s “Distressed Poet,” and see what it is
that moves his sympathy there. Not the perplexity of the poor poet
himself—that raises only an irreverent smile—but the poor good pretty
wife raising her household eyes meekly and wonderingly to the loud
milkwoman, their inexorable creditor—the piece of meat that was to form
their scanty dinner, abstracted by the felonious starveling of a
cur,—these touch on deeper woes than the head-scratching distress of the
unproductive poet.

To return to Mr Smith’s idea of setting the age to music. The first
requisite clearly is, that the musician shall be pre-eminently a man of
the age. It is at once evident that oldfashioned people, with any
lingering remnants of the heroic or dark ages about their ideas, would
be quite out of place here. None but liberals and progressionists need
apply. These are so plentiful that there will be no difficulty in
finding a great number who embody the most prominent characteristics of
the time. Having got the man of the age, a tremendous difficulty occurs.
We are very much afraid there will not only be nothing poetical in the
cast of his ideas, but that he will be the embodiment of everything that
is prosaic. Call to mind, O Alexander! the qualities essential to a
poet—at the same time, picture to yourself a Man of the Age—and then
fancy what kind of music you will extract from him. Set the age to
music, quotha! Set the Stocks to music.

Having thus signally failed to point out how the thing is to be done, we
will tell Alexander how it will not be done. Not by uttering unmeaning
complaints against Fate and Heaven, and other names of similar purport
which we will not set down here, like a dog baying the moon. Not by
uttering profane rant, which, as it would not have been justified by the
mad despair of a Lear or an Othello, is horribly nonsensical in the
mouth of a young gentleman who ought to have taken a blue pill because
his liver was out of order. Not by pouring forth floods of images and
conceits which afford no perception of the idea their author would
convey. Not by making the moon and the sea appear in such a variety of
ridiculous characters that we shall never again stroll by moonlight on
the shore without seeing something comical in the aspect of the deep and
the heavenly bodies. Not by——But we have just lighted on a passage which
proves that Mr Smith knows what is right as well as anybody can tell
him:—

                           “Yet one word more—
           Strive for the poet’s crown, but ne’er forget
           How poor are fancy’s blooms to thoughtful fruits.”

And again—

                “Poet he was not in the larger sense—
            He could write pearls, but he could never write
            A poem round and perfect as a star.”

That is the point. Not to dismiss images unprotected on the world, like
Mr Winkle’s shots—which, we are informed, were “unfortunate foundlings
cast loose upon society, and billeted nowhere”—but to mature a worthy
leading idea, waiting, watching, fostering it till it is full-grown and
symmetrical in its growth; and from which the lesser ideas and images
shall spring as naturally, necessarily, and with as excellent effect of
adornment, as leaves from the tree.

Whether Alexander can do this, yet remains to be proved. Some of the
requisites he possesses in a high degree. Force, picturesqueness of
conception, and musical expression, all of which he has displayed, will
do great things when giving utterance to a theme well chosen and well
designed; but at present they only tell us, like a harp swept by the
wind, of the melodies slumbering in the chords. Such is the Æolian
character of the Life-drama—fitful, wild, melancholy, often suggestive
of something exquisitely sweet and graceful, but faint, fugitive, and
incoherent. When our poet sounds a strain worthy of the instrument, our
pæans shall accompany and swell the chorus of applause.

The sonnets, as conveying tangible ideas, and such as excite interest
and sympathy, have greatly exalted our opinion of the poet’s powers.
They have not been much quoted as yet by any of his discerning admirers,
perhaps because there is little or nothing in them but what a plain man
may understand, and they contain few allusions to the ocean or any of
the planets. But here is one showing a fine picture—a picture that
appeals to the imagination and the heart. It is at once manly and
pathetic, representing a friendless, but independent and aspiring
genius:—

       “Joy, like a stream, flows through the Christmas streets,
       But I am sitting in my silent room—
       Sitting all silent in congenial gloom.
       To-night, while half the world the other greets
       With smiles, and grasping hands, and drinks, and meats,
       I sit and muse on my poetic doom.
       Like the dim scent within a budded rose,
       A joy is folded in my heart; and when
       I think on poets nurtured ’mong the throes,
       And by the lowly hearths of common men—
       Think of their works, some song, some swelling ode
       With gorgeous music glowing to a close,
       Deep-muffled as the dead-march of a god—
       My heart is burning to be one of those.”

As Mercutio says, “Is not this better, now, than groaning? Now art thou
sensible—now art thou Romeo.” We hope he will be “one of those,” and
think he may. Only he must believe that, however fine and rare the
poetic faculties he has evinced, they cannot produce anything for
posterity of themselves, but must build on a foundation of thought and
art.

We are afraid, though we have not descended to verbal criticism, but
have only indicated essential faults, that Alexander will think we have
treated his book in an irreverent spirit; but, nevertheless, it is a
truly paternal one. Even in such mood did we deal, of late, with our own
beloved first-born, heir of his mother’s charms and his father’s
virtues—a fine, clever fellow, in whom his parents take immense pride,
though we judiciously conceal it for fear of increasing the conceit
which is already somewhat conspicuous in his bearing. We rather think he
had been led astray by the example of that young scoundrel, Jones, who
threatened to hang himself if his mother didn’t give him five-and-twenty
shillings to pay his score at the pastry-cook’s, and so terrified the
poor lady into compliance. However that may be, our offspring, George,
being denied, of late, some unreasonable requests, straightway went into
sulky heroics—spoke of himself as an outcast—stalked about with a gloomy
air in dark corners of the shrubbery with his arms folded—smiled about
twice a-day, in a withering and savage manner, though his natural
disposition is cheerful and inclined to fun—and begged to decline to
hold any further intercourse with his relatives. He kept up the brooding
and injured character with great consistency (except that he always came
regularly to meals, and eat them with his customary appetite, which is a
very fine and healthy one), and was encouraged in it by his grandmother,
who, between ourselves, reader, is a rather silly old woman, much given
in her youth to maudlin sentimentalism, and Werterism, and bad forms of
Byronism. She would take him aside, pat his head, kiss his cheek, and
call him her poor dear boy, and slip money into his pocket, which he
neither thanked her for, nor offered to refuse; and he became more
firmly persuaded than ever, that he was one of the most ill-used young
heroes that ever existed. This we were sorry to see—like Mrs Quickly, we
cannot abide swaggerers—and we bethought ourselves of a remedy. Some
parents would have got in a rage and thrashed him—but he is a plucky
young fellow, and this would only have caused him to consider himself a
martyr; others would have mildly reasoned with him—but this would have
given his fault too important and serious an air, so we treated him to a
little irony and ridicule—caustic, not contemptuous, and more comical
than spiteful. Just before beginning this course of treatment, we
happened to overhear him making love, in the library, to Charlotte Jones
(sister of the before-mentioned admirer of confectionary), a great, fat,
lymphatic girl, who was spending a few days with his sisters, and who
has no more sentiment or passion in her than so much calipee. However,
he seemed to have quite enough for both, and poured forth his romantic
devotion with a fervid fluency which I suspect must be the result of
practice—for the young scamp is precocious, and conceived his first
passion, at the age of nine, for a fine young woman of four-and-twenty.
Charlotte, working away the while at a great cabbage-rose, not unlike
herself, which she is embroidering in worsted, listened to his raptures
with a lethargic calmness contrasting strongly with the impassioned air
of the youth, who was no doubt ready, like Walter, Mr Smith’s hero, for
the consideration of a kiss (if the placid object of his affections
would have consented to such an impropriety), to “take Death at a flying
leap”—which is undoubtedly the most astonishing instance of agility on
record since the cow jumped over the moon to the tune of “Hi, diddle,
diddle.” Our entrance, just as he had got on his knees, and was going to
take her hand, somewhat disconcerted him; and we turned the incident to
such advantage, that our very first jest at him in the presence of the
family caused him (the boy has a fine sense of humour) to retire
precipitately from the room, for fear he should compromise his dignity
by exploding in laughter. He strove to preserve his gloomy demeanour for
a day or two; but finding it of no effect to maintain a stern scowl on
his forehead, while his mouth expanded in an unwilling grin, he gave up
the attempt; and now greets any allusion to his former tragedy airs with
as hearty a laugh as anybody.

Our impression is very strong that Mr Smith is not himself satisfied
with his work, and that the undiscriminating applause he has met with in
some quarters will not deceive him. He must know that the ornaments of
the Life-drama are out of all proportion to the framework, and that the
latter is too loosely put together to float far down the crowded stream
of time. He has a strong leaning to mysticism, a common vice of the
times, and should therefore exclude carefully all ideas which he cannot
render clear to himself, and all expressions which fail to convey his
meaning clearly to others. He should remember that, though a fine image
may be welcomed for its own sake, yet, as a rule, similes and images are
only admissible as illustrations, and if they do not render the parent
thought more clear, they render it more cloudy. His great want is a
proper root-idea, and intelligible theme which shall command the
sympathies of other minds: these obtained, he will shake his faults like
dewdrops from his mane; and he will find that his tropes, thus
disciplined, will not only obtain double force from their fitness, but
will also be intrinsically finer than the random growths of accident. It
is true that Mr Smith, through his spokesman, Walter, mentions a plan
for a poem, his “loved and chosen theme,” (p. 38). He says,

              “I will begin in the oldest—Far in God,
              When all the ages, and all suns and worlds,
              And souls of men and angels lay in Him,
              Like unborn forests in an acorn cup.”

A prospect, the mere sketch of which fills us with concern. If we
thought he would listen, we would say—No, Mr Smith; don’t begin in the
oldest—leave the “dead eternities” alone, and don’t let your “first
chorus,” on any account, be “the shouting of the morning stars.” Rather
begin, as you propose to end, with “silence,” than in this melancholy
way. Let your thoughts be based on the unalterable emotions of the
heart, not on the wild driftings of the fancy. Observe all that strongly
appeals to the feelings of others and of yourself—let art assist you to
select and to combine—your warm imagination will give life to the
conception, and your powers of fancy and language will vividly express
it. Don’t set down any odd conceit that may strike you about the
relation of the sea and the stars, and the moon; but when you conceive
an image which, besides being fine in itself, shall bear essential, not
accidental, relation to some part of your theme, put it by till your
main subject, in its natural expansion, affords it a fitting place.

Following this course, we trust that Alexander will prove worthy of the
many illustrious scions of the house of Smith who have distinguished
themselves since Adam, and maintain its precedence over the houses of
Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Sydney the Reverend—Horace and James of the
Rejected Addresses—and William, of the modest and too obscure dramas
(noticed by us before), might well become prouder of the patronymic to
which they have already lent lustre, when Alexander, mellowed by time,
and taught by thought and experience, shall have produced his next and
riper work.




                  THE EPIDEMICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.[8]


This extremely interesting work of Dr Hecker’s consists of three several
treatises, or historical sketches, published at different times, and
here collected in a single volume. They are translated and published
under the direction of the Sydenham Society—a society which has been the
means of introducing to the medical profession, and to the English
reader, some of the most eminent works of German physicians and
physiologists. It is seldom, indeed, that their publications are of the
popular and amusing description of the one we have selected for notice;
but, speaking of them as a series, they are of that high philosophic
character which must render them acceptable to every man of liberal
education. How far they are accessible to the public at large we have
not the means of knowing, nor whether the purchase of any single volume
is a practicable matter to a non-subscriber; but, at all events, means,
we think, ought to be taken to place the whole series on the shelves of
every public library.

The great plague of the fourteenth century, called in Germany _The Black
Death_, from the dark spots of fatal omen which appeared on the bodies
of its victims; the _Dancing Mania_, which afterwards broke out both in
Germany and Italy; and the _Sweating Sickness_, which had its origin in
England, but extended itself also widely upon the Continent—these form
the three subjects of Dr Hecker’s book. The dancing mania, known in
Germany as St John’s or St Vitus’s Dance, and in Italy as the poison of
the Tarantula or Tarantism, will be most likely to present us with novel
and curious facts, and we shall be tempted to linger longest upon this
topic. Readers of all kinds, whether of Thucydides, or Boccaccio, or
Defoe, are familiar with the phenomena and events which characterise a
plague, and which bear a great resemblance to each other in all periods
of history. We shall, therefore, refrain from dwelling at any length
upon the well-known terrors of the Great Mortality or the Black Death.

Yet the subject is one of undying interest. The Great Plague is, in this
respect, like the Great Revolution of France; you may read fifty
histories of it, and pronounce it to be a topic thoroughly worn out and
exhausted; and yet when the fifty-first history is put into your hands,
the chance is that you will be led on, and will read to the very last
page with almost undiminished interest. The charm is alike in both
cases. It is that our humanity is seen in its moments of great, if not
glorious excitement—of _plenary inspiration_ of some kind, though it be
of an evil spirit—seen in moments when all its passions, good and bad,
and the bad chiefly, stand out revealed in full unfettered strength. And
the history, in both cases, is of perpetual value and significance to
us. Plagues, as our own generation can testify, are no more eradicated
or banished from the cities of mankind than political revolutions. They
read a lesson to us which, terrible as it is, we are still slow in
learning.

We are often haunted with the dread of over-population. This fear may
perhaps be encountered by another of a quite opposite description, when
we read that in the fourteenth century one quarter at least of the
population of the Old World was swept away in the short space of four
years! Such is the calculation which Dr Hecker makes, on the best
sources of information within his reach. If such devastating plagues
arise, as our author thinks, from great physical causes over which man
has no control, from an atmospheric poison not traceable to his
ignorance or vice, and which no advancement in science can prevent or
expel, there is indeed room for an undefined dread of periodical
depopulations, putting to the rout all human calculations and all human
forethought. But on this point we have our doubts.

“An inquiry into the causes of the Black Death,” says our author, “will
not be without important results in the study of the plagues which have
visited the world, although it cannot advance beyond generalisation
without entering upon a field hitherto uncultivated, and, to this hour,
entirely unknown. Mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, of
which we have credible information, had preceded it. From China to the
Atlantic the foundations of the earth were shaken—throughout Asia and
Europe the atmosphere was in commotion, and endangered, by its baneful
influence, both vegetable and animal life.” When, however, Dr Hecker
proceeds to specify the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and other
terrific events which shook the foundations of the earth from China to
the Atlantic, we do not find that the enumeration at all bears out this
general description. A large proportion of such disastrous phenomena as
he has been able to collect relate to China; and although the plague
should be proved to have travelled from the East, it is not traced, as
an identical disease, so far eastward as to China, and therefore is but
vaguely connected with the great droughts and violent rains which
afflicted that region of the earth. Nearer at home, in Europe, we have
mention made of “frequent thunderstorms,” and an eruption of Ætna, but
thunderstorms and a volcanic eruption have not, on other occasions,
given rise to a plague; not to add, that if the atmosphere of Europe was
tainted from causes of this kind, springing from its own soil and its
own climate, it would be quite superfluous to trace the disease to the
East at all. We should merely say that a similar disease broke out in
different countries at the same time, demonstrating some quite cosmical
or universal cause. The most important fact which is mentioned here, as
proving some wide atmospheric derangement, is the “thick stinking mist
seen to advance from the East and spread itself over Italy.” But Dr
Hecker himself adds, that at such a time natural occurrences would be
transformed or exaggerated into miracles; and we are quite sure that any
really extraordinary event, occurring simultaneously with the plague,
would, without further inquiry, be described as the cause of it. An
unusual mist, just as a comet or any unusual meteor, appearing at the
time, would be charged with the calamity.

On so obscure a subject we have no desire to advance any dogmatic
opinion. There are facts connected with this and other great epidemics
which, to men of cautious research, have seemed to point to some
widespreading poison, some subtle, deleterious matter diffused through
the air, or some abnormal condition of the atmosphere itself. Such there
may be, acting either as immediate or predisposing cause of the disease.
But to our apprehension, all plagues and pestilences have been bred from
two well-known and sufficient causes—famine and filth. Scanty and
unwholesome diet first disorders and debilitates the frame, fevers
ensue, the foul atmosphere of crowded unventilated dwellings becomes
impregnated by breathings that have passed through putrid lungs; and
thus the disease, especially in a hot climate, attains to that malignity
that the stricken wretch, move him where you will, becomes the centre of
infection to all around him, and from his pestiferous dwelling there
creeps a poison which invades even the most salubrious portion of the
town; which, stealing through the garden-gate and over the flower-beds,
enters even into the very palace itself. Doubtless other causes may
co-operate, as unusual rains and fogs; the fact that a murrain amongst
cattle sometimes accompanies or precedes a plague, indicates local
causes of this description; but the true source of the disease lies in
the city man has built, in his improvidence or injustice, his ignorance
or his sloth.

It is thus that Dr Hecker speaks of the manner in which the disease may
be propagated, so far as the agency of man is concerned:—we do not seem
to want any quite cosmical influence.


  “Thus much from authentic sources of the nature of the Black Death.
  The descriptions which have been communicated contain, with a few
  unimportant exceptions, all the symptoms of the Oriental plague, which
  have been observed in more modern times. No doubt can obtain on this
  point. The facts are placed clearly before our eyes. We must, however,
  bear in mind that this violent disease does not always appear in the
  same form; and that, while the essence of the poison which it
  produces, and which is separated so abundantly from the body of the
  patient, remains unchanged, it is proteoform in its varieties, from
  the almost imperceptible vesicle, unaccompanied by fever, which exists
  for some time before it extends its poison inwardly, and then excites
  fevers and buboes, to the fatal form in which carbuncular
  inflammations fall upon the most important viscera.

  “Such was the form which the plague assumed in the fourteenth century,
  for the accompanying chest affection, which appeared in all the
  countries whereof we have received any account, cannot, on a
  comparison with similar and familiar symptoms, be considered as any
  other than the inflammation in the lungs of modern medicine, a disease
  which at present only appears sporadically, and owing to a putrid
  decomposition of the fluids is probably combined with hemorrhages from
  the vessels of the lungs. Now as every carbuncle, whether it be
  cutaneous or internal, generates in abundance the matter of contagion
  which has given rise to it, so therefore must the breaths of the
  affected have been poisonous in this plague, and on this account its
  power of contagion wonderfully increased; wherefore the opinion
  appears incontrovertible that, owing to the accumulated numbers of the
  diseased, not only individual chambers and houses, but whole cities,
  were infected; which, moreover, in the middle ages, were, with few
  exceptions, _narrowly built, kept in a filthy state, and surrounded
  with stagnant ditches_. Flight was in consequence of no avail to the
  timid; for some, though they had sedulously avoided all communication
  with the diseased and the suspected, yet their clothes were saturated
  with the pestifierous atmosphere, and every inspiration imparted to
  them the seeds of the destructive malady which, in the greater number
  of cases, germinated with but too much fertility. Add to which the
  usual propagation of the plague through clothes, beds, and a thousand
  other things to which the pestilential poison adheres,—a propagation
  which, from want of caution, must have been infinitely multiplied; and
  since articles of this kind, removed from the access of air, not only
  retain the matter of contagion for an indefinite period, but also
  increase its activity, and engender it like a living being, frightful
  ill consequences followed for many years after the first fury of the
  pestilence was passed.”


It may be worth noticing that Dr Hecker, or his translator, uses the
terms contagion and infection indiscriminately; nor is the question
entered into whether the disease is capable of being propagated by mere
contact, without inhaling the morbific matter, or becoming inoculated
with it through some puncture in the skin. Dr Hecker nowhere gives
countenance to such a supposition. The poison would hardly penetrate by
mere touch through a sound and healthy skin. Such a belief, however, was
likely enough to prevail at a time when we are told that “even the eyes
of the patient were considered as sources of contagion, which had the
power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted
lustre or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether
in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was
considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment.”

Avignon is here mentioned as the first city in which the plague broke
out in Europe. We have a report of it from a contemporary physician, Guy
de Chauliac, a courageous man, it seems, who “vindicated the honour of
medicine by bidding defiance to danger, boldly and constantly assisting
the affected, and disdaining the excuse of his colleagues, who held the
Arabian notion, that medical aid was unavailing, and that the contagion
justified flight.” The plague appeared twice in Avignon, first in the
year 1348, and twelve years later, in 1360, “when it returned from
Germany.” On the first occasion it raged chiefly amongst the poor; on
the second more amongst the higher classes, destroying a great many
children, whom it had formerly spared, and but few women. We presume
that on the second occasion the plague was re-introduced at once amongst
the merchant class of the city, and this would account for fewer women
falling victims to it, because men of this class could take precautions
for the safety of their wives and daughters. But why a greater number of
children should have died, when the women were comparatively spared, is
what we will make no attempt to explain.

How fatal it proved at Florence, Boccaccio has recorded. It is from him
we learn with certainty that other animals besides man were capable of
being infected by the disease—a fact of no little interest in the
history of the plague. He mentions that he himself saw two hogs, on the
rags of a person who had died of plague, after staggering about for a
short time, fall down dead as if they had taken poison. A multitude of
dogs, cats, fowls, and other domesticated animals, were, he tells us,
fellow-sufferers with man.

In Germany the mortality was not so great as in Italy, but the disease
assumed the same character. In France, it is said, many were struck as
if by lightning, and died on the spot—and this more frequently among the
young and strong than the old. Throughout England the disease spread
with great rapidity, men dying in some cases immediately, in others
within twelve hours, or at latest in two days. Here, as elsewhere, the
inflammatory boils and buboes were recognised at once as prognosticating
a fatal issue. It first broke out in the county of Dorset. Few places
seem to have escaped; and the mortality was so great that contemporary
annalists have reported (with what degree of accuracy we cannot say)
that throughout the whole land not more than a tenth part of the
inhabitants had survived.

The north of Europe did not escape, nor did all the snows of Russia
protect her from this invasion. In Norway the disease broke out in a
frightful manner. Nor was the sea a refuge; sailors found no safety in
their ships; vessels were seen driving about on the ocean and drifting
on the shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.

It is a terrible history, this of a plague. Nevertheless, if we were
capable of surveying such events from an elevated position, where past
and future were revealed to our view, and the whole scheme of creation
unfolded to our knowledge, we should doubtless discover that even
plagues and pestilences play their parts for the welfare and advancement
of the human race. Nor are we without some glimpses of their utility.
Viewing the matter, in the first place, in a quite physiological light,
let us suppose that disease has been generated in a great city, that
debilitated parents give birth to feeble offspring, that the fever, or
whatever it may be, is wasting the strength of whole classes of the
population, is it not better that such disease should attain a power and
virulence that will enable it to sweep off at once a whole infected
generation, men, women, and children, leaving the population to be
replaced by the healthier who would survive? would not this be better
than to allow the disease to perpetuate itself indefinitely, and thus to
continue to multiply from an infected stock? The poison passes on, and
searches out other neighbourhoods where the like terrible remedy is
needed. Ay, but it passes, you say, into cities and districts where no
such curative process, no such restoration of the _breed_, was called
for. But it is always thus with the great laws of nature, or of
Providence. Thus far, and no farther! is said to the pestilence as well
as to the ocean; but the line along the beach is not kept or measured
with that petty precision which a land-surveyor would assuredly have
suggested. Man’s greatness arises in part from this struggle with an
external nature, which threatens from time to time to overwhelm him.
There is, according to his measurement of things, a dreadful surplus of
power and activity, both in the organic and the inorganic world. Nowhere
are the forces of nature exactly graduated to suit his taste or
convenience. Happily not. Man would sink into the tameness and
insipidity of an Arcadian shepherd, or the sheep he feeds and fondles,
if every wind that blew were exactly tempered to his own susceptibility.

But the moral effects of plague and pestilence—what good thing can be
said of them? A general dissoluteness, an unblushing villany, for the
most part prevails: a few instances of heroic virtue brighten out above
the corrupted mass. Well, is it nothing, then, that from time to time
our nature should be fully revealed to us in its utmost strength for
good or for evil? A very hideous revelation it may sometimes be, but not
the less salutary on this account. The mask of hypocrisy is torn off a
whole city; in one moment is revealed to a whole people what its
morality, what its piety is worth. Of the island of Cyprus, we are told,
that an earthquake shook its foundations, and was accompanied by so
frightful a hurricane that the inhabitants, _who had slain their
Mahometan slaves_ in order that they might not themselves be subjected
by them, fled in dismay in all directions. Who had slain their Mahometan
slaves! Their Christianity had brought them thus far on the road of
moral culture! At Lübeck, the Venice of the North, the wealthy merchants
were not, in this extremity, unmindful of the safety of their souls;
they spent their last strength in carrying their treasures to
monasteries and churches. Useless for all other purposes, their gold
would now purchase heaven. To such intelligent views of Christianity had
they attained! But the treasure had no longer any charm for the monks;
it might be infected; and even with them the thirst for gold was in
abeyance. They shut their gates upon it; yet still it was cast to them
over the convent walls. “People would not brook an impediment to the
last pious work to which they were driven by despair.”

Did all desert their post, or belie their professions? No; far from it.
Amongst other instances, take that of the Sisters of Charity at the
_Hotel Dieu_. “Though they lost their lives evidently from contagion,
and their numbers were several times renewed, there was still no want of
fresh candidates, who, strangers to the unchristian fear of death,
piously devoted themselves to their holy calling.”

But how cruel had their fears made the base multitude of Christendom!
They rose against the Jews. They sought an enemy. The wells were
poisoned; the Jews had poisoned them. Sordid natures invariably strive
to lose the sense of their own calamity in a vindictive passion against
some supposed author of it. For this reason it is, that, whatever the
nature of the public distress may be, they always fasten it upon some
human antagonist, whom they can have the luxury of hating and reviling.
If they cannot cure, they can at least revenge themselves.


  “The noble and the mean fearlessly bound themselves by an oath to
  extirpate the Jews by fire and sword, and to snatch them from their
  protectors, of whom the number was so small, that throughout all
  Germany but few places can be mentioned where these unfortunate people
  were not regarded as outlaws, and martyred and burnt. Solemn summonses
  were issued from Berne, to the towns of Basle, Freyburg, and
  Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as prisoners. The burgomasters and
  senators, indeed, opposed this requisition; but in Basle the populace
  obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the Jews, and to
  forbid persons of that community from entering their city for the
  space of two hundred years. Upon this all the Jews in Basle, whose
  number could not be inconsiderable, _were enclosed in a wooden
  building, constructed for the purpose, and burnt together with it_,
  upon the mere outcry of the people, without sentence or trial, which
  indeed would have availed them nothing. _Soon after the same thing
  took place at Freyburg._ A regular diet was held at Bennefeeld, in
  Alsace, where the bishops, lords, and barons, as also deputies of the
  counties and towns, consulted how they should proceed with regard to
  the Jews: and when the deputies of Strasburg—not, indeed, the bishop
  of this town, who proved himself a violent fanatic—spoke in favour of
  the persecuted, as nothing criminal was substantiated against them, a
  great outcry was raised, and it was vehemently asked why, if so, they
  had covered their wells and removed their buckets?” [The wells were
  not used in the mere suspicion that they were poisoned, and then the
  covering of them up became a proof with these reasoners that they
  _had_ been poisoned]. “A sanguinary decree was resolved upon, of which
  the populace, who obeyed here the call of the nobles and superior
  clergy, became but the too willing executioners. Wherever the Jews
  were not burnt they were at least banished, and so being compelled to
  wander about, they fell into the hands of the country people, who
  without humanity, and regardless of all laws, persecuted them with
  fire and sword. At Spires the Jews, driven to despair, assembled in
  their own habitations, which they set on fire, and thus consumed
  themselves with their families.”


The atrocities, in short, that were committed against this unhappy
people were innumerable. At Strasburg 2000 men were burnt in their own
burial-ground. At Mayence, 12,000 are said to have been put to a cruel
death. At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned themselves in their
own synagogue. Those whom the Christians saved they insisted upon
baptising! And, as fanaticism begets fanaticism, Jewish mothers were
seen throwing their children on the pile, _to prevent their being
baptised_, and then precipitating themselves into the flames. From many
of the accused the rack extorted a confession of guilt; and as some
Christians also were sentenced to death for poisoning the wells, Dr
Hecker suggests that it is not improbable the very belief in the
prevalence of the crime had induced some men of morbid imagination
really to commit it. When a faith in witchcraft, he observes, was
prevalent, many an old woman was tempted to mutter spells against her
neighbour. The false accusation had ended in producing, if not the crime
itself, yet the criminal intention.

When we remember what took place in England under the reign of one Titus
Oates, we shall not conclude that these terrible hallucinations of the
public mind are proofs of any very peculiar condition of barbarism.
Then, as at the later epoch to which we have alluded, a very marvellous
plot was devised and thoroughly credited. All the Jews throughout
Christendom were under the control and government of certain superiors
at Toledo—a secret and mysterious council of Rabbis—from whom they
received their commands. These prepared the poison with their own hands,
from spiders, owls, and other venomous animals, and distributed it in
little bags, with injunctions where it was to be thrown. Dr Hecker gives
us, in an appendix, an official account of the “Confessions made on the
15th September, in the year of our Lord 1348, in the castle of Chillon,
by the Jews arrested in Neustadt on the charge of poisoning the wells,
springs, and other places, also food, &c., with the design of destroying
and extirpating all Christians.” These confessions were, of course,
produced by the rack, or by the threat of torture, and the manifest
inutility of any defence or denial. Nor must it be forgotten, that the
official report was drawn up _after_ the whole of the Jews at Neustadt
had been burnt on this very charge. Amongst these confessions is one of
Balaviginus, a Jewish physician, arrested at Chillon “in consequence of
being found in the neighbourhood.” He was put for a short time upon the
rack, and, after being taken down, “confessed, after much hesitation,
that, about ten weeks before, the Rabbi Jacob of Toledo sent him, by a
Jewish boy, _some poison in the mummy of an egg_: it was a powder sewed
up in a thin leathern pouch, accompanied by a letter, commanding him, on
penalty of excommunication, and by his required obedience to the law, to
throw the poison into the larger and more frequented wells of Thonon.”
Similar letters had been sent to other Jews. All Jews, indeed, were
under the necessity of obeying these injunctions. He, Balaviginus, had
done so; he had thrown the poison into several wells. It was a powder
half red and half black. Red and black spots were produced by the
plague; it was right that this poison should partake of these two
colours.

Conveyed over the lake from Chillon to Clarens to point out the well
into which he had thrown the powder, Balaviginus, “on being conducted to
the spot, and having seen the well, acknowledged that to be the place,
saying, ‘This is the well into which I put the poison.’ The well was
examined in his presence, and the linen cloth in which the poison had
been wrapped was found. He acknowledged this to be the linen which had
contained the poison; he described it as being of two colours—red and
black.” We follow in imagination this Jewish physician. Taken from the
rack to his cell, he repeats whatever absurdity his unrelenting
persecutors put into his mouth. Rabbi Jacob of Toledo—mummy of an
egg—what you will. Conducted to the well—yes, this was the well; shown
the very rag—yes, this was the rag;—and the powder? yes, it was red and
black. What scorn and bitterness must have mingled with the agony of the
Jewish physician!

Amidst all this we hear the scourge and miserable chant of the
Flagellants, stirring up the people to fresh persecutions, and infecting
their minds with a superstition as terrible as the vice it pretended to
expiate. This was not, indeed, their first appearance in Europe; nor did
the Flagellants do more, at the commencement, than exaggerate the sort
of piety their own church had taught them. Happily, as their fanaticism
rose, they put themselves in opposition to the hierarchy, and were thus
the sooner dispersed. In their spiritual exultation they presumed to
reform or to dispense with the priesthood. They found themselves,
therefore, in their turn subjected to grave denunciations, and
pronounced to be one cause of the wrath of Heaven.

All this time what were the physicians doing? In the history of the
plague, written by a physician, the topic, we may be sure, is not
forgotten. But the information we glean is of a very scanty,
unsatisfactory character. As to the origin of the plague—“A grand
conjunction of the three superior planets, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, in
the sign of Aquarius, which took place, according to Guy de Chauliac, on
the 24th March 1345, was generally received as its principal cause. In
fixing the day, this physician, who was deeply versed in astrology, did
not agree with others; wherefore there arose various disputations of
weight in that age, but of none in ours.” The medical faculty of Paris
pronounced the same opinion. Being commissioned to report on the causes
and the remedies of this Great Mortality, they commence thus: “It is
known that in India, and the vicinity of the Great Sea, the
constellations which emulated the rays of the sun, and the warmth of the
heavenly fire, exerted their power especially against that sea, and
struggled violently with its waters.” Hence vapours and corrupted fogs;
hence no wholesome rain, or hail, or snow, or dew, could refresh the
earth. But notwithstanding this learning, quite peculiar to the age,
they were not more at fault than other learned bodies have been in later
times, in the practical remedies they suggested against the disease.
They were not entirely occupied in fixing the day when Jupiter, Mars,
and Saturn, had combated the sun over the great Indian Ocean. “They
did,” as Dr Hecker says, “what human intellect could do in the actual
condition of the healing art; and their knowledge of the disease was by
no means despicable.” When fevers have attained to that malignancy that
they take the name of plagues, they have escaped, we suspect, from the
control of the physician;—just as when fires take the name of
conflagrations, you must devote all your efforts to the saving of what
is yet unconsumed, and checking the extension of the flames.

Amongst the consequences of the plague, Dr Hecker notices that the
church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a
greater extent than after the Crusades; and that, on the subsidence of
the calamity, many entered the priesthood, or flocked to the
monasteries, who had no other motive than to participate in this wealth.
He adds, also, that,—


  “After the cessation of the Black Plague, a greater fecundity in women
  was everywhere remarkable—a grand phenomenon, which, from its
  occurrence after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction,
  if any occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the
  direction of general organic life. Marriages were, almost without
  exception, prolific, and double and treble births were more frequent
  than at other times; under which head we should remember the strange
  remark, that after the ‘great mortality’ _the children were said to
  have got fewer teeth than before_; at which contemporaries were
  mightily shocked, and even later writers have felt surprise.

  “If we examine the grounds of this oft-repeated assertion, we shall
  find that they were astonished to see children cut twenty, or at most
  twenty-two teeth, under the supposition that a greater number had
  formerly fallen to their share. Some writers of authority, as, for
  example, the physician Savonarola, at Ferrara, who probably looked for
  twenty-eight teeth in children, published their opinions on this
  subject. Others copied from them without seeing for themselves, as
  often happens in other matters which are equally evident; and thus the
  world believed in a miracle of an imperfection in the human body,
  which had been caused by the Black Plague.”


That a fresh impetus would be given to population seems to us quite
sufficiently accounted for, without calling into aid any “higher power
in the direction of general organic life.” Men and women would marry
early; and the very fact of their having survived the plague would, in
general, prove that they were healthy subjects, or had been well and
temperately brought up. There would be the same impetus to population
that an extensive emigration would cause, and an emigration that had
carried away most of the sick and the feeble. The belief that double and
treble births were more frequent than at other times, may perhaps be
explained in the same manner as the belief that there were fewer teeth
than before in the human head. No accurate observations had been at all
made upon the subject.

We come next in order to _The Dancing Mania_—an epidemic of a quite
different character. Not, indeed, as the name might imply, that the
convulsive dance was a very slight affliction—it was felt to be quite
otherwise; but because it belongs to that class of nervous maladies in
which there is great room for mental or psychical influence. Such
disorders spring up in a certain condition of the body, but the form
they assume will depend on social circumstances, or the ideas current at
the time. And thus Dr Hecker finds no difficulty in arranging the
_Convulsionnaires_ of France, or the early Methodists of England and
Wales, in the same category as the maniacal dancers of Germany. It was
in all the cases a physical tendency of a similar character, brought out
under the influence of different ideas.

Dr Hecker mentions a case which, from the simplicity of the facts, would
form a good introduction to others of a more complicated character. In
the year 1787, at a cotton-manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire,
a girl put a mouse into the bosom of another girl, who had a great dread
of mice. It threw her into a fit, and the fit continued, with the most
violent convulsions, for twenty-four hours. On the following day three
other girls were seized in the same way; on the day after six more. A
report was now spread that a strange disease had been introduced into
the factory by a bag of cotton opened in the house. Others who had not
even seen the infected, but only heard of their convulsions, were seized
with the same fits. In three days, the number of the sufferers had
reached to twenty-four. The symptoms were, a sense of great anxiety,
strangulation, and very strong convulsions, which lasted from one to
twenty-four hours, and of so violent a nature that it required four or
five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair, and
dashing their heads against the floor and walls. Dr St Clare was sent
for from Preston. Dr St Clare deserves to have his name remembered. The
ingenious man took with him a portable electrical machine. The electric
shock cured all his patients without an exception. When this was known,
and the belief could no longer hold its ground that the plague had been
brought in by the cotton bag, no fresh person was affected.

If we substitute for the cotton bag a belief in some demoniacal
influence, compelling people to dance against their will, we have the
dancing mania of Germany. Unhappily there was no St Clare at hand, with
his electrical machine, to give a favourable shock to body and mind at
once, and thus disperse the malady before it gathered an overpowering
strength by the very numbers of the infected.


  “The effects of the Black Death,” writes Dr Hecker (whose account of
  the disorder we cannot do better than give, with some abridgments),
  “had not yet subsided, when a strange delusion arose in Germany. It
  was a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the
  human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more
  than two centuries, since which time it has never reappeared. It was
  called the Dance of St John, or of St Vitus, on account of the
  Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterised, and which gave to
  those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and screaming and
  foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It did not
  remain confined to particular localities, but was propagated by the
  sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of
  Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west, which were
  already prepared for its reception by the prevailing opinions of the
  times.

  “So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at
  Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one
  common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the streets and in
  the churches, the following strange spectacle. They formed circles
  hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control over their
  senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours
  together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in
  a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and
  groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in
  clothes, bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again
  recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack.
  This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany
  which followed these spasmodic ravings; but the bystanders frequently
  relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping or
  trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing, they neither saw nor
  heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses,
  but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits, whose
  names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that
  they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which
  obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the
  heavens open, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary,
  according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and
  variously reflected in their imaginations.”


The disease spread itself in two directions. It extended from
Aix-la-Chapelle through the towns of the Netherlands, and also through
the Rhenish towns. In Liege, Utrecht, and many other towns of Belgium,
the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists
already girt with a cloth or bandage, that they might receive immediate
relief on the attack of the tympany. It seems that the crowd around were
often more ready to administer relief by kicks and blows than by drawing
this bandage tight. The most opposite feelings seem to have been excited
in the multitude by these exhibitions. Sometimes an idle and vicious mob
would take advantage of them, and they became the occasion of much riot
and debauchery. More frequently, however, the demoniacal origin of the
disease, of which few men doubted, led to its being regarded with
astonishment and horror. Religious processions were instituted on its
account, masses and hymns were sung, and the whole power of the
priesthood was called in to exorcise the evil spirit. The malady rose to
its greatest height in some of the towns on the Rhine. At Cologne the
number of the possessed amounted to more than five hundred, whilst at
Metz the streets are said to have been filled (numbering women and
children together) with eleven hundred dancers. Even those idle
vagabonds who, for their own purposes, imitated their convulsive
movements, assisted to spread the disorder; for in these maladies the
susceptible are infected quite as easily by the imitation as by the
reality.

The physicians stood aloof. Acknowledged as a demoniacal possession,
they left the treatment of the disease entirely to the priesthood; and
their exorcisms were not without avail. But it was necessary to this
species of remedy that the patients should have faith in the church and
its holy ministers. Without faith there would certainly, in such a case,
be no cure; and, unhappily, the report had been spread by some
irreverend schismatics that the disorder itself was owing—to what will
our readers suppose?—to an imperfect baptism—to the baptism of children
by the hands of unchaste priests. Where this notion prevailed, the
exorcism, we need not say, was unavailing.

The malady first bore the name of St John’s Dance, afterwards that of St
Vitus’s. This second name it took from the mere circumstance that St
Vitus was the saint appealed to for its cure. A legend had been framed
with a curious disregard—even for a legend—of all history and
chronology, in which St Vitus, who suffered martyrdom, as the church
records, under the Emperor Domitian, is described as praying, just
before he bent his neck to the sword, that he might protect from the
Dancing Mania all those _who should solemnise the day of his
commemoration_, and fast upon its eve. The prayer was granted; a voice
from heaven was heard saying, “Vitus, thy prayer is accepted.” He
became, of course, the patron saint of those afflicted with the dancing
plague. But the name under which it first appeared, of St John’s Dance,
receives from Dr Hecker an explanation which points out to us a probable
origin of the disease itself, or of the peculiar form which it assumed.


  “The connection,” he says, “which John the Baptist had with the
  dancing mania of the fourteenth century, was of a totally different
  character. He was originally far from being a protecting saint to
  those who were attacked, or one who would be likely to give them
  relief from a malady considered as the work of the devil. On the
  contrary, the manner in which he was worshipped afforded an important
  and very evident cause for its development. From the remotest period,
  perhaps even so far back as the fourth century, St John’s day was
  solemnised with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the
  original mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different
  nations by superadded relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans
  transferred to the festival of St John’s day an ancient heathen
  usage—the kindling of the ‘hodfyr,’ which was forbidden them by St
  Boniface; and the belief subsists even to the present day, that people
  and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are
  protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a
  kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian dances, which have originated
  from similar causes among all the rude nations of the earth, and the
  wild extravagancies of a heated imagination, were the constant
  accompaniments of this half-heathen, half-christian festival.”


In a note at a subsequent page Dr Hecker cites some curious passages to
show what in the middle ages took place at “St John’s fires.” Bones,
horns, and other rubbish were heaped together to be consumed in smoke,
while persons of all ages danced round the flames as if they had been
possessed. Others seized burning flambeaus, and made a circuit of the
fields, in the supposition that they thereby screened them from danger;
while others again turned a cartwheel, to represent the retrograde
movement of the sun. The last circumstance takes back the imagination to
the old primitive worship of the sun; and perhaps the very fires of St
John might date their history from those kindled in honour of Baal or
Moloch. Dr Hecker suggests that mingling with these heathen traditions
or customs a remembrance of the history of St John’s death—that dance
which occasioned his decapitation—might also have had its share in
determining the peculiar manner in which this saint’s day should be
observed. However that may be, as we find that the first dancers in
Aix-la-Chapelle appeared with St John’s name in their mouths, the
conjecture is very probable that the wild revels of St John’s day had
given rise, if not to the disease, yet to the type or form in which it
appeared.

At a subsequent period, indeed, when the disorder had assumed, if we may
so speak, a more settled aspect, the name of St John was no otherwise
associated with it than the name of St Vitus. People danced upon his
festival to obtain a cure. And these periodical dances, while they
relieved the patients, assisted also to perpetuate the malady.
Throughout the whole of June, we are told, prior to the festival of St
John, many men felt a disquietude and restlessness which they were
unable to overcome. They were dejected, timid, and anxious; wandered
about in an unsettled state, being tormented with twitching pains, which
seized them suddenly in different parts; they eagerly expected the eve
of St John’s day, in the confident hope that, by dancing at the altars
of this saint, they would be freed from all their sufferings. Nor were
they disappointed. By dancing and raving for three hours to the utmost
scope of their desires, they obtained peace for the rest of the year.
For a long time, however, we hear of cases which assumed the most
terrific form. Speaking of a period which embraced the close of the
fifteenth century, Dr Hecker says:—


  “The St Vitus’s dance attacked people of all stations, _especially
  those who led a sedentary life_, such as shoemakers and tailors; but
  even the most robust peasants abandoned their labours in the fields,
  as if they were possessed by evil spirits; and thus those affected
  were seen assembling indiscriminately, from time to time, at certain
  appointed places, and, unless prevented by the lookers-on, continuing
  to dance without intermission, until their very last breath was
  expended. Their fury and extravagance of demeanour so completely
  deprived them of their senses, that many of them dashed their brains
  out against the walls and corners of buildings, or rushed headlong
  into rapid rivers, where they found a watery grave. Roaring and
  foaming as they were, the bystanders could only succeed in restraining
  them by placing benches and chairs in their way, so that, by the high
  leaps they were tempted to take, their strength might be exhausted.”


Music, however, was a still better resource. It excited, but it hastened
forward the paroxysm, and doubtless reduced it to some measure and
rhythm. The magistrates even hired musicians for the purpose of carrying
the dancers the more rapidly through the attack, and directed that
athletic men should be sent among them, in order to complete their
exhaustion. A marvellous story is related on the authority of one Felix
Plater: Several powerful men being commissioned to dance with a girl who
had the dancing mania till she had recovered from her disorder, they
successively relieved each other, and danced on for the space of four
weeks! at the end of which time the patient fell down exhausted, was
carried to an hospital, and there recovered. She had never once
undressed, was entirely regardless of the pain of her lacerated feet,
and had merely sat down occasionally to take some nourishment or to
slumber, and even then “the hopping movement of her body continued.”

Happily, however, this mania grew more rare every year, so that in the
beginning of the seventeenth century we may be said to be losing sight
of it in Germany. Nor shall we follow out its history further in that
country, because the same disorder, under a different form, made its
appearance in Italy, and we must by no means neglect to notice the
dancing mania which was so universally attributed to the bite of the
tarantula. Whatever part the festival of St John the Baptist performed
in Germany, as an exciter of the disease, that part was still more
clearly performed in Italy by the popular belief in the venom of a
spider.

We shall not go back with Dr Hecker into the fears or superstitions of
classical times as to the bite of certain spiders or lizards; we must
keep more strictly to our text; we must start from the period when men’s
minds were still open to pain and alarm on account of the frequent
return of the plague.


  “The bite of venomous spiders, or rather the unreasonable fear of its
  consequences, excited at such a juncture, though it could not have
  done so at an earlier period, a violent nervous disorder, which, like
  St Vitus’s dance in Germany, spread by sympathy, increasing in
  severity as it took a wider range, and still further extending its
  ravages from its long continuance. Thus, from the middle of the
  fourteenth century, the furies of _The Dance_ brandished their scourge
  over afflicted mortals; and music, for which the inhabitants of Italy
  now probably for the first time manifested susceptibility and talent,
  became capable of exciting ecstatic attacks in those affected, and
  thus furnished the magical means of exorcising their melancholy.”


Does the learned doctor insinuate that the Italians owed their natural
taste for music to this invasion of Tarantism?


  “At the close of the fifteenth century we find that Tarantism had
  spread beyond the boundaries of Apulia, and that the fear of being
  bitten by venomous spiders had increased. Nothing short of death
  itself was expected from the wound which these insects inflicted; and
  if those who were bitten escaped with their lives, they were said to
  be pining away in a desponding state of lassitude. Many became
  weak-sighted or hard of hearing; some lost the power of speech; and
  all were insensible to ordinary causes of excitement. Nothing but the
  flute or the cithern afforded them relief. At the sound of these
  instruments they awoke as if by enchantment, opened their eyes, and
  moving slowly at first, according to the measure of the music, were,
  as the time quickened, gradually hurried on to the most passionate
  dance. It was generally observable that country people, _who were rude
  and ignorant of music, evinced on these occasions an unusual degree of
  grace_, as if they had been well practised in elegant movements of the
  body; for it is a peculiarity in nervous disorders of this kind that
  the organs of motion are in an altered condition, and are completely
  under the control of the overstrained spirits.”


This increased agility and grace of movement is by no means to be
discredited by the reader. It is a symptom which distinguishes one class
of epileptic patients. Some have attributed it to an over-excitement of
the cerebellum. However that may be, there are greater wonders than this
contained in our most sober and trustworthy books on the disorders of
the nervous system. We continue the account:—


  “Cities and villages alike resounded throughout the summer season with
  the notes of fifes, clarinets, and Turkish drums; and patients were
  everywhere to be met with who looked to dancing as their only remedy.
  Alexander ab Alexandro, who gives this account, saw a young man in a
  remote village who was seized with a violent attack of Tarantism. He
  listened with eagerness and a fixed stare to the sound of a drum, and
  his graceful movements gradually became more and more violent, until
  his dancing was converted into a succession of frantic leaps, which
  required the utmost exertion of his whole strength. In the midst of
  this overstrained exertion _of mind and body_ the music suddenly
  ceased, and he immediately fell powerless to the ground, where he lay
  senseless and motionless until its magical effect again aroused him to
  a renewal of his impassioned performances.”


We have put the expression “mind and body” in italics, because we may as
well take this opportunity to observe, that although convulsions of this
kind are excited, and assume a certain form on account of the
predominance of some idea, yet, when once called forth, they are almost
entirely mechanical in their nature. Mere animal excitability—what is
called the reflex action, or other automatic movements quite as little
associated with the immediate operations of “mind”—carry on the rest of
the process. And it is some consolation to think that the appearance of
pain and distress which marks convulsive disorders of all descriptions,
is, for the most part, illusory. The premonitory symptoms may be very
distressing, but the condition of the patient, when the fit is on, is
that of insensibility to pain.

The general conviction was, that by music and dancing the poison of the
tarantula was distributed over the whole body, and expelled through the
skin; but, unfortunately, it was also believed that if the slightest
vestige of it remained behind the disorder would break out again. Thus
there was no confidence excited in a perfect cure. Men who had danced
themselves well one summer watched the next summer for the returning
symptoms, and found in themselves what they looked for. Thus—


  “The number of those affected by it increased beyond belief, for
  whoever had actually been, or even fancied that he had been once
  bitten by a poisonous spider or scorpion, made his appearance annually
  whenever the merry notes of the Tarantella resounded. Inquisitive
  females joined the throng and caught the disease—not indeed from the
  poison of the spider, but from the mental poison which they eagerly
  received through the eye; and thus the cure of the _Tarantati_
  gradually became established as a regular festival of the populace.”


It was customary for whole bands of musicians to traverse Italy during
the summer months, and the cure of the disordered was undertaken on a
grand scale. This season of dancing and music was called “The women’s
little carnival,” for it was women more especially who conducted the
arrangements. It was they, too, it seems, who paid the musicians their
fee. The music itself received its due share of study and attention.
There were different kinds of the Tarantella (as the curative melody was
called) suited to every variety of the ailment.

One very curious circumstance connected with this disease must not pass
unnoticed—the passion excited by certain colours. Amongst the Germans,
those afflicted by St Vitus’s dance were enraged by any garment of the
colour of red. Amongst the Italians, on the contrary, red colours were
generally liked. Some preferred one colour, some another, but the
devotion to the chosen colour was one of the most extraordinary symptoms
which the disease manifested in Italy. The colour that pleased the
patient he was enamoured of; the colour that displeased excited his
utmost fury.


  “Some preferred yellow, others were enraptured with green; and
  eyewitnesses describe this rage for colours as so extraordinary that
  they can scarcely find words with which to express their astonishment.
  No sooner did the patients obtain a sight of their favourite colour
  than they rushed like infuriated animals towards the object, devoured
  it with their eager looks, kissed and caressed it in every possible
  way, and, gradually resigning themselves to softer sensations, adopted
  the languishing expression of enamoured lovers, and embraced the
  handkerchief, or whatever article it might be which was presented to
  them, with the most intense ardour, while the tears streamed from
  their eyes as if they were completely overwhelmed by the inebriating
  impression on their senses.

  “The dancing fits of a certain Capuchin friar in Tarentum excited so
  much curiosity that Cardinal Cajetano proceeded to the monastery that
  he might see with his own eyes what was going on. As soon as the monk,
  who was in the midst of his dance, perceived the spiritual prince
  clothed in his red garments, he no longer listened to the tarantella
  of the musicians, but with strange gestures endeavoured to approach
  the cardinal, as if he wished to count the very threads of his scarlet
  robe, and to allay his intense longing by its odour. The interference
  of the spectators, and his own respect, prevented his touching it, and
  thus, the irritation of his senses not being appeased, he fell into a
  state of such anguish and disquietude that he presently sunk down in a
  swoon, from which he did not recover until the cardinal
  compassionately gave him his cape. This he immediately seized in the
  greatest ecstasy, and pressed, now to his breast, now to his forehead
  and cheeks, and then again commenced his dance as if in the frenzy of
  a love fit.”


Another curious symptom, which was probably connected with this passion
for colour, was an ardent longing for the sea. These over-susceptible
people were attracted irresistibly to the boundless expanse of the blue
ocean, and lost themselves in its contemplation. Some were carried so
far by this vague passionate longing as to cast themselves into the
waves.

The persuasion of the inevitable and fatal consequences of being bitten
by the tarantula was so general that it exercised a dominion over the
strongest minds. Men who in their sober moments considered the disorder
as a species of nervous affection depending on the imagination, were
themselves brought under the influence of this imagination, and suffered
from the disorder at the approach of the dreaded tarantula. A very
striking anecdote of this kind is told of the Bishop of Foligno. Quite
sceptical as to the venom of the insect, he allowed himself to be bitten
by a tarantula. But he had not measured the strength of his own
imagination, however well he had estimated the real malignancy of the
spider. The bishop fell ill, nor was there any cure for him but the
music and the dance. Many reverend old gentlemen, it is said, to whom
this remedy appeared highly derogatory, only exaggerated their symptoms
by delaying to have recourse to what, after all, was found to be the
true and sole specific.

But even popular errors are not eternal. This of Tarantism continued,
our author tells us, throughout the whole of the seventeenth century,
but gradually declined till it became limited to single cases. “It may
therefore be not unreasonably maintained,” he concludes, “that the
Tarantism of modern times bears nearly the same relation to the original
malady as the St Vitus’s dance which still exists, and certainly has all
along existed, bears, in certain cases, to the original dancing mania of
the dancers of St John.”

In a subsequent chapter, our author informs us that a disease of a
similar character existed in Abyssinia, or still exists, for the
authority he quotes is that of an English surgeon who resided nine years
in Abyssinia, from 1810 to the year 1819. We cannot pretend to say that
we have ever seen the book, which the learned German has, however, not
permitted to escape him—we have never seen the _Life and Adventures of
Nathaniel Pearce_, written by himself; but, judging by the extract here
given, Nathaniel Pearce must be a person worth knowing, he writes with
so much candour and simplicity. The disease is called in Abyssinia the
Tigretier, because it occurs most frequently in the Tigrè country. The
first remedy resorted to is the introduction of a learned Dofter, “who
reads the Gospel of St John, and drenches the patient with cold water
daily.” If this does not answer, then the relations hire a band of
trumpeters, drummers, and fifers, and buy a quantity of liquor; all the
young men and women of the place assemble at the patient’s house, and
she (for it is generally a woman), arrayed in all the finery and
trinkets that can be borrowed from the neighbours, is excited by the
music to dance, day after day if necessary, till she drops down from
utter exhaustion. The disease is attended with a great emaciation; and
the doctor says “he was almost alarmed to see one nearly a skeleton move
with such strength.” He then proceeds to recount his own domestic
calamity in a strain of the most commendable candour:—


  “I could not have ventured to write this from hearsay, nor could I
  conceive it possible until I was obliged to put this remedy in
  practice upon my own wife, who was seized with the same disorder. I at
  first thought that a whip would be of some service, and one day
  attempted a few strokes when unnoticed by any person, _we being by
  ourselves_, and I having a strong suspicion that this ailment sprang
  from the weak minds of women, who were encouraged in it for the sake
  of the grandeur, rich dress, and music which accompany the cure. But
  how much was I surprised, the moment I struck a light blow, thinking
  to do good, to find that she became like a corpse; and even the joints
  of her fingers became so stiff that I could not straighten them.
  Indeed, I really thought that she was dead, and immediately made it
  known to the people in the house that she had fainted, but did not
  tell them the cause; upon which they immediately brought music, which
  I had for many days denied them, and which soon revived her; and I
  then left the house to her relations, to cure her at my expense. One
  day I went privately with a companion to see my wife dance, and kept
  at a short distance, as I was ashamed to go near the crowd. In looking
  steadfastly upon her, while dancing or jumping, more like a deer than
  a human being, I said that it certainly was not my wife; at which my
  companion burst into a fit of laughter, from which he could scarcely
  refrain all the way home.”


The capability of sustaining the most violent exercise, for a long time
together, and on very little food, is not one of the least perplexities
attendant upon these nervous or epileptic diseases. The partial
suspension of sensation and volition, by sparing the brain, may have
something to do with it. But into scientific perplexities of this kind
we cannot now enter. One plain and homely caution is derivable from all
these histories. Good sense is a great preservative of health. Do not
voluntarily make a fool of yourself, or your folly may become in turn
the master of your reason. Epilepsy has been brought on by the
simulation of epilepsy. We doubt not that a man might dance to his own
shadow, and talk to it, as it danced before him on the wall, till he
drove himself into a complete frenzy. A sect in America thought fit to
introduce certain grimaces, laughing, weeping, and the like, into their
public service. It was not long before their grimaces, in some of their
numbers, became involuntary; the muscles of the face had escaped the
control of the will. A decided _tongue-mania_ was exhibited a short time
amongst the Irvingites. Happily, in the present state of society, men’s
minds are called off into so many directions, that a predominant idea of
this kind has little chance of establishing itself in that tyrannous
manner which we have seen possible in the middle ages. But it is better
not to play with edged tools. If people will stand round a table, fixing
their minds on one idea—that a certain mysterious influence will pass
through their fingers to move the table—they will lose, for a time, the
voluntary command over their own fingers, which will exert themselves
without any volition or consciousness on their part. They are entering,
in fact, into that state which, in the olden time, was considered a
demoniacal possession; so that, speaking from this point of view, one
may truly say that “Satan does turn the table,” but it is by entering
into the table-turner. When we have been asked whether there is
_anything_ in mesmerism, we have always answered—a great deal more than
you ought, without medical advice, to make trial of. Nor do we at all
admire the performance of the so-called electro-biologist. Experiments
in the interest of science are permissible; but is it fit that any one
should practise the art of inducing a temporary state of idiocy in
persons of weak or susceptible nerves, for the purpose of collecting a
crowd, and passing round the hat?

The subject of the third treatise of Dr Hecker is the _Sweating
Sickness_. This third part is more miscellaneous than its predecessors,
and we have no space to do justice to its varied and sometimes
disputable matter. Dr Hecker describes the sweating sickness as a legacy
left us by the civil wars of York and Lancaster. It first developed
itself in Richmond’s army, which had been collected from abroad,
over-fatigued by long marches in a very damp season, and probably ill
supplied with rations. Its rapid extension through the cities he
attributes to the intemperance of the English, to their overfeeding, and
the want of cleanliness in their houses. Gluttony, and the filth of the
rush-covered floors, he detects even amongst the wealthiest of the land.
For a minute description of the disease, and the Doctor’s investigation
into the nature of it, we must refer to the book itself.

On the physicians, and the manner in which they addressed themselves to
the encounter of this strange calamity, there is a passage which it may
be instructive to peruse:—


  “The physicians could do little or nothing for the people in this
  extremity. They are nowhere alluded to throughout this epidemic, and
  even those who might have come forward to succour their
  fellow-citizen, had fallen into the errors of Galen, and their
  dialectic minds sank under this appalling phenomenon. This holds good
  even of the famous Thomas Linacre, subsequently physician in ordinary
  to two monarchs, and founder of the College of Physicians in 1518. In
  the prime of his youth he had been an eyewitness of the events at
  Oxford, and survived even the second and third eruption of the
  sweating sickness; but in none of his writings do we find a single
  word respecting this disease, which is of such permanent importance.
  In fact, the restorers of the medical science of ancient Greece, who
  were followed by all the most enlightened men in Europe, with the
  single exception of Linacre, occupied themselves rather with the
  ancient terms of art than with actual observation, and in their
  critical researches overlooked the important events that were passing
  before their eyes. This reminds us of the later Greek physicians, who
  for four hundred years paid no attention to the smallpox, because they
  could find no description of it in the immortal works of Galen!”


Who shall say, in reading such passages, that the _New Philosophy_ of
Bacon, which reads now like old common-sense, was not sadly wanted, if
the learned physician, while feeling his patient’s pulse, could see only
with the eyes of Galen? In the fourteenth century we see the physician
busied with his astrology, and laboriously fixing the day when Saturn,
Jupiter, and Mars, did battle with the sun over the great Indian Ocean;
in the sixteenth we find him, with quite dialectic mind, absorbed in the
study of his classical authorities; at the present time we may truly say
that there are no inquiries conducted with a more philosophical spirit,
or with greater zeal and energy, than those which relate to the human
frame, its functions and its diseases. The extreme complexity of the
subject renders our progress slow. And yet progress can hardly be said
to have been slow. Let any one take up that admirable little manual on
_The Nervous System_, by Dr Herbert Mayo, and compare it with any work a
hundred years old: it is a new science; and that not only from the new
facts which a Robert Bell and a Marshall Hall, and other distinguished
men in France and Germany, have added to our knowledge, but from the
fine spirit of philosophical inquiry which presides over the whole. We
have not only left astrology behind, we have not only left behind the
undue reverence to classical authority, but we have thrown aside that
dislike and depreciation of physiology which the metaphysician had done
his part to encourage, and have entered, as with a fresh eye and a
beating heart, upon the study of the wonders of the human frame.




                        THE SONG OF METRODORUS.


          Παντοίην βιότοιο τάμοις τρίβον. εἰν ἀγορῇ μέυ
            κύδεα καὶ πινυταὶ πρήξιες. ἐυ δὲ δόμοις
          ἄμπανμ’. ἐν δ’ἀγροῖς Φύσιος χάρις. ἐν δὲ ζαλάσση
            κέρδος. ἐπὶ ξείνης, ἢν μὲν ἔχης τι, κλέος.
          ν δ’ ἀπορὴς, μόνος οἶδας. ἔχεις γάμον; οἶκος ἄριστος
            ἔσσεται. οὐ γαμέεις; ζης ἔτ’ ἐλαφρότερον.
          τέκνα πόζος. ἄφροντις ἄπαμς βίος. αἱ νεότητες
            ῥωμαλέαι. πολιαὶ δ’ ἔμπαλιν εὐσεβέες.
          οὐκ ἄρα τῶν δισσῶν ἑνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέζαι
            μηδέποτ’, ἢ τὸ ζανειν. πάντα γὰρ ἐσζλὰ βίῳ.

                  *       *       *       *       *

               Metrodorus was a rare old blade,
               His wine he drank, his prayers he said,
                 And did his duty duly;
               But with grave affairs of Church and State
               He never fretted his smooth pate,
                 For he said, and he said full truly,
               If a man about and about will go,
               To mend all matters high and low,
                 He’ll find no rest full surely.
               In his chair of ease a thorn will grow,
               The gall will in his bladder flow,
               Thick seeds of sorrow he will sow,
               And make his dearest friend a foe,
                 And go to the grave prematurely.
               One day he sate beside the fire,
               With all things square to his desire
                 —A wintry day, when Boreas blew
               Through the piping hills with a halloo—
               Just after dinner, when the wine
               On the tip of his nose was glowing fine.
               A pleasant vapour ’fore him floats,
                 The logs are blazing brightly,
               And in his brain the happy thoughts
                 Begin to move full lightly.
               He never wrote a verse before,
               Though now he counted good threescore,
               And scarcely knew what poets meant,
               When in their high conceited bent
                 They talked of inspiration.
               But now his soul a fancy stirred;
               He trilled and chirped like any bird;
                 His bright imagination
               Poured forth a pleasant flowing verse,
               Which, if you please, I will rehearse
                 For gentle meditation.
               ’Twas Greek of course, but by the skill
               Made English, of my classic quill,
               As good, or better, if you will,
                 In this my free translation.

                                   1.
       They may rail at this world, and say that the devil
         Rules o’er it, usurping the mace of the Lord;
       In my soul I detest all such impious cavil,
         While I sit as a guest at life’s bountiful board.
       I was young; I am old, and my temples are hoary,
         On Time’s rocking tide I have gallantly oared;
       This wisdom I learned, ’tis the sum of my story,
         With blessings God’s earth like a garner is stored.


                                   2.
       You blame your condition; by Jove I was never
         So placed that I could not with pride be a man;
       At rest or afloat on life’s far-sounding river,
         Content was my watchword, enjoyment my plan.
       Where busy men bustle, to elbow and jostle
         What sport! then at home how delightful repose!
       What comfort and pleasure your body to measure
         At large in the elbow-chair, toasting your toes!


                                   3.
       A soldier? how gallant through smoke and through thunder
         To ride like the lightning, when Jupiter roars;
       A farmer? to gaze on the green leafy wonder
         Of April how sweet, and to think on the stores
       Of golden-sheaved autumn!—to dash through the billow
         Is dear to the merchant who carries his gains;
       How sweet to the poet on green grassy pillow,
         To lie when spring zephyrs are fanning his brains!


                                   4.
       When you find a good wife, Nature urges to marry;
         But art thou a bachelor, never complain;
       Less sail you display, but less burden you carry,
         And over yourself like a king you may reign.
       ’Tis pleasant to hear children prattling around you,
         Thank Heaven you’ve arrows enough for your bow;
       But if you love quiet, they’ll only confound you,
         So if now you have none—may it ever be so!


                                   5.
       Art young? then rejoice in thy youth,—give the pinion
         Of passion free play—love and hate like a man;
       And gather around thee a mighty dominion
         Of venturous thoughts, like the crest-waving van
       Of a conquering host. Art old? reputation
         And honour shall find thee and pleasures serene,
       And a power like to Jove’s, when the fate of the nation
         Shall wait on thy word in the hall of the queen.


                                   6.
       Blow hot or blow cold, with hearty endeavour
         Still witch out a virtue from all that you see;
       Use well what you get, giving thanks to the Giver,
         And think everything good in its place and degree.
       I’ve told you my thoughts, and I think you’re my debtor,
         And if you don’t think so, I wish you were dead;
       The sooner you rot on a dunghill the better,
         You’re not worth the straw that they shake for your bed.




                          THE NEW REFORM BILL.


We feel compelled to address ourselves to an ungracious and disagreeable
task. At this moment but one thought ought to be encouraged throughout
the British empire—that of encountering and beating back the new and
formidable aggressor on the liberties of Europe. We shall not enter now
upon the history of past transactions. We shall not stop to inquire
whether the Ministry acted foolishly or not in allowing themselves, in
spite of repeated warnings and most pregnant instances, to be deceived,
cajoled, and outwitted by the agents of Russian diplomacy. It is enough
for us that the war has, to all intents and purposes, begun—that we are
sending forth our armaments and making our preparations for such a
struggle as has not been known during the lifetime of the present
generation—and that we have, directly, the most colossal force in Europe
to cope with, to which possibly may be united a central power of the
Continent, with an army at its disposal more than twice as numerous as
our own.

Gladly do we hail the spirit which at present animates the nation. It
assures us that we have not degenerated during the long period of peace
which we have enjoyed. It shows that we are still alive to our dignity
as a people, to our duty as the enemies of outrage and aggression—that
we have heart enough and will enough, at any sacrifice, to maintain our
high position—and that the love of Mammon has not so occupied our souls
as to render us insensible to the part which we are bound to take, as
the freest state and most advanced community in Europe. We deny, on the
part of the people of Great Britain, that they have either been rash or
headstrong in this matter; they have submitted, with remarkable
patience, to negotiations protracted beyond hope, and with advantage to
the enemy; and, so far from being precipitate or impetuous towards war,
they have urged nothing upon the Ministry until, after unparalleled
vacillation, the latter have been compelled to see that no other course
was open to them but a final rupture with Russia.

This session of Parliament began as leisurely and lazily as though there
were no combustible elements visible in Europe—as though there had been
no aggression—as though no severe blow had been struck by Russia at
Turkey, almost in the presence of and in defiance of our fleet. Had we
been at peace with all the world, Ministers could not have shown less
symptoms of excitement. The meeting of Parliament was postponed to the
last day; possibly on account of negotiations still pending, after
Wallachia and Moldavia had been occupied by the Russian troops—after
engagements had taken place upon the Danube—and after a Turkish fleet
had been assailed and annihilated within the Turkish harbour of Sinope.
Negotiation is long-lived. The Premier has even now such faith in
protocols that he professes to believe the peace of Europe maybe
preserved—an opinion, the gallantry of which cannot be questioned,
inasmuch as he stands alone; and for which he will certainly be entitled
to immortal credit, if the Czar chooses to yield and withdraw after all
that has taken place. But with Lord Aberdeen’s opinions or convictions
we have nothing, at the present moment, to do. We think that,
considering the important nature of the crisis, and the vastness of the
interests at stake, it was the duty of Ministers to have advised an
earlier meeting of Parliament, so that the natural anxiety of the nation
might not be prolonged, nor any feeling of distrust engendered. Such a
step would at all events have been satisfactory to the public, as an
implied assurance that it was intended to obliterate, by a decided
course of action, the memory of the apathetic indifference and
vacillating policy of the latter half of the bygone year.

Pass we from that, however, to the actual meeting of Parliament. No
sooner were the members assembled, and, as it were, shaken into their
places, than Lord John Russell, a Cabinet Minister, announced that it
was his intention to move for leave to bring in a bill for amending the
representation of the country; and, notwithstanding the urgent
dissuasions both of friend and foe, grounded upon the exceeding
impolicy, under present circumstances, of forcing on a measure for which
there has been no call or necessity, he, on the evening of the 13th
February, proceeded to develop his scheme.

Now, it is perfectly true that, in the course of last session, Lord John
Russell, and, if we mistake not, Lord Aberdeen, stated that it was the
intention of Ministers to bring forward some measure of the kind. It is
true also that the former seems resolved, with characteristic obstinacy,
to effect some great change in the representation, and that his
resolution is not of yesterday’s date; for in 1852, just two years ago,
he obtained leave to bring in a bill for the same object, but with
provisions and machinery entirely different from this. It is not our
intention in the present paper to compare the two schemes propounded by
this consistent statesman for amending the representation. Whether,
however, the present bill is insisted on or not, we certainly shall take
an opportunity of instituting such a comparison, were it merely for the
purpose of exposing, beyond the possibility of refutation or defence,
the reckless, inconsistent, and almost crazy tamperings of the noble
Lord with the fabric of our constitution. We shall not judge him by any
other test than his own words and his own measures. He must either
admit—and we shall challenge his warmest adherent or advocate to deny
this—that he regards the British constitution as something that may be
altered and adjusted to suit special circumstances and party ends; or
that, in 1852, he, then First Minister of the Crown, introduced, with
culpable want of consideration, a measure, the details of which he now
repudiates. It has been the fashion, on the strength of a flippant
saying of the late Sydney Smith, to talk of Lord John Russell as a man
adequate, in his own conceit, to the conduct of any affair or
enterprise, and rigidly and unalterably wedded to his own opinions. We
cannot give him even that dubious credit now. He either committed a
gross blunder in his former bill, which is no slight imputation upon the
judgment of a Prime Minister, or he is acting just now under the direct
dictation of others. Nothing has occurred, during the last two years, to
make the Reform Bill of 1854 totally and entirely different, not only in
details, but in principle, from that which was proposed in 1852; and yet
the new measure is utterly inconsistent with the older one. We all
remember that, in 1852, Lord John failed to engage the public
support—can it be that he is now playing the bad and unpatriotic game of
which he was formerly suspected—that he is bidding for popularity and
party power, irrespective altogether of the true interests of the
country?

That comparison, however, we shall reserve for a future article. We have
said already that it was intimated last session, on the part of the
Ministry, that a bill for amending the representation would be
introduced. The question now is, whether it is for the advantage of the
country that such a resolution should be adhered to. That Ministers
ought to keep faith with the public is a proposition which we shall
never question. If it can be shown that the public, in any proper sense
of the term, has become aware of the existence of a grievance, and has
demanded a remedy or relief; and if, therefore, Ministers, toward the
end of a session, have admitted the justness of the demand, but have
been necessitated to postpone the remedy, they are certainly, under
ordinary circumstances, bound to come forward and redeem their pledge.
But, even in such a case as that which we have supposed, when
non-fulfilment of the pledge would naturally create dissatisfaction,
circumstances may arise to justify Ministers in declining, on public
grounds, to pursue a line of action which otherwise they would willingly
adopt. The present is not even a case of that kind. There was no demand
at all upon the part of the nation for any immediate measure of reform
of representation; and although, beyond all question, there are serious
points yet to be settled—for example, the relative representation of
Scotland as compared with England—Ministers were not urged to undertake
any specific measure, and the responsibility of having done so must rest
entirely on themselves.

But we ask, in the name of common sense, is this a time to breed
dissension in the country? Set aside such matters as this, which are not
clamoured for in any way, and there is absolutely no party feeling among
us. All that has been absorbed in the national and British feeling; and
we are now sending forth our navy and our army—parting with our sons and
our brothers—not knowing whether they may again return to us, but
believing that they have gone to support a just cause, and knowing that,
in the worst event, they will be mourned by more than ourselves. We
shall be called upon, and we are ready, one and all, to submit to
increased taxation, and to perform the part which our fathers performed
when the integrity of the land was threatened. But is it the part of
Ministers, _now_, at the very opening of the campaign, to do all in
their power to excite angry feelings among us, to awake party
jealousies, and to rouse antagonism between town and country?

In England, the proposed disfranchisement of nineteen boroughs,
returning twenty-nine members, and the reduction of thirty-three others,
now returning two, to one member each, will, beyond all question, excite
a vast deal of animosity and discussion. We are not by any means so
bigotted or besotted in our admiration of the present system as to deny
that a plausible argument maybe maintained in favour of much of this
disfranchisement and reduction; for the old Reform Act was eminently a
party measure, and dealt tenderly with existing interests whenever these
belonged to the Whigs. But when we look to the simple facts, that our
system and arrangements for the distribution of the franchise, such as
they are, stood the triumphant test of 1848, when every other state in
Europe was rocking before the whirlwind of revolution—and that no
clamour has been heard for their alteration—we humbly venture to think
that this is not the time for any extensive experiment. Nor are we by
any means convinced that the suppression of small constituencies in
favour of larger ones which are already represented, would be a
practical improvement. We would much rather see large existing
constituencies subdivided, so that no elector should be allowed to vote
for more than one member. This might very easily be effected. Edinburgh,
for example, would still return two members, but these would be elected
by two distinct bodies of voters in different wards. In like manner,
where there are two or more members for a county, these should be
returned by separate votes in three departments or districts of
parishes, which, indeed, would be simply an extension of the system now
followed in the larger English counties. This would at once supersede
the necessity of having recourse to such ridiculous and fantastic
devices as “the representation of minorities,” which is contemplated by
the present bill, and which is grossly unfair, inasmuch as its operation
is only practicable in the case of constituencies returning three
members. From what we have seen of their working, we are not at all
enamoured of large constituencies. They have at present more power than
they are entitled to; for we maintain it to be contrary to the just
principle of representation that any elector should have more than one
representative. If the other system, which Lord John Russell practically
advocates, is a good one, why should not the three Ridings of Yorkshire
be united, so that electors in the county might vote for six
representatives? It is just as easy to divide a town as a county. The
machinery is already supplied by the municipal arrangements; and if that
system were to be adopted—and we earnestly recommend it for
consideration—we should hear nothing more of the tyranny of majorities.
Until some such plan, founded on principle and recommended by reason, is
matured, we oppose the disfranchisement of any of the boroughs. But let
us again revert to the time which has been selected for propounding
these sweeping changes.

We have been told, in ridiculously pompous language, that Great Britain
will present a magnificent spectacle to the world, if, while engaging in
a deadly struggle with the most colossal power of Europe, she applies
herself, at the same time, to the remodelment of her own constitution.
With all deference to the speaker, we never listened to more atrocious
nonsense. What should we think of the sanity of the man who, at the very
moment when his house was attacked from without, should set fire to it
within, for the purpose of exhibiting the “sublime spectacle” of
simultaneous external defence and internal extinguishment? Of course we
should consider him as mad, clap a blister on his head, and have him
instantly conveyed to bedlam. And yet that is, just now, the precise
language of Ministers. We really are surprised that any of them should
have the audacity to hazard such an argument; if, indeed, that can be
called an argument which is no better than a preposterous hyperbole.
They know, perfectly well, that this measure of theirs cannot be
persevered in without exciting very general dissatisfaction in various
parts of the country—that it must necessarily lead to protracted
discussion, and a strong demonstration of party feeling in both Houses
of Parliament; that if they are unsuccessful in carrying it through,
they will have weakened their own influence at a time when it is most
desirable that the hands of Government should be strengthened; and that
if, on the contrary, they are successful, an immediate dissolution of
Parliament, and new general election, must take place. These are the
obvious and inevitable consequences, if they persist in their present
course; and we hesitate not to say that faction, in its worst spirit,
could devise no more dangerous scheme for disturbing the unanimity of
the country. “But,” say some of the Whig and Liberal journals, “it is
obvious that the present move is a mere indication of what may take
place hereafter. Lord John Russell has no serious intention of pushing
through this bill at the present time, nor would his colleagues permit
him to do so—this is merely to be regarded as the fulfilment of his
pledge, and in due time it will be withdrawn.” If we are to take that as
the true interpretation of the business—if we are to suppose that this
measure has been introduced as a sham, without serious intentions of
carrying it into execution, the sooner Lord John Russell retires from
public life the better for his own reputation. Sham bills, we are aware,
are not novelties. Of late years we have seen, with infinite sorrow and
disgust, this species of deception practised upon the public, but never
at such a time and under such circumstances as now. It is no valid
excuse to say that this is the mere redemption of a pledge, and that
Lord John Russell could not act otherwise with honour. What is Lord John
Russell, that considerations personal to him should be allowed to
disturb the unanimity of the British people at such a crisis; or that
his gratuitous pledges and random promises should interfere with the
public weal? If such a step, in such a juncture, had been taken by a
Tory instead of a Whig minister, the offence would not have been
allowed, even on the first night, to pass without a storm of
reprobation. Lord John himself would have risen, with an unblushing
front, and a total disregard of antecedents, to prove from Whig
tradition that any attempt to divide the country, at the moment when it
was collecting its energies for action, was a crime worthy of
impeachment. Mr Macaulay would have been hurried from his books at the
Albany to explain, in sonorous language, what course would have been
taken by the Roman senate, in regard to any one who might have proposed,
when the Gauls were at the gate, to undermine the Roman constitution;
and the Tarpeian rock would, doubtless, have been suggested as the
proper punishment. Sir James Graham would have started up to protest
that this was not the time for “pottering” over constitutions, or
revising constituencies, and have insulted the parent of the bill with
the imperious airs of a Commodore Trunnion. Sir Charles Wood—but we
shall not pursue the imaginary case further, because the name we have
last cited is suggestive of a counting-out. What we mean to convey is,
that the political changes contemplated by this bill, without reference
to minor details, such as lowering of the franchise, &c., are so
serious, that the Ministry, if they really intend, or intended, to carry
them through, could not, by possibility, have selected a worse or more
injudicious time; and that they are, by persevering, abusing the
confidence of the country. If, on the contrary, this measure is to be
regarded as a sham, or merely tentatory, then we say that the country
has excellent reason for feeling indignant and disgusted that, under
present circumstances, such a hoax should be practised upon it.

Lord John Russell is unfortunate in his experiences. By accident rather
than by choice—for he was then no eminent political character—his was
the hand to open the floodgates more than twenty years ago. He heard the
roaring of the pent-up waters, pouring down as if in jubilee, and his
soul was big with triumph. Since then, he has heard nothing of the kind;
but still his memory lingers on the far-off Niagara roll, and he wishes,
before he dies, to have the sound repeated. Hence he is perpetually
prowling about the locks of the constitution, devising schemes for
another flood, just as the schoolboy, who has assisted at the sluicing
of one dam, is energetic for a repetition of the experiment, regardless
altogether of the havoc he may be making below. His Nemesis—as it is the
fashion now to call it—has been more decided and humiliating than that
of any public man of our age. He has sunk from a Premier to a
subordinate, under the command of a chief to whom, for the better part
of his life, he was diametrically opposed in politics. He was not even
allowed to remain long as a recognised subordinate. He descended to the
rank of an attaché, in which situation he now remains. He has affected
partial retirement from politics, but, at best, he is only half a
Cincinnatus. We do not know accurately what were the farming
capabilities of the conqueror of the Volsci; but we know, accurately
enough, what are the literary achievements of Lord John Russell. We
regret, very sincerely, that he has not been able to establish for
himself a name in letters; because, if he had done so, we might have
hoped to get rid of him as a politician. But that remorseless public,
upon whose fiat all authors and editors are dependent, stood in the way;
and decreasing sales bore a lamentable evidence to the noble Lord’s
decreasing literary popularity. In order, if possible, to redeem his
reputation, he touched, with doubtful gallantry, the shield of the most
aged antagonist in the lists; and the result was that, like the Admiral
Guarinos in the Spanish ballad, the old warrior—though in bad case and
wretchedly battered armour—spurred out, and overthrew him in a canter.
Nettled at this discomfiture, he comes back to politics; and—availing
himself of his position, which the Premier cannot well gainsay, inasmuch
as he has no sure hold on the affections of the leading Whigs, who would
pitch him over, if an opportunity were afforded, as freely as ever
hencoop was given to the waves—he propounds a project of further reform,
for which, we doubt not, he is frightfully objurgated by some of his
associates in the Cabinet. But, let them say their worst, he knows that
he is still in power—that he can threaten them, in one way or another,
with active opposition—and therefore they are constrained to let him
appear as the author of a new Reform Bill; and although in their hearts
they curse his recklessness, they dare not, in as many words, repudiate
his false position. Such are the national advantages and inevitable
results of that species of combination known as a “Coalition Ministry.”

Let us now see what changes are to be made in the electoral body. These
are various and complicated, but we shall state them in order; and
first, as to the new qualifications. The following are to be entitled to
enrolment, either in town or country:—

  1. All persons having salaries of £100 a-year, derived from public or
       private employment, provided they are paid by the half-year or
       quarter.

  2. All persons in receipt of £10 a-year, derived from dividends from
       property, either in the Funds, or in bank for East India
       Company’s stock.

  3. All persons paying income or assessed taxes to the yearly income of
       40s.

  4. All graduates of any university in the United Kingdom.

  5. All persons who, for three years, have had a deposit of £50 in a
       savings’ bank.

So there is an end at once of property and occupancy as the basis of the
electoral franchise. If you have five sons, and wish to qualify them for
voting, you have simply to deposit £50 in name of each in a savings’
bank, and in three years’ time they will be placed on the register. And
remark this, that, once on the register, there they abide for ever; for
Lord John distinctly tells us, “we make the register of votes final.” So
that, on the day after your son is placed on the roll, you may reclaim
your money with interest! Happy graduates of universities! They are
entitled to the franchise in virtue of the magical letters appended to
their names; and they may flit about from place to place, the adornment
of twenty registers, because the register is to be final. Take out a
game-certificate, and you may not only shoot partridges for the year,
but may vote at elections in perpetuity! Any person who wears
hair-powder, keeps a terrier, and has a crest engraved on his seal, for
which valuable privileges he pays £2, 8s. 8d. of assessed taxes, is
henceforward a voter! We are not joking. Such are absolutely the
provisions of this precious Reform Bill, the result, as we are told, of
the deliberate and collective wisdom of the Ministry!

Faintly, and like a dream, the recollection of the beautiful old Whig
moral sentiments steals upon our memory. We remember the touching
pictures, limned some twenty years ago, of the industrious man working
his way to the rank of the ten-pounders, in order to attain the glorious
privilege of the franchise. We were told then that it was most desirable
to have a distinct property qualification, in order that men might exert
themselves to attain it, and by their exertions stimulate others in the
like course of frugality and perseverance. Is that to be the case in
future? Certainly not. Every common carrier who pays for his van £2, 6s.
8d. yearly, as the tax on an implement of trade, is to be as politically
powerful as the acred squire, or the manufacturer who gives employment
to thousands—every horse-dealer, dog-breaker, and tavern-keeper may vote
in virtue of the assessed taxes—every clerk in a shop who has £100
a-year, and every warehouseman, who has either saved or succeeded to
£50—are to be entitled to vote either in town or county. We said, long
ago, when the Whigs were lauding their earlier measure as a grand
incentive to industry, and as a splendidly devised scheme for
stimulating deserving operatives, that before many years were over the
same party would attempt to lower the qualification, so as to embrace
all who were likely to forward and promote their designs. Our prophecy
is now demonstrated to be true. We showed that, after the first
successful attempt, there never can be an end of swamping, or, at all
events, of proposals to swamp. The ten-pound householders, then in the
full enjoyment of their monopoly, did not seem to believe us. Somehow or
other they had been impressed with the idea that the Whigs were the
devoted friends of the “middle classes”—that they had a firm faith in
what was termed “shopocracy”—and that they never would attempt to
supplant the power which they had created. And, certainly, the
ten-pounders have done nothing to merit this treatment at the hands of
the Whigs. They have clung to them, especially in the large towns, with
a fidelity which we cannot but respect, and, in spite of occasional
scurvy treatment, have shown themselves the most zealous of partisans.
But the time has now arrived when their ascendancy is to give way.
Respectability is no longer the fashion. If the ten-pounders, indeed,
had been able to give the Whigs a large majority in Parliament, and to
have insured their continuance in power, matters might have been
different. There would then have been no occasion for lowering the
franchise; because the Whigs, ever since they have been a party (which
is now an old story), have never taken a single step except as means
towards an end; and they would not, but for party necessity, have
attempted to swamp their friends. But the old Reform Bill, though
devised especially for the purpose of securing to the Whigs an unlimited
range of power, did not succeed in its object. It was based essentially
upon property, and, by degrees, property and Conservatism came to a
common understanding. The Whigs lost ground every year: partly because
their champions were either effete or insincere; partly because they
were foolish enough to presume on their new ascendancy, and to insult
the rooted Protestantism of the country; and partly, because they showed
themselves in their arrangements grasping, greedy, and nepotical, to a
degree never yet paralleled even in a corrupted state. They wanted to
make, and did in fact make, with scarce an exception, the Cabinet a mere
family Junta. They married and forwarded marriages on the strength of
political connexion, and jobbed out public employment accordingly. Grey,
Russell, and Elliot, were the three names preferred; and Heaven only
knows what amount of perquisites was absorbed by the scions of these
illustrious races. Such things cannot be done in a corner, so secretly
as to escape observation. The popular ire was roused at such an
exhibition of awful selfishness, and the Whigs declined in character.
Had Sir Robert Peel not been the Minister and type of expediency, he
might have gained an easy and lasting victory over them; but
unfortunately, both for the party which he then led and for himself, he
had a weak perception of principle. The two rivals sate, on opposite
sides of the table, watching each other at the game of popularity, but
never for a moment reflecting that, in any event, Great Britain had to
pay the loss. The game, though it had continued a great deal too long,
was somewhat abruptly terminated. Those who had supported the Baronet
while he played fair, withdrew their confidence; and the noble lord was
left in possession of the field. Did he maintain it? By no means. He
juggled and traversed until every one was weary of him, and at last he
was ejected. The election of 1852 showed that parties were very nearly
balanced; so nearly indeed that, but for the union of the Peelites with
the Whigs, Lord Derby would have had a majority in the House of Commons.
This state of things may be embarrassing to politicians, but it does not
justify a violent change in the Constitution. However desirable
majorities may be to either party, an attempt to obtain ascendancy by
means of legislative enactment and tampering with the franchise, is so
very reprehensible that it amounts almost to a crime.

But we must not lose sight of the bill by indulging in remarks upon the
past. Its object is to swamp the present class of voters by a wholesale
admission of others who have not been able to raise themselves to the
enviable level which is the limit of the existing qualification. The
bill is ingeniously devised. Let it pass, and every tradesman will
consider himself sure of three or four votes which he can direct.
Because, of course, the clerk, with £100 a-year, dares not vote against
his master; and, even if he is entitled, after dismissal, to remain on
the register, the mere privilege of voting, perhaps once in seven years,
will be a poor compensation for the immediate loss of employment. Can
you call a clerk or book-keeper, with a bare £100 a-year, independent?
To do so is a mere perversion of terms. He is more liable even than the
operative to the influence of his employer, inasmuch as the nature of
his employment is more precarious. We heard a great deal last year about
Government influence being used among the persons employed in the
dockyards, and it was gravely proposed by some of the leading Whig
journals, that all such should be disfranchised, as they could not be
expected to vote independently. But a Government official, however
zealous and unscrupulous he may be, is amenable to public opinion and
public censure, and cannot exercise the same stringent means of
compulsion which are open to the tradesman or the attorney.

Then as to bribery: the tendency of lowering the franchise must be to
increase that to a very great extent. In many places, even under the
present system, votes are bought and sold; but if this bill is carried
into effect, the corruption will become enormous. Experience has shown
us, very clearly, that there is a large class in this country by whom
votes are considered in the light of marketable commodities, and this
bill seems specially framed for the purpose of adding to their numbers.
The possession of £50 in a savings-bank is by no means a guarantee that
the depositor will be inaccessible to the influences of a bribe. But
besides the other changes which we have discussed, it is proposed that
residence of two years and a-half in a house rated at £6 in a municipal
borough shall confer the right of voting, and that previous payment of
rates and taxes is to be no longer required! Can any one for a moment
doubt that the consequence of this will be to render constituencies
venal to an extent never yet known in this country? If even under the
present system it is found that bribery prevails, will not the offence
become much more rank and general when you enfranchise a class
peculiarly liable from their position to such influences? And remember
this, that candidates or their agents are not always, nor indeed in the
majority of cases, the tempters. Enough has been revealed to show us
that, in a very large number of the English towns, there exist regularly
organised clubs or societies of voters, who force their terms upon
candidates. These fine patriots do not concern themselves much with
party politics. They do not object to one man because he is a Tory, or
to another because he is a Whig. Pledges as to future conduct are not at
all in their line: they much prefer the immediate tender of a crisp
bank-note or of a few shining sovereigns. They have their agents and
their office-bearers, and must be bought in the lump. Let this bill
pass, and there will hardly be an urban constituency in this kingdom
without such a club. Is that a state of things to be envied? Is it fair
to the honest and upright voter that he should be swamped by organised
rascality, and that his privilege should be rendered of no avail? We can
hardly express ourselves too strongly on this subject, for the
provocation is very great. The Whig party, for years past, have affected
to mourn over the corruption of the constituencies, and yet here is
their accredited leader bringing in a bill which must necessarily have
the effect of increasing that corruption tenfold!

But we have not yet quite done. Lord John Russell proposes to give 46
new members to the English counties; but then the county constituency is
not to remain as before. Occupiers, not proprietors, of £10 a-year are
to have votes in counties; and it is by no means contemplated that the
house occupied by the voter should be of that value. “We propose,” said
Lord John Russell, “with respect to the county right of voting,
that—with the exception of a dwelling-house, which may be of any value,
provided the voter lives in it—in all other cases the building must be
of the value of £5 a-year. Supposing there is a house and land, the
house may be rated at £1 or £2 a-year, provided the voter resides in it;
but if the qualification is made out by any other building—a cattle-shed
or any other building of that kind—then we propose this check, that such
building shall be of the value of £5 a-year. This, then, is the
franchise we propose to give in counties for the future; and the House
will see that it has a very considerable bearing upon the question of
the increase of number of members which I have stated we propose. Out of
the whole number I have mentioned I shall propose that 46 members shall
be given to counties; but as these counties will hereafter include the
£10 householders, it is obvious that the constituency will be less of a
special character. It does seem to me that all the endeavours made to
run down the agricultural interest, or to run down the manufacturing
interest, are totally foolish and absurd, and that there can be no
better system of representation than that which takes into consideration
the whole of the great interests of the country, which contribute to its
glory and prosperity.” We have thought it right to insert these
paragraphs, because they contain a doctrine quite new to statesmen, and
one which has hitherto been unbroached. There is certainly a little
obscurity in the language, but not enough to conceal the true nature of
the sentiment. What Lord John Russell means to say is this:—It is absurd
any longer to maintain the special character of constituencies—absurd to
make distinctions between agriculture, manufactures, or any branch of
industry—absurd to frame your system so that one member shall represent
agriculture, another commerce, and another manufactures, because you
should in every case combine the whole of the great interests of the
country. Carry that doctrine into effect, and the distinction between
counties and towns ceases altogether. But how can you bring it fairly
into effect? In the towns which have the privilege of returning members,
agriculture is not, and cannot be, represented at all. The urban voters
are all engaged in other pursuits, and they send to the House of Commons
members to represent that branch of industry which is their staple. From
the towns, therefore, the territorial interest, which is in reality the
greatest and most enduring in England, never can be adequately
represented. You may, however, easily enough, swamp the agricultural
interest in the counties, and that by the method which Lord John Russell
proposes, namely, of admitting to the county-roll ten-pound occupiers
from the towns, which do not send a representative to Parliament. It has
often been remarked, as a special defect in the Act of 1832, that it
allowed in many cases the votes of small proprietors in villages and
towns to swamp the votes of the agriculturists; and in several counties
in Scotland this is notoriously the case. The manufacturing towns in
Forfarshire, in Roxburghshire, and in Fife, furnish so many votes, that
the landed interest is entirely unrepresented; and as new seats of
manufacture are laid down, the evil is always progressive. There can be
no doubt that in the instances which we have referred to, the landed
interest is incomparably greater than all the others; and yet, in so far
as representation goes, it has virtually no voice at all. It has been
proposed, more than once—and the scheme carries reason with it—that
these anomalies should be removed by the attachment of the unrepresented
boroughs to the nearest ones which have representation; thus increasing
and consolidating a class of voters who have a distinct common interest.
If this were done, and the counties freed from an incubus, there might
be no objection to the lowering of the agricultural tenant’s
qualification, so that the man who paid £20 of yearly rent might be
entitled to admission to the roll. But Lord John Russell takes exactly
the opposite view. He wants to swamp the country constituencies
altogether, and he proposes to effect that by letting in every man from
the villages who pays £10 of rent! He himself admits that by this
arrangement, persons occupying houses not rated at more than £1 or £2
a-year—in fact, mere hovels—may become county voters, and this he
considers a fitting method of combining “the whole of the great
interests of the country!” And yet, mark his inconsistency. By the same
bill which proposes this amalgamation of interests in the counties, it
is provided that University representation shall be extended, and that
special members shall be allotted to the English Inns of Court. Surely
there cannot be a more direct recognition of separate and exclusive
interests than this; and yet, in counties, the agricultural interest is
to be put down.

We have not the least fear that the law will be so altered; but that
such proposals should emanate from a Ministry, is, we think, a
disgraceful and a lamentable fact. They are no doubt entitled to have
their opinion. They may think, though on what grounds we cannot divine,
that it is good policy not to maintain any balance in the constitution,
and that the franchise in town and country should be made the same. They
may consider it advisable that small manufacturing towns, too
unimportant to return members of themselves, should be allowed to
furnish the majority of county voters, and that, virtually, the land
should cease to have any representatives. If they think so, it is much
to be regretted that they do not say so openly, so that we might have
the opportunity of doing battle in a fair field. But this measure of
theirs is intended to be deceptive, and convey a false impression that
they are dealing impartially with all classes. In the first place, they
take from the smaller boroughs no fewer than 66 members. Their principle
is, that no borough having less than 300 electors, or less than 5000
inhabitants, ought to return a member; and that no borough having less
than 500 electors, or less than 10,000 inhabitants, should return two
members. Let us, for the sake of argument, admit the justice of this
proposition. Does it therefore follow that it was wise to disfranchise
such boroughs? That is by no means a necessary consequence. If the
constituency is at present too small, extend it by all means. Wherever
practicable, join these boroughs together; where that cannot be done,
take an increased constituency from the nearest unrepresented town,
until you reach the magic number which is to be the minimum of
representation. Bring in fresh blood, which it is quite easy to do,
without exciting the clamour and dissatisfaction which the abolition or
curtailment of a privilege long enjoyed is sure to create. It cannot be
denied that there is plenty of material at hand. There is also
Parliamentary precedent and usage; for in Scotland, at the present
moment, groups of small burghs return a single member, and some of these
burghs are infinitesimally small. We have them so low, in point of
voters, as 12, 14, and 22. Yet they are not disfranchised. They share
their peculiar privilege along with others, making in the aggregate very
respectable constituencies. Surely such an arrangement as that would be
preferable to the Government proposition, which does wanton violence to
constituencies against which no accusation has been made. We fear,
however, that the disfranchisement of the smaller boroughs was
considered an indispensable preliminary to the grand attack upon the
counties.

Having thus secured the disposal of sixty-six seats, the Government come
forward with an immense show of liberality, and offer forty-six of these
to the counties. But then it is only on condition that the counties will
allow themselves to be swamped. Nine large towns are each to have an
additional member; there are to be five new borough seats; the Inns of
Court are to have two, and the London University one member; the
remaining three seats are to be given to Scotland.

This brings us to a point which we are absolutely bound to notice,
because it serves as a further illustration of the impropriety and folly
of bringing forward such a bill at such a time. If the Emperor Nicholas
had the direction of our internal affairs, he could not have devised a
more notable plan for fomenting dissension among us; and it is but right
to show that this measure, if pushed on, must excite an angry feeling in
the country. We, who are opposing any change in the electoral franchise
at the present time, mainly because we think it an unhappy and dangerous
juncture for making experiments, cannot be blamed if we state our own
views of what is really required when the proper time shall arrive for
making a readjustment of the representation. We do not wish, by any
means, to argue the question at present: we state it simply to show the
extent of the disagreement which may arise, if this measure is to be
prosecuted just now.

Independent of the wholesale disfranchisement of English boroughs, which
must necessarily excite great disgust and dissatisfaction, we take leave
to tell Lord John Russell, and the other members of the Cabinet, that
this bill of theirs is not likely to meet with any favour in the eyes of
the Scottish people. The question of adequate representation has been
mooted, discussed, and is now thoroughly understood by us; and we are
determined, in the event of a change, to insist that our rights shall be
recognised and allowed. This new bill, proposing to give us three
additional members, whereas in respect either of population or of
taxation we are entitled to twenty, cannot be satisfactory. It is not
only right, but necessary, that our English friends should know the
feeling in Scotland. We are not represented on the same scale or in the
same manner as England is, and we complain of the inequality. We ask a
common standard and a just proportion. Now, it does not appear that, by
the present bill, the existing anomalies are to be removed, although, by
the disfranchisement of so many boroughs, it would have been easy to
have given Scotland her just share of members. If there be any reason
why Scotland should have fewer proportional representatives than
England, let it be boldly stated. If there is no reason at all, then let
justice be done to us. We do not wish at present to go into
details—indeed, that would be premature, until the new Scottish Reform
Bill is before us; but as it is quite plain that the aggregate number of
the House of Commons is not to be augmented, and as Lord John Russell
proposes to give only three additional members to Scotland, we are
perfectly entitled to enter our emphatic protest against a measure which
has no solid principle for its foundation. The first point for
consideration, in a redistribution of the representation such as is now
contemplated, was undoubtedly the number of members which England,
Scotland, and Ireland are entitled respectively to return. Lord John
Russell either does not see the principle, or he refuses to acknowledge
it. Now, this is a matter which will cause much excitement, and create
not a little angry feeling in Scotland; and it is as well that our
English friends should be made aware of it. We are, of course, anxious
for a proper increase of national representatives, and we are perfectly
aware that we cannot attain that object without a general measure for
altering and abolishing constituencies. But this measure, while it is
sure to create a turmoil in England, hardly professes to benefit us at
all, and avoids the principle for which the Scottish people are
contending. Any arrangements which may be made as to the future
distribution of the representation, ought to be well weighed,
considered, and matured; for this country will not submit to the
confusion of a new reform bill once in every three or four years. This
measure seems to us to be utterly deficient in these respects, and to be
so loosely conceived as to give some colour to the prevalent opinion
that it furnished an agreeable relaxation to the noble Lord between the
intervals of his more serious editorial labours.

In Scotland, therefore, the bill will be considered highly
objectionable, as evading the only popular demand from that portion of
Great Britain. Beyond an increase of numbers, we have no desire for any
change—Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, being for once agreed.

But we are not so unreasonable as to wish to fight that battle now. We
earnestly deprecate anything like internal discord, for we have other
battles to fight, and the people of Great Britain ought now, if ever, to
be cordially united in sentiment. Therefore, although we think that we
are not altogether fairly treated, and that we have not only a strong
case, but an absolute right to claim redress, we shall not be guilty of
the lamentable folly of urging our claims for increased representation
at such a time. We believe that to be the general feeling of the people
of Scotland; but then their forbearance is entirely contingent upon the
course which the Government may pursue in respect to this measure. There
may be, and probably will be, agitation hereafter; but there need be
none now, at least on the score of representation, if the Ministry will
but tacitly acknowledge their error, and remove this source of
dissension.

There are several other points in this bill which are not only open to
comment, but, as we think, decidedly objectionable. We shall merely
refer to two of these. The first is, the preposterous notion of giving a
member to minorities. The more we consider this plan, the more
egregiously absurd does it appear. Why, in the name of all that is
rational, should minorities be represented? And if that question can be
answered satisfactorily, there is still another beyond it:—Why should
only a limited number of constituencies be put in possession of such a
privilege? But it may be worth while to suppose the new system in
operation.

Manchester, under the new bill, will have three members. At present it
has two, and these two are Liberals. On the hypothesis of Lord John
Russell, though that by no means follows as a matter of course, the
third, or minority member, will be a Conservative. What does that amount
to but the cancelling, on any great political occasion, of two of the
members for Manchester? The Conservative pairs off with one of the
Liberals, or they go into the opposite lobby, which is exactly the same
thing, and the opinions of Cottonopolis are only represented and
enforced on a division, by a single member! We suspect that the present
electorate of Manchester is much too shrewd and far-sighted to accept
any arrangement of the kind; and that they would much prefer having two
members whose votes tell on each division, to having nominally three,
but, in reality, only one. Suppose that a minority member dies during a
session of Parliament, or accepts the Chiltern Hundreds, how is his
place to be supplied? Is there to be an election with three candidates
in the field, and is the lowest to be proclaimed the victor? If not,
what becomes of Lord John Russell’s “principle?” Then observe that,
setting aside its absurdity, this crotchet would establish a new
relation between representatives and represented. At present, the choice
of the majority is recognised by all, and in matters of business there
is free communication between the electors and the member, irrespective
altogether of their party tendencies. This is a great privilege, and a
great advantage. It has done much to soften acerbity, and, in some
instances, has reconciled powerful parties to acquiesce in the return of
a good and energetic member, albeit he might support a different policy
from that to which they were inclined. But now the majority is to have
its members, and the minority is to have its member, and the House is to
be divided against itself. We seriously aver that we do not remember to
have ever heard of a proposal more singularly silly, or more utterly
absurd; and if this really be, as we are told, the keystone of the New
Reform Bill, we may be allowed to express a hope that Lord John Russell
will, for the future, desist from all architectural experiments.

We have barely space or time to advert to one other portion of this
Bill—namely, that whereby it is proposed that members accepting office
under the Crown should not vacate their seats. So far from being
inclined to approve of that proposition, we condemn it utterly. The
existing rule is a safeguard, and a most valuable one, against
profligacy in high places, and ought not, by any means, to be abolished.
It is rather amusing to see that Lord John Russell has been compelled to
reflect upon his own measure of 1832, in order to make a rational excuse
for his new proposal. He says—“In those times, when a seat could always
be found for any person for whom it was required, Ministers suffered
little inconvenience from the Act of Anne; but when the principle of
popular representation was introduced into all our elections, the
statute created difficulties which were hardly compensated by the
advantage of having new elections.” What difficulties? There were no
difficulties of any kind. If an honest man, with a clear conscience, who
was the choice of a constituency, accepted office, he was sure to be
returned again, and almost always without opposition; if, on the
contrary, his conscience was not quite clear, he had to undergo a
wholesome ordeal. But perhaps we owe this proposal to the clause about
the minority members, since it is plain that an unfortunate senator in
that position need not go down to his constituency unless, as we have
already said, provision is made for his being returned, in virtue of his
being lowest on the poll.

Whether the Ministry collectively have acted wisely or not in allowing
this measure to be brought forward, we cannot say. They may have reasons
which are not apparent to us. They may, for example, wish to allow Lord
John Russell to expose himself, preparatory to some new arrangement. He
is evidently a dangerous member of the Cabinet; for, while the Prime
Minister is maintaining that there is still a chance of avoiding war
with Russia, it is intolerable that a subordinate should use language of
the most unguarded and opprobrious nature in respect to the Emperor. It
is just a repetition of the offence of which both Sir James Graham and
Sir Charles Wood were guilty in respect of Louis Napoleon; and although,
in this case, the commentary may be just enough, we cannot but deplore
such exhibitions on the part of Ministers. But if the Ministry intend
seriously to proceed with this bill, at the present time, we shall be
compelled to draw upon the noble lord, for terms sufficiently severe to
express our indignation at their conduct.


           _Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

-----

Footnote 1:

  _The Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli, M.P.: a Literary and
  Political Biography, addressed to the New Generation._ Bentley,
  London. 1854.

Footnote 2:

  The following general order, published in the _Wallachian Moniteur_
  (the Russian Official journal), about the end of January last, shows
  the sort of protection which the Principalities enjoy, and the manner
  in which the Moldo-Wallachians are taught to love their
  protectors:—“_Ordered_, 1st, That all men from the age of eighteen to
  forty years, married or unmarried, and whatever their profession may
  be, are required by the generals, colonels, or commanders of corps to
  do service for the Russian army; 2d, That horses, waggons, oxen or
  other beasts of burden, may be required for the same service; and, 3d,
  That all boats, barks, or floats, now on the Danube, are seized from
  the present moment, for the service of the Russian army. This decree
  is applicable to all Wallachian subjects—those who attempt to evade
  its execution _shall be tried by court-martial_.”

Footnote 3:

  _Poems._ By MATTHEW ARNOLD. A New Edition. London: Longmans. 1853.

  _Poems, Narrative and Lyrical._ By EDWIN ARNOLD, of University
  College, Oxford. Oxford: Francis Macpherson. 1853.

Footnote 4:

  “Cash and Pedigree,” in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, No. CCCCXIV., for
  _April 1850_.

Footnote 5:

  _Agricultural Labourers as they were, are, and ought to be, in their
  Social Condition._ By the Rev. HARRY STUART, A.M., Minister of
  Oathlaw.

Footnote 6:

  The following excerpts from the reports of the clergy of Morayshire
  indicate how entirely they anticipated the views of Mr Stuart, and how
  much they were alive to the necessity of such a movement as that which
  Mr Stuart has been instrumental in originating. “I would add,” writes
  one clergyman, “that as the moral condition of frail beings such as we
  are is often powerfully affected by circumstances of comparatively
  trifling amount, if masters attended a little to the physical comforts
  of their servants, by providing them with fire and light, &c., (when
  they live in bothies), by means of a female servant, having their room
  in readiness when they leave off work, instead of allowing them to go
  to a bothy, cold and comfortless, they would be less induced to resort
  to ardent spirits, or to wander from home in search of company and
  comfort.” Another reverend respondent says: “The greatest desideratum
  in respect of this class, and which would tend more than any other
  temporal means to their improvement, is the adoption by the landed
  proprietors and by agricultural societies of the plan of rewarding
  servants of long-established good character, by affording them
  facilities for becoming occupiers of small farms themselves.”

Footnote 7:

  _Poems by Alexander Smith._ 12mo. David Bogue, London.

Footnote 8:

  _The Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, from the German of J. F. C.
  HECKER, M.D., translated by B. G. BABINGTON, M.D., F.R.S.

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                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 2. Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
      chapter.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.