initial commit of ebook 12761HEADmain

11 files changed, 62407 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/12761-0.txt b/12761-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4e7b54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/12761-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9852 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12761 ***
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
+
+NO. CCCXXIX.   MARCH, 1843.   VOL. LIII.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    AMMALÁT BEK. A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI
+    POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.--NO. VI.
+    CALEB STUKELY. PART XII.
+    IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. SANDT AND KOTZEBUE
+    THE JEWELLER'S WIFE. A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO
+    THE TALE OF A TUB:
+        AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER--HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME
+    PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS, BY A COCKNEY
+    THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.
+    THE LOST LAMB. BY DELTA
+    COMTE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+AMMALÁT BEK.
+
+A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A. OF
+CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL
+LYCEUM OF TSARSKOË SELO.
+
+
+THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental
+neighbours with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of
+no very recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem
+to possess us:
+
+    "----tenet insanabile multos
+    _Terrarum_ [Greek: kakoithes], et ægro in corde senescit:"
+
+when the press groans with "Tours," "Trips," "Hand-books," "Journeys,"
+"Visits."
+
+In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England
+knows very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social
+condition, manners, and literature of one of the most powerful among her
+continental sisters.
+
+The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in
+the reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that
+epoch, so auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by
+Chancellor in 1554, has never since been relaxed: the two nations have
+advanced, each at its own pace, and by its own paths, towards the
+sublime goal of improvement and civilization--have stood shoulder to
+shoulder in the battle for the weal and liberty of mankind.
+
+It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and
+Elizabeth is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter
+and of Catharine. The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be
+found in any indifference or want of curiosity on the part of English
+travellers. There is no lack of pilgrims annually leaving the bank of
+Thames,
+
+    "With cockle hat and staff,
+      With gourd and sandal shoon;"
+
+armed duly with note-book and "patent Mordan," directing their wandering
+steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a
+very short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince
+a foreigner how defective, and often how false, is the information given
+by travellers respecting the social and national character of the
+Russians. These abundant and singular misrepresentations are not, of
+course, voluntary; and it may not be useless to point out their
+principal sources.
+
+The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the
+language, and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten
+track--from St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny
+Nóvgorod, without any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may
+enjoy, during a visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which
+the higher classes are so justly celebrated; but his association with
+the nobility will be found an absolute obstacle to the making even a
+trifling progress in the Russian language; which, though now regaining a
+degree of attention from the elevated classes,[1] too long denied to it
+by those with whom their native tongue _was_ an unfashionable one--he
+would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very frequent
+opportunities of hearing.
+
+     [1] There is, strictly speaking, no middle class in Russia; the
+     "bourgeoisie," or merchants, it is true, may seem to form an
+     exception to this remark, but into their circles the traveller
+     would find it, from many reasons, difficult, and even
+     impossible, to enter.
+
+But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a
+determination to study the noble and interesting language of the
+country, an intention of remaining here long enough to learn it, he was
+often discouraged by the belief, that the literature was too poor to
+repay his time and labour. Besides, the Russian language has so little
+relation to the other European tongues--it stands so much alone, and
+throws so little direct light upon any of them, that another obstacle
+was thrown into his way.
+
+The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all
+derived, more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the
+whole south and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon
+the other cognate dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental
+tongues facilitates, nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand
+others, which are less languages of distinct type than dialects of the
+same speech, offshoots from the same stock.
+
+Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in
+every disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German
+periodicals with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched
+rags of translation which are all that has been hitherto done towards
+the reproduction, in our own language, of the literature of Russia.
+These versions were made by persons utterly unacquainted with the
+country, the manners, and the people, or made after the Russian had been
+distilled through the alembic of a previous French or German
+translation.
+
+Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation
+sooner than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than
+honourable to the literary enterprise of England, that the present is
+the first attempt to introduce to the British public any work of Russian
+Prose Fiction whatever, with any thing like a reasonable selection of
+subject and character, at least _directly_ from the original language.
+
+The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of
+"Russian Anthology," and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would
+appear at first sight an exception to that indifference to the
+productions of Russian genius of which we have accused the English
+public; and the popularity of that collection would be an additional
+encouragement to the hope, that our charge may be, if not ill-founded,
+at least exaggerated.
+
+We are willing to believe, that the degree--if we are rightly informed,
+no slight one--of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in
+England, was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme
+incompetency with which the translations they contained were executed.
+
+It is always painful to find fault--more painful to criticise with
+severity--the work of a person whose motive was the same as that which
+actuates the present publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness[2]
+exhibited in the versions in question tends to give a false and
+disparaging idea of the value and the tone of Russian poetry, we may be
+excused for our apparent uncourteousness in thus pointing out their
+defects.
+
+     [2] In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be
+     required of us. Though we might fill many pages with instances
+     of the two great sins of the translator, commission and
+     omission, the _poco piu_ and _poco meno_, we will content
+     ourselves with taking, _ad aperturam libri_, an example. At
+     page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring's Russian Anthology, will
+     be found a short lyric piece of Dmítrieff, entitled "To Chloe."
+     It consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of
+     these five stanzas, three have a totally different meaning in
+     the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the
+     remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look
+     for in vain in the original. This carelessness is the less
+     excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style,
+     subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty
+     to a translator. Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece
+     in question was taken at random,) it will not be necessary to
+     dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through
+     Bowring's versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of
+     the Russian metres--sins against _costume_, as, for example,
+     the making a hussar (a _Russian_ hussar) swear by his _beard_,
+     &c. &c. &c.
+
+It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a
+brief sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin,
+growth, and fortunes of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In
+doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as
+possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters
+in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow
+and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas,
+suddenly into light.
+
+In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the
+department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety,
+though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more
+fully the intellectual annals of Russia.
+
+In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril[3] and
+Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious
+boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisláff, Sviatopólk, and Kótsel, then
+chiefs of the Moravians.
+
+     [3] Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this
+     important personage, his real name was Constantine.
+
+The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek
+alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain
+sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,[4] to add a number of
+other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So
+closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the
+Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any
+necessity.
+
+     [4] For instance, the _j_, (pronounced as the French _j_), _ts,
+     sh, shtsh, tch, ui, yä_. As the characters representing these
+     sounds are not to be found in the "case" of an English
+     compositor, we cannot enter into their Oriental origin.
+
+These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the
+Russian) varied surprisingly little in their form,[5] and perhaps
+without any change whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern
+alphabet of the Russian language; an examination of which would go far,
+in our opinion, to settle the long agitated question respecting the
+ancient pronunciation of the classic languages, particularly as Cyril
+and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a language totally foreign
+from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.
+
+     [5] Not to speak of the capitals, the [Greek: gamma, delta,
+     zeta, kappa, lambda, mu, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, phi, chi,
+     theta], have undergone hardly the most trifling change in form;
+     [Greek: psi, xi, omega], though they do not occur in the
+     Russian, are found in the Slavonic alphabet. The Russian
+     pronunciation of their letter B, which agrees with that of the
+     modern Greeks, is V, there being another character for the
+     _sound_ B.
+
+In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the
+first monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril
+immediately after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken
+at Thessalonika was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely
+Greek words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of
+the version being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the
+Scriptures were not translated into any specific spoken dialect at all;
+but that a kind of _mezzo-termine_ was selected--or rather formed--for
+the purpose. What we have advanced derives a still stronger degree of
+probability from the circumstance, that the Slavonic Bible follows the
+Greek _construction_. This Bible, with slight changes and corrections
+produced by three or four revisions made at different periods, is that
+still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language of
+the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the Bible
+forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper
+classes--who are instructed in this _dead_ language, precisely as an
+Italian must study Latin in order to read the Bible.
+
+Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history,
+towers, like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid,
+one colossal figure--that of Vladímir Sviatoslávitch; the first to
+surmount the bloody splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet[6] with the
+mildly-radiant Cross of Christ.
+
+     [6] The crown was not worn by the ancient Russian sovereigns,
+     or "Grand Princes," as they were called; the insignia of these
+     potentates was a close skull-cap, called in Russian shápka,
+     bonnet; many of which are preserved in the regalia of Moscow.
+     This bonnet is generally surrounded by the most precious furs,
+     and gorgeously decorated with gems.
+
+From the conversion to Christianity of Vladímir and his
+subjects--passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar
+hordes, which lasted for about 250 years--we may consider two languages,
+essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of
+the 17th century--the one the written or learned, the other the spoken
+language.
+
+The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were
+translated: and this remained the learned or official language for a
+long period. In this--or in an imitation of this, effected with various
+degrees of success--were compiled the different collections of Monkish
+annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select
+their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of
+facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were
+composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above
+classes[7] were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of
+the Church and of learning.
+
+     [7] For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels,
+     &c. Two of the last-mentioned species of works are very curious
+     from their antiquity. The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem of Daniel,
+     prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century;
+     and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nikítin,
+     merchant of Tver, made about 1470.
+
+The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much
+allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which
+overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a
+half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented
+themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised
+probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language;
+and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect
+upon the Russian tongue.[8]
+
+     [8] The only traces left on the _language_ by the Tartar
+     domination are a few words, chiefly expressing articles of
+     dress.
+
+It is to the reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch, who united Little Russia to
+Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the
+country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little
+Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit
+of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.
+
+The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future
+fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would
+possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia
+such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more
+extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain
+disturbing--if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure
+impeding--forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable
+dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and
+admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to
+rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also
+destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was
+national--that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse
+the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter
+perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other
+languages, than the production of originality in his own.
+
+This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems
+to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number
+of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter's time
+
+     "A Babylonish dialect;"
+
+the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with
+an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every
+tongue; terms which might have been--have, indeed, since
+been--translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the
+literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish
+our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of
+translations, but very few original productions.
+
+From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note:
+we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or
+vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have
+proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting,
+cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.
+
+At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it
+will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages--the Slavonic, to
+which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little
+Russia.
+
+The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from
+which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably
+raise a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing
+this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon
+the circumstance, that the literature is--as we have stated--divisible
+into two distinct and widely differing regions. It will be sufficiently
+accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a
+century back from the present time; and to consider Lomonósoff as its
+founder. Mikháil Vassílievitch Lomonósoff, born in 1711, is the author
+who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the
+North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in
+almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of
+science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles
+he had fixed as a grammarian.
+
+He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in
+conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumarókoff and Kheráskoff, he
+laid the foundations of the Russian literature.
+
+Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the
+reverence due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's
+letters, it will be sufficient to remark, that Soumarókoff was the first
+to introduce tragedy and opera, and Kheráskoff, the author of two epic
+poems which we omit to particularize, as not coming within our present
+scope, wrote a work entitled "Cadmus and Harmonia," which may be
+considered as the first romance. It is a narrative and metaphysical
+work, which we should class as a "prose poem;" the style being
+considerably elevated above the tone of the "Musa pedestris."
+
+The name of Emín comes next in historical, though not literary,
+importance: though the greater part of his productions consists of
+translations, particularly of those shorter pieces of prose fiction
+called by the Italians "novelle," he was the author of a few original
+pieces, now but little read; his style bears the marks, like that of
+Kheráskoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want of finish.
+
+The reputation of Karamzín is too widely spread throughout Europe to
+render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by
+him to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he
+commenced a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first
+chapters.
+
+Naréjniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia--or rather of
+the South or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of
+vivacity, but as they are deformed by defects both in style and taste,
+his reputation has become almost extinct. We cannot quit this division
+of our subject, which refers to romantic fiction anterior to the
+appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning the names
+of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished as having
+produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical
+event--Polevói and Bestónjeff--the latter of whom wrote, under the name
+of Marlínski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high
+and deserved reputation.
+
+It is with Zagóskin that we may regard the regular historical
+novel--viewing that species of composition as exemplified in the works
+of Scott--as having commenced.
+
+With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is
+so extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory
+allusion to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing
+which, we shall attend more exclusively to those productions of which
+the subject or treatment is purely national.
+
+One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zagóskin,
+whose historical romance "Yoúriy Milosláffskiy," met with great and
+permanent success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most
+interesting crisis in the Russian history, when the valour of Mínin
+enabled his countrymen to shake off the hated yoke of Poland. His other
+work, "Roslavleóff," is less interesting: the period is 1812. We may
+also mention his "Iskonsítel"--"the Tempter"--a fantastic story, in
+which an imaginary being is represented as mingling with and influencing
+the affairs of real life.
+
+Of Boulgárin, we may mention, besides his "Ivan Vuíjgin," a romance in
+the manner of "Gil Blas," the scenery and characters of which are
+entirely Russian, two historical novels of considerable importance. "The
+False Dimítri," and "Mazeppa,"--the hero of the latter being _a real
+person_, and not, as most readers are aware, a fictitious character
+invented by Byron.
+
+Next comes the name of Lajétchnikoff, whose "Last Page" possesses a
+reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The
+action passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great,
+and Catharine plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Glück,
+becoming empress at the conclusion. The "House of Ice," by the same
+writer, is perhaps more generally known than the preceding work. The
+last-named romance depicts with great spirit the struggle between the
+Russian and foreign parties in the reign of Anna Ivánovna. But perhaps
+the most remarkable work of Lajétchnikoff is the romance entitled
+"Bassourmán," the scene of which is laid under Iván III., surnamed the
+Great.[9] Another Polevói (Nikolái) produced a work of great
+merit:--"The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord," a very faithful picture of
+the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the
+circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe
+to Polevói a wild story entitled "Abbaddon." Veltman produced, under the
+title of "Kostshéi the Deathless," a historical study of the manners of
+the twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust
+to omit the name of a lady, the Countess Shíshkin, who produced the
+historical novel "Mikháil Vassílievitch Skópin-Shúisky," which obtained
+great popularity.
+
+     [9] The non-Russian reader must be cautioned not to confuse
+     Iván III. (surnamed Velíkiy, or the Great) with Ivan IV., the
+     Cruel, the latter of whom is to foreigners the most prominent
+     figure in the Russian history. Iván III. mounted the throne in
+     1462, and his terrible namesake in 1534; the reign of Vassíliy
+     Ivánovitch intervening between these two memorable epochs.
+
+The picturesque career of Lomonósoff gave materials for a romantic
+biography of that poet, the work of Xenophónt Polevói, resembling, in
+its mixture of truth and fiction, the "Wahrheit und Dichtung" of Goethe.
+
+Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those
+exhibiting scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been
+neglected. Kaláshnikoff wrote "The Merchant Jáloboff's Daughter," and
+the "Kamtchadálka," both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia;
+the former painting various parts of that wild and interesting country,
+the latter confined more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtchátka.
+Besides Gógol, whose easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many
+humorous sketches of provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitchéff,
+whose "Khólmsky Family" possesses much interest; but the delineations of
+Gógol depend so much for their effect upon delicate shades of manner,
+&c., that it is not probable they can ever be effectively reproduced in
+another language.
+
+Mentioning Peróffsky, whose "Monastírka" gives a picture of Russian
+interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation.
+His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of
+a very curious race--the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchérnaia
+Jénstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society,
+which was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.
+
+The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British
+readers to a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most
+unaccountably neglected by the English public, the present would not be
+a fit occasion to enter with any minuteness into the history of Russian
+letters, or to give, in fact, more than a passing allusion to its chief
+features; the translator hopes that he will be excused for the
+meagreness of the present notice.
+
+He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any
+increasing desire on the part of his countrymen to become more
+accurately acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is
+convinced, of a very high degree of respect and admiration. How could
+that acquaintance be so delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the
+interchange of literature? The great works of English genius are read,
+studied, and admired, throughout the vast empire of Russia; the language
+of England is rapidly and steadily extending, and justice, no less than
+policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions respecting the social
+and domestic character, no less than the history, of Russia, should be
+dispelled by truth.
+
+The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to
+specify one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the
+present romance, as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in
+England the literature of Russia.
+
+It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the
+facts and characters are all strictly true;[10] besides this, the author
+passed many years in the Caucasus, and made full use of the
+opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming familiar with the language,
+manners, and scenery of a region on which the attention of the English
+public has long been turned with peculiar interest.
+
+     [10] The translator recently met in society a Russian officer,
+     who had served with distinction in the country which forms the
+     scene of "Ammalát Bek." This gentleman had intimately known
+     Marlínski, and bore witness to the perfect accuracy of his
+     delineations, as well of the external features of nature as of
+     the characters of his _dramatis personæ_. The officer alluded
+     to had served some time in the very regiment commanded by the
+     unfortunate Verkhóffsky. Our fair readers may be interested to
+     learn, that Seltanetta still lives, and yet bears traces of her
+     former beauty. She married the Shamkhál, and now resides in
+     feudal magnificence at Tarki, where she exercises great sway,
+     which she employs in favour of the Russian interest, to which
+     she is devoted.
+
+The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it
+is hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public
+always "_novitatis avida_," and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with
+the "Bismillahs" and "Mashallahs" of the ordinary oriental novels, may
+find some piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life--that of the
+Caucasian Tartars.
+
+The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for
+which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon
+the method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian
+orthography, as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as
+_zh_, &c. &c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the
+correct pronunciation. Throughout these pages the vowels _a, e, i, o,
+y_, are supposed to be pronounced as in French, the diphthong _ou_ as in
+the word _you_, the _j_ always with the French sound.
+
+With respect to the combinations of consonants employed, _kh_ has the
+gutteral sound of the _ch_ in the Scottish word _loch_, and _gh_ is like
+a rather rough or coarse aspirate.
+
+The simple _g_ is invariably to be uttered hard, as in _gun_ or _gall_.
+
+To avoid the possibility of errors, the combination _tch_, though not a
+very soft one to the eye, represents a Russian sound for which there is
+no character in English. It is, of course, uttered as in the word
+_watch_.
+
+As a great deal of the apparent discord of Russian words, as pronounced
+by foreigners, arises from ignorance of the place of the accent, we have
+added a sign over every polysyllable word, indicating the part on which
+the stress is to be laid.
+
+The few preceding rules will, the translator hopes, enable his
+countrymen to _attack_ the pronunciation of the Russian names without
+the ancient dread inspired by terrific and complicated clusters of
+consonants; and will perhaps prove to them that the language is both an
+easy and a melodious one.
+
+     _St Petersburg, November_ 10, 1842.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+    "Be slow to offend--swift to revenge!"
+      _Inscription on a dagger of Daghestán._
+
+It was Djoumá.[11] Not far from Bouináki, a considerable village of
+Northern Daghestán, the young Tartars were assembled for their national
+exercise called "djigítering;" that is, the horse-race accompanied by
+various trials of boldness and strength. Bouináki is situated upon two
+ledges of the precipitous rocks of the mountain: on the left of the road
+leading from Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above the town, the crest
+of Caucasus, feathered with wood; on the right, the shore, sinking
+imperceptibly, spreads itself out into meadows, on which the Caspian Sea
+pours its eternal murmur, like the voice of human multitudes.
+
+     [11] Djoumá answers to our Sabbath. The days of the Mahomedan
+     week are as follows: Shambi, Saturday; Ikhshambá, Sunday;
+     Doushambá, Monday; Seshambá, Tuesday; Tchershambá, Wednesday;
+     Pkhanshambá, Thursday; Djoumá, Friday.
+
+A vernal day was fading into evening, and all the inhabitants, attracted
+rather by the coolness of the breeze than by any feeling of curiosity,
+had quitted their sáklas,[12] and assembled in crowds on both sides of
+the road. The women, without veils, and with coloured kerchiefs rolled
+like turbans round their heads, clad in the long chemise,[13] confined
+by the short arkhaloúkh, and wide toumáns,[14] sat in rows, while
+strings of children sported before them. The men, assembled in little
+groups, stood, or rested on their knees;[15] others, in twos or threes,
+walked slowly round, smoking tobacco in little wooden pipes: a cheerful
+buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded the clattering of hoofs, and the
+cry "katch, katch!" (make way!) from the horsemen preparing for the
+race.
+
+     [12] Sákla, a Circassian hut.
+
+     [13] A species of garment, resembling a frock-coat with an
+     upright collar, reaching to the knees, fixed in front by hooks
+     and eyes, worn by both sexes.
+
+     [14] The trowsers of the _women_: those worn by the men, though
+     alike in form, are called shalwárs. It is an offence to tell a
+     man that he wears the toumán; being equivalent to a charge of
+     effeminacy; and _vice versâ_.
+
+     [15] It is the ordinary manner of the Asiatics to sit in this
+     manner in public, or in the presence of a superior.
+
+Nature, in Daghestán, is most lovely in the month of May. Millions of
+roses poured their blushes over the crags; their odour was streaming in
+the air; the nightingale was not silent in the green twilight of the
+wood, almond-trees, all silvered with their flowers, arose like the
+cupolas of a pagoda, and resembled, with their lofty branches twined
+with leaves, the minarets of some Mussulman mosque. Broad-breasted oaks,
+like sturdy old warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and
+chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked
+like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the
+summer heats. Sportive flocks of sheep--their fleeces speckled with
+rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for
+hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and
+there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating
+on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills--such is the frame
+that encloses the picture of every Mussulman village. On this Djoumá,
+the neighbourhood of Bouináki was more than usually animated. The sun
+poured his floods of gold on the dark walls of the flat-roofed sáklas,
+clothing them with fantastic shadows, and adding beauty to their forms.
+In the distance, crawling along the mountain, the creaking arbas[16]
+flitted among the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past them,
+before them, flew a horseman, raising the dust along the road ... the
+mountain crest and the boundless sea gave grandeur to this picture, and
+all nature breathed a glow of life.
+
+     [16] A kind of rude cart with two wheels.
+
+"He comes, he comes!" was murmured through the crowd; all was in motion.
+The horsemen, who till now had been chattering with their acquaintance
+on foot, or disorderedly riding about the meadow, now leaped upon their
+steeds, and dashed forward to meet the cavalcade which was descending to
+the plain: it was Ammalát Bek, the nephew of the Shamkhál[17] of Tarki,
+with his suite. He was habited in a black Persian cloak, edged with
+gold-lace, the hanging sleeves thrown back over his shoulders. A Turkish
+shawl was wound round his arkhaloúkh, which was made of flowered silk.
+Red shalwárs were lost in his yellow high-heeled riding-boots. His gun,
+dagger, and pistol, glittered with gold and silver arabesque work. The
+hilt of his sabre was enriched with gems. The Prince of Tarki was a
+tall, well-made youth, of frank countenance; black curls streamed behind
+his ears from under his cap--a slight mustache shaded his upper lip--his
+eyes glittered with a proud courtesy. He rode a bright bay steed, which
+fretted under his hand like a whirlwind. Contrary to custom, the horse's
+caparison was not the round Persian housing, embroidered all over with
+silk, but the light Circassian saddle, ornamented with silver on a black
+ground; and the stirrups were of the black steel of Kharamán, inlaid
+with gold. Twenty noúkers[18] on spirited horses, and dressed in cloaks
+glittering with lace, their caps cocked jauntily, and leaning affectedly
+on one side, pranced and sidled after him. The people respectfully stood
+up before their Bek, and bowed, pressing their right hand upon their
+right knee. A murmur of whispered approbation followed the young chief
+as he passed among the women. Arrived at the southern extremity of the
+ground, Ammalát stopped. The chief people, the old men leaning upon
+their sticks, and the elders of Bouináki, stood round in a circle to
+catch a kind word from the Bek; but Ammalát did not pay them any
+particular attention, and with cold politeness replied in monosyllables
+to the flatteries and obeisances of his inferiors. He waved his hand;
+this was the signal to commence the race.
+
+     [17] The first Shamkháls were the kinsmen and representatives
+     of the Khalifs of Damascus: the last Shamkhál died on his
+     return from Russia, and with him finished this useless rank.
+     His son, Suleiman Pacha, possessed his property as a private
+     individual.
+
+     [18] The attendants of a Tartar noble, equivalent to the
+     "henchman" of the ancient Highlanders. The noúker waits behind
+     his lord at table, cuts up and presents the food.
+
+Twenty of the most fiery horsemen dashed forward, without the slightest
+order or regularity, galloping onward and back again, placing themselves
+in all kinds of attitudes, and alternately passing each other. At one
+moment they jostled one another from the course, and at the same time
+held in their horses, then again they let them go at full gallop over
+the plain. After this, they each took slender sticks, called djigidís,
+and darted them as they rode, either in the charge or the pursuit, and
+again seizing them as they flew, or picking them up from the earth.
+Several tumbled from their saddles under the strong blows; and then
+resounded the loud laugh of the spectators, while loud applauses greeted
+the conqueror; sometimes the horses stumbled, and the riders were thrown
+over their heads, hurled off by a double force from the shortness of
+their stirrups. Then commenced the shooting. Ammalát Bek had remained a
+little apart, looking on with apparent pleasure. His noúkers, one after
+the other, had joined the crowd of djigíterers, so that, at last, only
+two were left by his side. For some time he was immovable, and followed
+with an indifferent gaze the imitation of an Asiatic combat; but by
+degrees his interest grew stronger. At first he watched the cavaliers
+with great attention, then he began to encourage them by his voice and
+gestures, he rose higher in his stirrups, and at last the warrior-blood
+boiled in his veins, when his favourite noúker could not hit a cap which
+he had thrown down before him. He snatched his gun from his attendants,
+and dashed forward like an arrow, winding among the sporters. "Make
+way--make way!" was heard around, and all, dispersing like a rain-cloud
+on either side, gave place to Ammalát Bek.
+
+At the distance of a verst[19] stood ten poles with caps hanging on
+them. Ammalát rode straight up to them, waved his gun round his head,
+and turned close round the pole; as he turned he stood up in his
+stirrups, turned back--bang!--the cap tumbled to the ground; without
+checking his speed he reloaded, the reins hanging on his horse's
+neck--knocked off another, then a third--and so on the whole ten. A
+murmur of applause arose on all sides; but Ammalát, without stopping,
+threw his gun into the hands of one of his noúkers, pulled out a pistol
+from his belt, and with the ball struck the shoe from the hind foot of
+his horse; the shoe flew off, and fell far behind him; he then again
+took his gun from his noúker, and ordered him to gallop on before him.
+Quicker than thought both darted forward. When half-way round the
+course, the noúker drew from his pocket a rouble, and threw it up in the
+air. Ammalát raised himself in the saddle, without waiting till it fell;
+but at the very instant his horse stumbled with all his four legs
+together, and striking the dust with his nostrils, rolled prostrate. All
+uttered a cry of terror; but the dexterous horseman, standing up in the
+stirrups, without losing his seat, or even leaning forward, as if he had
+been aware that he was going to fall, fired rapidly, and hitting the
+rouble with his ball, hurled it far among the people. The crowd shouted
+with delight--"Igeed, igeed! (bravo!) Alla valla-ha!" But Ammalát Bek,
+modestly retiring, dismounted from his steed, and throwing the reins to
+his djilladár, (groom,) ordered him immediately to have the horse shod.
+The race and the shooting was continued.
+
+     [19] 3500 English feet--three quarters of a mile.
+
+At this moment there rode up to Ammalát his emdjék,[20] Saphir-Ali, the
+son of one of the poor beks of Bouináki, a young man of an agreeable
+exterior, and simple, cheerful character. He had grown up with Ammalát,
+and therefore treated him with great familiarity. He leaped from his
+horse, and nodding his head, exclaimed--"Noúker Mémet Rasoúl has knocked
+up the old cropped[21] stallion, in trying to leap him over a ditch
+seven paces wide." "And did he leap it?" cried Ammalát impatiently.
+"Bring him instantly to me!" He went to meet the horse--and without
+putting his foot in the stirrup, leaped into the saddle, and galloped to
+the bed of a mountain-torrent. As he galloped, he pressed the horse with
+his knee, but the wearied animal, not trusting to his strength, bolted
+aside on the very brink, and Ammalát was obliged to make another turn.
+The second time, the steed, stimulated by the whip, reared up on his
+hind-legs in order to leap the ditch, but he hesitated, grew restive,
+and resisted with his fore-feet. Ammalát grew angry. In vain did
+Saphir-Ali entreat him not to force the horse, which had lost in many a
+combat and journey the elasticity of his limbs. Ammalát would not listen
+to any thing; but urging him with a cry, and striking him with his drawn
+sabre for the third time, he galloped him at the ravine; and when, for
+the third time, the old horse stopped short in his stride, not daring to
+leap, he struck him so violently on the head with the hilt of his sabre,
+that he fell lifeless on the earth.
+
+     [20] Foster-brother; from the word "emdjek"--suckling. Among
+     the tribes of the Caucasus, this relationship is held more
+     sacred than that of nature. Every man would willingly die for
+     his emdjek.
+
+     [21] This is a celebrated race of Persian horses, called Teke.
+
+"This is the reward of faithful service!" said Saphir-Ali,
+compassionately, as he gazed on the lifeless steed.
+
+"This is the reward of disobedience!" replied Ammalát, with flashing
+eyes.
+
+Seeing the anger of the Bek, all were silent. The horsemen, however,
+continued their djigítering.
+
+And suddenly was heard the thunder of Russian drums, and the bayonets of
+Russian soldiers glittered as they wound over the hill. It was a company
+of the Kourínsky regiment of infantry, sent from a detachment which had
+been dispatched to Akoúsh, then in a state of revolt, under Sheikh Ali
+Khan, the banished chief of Derbend. This company had been protecting a
+convoy of supplies from Derbend, whither it was returning by the
+mountain road. The commander of the company, Captain -----, and one
+officer with him, rode in front. Before they had reached the
+race-course, the retreat was beaten, and the company halted, throwing
+aside their havresacks and piling their muskets, but without lighting a
+fire.
+
+The arrival of a Russian detachment could have been no novelty to the
+inhabitants of Daghestán in the year 1819; and even yet, it must be
+confessed, it is an event that gives them no pleasure. Superstition made
+them look on the Russians as eternal enemies--enemies, however, vigorous
+and able; and they determined, therefore, not to injure them but in
+secret, by concealing their hatred under a mask of amity. A buzz spread
+among the people on the appearance of the Russians: the women returned
+by winding paths to the village, not forgetting, however, to gaze
+secretly at the strangers. The men, on the contrary, threw fierce
+glances at them over their shoulders, and began to assemble in groups,
+discussing how they might best get rid of them, and relieve themselves
+from the podvód[22], and so on. A multitude of loungers and boys,
+however, surrounded the Russians as they reposed upon the grass. Some of
+the Kekkhoúds (starosts[23]) and Tehaoúshes (desiátniks[24]) appointed
+by the Russian Government, hastily advancing to the Captain, pulled off
+their caps, after the usual salutation, "Khot ghialdi!" (welcome!) and
+"Yakshimoúsen, tazamoúsen, sen-ne-ma-moúsen," (I greet you,) arrived at
+the inevitable question at a meeting of Asiatics, "What news?"--"Na
+khaber?"
+
+     [22] The being obliged to transport provisions.
+
+     [23] The chief of a village.
+
+     [24] The subordinates of the atarost.
+
+"The only news with me is, that my horse has cast a shoe, and the poor
+devil is dead lame," answered the Captain in pretty good Tartar: "and
+here is, just _ápropos_, a blacksmith!" he continued, turning to a
+broad-shouldered Tartar, who was filing the fresh-shod hoof of Ammalát's
+horse. "Kounák! (my friend,)--shoe my horse--the shoes are ready--'tis
+but the clink of a hammer, and 'tis done in a moment!"
+
+The blacksmith turned sulkily towards the Captain a face tanned by his
+forge and by the sun, looked from the corners of his eyes at his
+questioner, stroked the thick mustache which overshadowed a beard long
+unrazored, and which might for its bristles have done honour to any
+boar; flattened his arákshin (bonnet) on his head, and coolly continued
+putting away his tools in their bag.
+
+"Do you understand me, son of a wolf race?" said the Captain.
+
+"I understand you well," answered the blacksmith,--"you want your horse
+shod."
+
+"And I should advise you to shoe him," replied the Captain, observing on
+the part of the Tartar a desire to jest.
+
+"To-day is a holiday: I will not work."
+
+"I will pay you what you like for your work; but I tell you that,
+whether you like it or not, you must do what I want."
+
+"The will of Allah is above ours; and he does not permit us to work on
+Djoumá. We sin enough for gain on common days, so on a holiday I do not
+wish to buy coals with silver."[25]
+
+     [25] Go to the devil.
+
+"But were you not at work just now, obstinate blockhead? Is not one
+horse the same as another? Besides, mine is a real Mussulman--look at
+the mark[26]--the blood of Karabákh."
+
+     [26] The Asiatics mark their horses by burning them on their
+     haunch with a hot iron. This peculiar mark, the [Greek: stigma]
+     or [Greek: kotpa] of the Greeks is called "távro."
+
+"All horses are alike; but not so those who ride them: Ammalát Bek is my
+aga (lord.)"
+
+"That is, if you had taken it into your head to refuse him, he would
+have had your ears cropped; but you will not work for me, in the hope
+that I would not dare to do the same. Very well, my friend! I certainly
+will not crop your ears, but be assured that I will warm that orthodox
+back of yours with two hundred pretty stinging nogaikas (lashes with a
+whip) if you won't leave off your nonsense--do you hear?"
+
+"I hear--and I answer as I did before: I will not shoe the horse--for I
+am a good Mussulman."
+
+"And I will make you shoe him, because I am a good soldier. As you have
+worked at the will of your Bek, you shall work for the need of a Russian
+officer--without this I cannot proceed. Corporals, forward!"
+
+In the mean time a circle of gazers had been extending round the
+obstinate blacksmith, like a ring made in the water by casting a stone
+into it. Some in the crowd were disputing the best places, hardly
+knowing what they were running to see; and at last more cries were
+heard: "It is not fair--it cannot be: to-day is a holiday: to-day it is
+a sin to work!" Some of the boldest, trusting to their numbers, pulled
+their caps over their eyes, and felt at the hilts of their daggers,
+pressing close up to the Captain, and crying "Don't shoe him, Alékper!
+Do nothing for him: here's news, my masters! What new prophets for us
+are these unwashed Russians?" The Captain was a brave man, and thoroughly
+understood the Asiatics. "Away, ye rascals!" he cried in a rage, laying
+his hand on the butt of his pistol. "Be silent, or the first that dares
+to let an insult pass his teeth, shall have them closed with a leaden
+seal!"
+
+This threat, enforced by the bayonets of some of the soldiers, succeeded
+immediately: they who were timid took to their heels--the bolder held
+their tongues. Even the orthodox blacksmith, seeing that the affair was
+becoming serious, looked round on all sides, and muttered "Nedjelaim?"
+(What can I do?) tucked up his sleeves, pulled out from his bag the
+hammer and pincers, and began to shoe the Russian's horse, grumbling
+between his teeth, "_Vala billa beetmi eddeem_, (I will not do it, by
+God!)" It must be remarked that all this took place out of Ammalát's
+presence. He had hardly looked at the Russians, when, in order to avoid
+a disagreeable rencontre, he mounted the horse which had just been shod,
+and galloped off to Bouináki, where his house was situated.
+
+While this was taking place at one end of the exercising ground, a
+horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers. He was of
+middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of
+linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike
+equipment, and followed by five noúkers. By their dusty dress, and the
+foam which covered their horses, it might be seen that they had ridden
+far and fast. The first horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers,
+advanced slowly along the piles of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids
+of fire-arms. The noúkers, following the steps of their master, far from
+turning aside, coolly rode over the scattered weapons. The sentry, who
+had challenged them while they were yet at some distance, and warned
+them not to approach, seized the bit of the steed bestridden by the
+mail-coated horseman, while the rest of the soldiers, enraged at such an
+insult from a Mussulman, assailed the party with abuse. "Hold hard! Who
+are you?" was the challenge and question of the sentinel. "Thou must be
+a raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan Akhmet Khan of Avár,"[27]
+coolly answered the man in mail, shaking off the hand of the sentry from
+his reins. "I think last year I left the Russians a keepsake at Báshli.
+Translate that for him," he said to one of his noúkers. The Aváretz
+repeated his words in pretty intelligible Russian.
+
+     [27] The brother of Hassan Khan Djemontái, who became Khan of
+     Avár by marrying the Khan's widow and heiress.
+
+"'Tis Akhmet Khan! Akhmet Khan!" shouted the soldiers. "Seize him! hold
+him fast! down with him! pay him for the affair of Báshli[28]--the
+villains cut our wounded to pieces."
+
+     [28] The Russian detachment, consisting on this occasion of
+     3000 men, was surrounded by 60,000. These were, Ouizmi
+     Karakaidákhsky, the Aváretzes, Akoushínetzes, the Boulinétzes
+     of the Koi-Soú, and others. The Russians fought their way out
+     by night, but with considerable loss.
+
+"Away, brute!" cried Sultan Akhmet Khan to the soldier who had again
+seized the bridle of his horse--"I am a Russian general."
+
+"A Russian traitor!" roared a multitude of voices; "bring him to the
+Captain: drag him to Derbend, to Colonel Verkhóffsky."
+
+"'Tis only to hell I would go with such guides!" said Akhmet, with a
+contemptuous smile, and making his horse rear, he turned him to the
+right and left; then, with a blow of the nogaik,[29] he made him leap
+into the air, and disappeared. The noúkers kept their eye on the
+movements of their chief, and uttering their warcry, followed his steps,
+and overthrowing several of the soldiers, cleared a way for themselves
+into the road. After galloping off to a distance of scarce a hundred
+paces, the Khan rode away at a slow walk, with an expression of the
+greatest _sang-froid_, not deigning to look back, and coolly playing
+with his bridle. The crowd of Tartars assembled round the blacksmith
+attracted his attention. "What are you quarrelling about, friends?"
+asked Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining in his horse.
+
+     [29] The whip of a Kazak.
+
+In sign of respect and reverence, they all applied their hands to their
+foreheads when they saw the Khan. The timid or peaceably disposed among
+them, dreading the consequences, either from the Russians or the Khan,
+to which this rencontre might expose them, exhibited much discomfiture
+at the question; but the idle, the ruffian, and the desperate--for all
+beheld with hatred the Russian domination--crowded turbulently round him
+with delight. They hurriedly told him what was the matter.
+
+"And you stand, like buffaloes, stupidly looking on, while they force
+your brother to work like a brute under the yoke!" exclaimed the Khan,
+gloomily, to the bystanders; "while they laugh in your face at your
+customs, and trample your faith under their feet! and ye whine like old
+women, instead of revenging yourselves like men! Cowards! cowards!"
+
+"What can we do?" cried a multitude of voices together; "the Russians
+have cannon--they have bayonets!"
+
+"And ye, have ye not guns? have ye not daggers? It is not the Russians
+that are brave, but ye that are cowards! Shame of Mussulmans! The sword
+of Daghestán trembles before the Russian whip. Ye are afraid of the roll
+of the cannon; but ye fear not the reproach of cowardice. The fermán of
+a Russian prístav[30] is holier to you than a chapter of the Koran.
+Siberia frightens you more than hell. Did your forefathers act, did your
+forefathers think thus? They counted not their enemies, they calculated
+not. Outnumbered or not, they met them, bravely fought them, and
+gloriously died! And what fear ye? Have the Russians ribs of iron? Have
+their cannon no breach? Is it not by the tail that you seize the
+scorpion?" This address stirred the crowd. The Tartar vanity was touched
+to the quick. "What do we care for them? Why do we let them lord it over
+us here?" was heard around. "Let us liberate the blacksmith from his
+work--let us liberate him!" they roared, as they narrowed their circle
+round the Russian soldiers, amidst whom Alékper was shoeing the
+captain's horse. The confusion increased. Satisfied with the tumult he
+had created, Sultan Akhmet Khan, not wishing to mix himself up in an
+insignificant brawl, rode out of the crowd, leaving two noúkers to keep
+alive the violent spirit among the Tartars, while, accompanied by the
+remainder, he rode rapidly to the ootakh[31] of Ammalát.
+
+     [30] A superintendent.
+
+     [31] The house, in Tartar, is "ev;" "outakh," mansion; and
+     "sarái," edifice in general; "haram-khanéh," the women's
+     apartments. For palace they employ the word "igarát." The
+     Russians confound all these meanings in the word "sákla,"
+     which, in the Circassian language, is house.
+
+"Mayest thou be victorious," said Sultan Akhmet Khan to Ammalát Bek, who
+received him at the threshold. This ordinary salutation, in the
+Circassian language, was pronounced with so marked an emphasis, that
+Ammalát as he kissed him, asked, "Is that a jest or a prophecy, my fair
+guest?"
+
+"That depends on thee," replied the Sultan. "It is upon the right heir
+of the Shamkhalát[32] that it depends to draw the sword from the
+scabbard."
+
+     [32] The father of Ammalát was the eldest of the family, and
+     consequently the true heir to the Shamkhalát. But the Russians,
+     having conquered Daghestán, not trusting to the good intentions
+     of this chief, gave the power to the younger brother.
+
+"To sheath it no more, Khan? An unenviable destiny. Methinks it is
+better to reign in Bouináki, than for an empty title to be obliged to
+hide in the mountains like a jackal."
+
+"To bound from the mountains like a lion, Ammalát; and to repose, after
+your glorious toils, in the palace of your ancestors."
+
+"To repose? Is it not better not to be awakened at all?
+
+"Would you behold but in a dream what you ought to possess in reality?
+The Russians are giving you the poppy, and will lull you with tales,
+while another plucks the golden flowers of the garden."[33]
+
+     [33] A _jeu-de-mots_ which the Asiatics admire much;
+     "kizil-gulliár" means simply roses, but the Khan alludes to
+     "kizíl," ducats.
+
+"What can I do with my force?"
+
+"Force--that is in thy soul, Ammalát!... Despise dangers and they bend
+before you.... Dost thou hear that?" added Sultan Akhmet Khan, as the
+sound of firing reached them from the town. "It is the voice of
+victory!"
+
+Saphir-Ali rushed into the chamber with an agitated face.
+
+"Bouináki is in revolt," he hurriedly began; "a crowd of rioters has
+overpowered the detachment, and they have begun to fire from the
+rocks."[34]
+
+     [34] The Tartars, like the North American Indians, always, if
+     possible, shelter themselves behind rocks and enclosures, &c.,
+     when engaged in battle.
+
+"Rascals!" cried Ammalát, as he threw his gun over his shoulder. "How
+dared they to rise without me! Run, Saphir-Ali, threaten them with my
+name; kill the first who disobeys."
+
+"I have done all I could to restrain them," said Saphir-Ali, "but none
+would listen to me, for the noúkers of Sultan Akhmet Khan were urging
+them on, saying that he had ordered them to slay the Russians."
+
+"Indeed! did my noúkers say that?" asked the Khan.
+
+"They did not say so much, but they set the example," said Saphir-Ali.
+
+"In that case they have done well," replied Sultan Akhmet Khan: "this is
+brave!"
+
+"What hast thou done, Khan!" cried Ammalát, angrily.
+
+"What you might have done long ago!"
+
+"How can I justify myself to the Russians?"
+
+"With lead and steel.... The firing is begun.... Fate works for you ...
+the sword is drawn ... let us go seek the Russians!"
+
+"They are here!" cried the Captain, who, followed by two men, had broken
+through the disorderly ranks of the Tartars, and dashed into the house
+of their chief. Confounded by the unexpected outbreak in which he was
+certain to be considered a party, Ammalát saluted his enraged
+guest--"Come in peace!" he said to him in Tartar.
+
+"I care not whether I come in peace or no," answered the Captain, "but I
+find no peaceful reception in Bouináki. Thy Tartars, Ammalát, have dared
+to fire upon a soldier of mine, of yours, a subject of our Tsar."
+
+"In very deed, 'twas absurd to fire on a Russian," said the Khan,
+contemptuously stretching himself on the cushions of the divan, "when
+they might have cut his throat."
+
+"Here is the cause of all the mischief, Ammalát!" said the Captain,
+angrily, pointing to the Khan; "but for this insolent rebel not a
+trigger would have been pulled in Bouináki! But you have done well,
+Ammalát Bek, to invite Russians as friends, and to receive their foe as
+a guest, to shelter him as a comrade, to honour him as a friend! Ammalát
+Bek, this man is named in the order of the commander-in-chief; give him
+up."
+
+"Captain," answered Ammalát, "with us a guest is sacred. To give him up
+would be a sin upon my soul, an ineffaceable shame upon my head; respect
+my entreaty; respect our customs."
+
+"I will tell you, in your turn--respect the Russian laws. Remember your
+duty. You have sworn allegiance to the Tsar, and your oath obliges you
+not to spare your own brother if he is a criminal."
+
+"Rather would I give up my brother than my guest, Sir Captain! It is not
+for you to judge my promises and obligations. My tribunal is Allah and
+the padishah! In the field, let fortune take care of the Khan; but
+within my threshold, beneath my roof, I am bound to be his protector,
+and I will be!"
+
+"And you shall be answerable for this traitor!"
+
+The Khan had lain in haughty silence during this dispute, breathing the
+smoke from his pipe: but at the word "traitor," his blood was fired, he
+started up, and rushed indignantly to the Captain.
+
+"Traitor, say you?" he cried. "Say rather, that I refused to betray him
+to whom I was bound by promise. The Russian padishah gave me rank, the
+sardar[35] caressed me--and I was faithful so long as they demanded of
+me nothing impossible or humiliating. But, all of a sudden, they wished
+me to admit troops into Avár--to permit fortresses to be built there;
+and what name should I have deserved, if I had sold the blood and sweat
+of the Aváretzes, my brethren! If I had attempted this, think ye that I
+could have done it? A thousand free daggers, a thousand unhired bullets,
+would have flown to the heart of the betrayer. The very rocks would have
+fallen on the son who could betray his father. I refused the friendship
+of the Russians; but I was not their enemy--and what was the reward of
+my just intentions, my honest counsels? I was deeply, personally
+insulted by the letter of one of your generals, whom I had warned. That
+insolence cost him dear at Báshli ... I shed a river of blood for some
+few drops of insulting ink, and that river divides us for ever."
+
+     [35] The commander-in-chief.
+
+"That blood cries for vengeance!" replied the enraged Captain. "Thou
+shalt not escape it, robber!"
+
+"Nor thou from me!" shouted the infuriated Khan, plunging his dagger
+into the body of the Captain, as he lifted his hand to seize him by the
+collar. Severely wounded, the officer fell groaning on the carpet.
+
+"Thou hast undone me!" cried Ammalát, wringing his hands. "He is a
+Russian, and my guest!"
+
+"There are insults which a roof cannot cover," sullenly replied the
+Khan. "The die is cast: it is no time to hesitate. Shut your gate, call
+your people, and let us attack the enemy."
+
+"An hour ago I had no enemy ... there are no means now for repulsing
+them ... I have neither powder nor ball ... The people are dispersed."
+
+"They have fled!" cried Saphir-Ali in despair. "The Russians are
+advancing at full march over the hill. They are close at hand!"
+
+"If so, go with me, Ammalát!" said the Khan. "I rode to Tchetchná
+yesterday, to raise the revolt along the line ... What will be the end,
+God knows; but there is bread in the mountains. Do you consent?"
+
+"Let us go!" ... replied Ammalát, resolvedly.... "When our only safety
+is in flight, it is no time for disputes and reproaches."
+
+"Ho! horses, and six noúkers with me!"
+
+"And am I to go with you?" said Saphir-Ali, with tears in his
+eyes--"with you for weal or woe!"
+
+"No, my good Saphir-Ali, no. Remain you here to govern the household,
+that our people and the strangers may not seize every thing. Give my
+greeting to my wife, and take her to my father-in-law, the Shamkhál.
+Forget me not, and farewell!"
+
+They had barely time to escape at full gallop by one gate, when the
+Russians dashed in at the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The vernal noon was shining upon the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud
+voices of the moollahs had called the inhabitants of Tchetchná to
+prayer. By degrees they came forth from the mosques, and though
+invisible to each other from the towers on which they stood, their
+solitary voices, after awaking for a moment the echoes of the hills,
+sank to stillness in the silent air.
+
+The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a Turkish devotee, one of those
+missionaries annually sent into the mountains by the Divan of Stamboul,
+to spread and strengthen the faith, and to increase the detestation felt
+by the inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing on the roof of the
+mosque, having performed the usual call, ablution, and prayer. He had
+not been long installed as moollah of Igáli, a village of Tchetchná; and
+plunged in a deep contemplation of his hoary beard, and the circling
+smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe, he gazed from time to time with a
+curious interest on the mountains, and on the defiles which lay towards
+the north, right before his eyes. On the left arose the precipitous
+ridges dividing Tchetchná from Avár, and beyond them glittered the snows
+of Caucasus; sáklas scattered disorderly along the ridges half-way up
+the mountain, and narrow paths led to these fortresses built by nature,
+and employed by the hill-robbers to defend their liberty, or secure
+their plunder. All was still in the village and the surrounding hills;
+there was not a human being to be seen on the roads or streets; flocks
+of sheep were reposing in the shade of the cliffs; the buffaloes were
+crowded in the muddy swamps near the springs, with only their muzzles
+protruded from the marsh. Nought save the hum of the insects--nought
+save the monotonous chirp of the grasshoppers indicated life amid the
+breathless silence of the mountains; and Hadji Suleiman, stretched under
+the cupola, was intensely enjoying the stillness and repose of nature,
+so congenial to the lazy immobility of the Turkish character. Indolently
+he turned his eyes, whose fire was extinguished, and which no longer
+reflected the light of the sun, and at length they fell upon two
+horsemen, slowly climbing the opposite side of the declivity.
+
+"Néphtali!" cried our Moollah, turning towards a neighbouring sákla, at
+the gate of which stood a saddled horse. And then a handsome
+Tchetchenetz, with short cut beard, and shaggy cap covering half his
+face, ran out into the street. "I see two horsemen," continued the
+Moollah; "they are riding round the village!"
+
+"Most likely Jews or Armenians," answered Néphtali. "They do not choose
+to hire a guide, and will break their necks in the winding road. The
+wild-goats, and our boldest riders, would not plunge into these recesses
+without precaution."
+
+"No, brother Néphtali; I have been twice to Mecca, and have seen plenty
+of Jews and Armenians every where. But these riders look not like Hebrew
+chafferers, unless, indeed, they exchange steel for gold in the mountain
+road. They have no bales of merchandise. Look at them yourself from
+above; your eyes are surer than mine; mine have had their day, and done
+their work. There was a time when I could count the buttons on a Russian
+soldier's coat a verst off, and my rifle never missed an infidel; but
+now I could not distinguish a ram of my own afar."
+
+By this time Néphtali was at the side of the Moollah, and was examining
+the travellers with an eagle glance.
+
+"The noonday is hot, and the road rugged," said Suleiman; "invite the
+travellers to refresh themselves and their horses: perhaps they have
+news: besides, the Koran commands us to show hospitality."
+
+"With us in the mountains, and before the Koran, never did a stranger
+leave a village hungry or sad; never did he depart without tchourek,[36]
+without blessing, without a guide; but these people are suspicious: why
+do they avoid honest men, and pass our village by by-roads, and with
+danger to their life?"
+
+     [36] A kind of dried bread.
+
+"It seems that they are your countrymen," said Suleiman, shading his
+eyes with his hand: "their dress is Tchetchná. Perhaps they are
+returning from a plundering exhibition, to which your father went with a
+hundred of his neighbours; or perhaps they are brothers, going to
+revenge blood for blood."
+
+"No, Suleiman, that is not like us. Could a mountaineer's heart refrain
+from coming to see his countrymen--to boast of his exploits against the
+Russians, and to show his booty? These are neither avengers of blood nor
+Abreks--their faces are not covered by the báshlik; besides, dress is
+deceptive. Who can tell that those are not Russian deserters! The other
+day a Kázak, who had murdered his master, fled from Goumbet-Aoúl with
+his horse and arms.... The devil is strong!"
+
+"He is strong in them in whom the faith is weak, Néphtali;--yet, if I
+mistake not, the hinder horseman has hair flowing from under his cap."
+
+"May I be pounded to dust, but it is so! It is either a Russian, or, what
+is worse, a Tartar Shageed.[37] Stop a moment, my friend; I will comb
+your zilflárs for you! In half-an-hour I will return, Suleiman, either
+with them,--or one of us three shall feed the mountain berkoots
+(eagles.)"
+
+     [37] The mountaineers are bad Mussulmans, the Sooni sect is
+     predominant; but the Daghestánetzes are in general Shageeds, as
+     the Persians. The sects hate each other with all their heart.
+
+Néphtali rushed down the stairs, threw the gun on his shoulders, leapt
+into his saddle and dashed down the hill, caring neither for furrow nor
+stone. Only the dust arose, and the pebbles streamed down after the bold
+horseman."
+
+"Alla akbér!" gravely exclaimed Suleiman, and lit his pipe.
+
+Néphtali soon came up with the strangers. Their horses were covered with
+foam, and the sweat-drops rained from them on the narrow path by which
+they were climbing the mountain. The first was clothed in a shirt of
+mail, the other in the Circassian dress: except that he wore a Persian
+sabre instead of a sháshka,[38] suspended by a laced girdle. His left
+arm was covered with blood, bound up with a handkerchief, and supported
+by the sword-knot. The faces of both were concealed. For some time he
+rode behind them along the slippery path, which overhung a precipice;
+but at the first open space he galloped by them, and turned his horse
+round. "Salám aleikom!" said he, opposing their passage along the rugged
+and half-built road among the rocks, as he made ready his arms. The
+foremost horseman suddenly wrapped his boúrka[39] round his face, so as
+to leave visible only his knit brows: "Aleikom Salám!" answered he,
+cocking his gun, and fixing himself in the saddle.
+
+     [38] The Circassian sabre.
+
+     [39] A rough cloak, used as a protection in bad weather.
+
+"God give you a good journey!" said Néphtali. repeating the usual
+salutation, and preparing, at the first hostile movement, to shoot the
+stranger.
+
+"God give you enough of sense not to interrupt the traveller," replied
+his antagonist, impatiently: "What would you with us, Kounák?"[40]
+
+     [40] Friend, comrade.
+
+"I offer you rest, and a brother's repast, barley and stalls for your
+horses. My threshold flourishes by hospitality: the blessing of the
+stranger increaseth the flock, and giveth sharpness to the sword of the
+master. Fix not the seal of reproach on our whole village. Let them not
+say, 'They have seen travellers in the heat of noon, and have not
+refreshed them nor sheltered them.'"
+
+"We thank you for your kindness; but we are not wont to take forced
+hospitality; and haste is even more necessary for us than rest."
+
+"You ride to your death without a guide."
+
+"Guide!" exclaimed the traveller; "I know every step of the Caucasus. I
+have been where your serpents climb not, your tigers cannot mount, your
+eagles cannot fly. Make way, comrade: thy threshold is not on God's
+high-road, and I have no time to prate with thee."
+
+"I will not yield a step, till I know who and whence you are!"
+
+"Insolent scoundrel, out of my way, or thy mother shall beg thy bones
+from the jackall and the wind! Thank your luck, Néphtali, that thy
+father and I have eaten one another's salt; and often have ridden by his
+side in the battle. Unworthy son! thou art rambling about the roads, and
+ready to attack the peaceable travellers, while thy father's corse lies
+rotting on the fields of Russia, and the wives of the Kazáks are selling
+his arms in the bazar. Néphtali, thy father was slain yesterday beyond
+the Térek. Dost thou know me now?"
+
+"Sultan Akhmet Khan!" cried the Tchetchenetz, struck by the piercing
+look and by the terrible news. His voice was stifled, and he fell
+forward on his horse's neck in inexpressible grief.
+
+"Yes, I am Sultan Akhmet Khan! but grave this in your memory,
+Néphtali--that if you say to any one, 'I have seen the Khan of Avár,' my
+vengeance will live from generation to generation."
+
+The strangers passed on, the Khan in silence, plunged, as it seemed, in
+painful recollections; Ammalát (for it was he) in gloomy thought. The
+dress of both bore witness to recent fighting; their mustaches were
+singed by the priming, and splashes of blood had dried upon their faces;
+but the proud look of the first seemed to defy to the combat fate and
+chance; a gloomy smile, of hate mingled with scorn, contracted his lip.
+On the other hand, on the features of Ammalát exhaustion was painted. He
+could hardly turn his languid eyes; and from time to time a groan
+escaped him, caused by the pain of his wounded arm. The uneasy pace of
+the Tartar horse, unaccustomed to the mountain roads, renewed the
+torment of his wound. He was the first to break the silence.
+
+"Why have you refused the offer of these good people? We might have
+stopped an hour or two to repose, and at dewfall we could have
+proceeded."
+
+"You think so, because you feel like a young man, dear Ammalát: you are
+used to rule your Tartars like slaves, and you fancy that you can
+conduct yourself with the same ease among the free mountaineers. The
+hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;--we are defeated and flying.
+Hundreds of brave mountaineers--your noúkers and my own--have fallen in
+fight with the Russians; and the Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight
+the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan, which they are wont to behold the star
+of victory! To accept the beggar's repast, perhaps to hear reproaches
+for the death of fathers and sons, carried away by me in this rash
+expedition--'twould be to lose their confidence for ever. Time will
+pass, tears will dry up; the thirst of vengeance will take place of
+grief for the dead; and then again Sultan Akhmet will be seen the
+prophet of plunder and of blood. Then again the battle-signal shall echo
+through the mountains, and I shall once more lead flying bands of
+avengers into the Russian limits. If I go now, in the moment of defeat,
+the Tchetchenetz will judge that Allah giveth and taketh away victory.
+They may offend me by rash words, and with me an offence is
+ineffaceable; and the revenge of a personal offence would obstruct the
+road that leads me to the Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel with a
+brave people--and destroy the idol of glory on which they are wont to
+gaze with rapture? Never does man appear so mean as in weakness, when
+every one can measure his strength with him fearlessly: besides, you
+need a skilful leech, and nowhere will you find a better than at my
+house. To-morrow we shall be at home; have patience until then."
+
+With a gesture of gratitude Ammalát Bek placed his hand upon his heart
+and forehead: he perfectly felt the truth of the Khan's words, but
+exhaustion for many hours had been overwhelming him. Avoiding the
+villages, they passed the night among the rocks, eating a handful of
+millet boiled in honey, without the mountaineers seldom set out on a
+journey. Crossing the Koi-Soú by the bridge near the Asheért, quitting
+its northern branch, and leaving behind them Andéh, and the country of
+the Boulinétzes of the Koi-Soú, and the naked chain of Salataóu. A rude
+path lay before them, winding among forests and cliffs terrible to body
+and soul; and they began to climb the last chain which separated them on
+the north from Khounzákh or Avár, the capital of the Khans. The forest,
+and then the underwood, had gradually disappeared from the naked flint
+of the mountain, on which cloud and tempest could hardly wander. To
+reach the summit, our travellers were compelled to ride alternately to
+the right and to the left, so precipitous was the ascent of the rocks.
+The experienced steed of the Khan stepped cautiously and surely from
+stone to stone, feeling his way with his hoofs, and when they slipped,
+gliding on his haunches down the declivities: while the ardent fiery
+horse of Ammalát, trained in the hills of Daghestán, fretted, curveted,
+and slipped. Deprived of his customary grooming, he could not support a
+two days' flight under the intense cold and burning sunshine of the
+mountains, travelling among sharp rocks, and nourished only by the
+scanty herbage of the crevices. He snorted heavily as he climbed higher
+and higher; the sweat streamed from his poitrel; his large nostrils were
+dry and parched, and foam boiled from his bit. "Allah berekét!"
+exclaimed Ammalát, as he reached the crest from which there opened
+before him a view of Avár: but at the very moment his exhausted horse
+fell under him; the blood spouted from his open mouth, and his last
+breath burst the saddle-girth.
+
+The Khan assisted the Bek to extricate himself from the stirrups; but
+observed with alarm that his efforts had displaced the bandage on
+Ammalát's wounded arm, and that the blood was soaking through it afresh.
+The young man, it seemed, was insensible to pain; tears were rolling
+down his face upon the dead horse. So one drop fills not, but overflows
+the cup. "Thou wilt never more bear me like down upon the wind," he
+said, "nor hear behind thee from the dust-cloud of the race, the shouts,
+unpleasing to the rival, the acclamations of the people: in the blaze of
+battle no more shalt thou carry me from the iron rain of the Russian
+cannon. With thee I gained the fame of a warrior--why should I survive,
+or it, or thee?" He bent his face upon his knee, and remained silent a
+long time, while the Khan carefully bound up his wounded arm: at length
+Ammalát raised his head: "Leave me!" he cried, resolutely: "leave,
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, a wretch to his fate! The way is long, and I am
+exhausted. By remaining with me, you will perish in vain. See! the eagle
+soars around us; he knows that my heart will soon quiver beneath his
+talons, and I thank God! Better find an airy grave in the maw of a bird
+of prey, than leave my corse beneath a Christian foot. Farewell, linger
+not."
+
+"For shame, Ammalát! you trip against a straw....! What the great harm?
+You are wounded, and your horse is dead. Your wound will soon healed,
+and we will find you a better horse! Allah sendeth not misfortunes
+alone. In the flower of your age, and the full vigour of your faculties,
+it is a sin to despair. Mount my horse, I will lead him by the bridle,
+and by night we shall be at home. Time is precious!"
+
+"For me, time is no more, Sultan Ahkmet Khan ... I thank you heartily
+for your brotherly care, but I cannot take advantage of it ... you
+yourself cannot support a march on foot after such fatigue. I repeat ...
+leave me to my fate. Here, on these inaccessible heights, I will die
+free and contented ... And what is there to recall me to life! My
+parents lie under the earth, my wife is blind, my uncle and
+father-in-law the Shamkhál are cowering at Tarki before the Russians ...
+the Giaour is revelling in my native land, in my inheritance; and I
+myself an a wanderer from my home, a runaway from battle. I neither can,
+nor ought to live."
+
+"You ought _not_ to talk such nonsense, dear Ammalát:--and nothing but
+fever can excuse you. We are created that we may live longer than our
+fathers. For wives, if one has not teazed you enough, we will find you
+three more. If you love not the Shamkhál, yet love your own
+inheritance--you ought to live, if but for that; since to a dead man
+power is useless, and victory impossible. Revenge on the Russians is a
+holy duty: live, if but for that. That we are beaten, is no novelty for
+a warrior; to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls to us. Allah gives
+fortune; but a man creates his own glory, not by fortune, but by
+firmness. Take courage, my friend Ammalát.... You are wounded and weak;
+I am strong from habit, and not fatigued by flight. Mount! and we may
+yet live to beat the Russians."
+
+The colour returned to Ammalát's face ... "Yes, I will live for
+revenge!" he cried: "for revenge both secret and open. Believe me,
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I accept your generosity!
+Henceforth I am yours; I swear by the graves of my fathers.... I am
+yours! Guide my steps, direct the strokes of my arm; and if ever,
+drowned in softness, I forget my oath, remind me of this moment, of this
+mountain peak: Ammalát Bek will awake, and his dagger will be
+lightning!"
+
+The Khan embraced him, as he lifted the excited youth into the saddle.
+"Now I behold in you the pure blood of the Emírs!" said he: "the burning
+blood of their children, which flows in our veins like the sulphur in
+the entrails of the rocks, which, ever and anon inflaming, shakes and
+topples down the crags." Steadying with one hand the wounded man in the
+saddle, the Khan began cautiously to descend the rugged croft.
+Occasionally the stones fell rattling from under their feet, or the
+horse slid downward over the smooth granite, so that they were well
+pleased to reach the mossy slopes. By degrees, creeping plants began to
+appear, spreading their green sheets; and, waving from the crevices like
+fans, they hung down in long ringlets like ribbons or flags. At length
+they reached a thick wood of nut-trees; then came the oak, the wild
+cherry, and, lower still, the tchinár,[41] and the tchindár. The
+variety, the wealth of vegetation, and the majestic silence of the
+umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary adoration of the wild
+strength of nature. Ever and anon, from the midnight darkness of the
+boughs, there dawned, like the morning, glimpses of meadows, covered
+with a fragrant carpet of flowers untrodden by the foot of man. The
+pathway at one time lost itself in the depth of the thicket; at another,
+crept forth upon the edge of the rock, below which gleamed and murmured
+a rivulet, now foaming over the stones, then again slumbering on its
+rocky bed, under the shade of the barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants,
+sparkling with their rainbow tails, flitted from shrub to shrub; flights
+of wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes in an horizontal troop,
+sometimes like a column, rising to the sky; and sunset flooded all with
+its airy purple, and light mists began to rise from the narrow gorges:
+every thing breathed the freshness of evening. Our travellers were now
+near the village of Aki, and separated only by a hill from Khounzákh. A
+low crest alone divided them from that village, when the report of a gun
+resounded from the mountain, and, like an ominous signal, was repeated
+by the echoes of the cliffs. The travellers halted irresolute: the
+echoes by degrees sank into stillness. "Our hunters!" cried Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, wiping the sweat from his face: "they expect me not, and
+think not to meet me here! Many tears of joy, and many of sorrow, do I
+bear to Khounzákh!" Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in the face of Akhmet
+Khan. Vividly does every soft and every savage sentiment play on the
+features of the Asiatic.
+
+     [41] Tchinár, the palmated-leaved plane.
+
+Another report soon interrupted his meditation; then another, and
+another. Shot answered shot, and at length thickened into a warm fire.
+"'Tis the Russians!" cried Ammalát, drawing his sabre. He pressed his
+horse with the stirrup, as though he would have leaped over the ridge at
+a single bound; but in a moment his strength failed him, and the blade
+fell ringing on the ground, as his arm dropped heavily by his side.
+"Khan!" said he, dismounting, "go to the succour of your people; your
+face will be worth more to them than a hundred warriors."
+
+The Khan heard him not; he was listening intently for the flight of the
+balls, as if he would distinguish those of the Russian from the Avárian.
+"Have they, besides the agility of the goat, stolen the wings of the
+eagle of Kazbéc? Can they have reached our inaccessible fastnesses?"
+said he, leaning to the saddle, with his foot already in the stirrup.
+"Farewell, Ammalát!" he cried at length, listening to the firing, which
+now grew hotter: "I go to perish on the ruins I have made, after
+striking like a thunderbolt!" At this moment a bullet whistled by, and
+fell at his feet. Bending down and picking it up, his face was lighted
+with a smile. He quietly took his foot from the stirrup, and turning to
+Ammalát, "Mount!" said he, "you shall presently find with your own eyes
+an answer to this riddle. The Russian bullets are of lead; but this is
+copper[42]--an Aváretz, my dear countryman. Besides, it comes from the
+south, where the Russians cannot be."
+
+     [42] Having no lead, the Aváretzes use balls of copper, as they
+     possess small mines of that metal.
+
+They ascended to the summit of the crest, and before their view opened
+two villages, situated on the opposite sides of a deep ravine; from
+behind them came the firing. The inhabitants sheltering themselves
+behind rocks and hedges, were firing at each other. Between them the
+women were incessantly running, sobbing and weeping when any combatant,
+approaching the edge of the ravine, fell wounded. They carried stones,
+and, regardless of the whistling of the balls, fearlessly piled them up,
+so as to make a kind of defence. Cries of joy arose from one side or the
+other, as a wounded adversary was carried from the field; a groan of
+sorrow ascended in the air when one of their kinsmen or comrades was
+hit. Ammalát gazed at the combat for some time with surprise, a combat in
+which there was a great deal more noise than execution. At length he
+turned an enquiring eye upon the Khan.
+
+"With us these are everyday affairs!" he answered, delightedly marking
+each report. "Such skirmishes cherish among us a warlike spirit and
+warlike habits. With you, private quarrels end in a few blows of the
+dagger; among us they become the common business of whole villages, and
+any trifle is enough to occasion them. Probably they are fighting about
+some cow that has been stolen. With us it is no disgrace to steal in
+another village--the shame is, to be found out. Admire the coolness of
+our women; the balls are whizzing about like gnats, yet they pay no
+attention to them! Worthy wives and mothers of brave men! To be sure,
+there would be eternal disgrace to him who could wound a woman, yet no
+man can answer for a ball. A sharp eye may aim it; but blind chance
+carries it to the mark. But darkness is falling from heaven, and
+dividing these enemies for a moment. Let us hasten to my kinsmen."
+
+Nothing but the experience of the Khan could have saved our travellers
+from frequent falls in the precipitous descent to the river Ouzén.
+Ammalát could see scarcely any thing before him; the double veil of
+night and weakness enveloped his eyes; his head turned: he beheld, as it
+were in a dream, when they again mounted an eminence, the gate and
+watch-tower of the Khan's house. With an uncertain foot he dismounted in
+a courtyard, surrounded by shouting noúkers and attendants; and he had
+hardly stepped over the grated threshold when his breath failed him--a
+deadly paleness poured its snow over the wounded man's face; and the
+young Bek, exhausted by loss of blood, fatigued by travel, hunger, and
+anguish of soul, fell senseless on the embroidered carpets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
+
+No. VI.
+
+
+THE LAY OF THE BELL.
+
+     "Vivos voco--Mortuous plango--Fulgura frango."
+
+      Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,
+        Awaits the mould of bakèd clay.
+      Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth--
+        THE BELL that shall be born to-day!
+            And wearily now,
+            With the sweat of the brow,
+    Shall the work win its grace in the master's eye,
+    But the blessing that hallows must come from high.
+
+    And well an earnest word beseems
+      The work the earnest hand prepares;
+    Its load more light the labour deems,
+      When sweet discourse the labour shares.
+    So let us ponder--nor in vain--
+      What strength has wrought when labour wills;
+    For who would not the fool disdain
+      Who ne'er can feel what he fulfills?
+    And well it stamps our Human Race,
+      And hence the gift TO UNDERSTAND,
+    When in the musing heart we trace
+      Whate'er we fashion with the hand.
+
+      From the fir the fagot take,
+        Keep it, heap it hard and dry,
+      That the gather'd flame may break
+        Through the furnace, wroth and high.
+            Smolt the copper within--
+            Quick--the brass with the tin,
+    That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell
+    May flow in the right course glib and well.
+
+    What now these mines so deeply shroud,
+      What Force with Fire is moulding thus,
+    Shall from yon steeple, oft and loud,
+      Speak, witnessing of us!
+    It shall, in later days unfailing,
+      Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;
+    Its solemn voice with Sorrow wailing,
+      Or choral chiming to Devotion.
+    Whatever sound in man's deep breast
+      Fate wakens, through his winding track,
+    Shall strike that metal-crownèd crest,
+      Which rings the moral answer back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      See the silvery bubbles spring!
+        Good! the mass is melting now!
+      Let the salts we duly bring
+        Purge the flood, and speed the flow.
+            From the dross and the scum,
+            Pure, the fusion must come;
+    For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,
+    That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.
+
+    That voice, with merry music rife,
+      The cherish'd child shall welcome in;
+    What time the rosy dreams of life,
+      In the first slumber's arms begin.
+    As yet in Time's dark womb unwarning,
+      Repose the days, or foul or fair;
+    And watchful o'er that golden morning,
+      The Mother-Love's untiring care!
+
+      And swift the years like arrows fly--
+      No more with girls content to play,
+      Bounds the proud Boy upon his way,
+      Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,
+      With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;
+      And, wearied with the wish to roam,
+      Again seeks, stranger-like, the Father-Home.
+      And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks
+        Out from its native morning skies,
+      With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,
+        The Virgin stands before his eyes.
+      A nameless longing seizes him!
+        From all his wild companions flown;
+      Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;
+        He wanders all alone.
+      Blushing, he glides where'er she move;
+        Her greeting can transport him;
+      To every mead to deck his love,
+        The happy wild flowers court him!
+      Sweet Hope--and tender Longing--ye
+        The growth of Life's first Age of Gold;
+      When the heart, swelling, seems to see
+        The gates of heaven unfold!
+    O Love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,
+    Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Browning o'er the pipes are simmering,
+        Dip this fairy rod within;
+      If like glass the surface glimmering,
+        Then the casting may begin.
+            Brisk, brisk to the rest--
+            Quick!--the fusion to test;
+    And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign,
+    If the ductile and brittle united combine.
+
+    For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,
+    And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,
+      Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong:
+    So be it with thee, if for ever united,
+    The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;
+      Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.
+
+    Lovely, thither are they bringing,
+      With her virgin wreath, the Bride!
+    To the love-feast clearly ringing,
+      Tolls the church-bell far and wide!
+    With that sweetest holyday,
+      Must the May of Life depart;
+    With the cestus loosed--away
+      Flies ILLUSION from the heart!
+        Yet Love lingers lonely,
+          When Passion is mute,
+        And the blossoms may only
+          Give way to the fruit.
+
+        The Husband must enter
+          The hostile life,
+          With struggle and strife,
+          To plant or to watch,
+          To snare or to snatch,
+          To pray and importune,
+        Must wager and venture
+          And hunt down his fortune!
+      Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,
+      And the garners are fill'd with the gold of the grain,
+      Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!
+        Within sits Another,
+          The thrifty Housewife;
+        The mild one, the mother--
+          Her home is her life.
+        In its circle she rules,
+        And the daughters she schools,
+          And she cautions the boys,
+        With a bustling command,
+        And a diligent hand
+          Employ'd she employs;
+        Gives order to store,
+        And the much makes the more;
+    Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,
+    And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;
+    And she hoards in the presses, well polish'd and full,
+    The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;
+    Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavour
+    Rests never!
+      Blithe the Master (where the while
+      From his roof he sees them smile)
+        Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;
+      There, the beams projecting far,
+      And the laden store-house are,
+      And the granaries bow'd beneath
+        The blessings of the golden grain;
+      There, in undulating motion,
+      Wave the corn-fields like an ocean.
+      Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:--
+      "My house is built upon a rock,
+      And sees unmoved the stormy shock
+        Of waves that fret below!"
+      What chain so strong, what girth so great,
+      To bind the giant form of Fate?--
+        Swift are the steps of Woe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now the casting may begin;
+        See the breach indented there:
+      Ere we run the fusion in,
+        Halt--and speed the pious prayer!
+          Pull the bung out--
+          See around and about
+    What vapour, what vapour--God help us!--has risen?--
+    Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!
+
+    What, friend, is like the might of fire
+    When man can watch and wield the ire?
+    Whate'er we shape or work, we owe
+    Still to that heaven-descended glow.
+    But dread the heaven-descended glow,
+    When from their chain its wild wings go,
+      When, where it listeth, wide and wild
+      Sweeps the free Nature's free-born Child!
+      When the Frantic One fleets,
+        While no force can withstand,
+      Through the populous streets
+        Whirling ghastly the brand;
+      For the Element hates
+      What Man's labour creates,
+        And the work of his hand!
+      Impartially out from the cloud,
+        Or the curse or the blessing may fall!
+      Benignantly out from the cloud
+        Come the dews, the revivers of all!
+      Avengingly our from the cloud
+        Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!
+      Hark--a wail from the steeple!--aloud
+      The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!
+        Look--look--red as blood
+          All on high!
+        It is not the daylight that fills with its flood
+          The sky!
+        What a clamour awaking
+        Roars up through the street,
+        What a hell-vapour breaking
+          Rolls on through the street,
+        And higher and higher
+        Aloft moves the Column of Fire!
+        Through the vistas and rows
+        Like a whirlwind it goes,
+        And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.
+      Beams are crackling--posts are shrinking--
+      Walls are sinking--windows clinking--
+        Children crying--
+        Mothers flying--
+    And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)
+    Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!
+    Hurry and skurry--away--away,
+    And the face of the night is as clear as day!
+        As the links in a chain,
+        Again and again
+      Flies the bucket from hand to hand;
+        High in arches up rushing
+        The engines are gushing,
+    And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,
+    With a roar on the breast of the element bounds.
+      To the grain and the fruits,
+      Through the rafters and beams,
+    Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!
+    As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,
+      Rush the flames to the sky
+      Giant-high;
+    And at length,
+    Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!
+    With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,
+    And submits to his doom!
+        Desolate
+      The place, and dread
+      For storms the barren bed.
+      In the deserted gaps that casements were,
+      Looks forth despair;
+      And, where the roof hath been,
+      Peer the pale clouds within!
+
+      One look
+        Upon the grave
+        Of all that Fortune gave
+      The loiterer took--
+    Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,
+    One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left--
+    _The faces that he loves_! He counts them o'er--
+    And, see--not one dear look is missing from _that_ store!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now clasp'd the bell within the clay--
+        The mould the mingled metals fill--
+      Oh, may it, sparkling into day,
+        Reward the labour and the skill!
+          Alas! should it fail,
+          For the mould may be frail--
+    And still with our hope must be mingled the fear--
+    And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!
+
+      To the dark womb of sacred earth
+        This labour of our hands is given,
+      As seeds that wait the second birth,
+        And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!
+      Ah seeds, how dearer far than they
+        We bury in the dismal tomb,
+      Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray
+      That suns beyond the realm of day
+        May warm them into bloom!
+
+        From the steeple
+          Tolls the bell,
+        Deep and heavy,
+          The death-knell!
+      Measured and solemn, guiding up the road
+      A wearied wanderer to the last abode.
+        It is that worship'd wife--
+        It is that faithful mother![43]
+    Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,
+    From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.
+    Far from those blithe companions, born
+    Of her, and blooming in their morn;
+    On whom, when couch'd, her heart above
+    So often look'd the Mother-Love!
+
+    Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,
+      And never, never more to come--
+    She dwells within the shadowy land,
+      Who was the Mother of that Home!
+    How oft they miss that tender guide,
+      The care--the watch--the face--the MOTHER--
+    And where she sate the babes beside,
+      Sits with unloving looks--ANOTHER!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    While the mass is cooling now,
+      Let the labour yield to leisure,
+    As the bird upon the bough,
+      Loose the travail to the pleasure.
+        When the soft stars awaken,
+        Each task be forsaken!
+
+    And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,
+    If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!
+
+    Gleesome and gay,
+    On the welcoming way,
+    Through the wood glides the wanderer home!
+    And the eye and ear are meeting,
+    Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating--
+    Now, the wonted shelter near,
+    Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;
+    Creaking now the heavy wain,
+    Reels with the happy harvest grain.
+    Which with many-coloured leaves,
+    Glitters the garland on the sheaves;
+    And the mower and the maid
+    Bound to the dance beneath the shade!
+    Desert street, and quiet mart;--
+    Silence is in the city's heart;
+    Round the taper burning cheerly,
+    Gather the groups HOME loves so dearly;
+    And the gate the town before
+    Heavily swings with sullen roar!
+
+      Though darkness is spreading
+        O'er earth--the Upright
+      And the Honest, undreading,
+        Look safe on the night.
+      Which the evil man watching in awe,
+      For the Eye of the Night is the Law!
+        Bliss-dower'd: O daughter of the skies,
+    Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ
+    Blends like to like in light and joy--
+    Builder of Cities, who of old
+    Call'd the wild man from waste and wold.
+    And in his hut thy presence stealing,
+    Roused each familiar household feeling;
+      And, best of all the happy ties,
+    The centre of the social band,--
+    _The Instinct of the Fatherland!_
+
+    United thus--each helping each,
+      Brisk work the countless hands for ever;
+    For nought its power to strength can teach,
+    Like Emulation and Endeavour!
+    Thus link'd the master with the man,
+      Each in his rights can each revere,
+    And while they march in freedom's van,
+      Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!
+    To freemen labour is renown!
+      Who works--gives blessings and commands;
+    Kings glory in the orb and crown--
+      Be ours the glory of our hands.
+
+    Long in these walls--long may we greet
+    Your footfalls, Peace and concord sweet!
+    Distant the day, Oh! distant far,
+    When the rude hordes of trampling War
+      Shall scare the silent vale;
+      And where,
+      Now the sweet heaven when day doth leave
+      The air;
+      Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of Eve;
+    Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,
+    From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now, its destined task fulfill'd,
+        Asunder break the prison-mould;
+      Let the goodly Bell we build,
+        Eye and heart alike behold.
+          The hammer down heave,
+          Till the cover it cleave.
+    For the Bell to rise up to the freedom of day,
+    Destruction must seize on the shape of the clay.
+
+    To break the mould, the master may,
+      If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;
+    But woe, when on its fiery way
+      The metal seeks itself to pour.
+    Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,
+      Exploding from its shattered home,
+    And glaring forth, as from a hell,
+      Behold the red Destruction come!
+    When rages strength that has no reason,
+    _There_ breaks the mould before the season;
+    When numbers burst what bound before,
+    Woe to the State that thrives no more!
+    Yea, woe, when in the City's heart,
+      The latent spark to flame is blown;
+    And Millions from their silence start,
+      To claim, without a guide, their own!
+    Discordant howls the warning Bell,
+      Proclaiming discord wide and far,
+    And, born but things of peace to tell,
+      Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:
+    "Freedom! Equality!"--to blood,
+      Rush the roused people at the sound!
+    Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
+      And banded murder closes round!
+    The hyæna-shapes, that women were!
+      Jest with the horrors they survey;
+    They hound--they rend--they mangle there--
+      As panthers with their prey!
+    Nought rests to hallow--burst the ties
+      Of life's sublime and reverent awe;
+    Before the Vice the Virtue flies,
+      And Universal Crime is Law!
+    Man fears the lion's kingly tread;
+      Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;
+    And still the dreadliest of the dread,
+      Is Man himself in error!
+    No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes
+      The Blind!--Why place it in his hand?
+    It lights not him--it but consumes
+      The City and the Land!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!
+        The kernel bursts its husk--behold
+      From the dull clay the metal rise,
+        Clear shining, as a star of gold!
+          Neck and lip, but as one beam,
+          It laughs like a sun-beam.
+    And even the scutcheon, clear graven, shall tell
+    That the art of a master has fashion'd the Bell!
+
+    Come in--come in
+    My merry men--we'll form a ring
+    The new-born labour christening;
+      And "CONCORD" we will name her!--
+    To union may her heart-felt call
+      In brother-love attune us all!
+    May she the destined glory win
+      For which the master sought to frame her--
+    Aloft--(all earth's existence under,)
+      In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar
+    To dwell--the Neighbour of the Thunder,
+      The Borderer of the Star!
+    Be hers above a voice to raise
+      Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,
+    Who, while they move, their Maker praise,
+      And lead around the wreathèd year!
+    To solemn and eternal things
+      We dedicate her lips sublime!--
+    To fan--as hourly on she swings
+      The silent plumes of Time!--
+    No pulse--no heart--no feeling hers!
+      She lends the warning voice to Fate;
+    And still companions, while she stirs,
+      The changes of the Human State!
+    So may she teach us, as her tone
+      But now so mighty, melts away--
+    That earth no life which earth has known
+      From the Last Silence can delay!
+
+    Slowly now the cords upheave her!
+      From her earth-grave soars the Bell;
+    Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her
+      In the Music-Realm to dwell!
+        Up--upwards--yet raise--
+        She has risen--she sways.
+    Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,
+    And oh, may thy first sound be hallow'd to--PEACE![44]
+
+     [43] The translation adheres to the original, in forsaking the
+     rhyme in these lines and some others.
+
+     [44] Written in the time of French war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VOTIVE TABLETS.
+
+    What the God taught me--what, through life, my friend
+      And aid hath been,
+    With pious hand, and grateful, I suspend
+      The temple walls within.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE GOOD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+    Foster the Good, and thou shalt tend the Flower
+      Already sown on earth;--
+    Foster the Beautiful, and every hour
+      Thou call'st new flowers to birth!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO ----.
+
+    Give me that which thou know'st--I'll receive and attend;--
+    But thou giv'st me _thyself_--pri'thee spare me, my friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+    That which hath been can INTELLECT declare,
+      What Nature built--it imitates or gilds--
+    And REASON builds o'er Nature--but in air--
+      _Genius_ alone in Nature--Nature builds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CORRECTNESS--(Free translation.)
+
+    The calm correctness where no fault we see
+    Attests Art's loftiest--or its least degree;
+    Alike the smoothness of the surface shows
+    The Pool's dull stagnor--the great Sea's repose!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE IMITATOR.
+
+    Good out of good--_that_ art is known to all--
+    But Genius from the bad the good can call--
+    Thou, mimic, not from leading strings escaped,
+    Work'st but the matter that's already shaped!
+    The already shaped a nobler hand awaits--
+    All matter asks a spirit that creates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MASTER.
+
+    The herd of Scribes by what they tell us
+    Show all in which their wits excel us;
+    But the true Master we behold
+    In what his art leaves--just untold!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO THE MYSTIC.
+
+    That is the real mystery which around
+      All life, is found;--
+    Which still before all eyes for aye has been,
+      Nor eye hath seen!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ASTRONOMICAL WORKS.
+
+    All measureless, all infinite in awe,
+      Heaven to great souls is given--
+    And yet the sprite of littleness can draw
+      Down to its inch--the Heaven!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE DIVISION OF RANKS.
+
+    Yes, there's a patent of nobility
+      Above the meanness of our common state;
+    With what they _do_ the vulgar natures buy
+      Its titles--and with what they _are_, the great!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THEOPHANY.
+
+    When draw the Prosperous near me, I forget
+      The gods of heaven; but where
+    Sorrow and suffering in my sight are set,
+      The gods, I feel, are there!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE CHIEF END OF MAN.
+
+    What the chief end of Man?--Behold yon tree,
+      And let it teach thee, Friend!
+    _Will_ what that will-less yearns for;--and for thee
+      Is compass'd Man's chief end!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ULYSSES.
+
+    To gain his home all oceans he explored--
+    Here Scylla frown'd--and there Charybdis roar'd;
+    Horror on sea--and horror on the land--
+    In hell's dark boat he sought the spectre land,
+    Till borne--a slumberer--to his native spot
+    He woke--and sorrowing, knew his country not!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOVE TO HERCULES.
+
+    'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,
+    But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE SOWER.
+
+    See, full of hope, thou trustest to the earth
+      The golden seed, and waitest till the spring
+    Summons the buried to a happier birth;
+      But in Time's furrow duly scattering,
+    Think'st thou, how deeds by wisdom sown may be,
+      Silently ripen'd for Eternity?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MERCHANT.
+
+    Where sails the ship?--It leads the Tyrian forth
+    For the rich amber of the liberal North.
+    Be kind ye seas--winds lend your gentlest wing,
+    May in each creek, sweet wells restoring spring!--
+    To you, ye gods, belong the Merchant!--o'er
+    The waves, his sails the wide world's goods explore;
+    And, all the while, wherever waft the gales,
+    The wide world's good sails with him as he sails!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+COLUMBUS.
+
+    Steer on, bold Sailor--Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,
+    And hopeless at the helm may drop the weak and weary hand,
+    YET EVER--EVER TO THE WEST, for there the coast must lie,
+    And dim it dawns and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;
+    Yea, trust the guiding God--and go along the floating grave,
+    Though hid till now--yet now, behold the New World o'er the wave!
+    With Genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,
+    And ever what the One foretels the Other shall fulfil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE TO THE NORTHERN WANDERER.
+
+    And o'er the river hast thou past, and o'er the mighty sea,
+    And o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me;
+    To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows,
+    And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes--
+    Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here,
+    But art thou nearer now to me--or I to thee more near?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS.
+
+    What the Grecian arts created,
+    May the victor Gaul, elated,
+      Bear with banners to his strand.[45]
+    In museums many a row,
+    May the conquering showman show
+      To his startled Fatherland!
+
+    Mute to him, they crowd the halls,
+    Ever on their pedestals
+      Lifeless stand they!--He alone
+    Who alone, the Muses seeing,
+    Clasps--can warm them into being;
+    The Muses to the Vandal--stone!
+
+     [45] To the shore of the Seine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE POETRY OF LIFE.
+
+    "Who would himself with shadows entertain,
+    Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,
+    Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?
+    Though with my dream my heaven should be resign'd--
+    Though the free-pinion'd soul that now can dwell
+    In the large empire of the Possible,
+    This work-day life with iron chains may bind,
+    Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,
+    And solemn duty to our acts decreed,
+    Meets us thus tutor'd in the hour of need,
+    With a more sober and submissive mind!
+    How front Necessity--yet bid thy youth
+    Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, Truth."
+
+    So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I;
+    As from Experience--that sure port serene--
+    Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,
+    The summer glory withers from the scene,
+    Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,
+    The godlike images that seem'd so fair!
+    Silent the playful Muse--the rosy Hours
+    Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers
+    Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair.
+    Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre,
+    Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;--
+    The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire
+    With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life.
+    The world seems what it _is_--A Grave! and Love
+    Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above,
+    And _sees_!--He sees but images of clay
+    Where he dream'd gods; and sighs--and glides away.
+    The youngness of the Beautiful grows old,
+    And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold;
+    And in the crowd of joys--upon thy throne
+    Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CALEB STUKELY.
+
+PART XII.
+
+THE PARSONAGE.
+
+
+It was not without misgiving that I knocked modestly at the door of Mr
+Jehu Tomkins. For himself, there was no solidity in his moral
+composition, nothing to grapple or rely upon. He was a small weak man of
+no character at all, and but for his powerful wife and active partner,
+would have become the smallest of unknown quantities in the respectable
+parish that contained him. Upon his own weak shoulders he could not have
+sustained the burden of an establishment, and must inevitably have
+dwindled into the lightest of light porters, or the most aged of
+errand-boys. Nothing could have saved him from the operation of a law,
+as powerful and certain as that of gravitation, in virtue of which the
+soft and empty-headed of this world walk to the wall, and resign,
+without a murmur, their places to their betters. As for the deaconess, I
+have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor
+of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in
+reference to her. This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the
+knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales
+that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may
+be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,--and carry hearts
+about with them as easily as they carry bags.
+
+My first application was unsuccessful. The deacon was not at home. "Mr
+Tomkins and his lady had gone _to hear_ the Reverend Doctor
+Whitefroth,"--a northern and eccentric light, now blazing for a time in
+the metropolis. It is a curious fact, and worthy to be recorded, that Mr
+Tomkins, and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist whom I had hitherto
+encountered, never professed to visit the house of prayer with any other
+object than that of _hearing_. It was never by any accident to worship
+or to pray. What, in truth was the vast but lowly looking building, into
+which hundreds crowded with the dapper deacon at their head, sabbath
+after sabbath--what but a temple sacred to vanity and excitement,
+eloquence and perspiration! Which one individual, taken at random from
+the concourse, was not ready to declare that his business there that day
+was "to hear the dear good man," and nothing else? If you could lay
+bare--as, thank Heaven, you cannot--your fellow-creature's heart,
+whither would you behold stealing away the adoration that, in such a
+place, in such a time, is due to one alone--whither, if not to Mr
+Clayton? But let this pass.
+
+I paid a second visit to my friend, and gained admittance. It was about
+half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and the shop had been closed
+some twenty minutes before. I was ushered into a well-furnished room
+behind the shop, where sat the firm--Mrs Jehu and the junior partner.
+The latter looked into his lady's face, perceived a smile upon it, and
+then--but not till then, he offered me his hand, and welcomed me with
+much apparent warmth. This ceremony over, Mr Tomkins grew fidgety and
+uneasy, and betrayed a great anxiety to get up a conversation which he
+had not heart enough to set a going. Mrs Tomkins, a woman of the world,
+evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling, and in peace. I perceived
+immediately that I must state at once the object of my visit, and I
+proceeded to the task.
+
+"Mrs Tomkins," I commenced.
+
+"Sir?" said that lady, and then a postman's knock brought us to a stop,
+and Jehu skipped across the room to listen at the door.
+
+"That's him, my dear Jemima," exclaimed the linen-draper, "I know his
+knock," and then he skipped as quickly to his chair again.
+
+The door of the apartment was opened by a servant girl, who entered the
+room alone and approached her mistress with a card. Mrs Tomkins looked
+at it through her eye-glass, said "she was most happy," and the servant
+then retired. The card was placed upon the table near me, and, as I
+believe, for my inspection. I took it up, and read the following words,
+"_Mr Stanislaus Levisohn_." They were engraven in the centre of the
+paper, and were surrounded by a circle of rays, which in its turn was
+enveloped in a circle of clouds. In the very corner of the card, and in
+very small characters, the words "_general merchant_" were written.
+
+There was a noise of shoe-cleaning outside the door for about five
+minutes, then the door was opened again by the domestic, and a
+remarkable gentleman walked very slowly in. He was a tall individual,
+with small cunning eyes, black eye-brows, and a beard. He was rather
+shabbily attired, and not washed with care. He had thick boorish hands,
+and he smelt unpleasantly of tobacco smoke; an affected grin at variance
+with every feature, was planted on his face, and sickened an
+unprejudiced observer at the very first gaze. His mode of uttering
+English betrayed him for a foreigner. He was a native of Poland. Before
+uttering a syllable, the interesting stranger walked to a corner of the
+room, turned himself to the wall, and muttered a few undistinguishable
+words. He then bowed lowly to the company, and took a chair, grinning
+all the while.
+
+"Is that a Polish move?" asked Mr Tomkins.
+
+"It vos de coshtom mit de anshent tribes, my tear sare, vor alles tings,
+to recommend de family to de protection of de hevins. Vy not now mit all
+goot Christians?"
+
+"Why not indeed?" added Mrs Tomkins. "May I offer you a glass of raisin
+wine?"
+
+"Tank you. For de shtomack's sake--yase."
+
+A glass was poured out. It was but decent to offer me another. I paid my
+compliments to the hostess and the gentlemen, and was about to drink it
+off, when the enlightened foreigner called upon me in a loud voice to
+desist.
+
+"Shtay, mein young friend--ve are not de heathen and de cannibal. It is
+our privilege to live in de Christian society mit de Christian lady. Ve
+most ask blessing--alvays--never forget--you excuse--vait tree minutes."
+
+It was not for me to protest against so pious a movement, albeit it
+presented itself somewhat inopportunely and out of place. Mr Levisohn
+covered his face with one hand, and murmured a few words. The last only
+reached me. It was "Amen," and this was rather heaved up in a sigh, than
+articulately expressed.
+
+"Do you like the wine?" asked Jehu, as if he thought it superfine.
+
+"Yase, I like moch--especially de sherry and de port."
+
+Jehu smiled, but made no reply.
+
+Mrs Tomkins supposed that port and sherry were favourite beverages in
+Poland, but, for her part, she had found that nothing agreed so well
+with British stomachs as the native wines.
+
+"Ah! my lady," said the Pole, "ve can give up very moch so long ve got
+British religions."
+
+"Very true, indeed," answered Mrs Tomkins. "Pray, Mr Levisohn, what may
+be your opinion of the lost sheep? Do you think they will come into the
+fold during our time?"
+
+Before the gentleman replies, it may be proper to state on his behalf,
+that he had never given his questioner any reason to suppose that he was
+better informed on such mysterious subjects than herself. The history of
+his introduction into the family of the linen-draper is very short. He
+had been for some years connected with Mr Tomkins in the way of
+business, having supplied that gentleman with all the genuine foreign,
+but certainly English, perfumery, that was retailed with considerable
+profit in his over-nice and pious establishment. Mrs Tomkins, no less
+zealous in the cause of the church than that of her own shop, at length,
+and all on a sudden, resolved to set about his conversion, and to
+present him to the chapel as a brand plucked with her own hand from the
+burning. As a preliminary step, he was invited to supper, and treated
+with peculiar respect. The matter was gently touched upon, but
+discussion postponed until another occasion. Mr Levisohn being very
+shrewd, very needy, and enjoying no particular principles of morality
+and religion, perceived immediately the object of his hostess, met her
+more than half-way in her Christian purposes, and accepted her numerous
+invitations to tea and supper with the most affectionate readiness.
+Within two months he was received into the bosom of the church, and
+became as celebrated for the depth and intensity of his belief as for
+the earnestness and promptitude with which he attended the meetings of
+the brethren, particularly those in which eating and drinking did not
+constitute the least important part of the proceedings. Being a
+foreigner, he was listened to with the deepest attention, very often
+indeed to his serious annoyance, for his ignorance was awful, and his
+assurance, great as it was, not always sufficient to get him clear of
+his difficulties. His foreign accent, however, worked wonders for him,
+and whenever too hard pressed, afforded him a secure and happy retreat.
+An unmeaning grin, and "_me not pronounce_," had saved him from
+precipices, down which an Englishman, _cæteris paribus_, must
+unquestionably have been dashed.
+
+"Vill dey come?" said Mr Levisohn, in answer to the question. "Yase,
+certainly, if dey like, I tink."
+
+"Ah, sir, I fear you are a latitudinarian," said the lady.
+
+"I hope Hevin, my dear lady, vill forgive me for dat, and all my
+wickedness. I am a shinner, I shtink!"
+
+I looked at the converted gentleman, at the same moment that Mrs Jehu
+assured him that it would be a great thing if they were all as satisfied
+of their condition as he might be. "Your strong convictions of your
+worthlessness is alone a proof," she added, "of your accepted state."
+
+"My lady," continued the humble Stanislaus, "I am rotten, I am a tief, a
+blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket, a housebreak, a sticker mit de
+knife. I vish somebody would call me names all de day long, because I
+forget sometime dat I am de nashty vurm of de creation. I tink I hire a
+boy to call me names, and make me not forget. Oh, my lady, I alvays
+remember those fine words you sing--
+
+    'If I could read my title clear
+      To manshions in de shkies,
+    I say farevell to every fear,
+      And vipe my veeping eyes.'"
+
+"That is so conscientious of you. Pray, my dear sir, is there an
+Establishment in Poland? or have you Independent churches?"
+
+"Ah, my dear lady, we have noting at all!"
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"Yase, it is possible--it is true."
+
+"Who could have thought it! What! nothing?"
+
+"Noting at all, my lady. Do not ask me again, I pray you. It is
+frightful to a goot Christian to talk dese tings."
+
+"What is your opinion of the Arminian doctrine, Mr Stanislaus?"
+
+"Do you mean de doctrine?" enquired Stanislaus, slowly, as though he
+found some difficulty in answering the question.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir."
+
+"I tink," said the gentleman, after some delay, "it vould he very goot
+if were not for someting."
+
+"Dear me!" cried Mrs Jehu, "that is so exactly my opinion!"
+
+"Den dere is noting more to be said about dat," continued Stanislaus,
+interrupting her; "and I hope you vill not ask dese deep questions, my
+dear lady, vich are not at all proper to be answered, and vich put me
+into de low spirits. Shall ve sing a hymn?"
+
+"By all means," exclaimed the hostess, who immediately made preparations
+for the ceremony. Hymn-books were introduced, and the servant-maid
+ordered up, and then a quartet was performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs
+Tomkins, her husband, and Betsy. The subject of the song was the
+courtship of Isaac. Two verses only have remained in my memory, and the
+manner in which they were given out by the fervent Stanislaus will never
+be forgotten. They ran thus:--
+
+    "Ven Abraham's servant to procure
+      A vife for Isaac vent,
+    He met Rebekah, tould his vish,
+      Her parents gave conshent.
+
+    'Shtay,' Satan, my old master, cries,
+      'Or force shall thee detain.'
+    'Hinder me not, I vill be gone,
+      I vish to break my chain.'"
+
+This being concluded, Mr Tomkins asked Mr Levisohn what he had to say in
+the business line, to which Mr Levisohn replied, "Someting very goot,
+but should he not vait until after soppare?" whereupon Mr Tomkins gave
+his lady a significant leer, and the latter retired, evidently to
+prepare the much desired repast. Then did little Jehu turn
+confidentially to Stanislaus, and ask him when he meant to deliver that
+ere _conac_ that he had promised him so long ago.
+
+"Ven Providence, my tear dikkon, paremits--I expect a case of goots at
+de cushtom-house every day; but my friend vot examins de marchandis, and
+vot saves me de duties ven I makes it all right mit him, is vary ill, I
+am sorry for to say, and ve most vait, mit Christian patience, my dear
+sare, till he get well. You see dat?"
+
+"Oh, yes; that's clear enough. Well, Stanny, I only hope that fellow
+won't die. I don't think you'd find it so easy to make it _all right_
+with any other chap; that's all!"
+
+"I hope he vill not die. Ve mosht pray dat he live, my dear dikkon. I
+tink it vill be vell if der goot Mr Clayton pray mit der church for him.
+You shall speak for him."
+
+"Well, what have you done about the _Eau de Cologne_?" continued Jehu
+Tomkins. "Have you nailed the fellow?"
+
+"It vos specially about dis matter dat I vish to see you, my dear sare.
+I persvade der man to sell ten cases. He be very nearly vot you call in
+der mess. He valk into de Gazette next week. He shtarve now. I pity him.
+De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I give fifty shilling--two pound ten.
+He buy meat for de childs, and is tankful. I take ten shillings for my
+trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit vary little."
+
+"Any good bills in the market, Stanny?"
+
+Stanislaus Levisohn winked.
+
+"Ho--you don't say so," said the deacon. "Have you got 'em with you?"
+
+"After soppare, my dear sare," answered Stanislaus, who looked at me,
+and winked again significantly at Jehu.
+
+Mrs Tomkins returned, accompanied by the vocal Betsy. The cloth was
+spread, and real silver forks, and fine cut tumblers, and blue plates
+with scripture patterns, speedily appeared. Then came a dish of fried
+sausages and parsley--then baked potatoes--then lamb chops. Then we all
+sat round the table, and then, against all order and propriety, Mrs Jehu
+grossly and publicly insulted her husband at his own board, by calling
+upon the enlightened foreigner to ask a blessing upon the meal.
+
+The company sat down; but scarcely were we seated before Stanislaus
+resumed.
+
+"I tank you, my tear goot Mrs Tomkins for dat shop mit der brown, ven it
+comes to my turn to be sarved. It look just der ting."
+
+Mrs Jehu served her guest immediately.
+
+"I vill take a sossage, tear lady, also, if you please."
+
+"And a baked potato?"
+
+"And a baked potato? Yase."
+
+He was served.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Christian lady, have you got, perhaps, der littel
+pickel-chesnut and der crimson cabbage?"
+
+"Mr Tomkins, go down-stairs and get the pickles," said the mistress of
+the house, and Tomkins vanished like a mouse on tiptoe.
+
+Before he could return, Stanislaus had eaten more than half his chop,
+and discovered that, after all, "it was _not_ just the ting." Mrs Jehu
+entreated him to try another. He declined at first; but at length
+suffered himself to be persuaded. Four chops had graced the dish
+originally; the remaining two were divided equally between the lady and
+myself. I begged that my share might be left for the worthy host, but
+receiving a recommendation from his wife "not to mind _him_," I said no
+more, but kept Mr Stanislaus Levisohn in countenance.
+
+"I hope you'll find it to your liking, Mr Stukely," said our hostess.
+
+"Mishter vat?" exclaimed the foreigner, looking quickly up. "I tink
+I"----
+
+"What is the matter, my dear sir?" enquired the lady of the house.
+
+"Noting, my tear friend, I tought der young gentleman vos a poor
+unconverted sinner dat I met a long time ago. Dat is all. Ve talk of
+someting else."
+
+Has the reader forgotten the dark-visaged individual, who at the
+examination of my lamented father before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy
+made his appearance in company with Mr Levy and the ready Ikey? Him I
+mean of the vivid imagination, who swore to facts which were no facts at
+all, and whom an unpoetic jury sentenced to vile imprisonment for wilful
+perjury? _There he sat_, transformed into a Pole, bearded and whiskered,
+and the hair of his head close clipped, but in every other regard the
+same as when the constable invited him to forsake a too prosaic and
+ungrateful world: and had Mr Levisohn been wise and guarded, the
+discovery would never have been made by me; for we had met but once
+before, then only for a short half hour, and under agitating
+circumstances. But my curiosity and attention once roused by his
+exclamation, it was impossible to mistake my man. I fixed my eye upon
+him, and the harder he pulled at his chop, and the more he attempted to
+evade my gaze, the more satisfied was I that a villain and an impostor
+was seated amongst us. Thinking, absurdly enough, to do my host and
+hostess a lasting service, I determined without delay to unmask the
+pretended saint, and to secure his victims from the designs he purposed.
+
+"Mr Levisohn," I said immediately, "you have told the truth--we have met
+before."
+
+"Nevare, my tear friend, you mistake; nevare in my life, upon my vurd."
+
+"Mrs Tomkins," I continued, rising, "I should not be worthy of your
+hospitality if I did not at once make known to you the character of that
+man. He is a convicted criminal. I have myself known him to be guilty of
+the grossest practices." Mr Levisohn dropped his chop, turned his greasy
+face up, and then looked round the room, and endeavoured to appear
+unconcerned, innocent, and amazed all at once. At this moment Jehu
+entered the room with the pickles, and the face of the deaconess grew
+fearfully stern.
+
+"Were you ever in the Court of Bankruptcy, Mr Levisohn?" I continued.
+
+"I have never been out of London, my good sare. You labour under de
+mistake.--I excuse you. Ah!" he cried our suddenly, as if a new idea had
+struck him very hard; "I see now vot it is. I explain. You take me for
+somebody else."
+
+"I do not, sir. I accuse you publicly of having committed perjury of the
+most shameless kind, and I can prove you guilty of the charge. Do you
+know a person of the name of Levy?"
+
+Mr Stanislaus looked to the ceiling after the manner of individuals who
+desire, or who do not desire, as the case may be, to call a subject to
+remembrance. "No," he answered, after a long pause; "certainly not. I
+never hear dat name."
+
+"Beware of him, Mrs Tomkins," I continued, "he is an impostor, a
+disgrace to mankind, and to the faith which he professes."
+
+"What do you mean by that, you impertinent young man?" said Mrs Tomkins,
+her blood rising to her face, herself rising from her chair. "I should
+have thought that a man who had been so recently expelled from his
+church would have had more decency. A pretty person you must be, to
+bring a charge of this kind against so good a creature as that."
+
+"No, do not say dat," interposted Stanny; "I am not goot. I am a brute
+beast."
+
+"Mr Tomkins," continued the lady, "I don't know what object that person
+has in disturbing the peace of our family, or why he comes here at all
+to-night. He is a mischief-making, hardened young man, or he would never
+have come to what he has. Well, I'm sure--What will Satan put into his
+head next!"
+
+"I vould vish you be not angry. Der young gentleman is, I dare say, vary
+goot at heart. He is labouring under de deloosions."
+
+"Mr Levisohn, pardon me, I am not. Proofs exist, and I can bring them to
+convict you."
+
+"Do you hear that, Mr Tomkins. Were you ever insulted so before? Are you
+master in your own house?"
+
+"What shall I do?" said Jehu, trembling with excitement at the door.
+
+"Do! What! Give him his hat, turn him out."
+
+"Oh, my dear goot Christian friends," said Mr Levisohn, imploringly; "de
+booels of der Christian growls ven he shees dese sights; vot is de goot
+of to fight? It is shtoopid. Let me be der peacemaker. Der yong man has
+been drink, perhaps. I forgive him from te bottom of my heart. If ve
+quarrel ve fight. If ve fight ve lose every ting.
+
+    'So Samson, ven his hair vos lost,
+    Met the Philistines to his cost,
+    Shook his vain limbs in shad shurprise,
+    Made feeble fight, and lost his eyes.'"
+
+"Mr Tomkins," I exclaimed, "I court inquiry, I can obtain proofs."
+
+"We want none of your proofs, you backslider," cried the deaconess.
+
+"Madam, you"----
+
+"Get out of the house, ambassador of Satan! Mr Tomkins, will you tell
+him instantly to go?"
+
+"Go!" squealed Tomkins from the door, not advancing an inch.
+
+I seized my hat, and left the table.
+
+"You will be sorry for this, sir," said I; "and you, madam"----
+
+"Don't talk to me, you bad man. If you don't go this minute I'll spring
+the rattle and have up the watchmen."
+
+I did not attempt to say another word. I left the room, and hurried from
+the house. I had hardly shut the street door before it was violently
+opened again, and the head of Mr Levisohn made itself apparent.
+
+"Go home," exclaimed that gentleman, "and pray to be shaved, you
+shtoopid ass."
+
+It was not many days after the enacting of this scene, that I entered
+upon my duties as the instructor of the infant children of my friend. It
+was useless to renew my application to the deacon, and I abandoned the
+idea. The youngest of my pupils was the lisping Billy. It was my honour
+to introduce him at the very porch of knowledge--to place him on the
+first step of learning's ladder--to make familiar to him the simple
+letters of his native tongue, in whose mysterious combinations the
+mighty souls of men appear and speak. The lesson of the alphabet was the
+first that I gave, and a heavy sadness depressed and humbled me when, as
+the child repeated wonderingly after me, letter by letter, I could not
+but feel deeply and acutely the miserable blighting of my youthful
+promises. How long was it ago--it seemed but yesterday, when the sun
+used to shine brightly into my own dear bed-room, and awake me with its
+first gush of light, telling my ready fancy that he came to rouse me
+from inaction, and to encourage me to my labours. Oh, happy labours!
+Beloved books! What joy I had amongst you! The house was silent--the
+city's streets tranquil as the breath of morning. I heard nothing but
+the glorious deeds ye spoke of, and saw only the worthies that were but
+dust, when centuries now passed were yet unborn, but whose immortal
+spirits are vouchsafed still to elevate man, and cheer him onward. How
+intense and sweet was our communion; and as I read and read on, how
+gratefully repose crept over me; how difficult it seemed to think
+unkindly of the world, or to believe in all the tales of human
+selfishness and cruelty with which the old will ever mock the ear and
+dull the heart of the confiding and the young. How willing I felt to
+love, and how gay a place was earth, with her constant sun, and
+overflowing lap, and her thousand joys, for man! And how intense was the
+fire of _hope_ that burned within me--fed with new fuel every passing
+hour, and how abiding and how beautiful _the future_! THE FUTURE! and it
+was here--a nothing--a dream--a melancholy phantasm!
+
+There are seasons of adversity, in which the mind, plunged in
+despondency and gloom, is startled and distressed by pictures of a
+happier time, that travel far to fool and tantalize the suffering heart.
+I sat with the child, and gazing full upon him, beheld him not, but--a
+vision of my father's house. There sits the good old man, and at his
+side--ah, how seldom were they apart!--my mother. And there, too, is the
+clergyman, my first instructor. Every well-remembered piece of furniture
+is there. The chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated by me for its age,
+and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew myself.
+The antique bookcase--the solid chest of drawers--the solemn sofa, all
+substantial as ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable and
+natural properties of the domestic parlour. My mother has her eyes upon
+me, and they are full of tears. My father and the minister are building
+up my fortunes, are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity an edifice
+formed of glittering words, incorporeal as the breath that rears it. And
+the feelings of that hour come back upon me. I glow with animation,
+confidence, and love. I have the strong delight that beats within the
+bosom of the boy who has the parents' trusty smile for ever on him. I
+dream of pouring happiness into those fond hearts--of growing up to be
+their prop and staff in their decline. I pierce into the future, and
+behold myself the esteemed and honoured amongst men--the patient,
+well-rewarded scholar--the cherished and the cherisher of the dear
+authors of my life--all brightness--all glory--all unsullied joy. The
+child touches my wet cheek, and asks me why I weep?--why?--why? He knows
+not of the early wreck that has annihilated the unhappy teacher's peace.
+
+We were still engaged upon our lesson, when John Thompson interrupted
+the proceeding, by entering the apartment in great haste, and placing in
+my hands a newspaper. "He had been searching," he said, "for one whole
+fortnight, to find a situation that would suit me, and now he thought
+that he had hit upon it. There it was, 'a tutorer in a human family,' to
+teach the languages and the sciences. Apply from two to four. It's just
+three now. Send the youngster to his mother, and see after it, my
+friend. I wouldn't have you lose it for the world." I took the journal
+from his hands, and, as though placed there by the hand of the avenger
+to arouse deeper remorse, to draw still hotter blood from the lacerated
+heart, the following announcement, and nothing else, glared on the
+paper, and took possession of my sight.
+
+"UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. After a contest more severe than any known for
+years, MR JOHN SMITHSON, _of Trinity College, Cambridge_, has been
+declared THE SENIOR WRANGLER of his year. Mr Smithson is, we understand,
+the son of a humble curate in Norfolk, whose principal support has been
+derived from the exertions of his son during his residence in the
+University. The honour could not have been conferred on a more deserving
+child of Alma Mater."
+
+A hundred recollections crowded on my brain. My heart was torn with
+anguish. The perseverance and the filial piety of Smithson, so opposite
+to my unsteadiness and unnatural disloyalty, confounded and unmanned me.
+I burst into tears before the faithful Thompson, and covered my face for
+very shame.
+
+"What is the matter, lad?" exclaimed the good fellow, pale with
+surprise, his eye trembling with honest feeling. "Have I hurt you? Drat
+the paper! Don't think, Stukely, I wished to get rid of you. Don't think
+so hard of your old friend. I thought to help and do you service; I know
+you have the feelings of a gentleman about you, and I wouldn't wound
+'em, God knows, for any thing. There, think no more about it. I am so
+rough a hand, I'm not fit to live with Christians. I mean no harm,
+believe me. Get rid of you, my boy! I only wish you'd say this is your
+home, and never leave me--that would make me happy."
+
+"Thompson," I answered, through my tears, "I am not deserving of your
+friendship. You have not offended me. You have never wronged me. You are
+all kindness and truth. I have had no real enemy but myself. Read that
+paper."
+
+I pointed to the paragraph, and he read it.
+
+"What of it?" he asked.
+
+"Thompson," listen to me; "what do you say of such a son?"
+
+"I can guess his father's feelings," said my friend. "Earth's a heaven,
+Stukely, when father and child live together as God appointed them."
+
+"But when a child breaks a parent's heart, Thompson--what then?"
+
+"Don't talk about it, lad. I have got eleven of 'em, and that's a side
+of the picture that I can't look at with pleasure. I think the boys are
+good. They have gone on well as yet; but who can tell what a few years
+will do?"
+
+"Or a few months, Thompson," I answered quickly, "or a few days, or
+hours, when the will is fickle, principles unfixed, and the heart
+treacherous and false. That Smithson and I, Thompson, were fellow
+students. We left home together--we took up our abode in the University
+together--we were attached to the same college--taught by the same
+master--read from the same books. My feelings were as warm as his. My
+resolution to do well apparently as firm, my knowledge and attainments
+as extensive. If he was encouraged, and protected, and urged forward by
+the fond love of a devoted household--so was I. If parental blessings
+hallowed his entrance upon those pursuits which have ended so
+successfully for him--so did they mine. If he had motive for exertion, I
+had not less--we were equal in the race which we began together--look at
+us now!"
+
+"How did it happen, then?"
+
+"He was honest and faithful to his purpose. I was not. He saw one object
+far in the distance before him, and looked neither to the right nor
+left, but dug his arduous way towards it. He craved not the false
+excitement of temporary applause, nor deemed the opinion of weak men
+essential to his design. He had a sacred duty to perform, which left him
+not the choice of action, and he performed it to the letter. He had a
+feeling conscience, and a reasoning heart, and the home of his youth,
+and the sister who had grown up with him, the father who had laboured,
+the mother who had striven for him, visited him by night and by day--in
+his silent study, and in his lonely bed, comforting, animating, and
+supporting him by their delightful presence."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"Just the reverse of this. I had neither simplicity of aim, nor
+stability of affection. One slip from the path, and I hadn't energy to
+take the road again. One vicious inclination, and the virtuous resolves
+of years melted before it. The sneer of a fool could frighten me from
+rectitude--the smile of a girl render me indifferent to the pangs that
+tear a parent's heart. Look at us both. Look at him--the man whom I
+treated with contemptuous derision. What a return home for him--his
+mission accomplished--HIS DUTY DONE! Look at me, the outcast, the
+beggar, the despised--the author of a mother's death, a father's
+bankruptcy and ruin--with no excuse for misconduct, no promise for the
+future, no self-justification, and no hope of pardon beyond that
+afforded to the vilest criminal that comes repentant to the mercy throne
+of God!"
+
+"Well--but, sir--Stukely--don't take the thing to heart. You are
+young--look for'rads. Oh, I tell you, it's a blessed thing to be sorry
+for our faults, and to feel as if we wished to do better for the time to
+come. I'm an older man than you, and I bid you take comfort, and trust
+to God for better things, and better things will come, too. You are not
+so badly off now as you were this time twelvemonth. And you know I'll
+never leave you. Don't despond--don't give away. It's unnatural for a
+man to do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh, bless you, this is a life of
+suffering and sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't go mad to think
+of leaving all his young 'uns behind him, and every thing he loves, if
+he wasn't taught that there's a quieter place above, where all shall
+meet agin? You know me, my boy; I can't talk, but I want to comfort you
+and cheer you up--and so, give me your hand, old fellow, and say you
+won't think of all this any more, but try and forget it, and see about
+settling comfortably in life. What do you say to the advertisement? A
+tutorer in a human family, to teach the languages and the sciences. Come
+now, that's right; I'm glad to see you laugh. I suppose I don't give the
+right pronunciation to the words. Well, never mind; laugh at your old
+friend. He'd rather see you laugh at him than teaze your heart about
+your troubles."
+
+Thompson would not be satisfied until I had read the advertisement, and
+given him my opinion of its merits. He would not suffer me to say
+another word about my past misfortunes, but insisted on my looking
+forward cheerfully, and like a man. The situation appeared to him just
+the thing for me; and after all, if I had wrangled as well as that 'ere
+Smithson--(though, at the same time, _wrangling_ seemed a very
+aggravating word to put into young men's mouths at all)--perhaps I
+shouldn't have been half as happy as a quiet comfortable life would make
+me. "I was cut out for a tutorer. He was sure of it. So he'd thank me to
+read the paper without another syllable." The advertisement, in truth,
+was promising. "The advertiser, in London, desired to engage the
+services of a young gentleman, capable of teaching the ancient
+languages, and giving his pupils 'an introduction to the sciences.' The
+salary would be liberal, and the occupation with a humane family in the
+country, who would receive the tutor as one of themselves. References
+would be required and given."
+
+"References would be required and given," I repeated, after having
+concluded the advertisement, and put the paper down.
+
+"Yes, that's the only thing!" said Thompson, scratching his honest ear,
+like a man perplexed and driven to a corner. "We haven't got no
+references to give. But I'll tell you what we've got though. We've got
+the papers of these freehold premises, and we've something like two
+thousand in the bank. I'll give 'em them, if you turns out a bad 'un.
+That I'll undertake to do, and shan't be frightened either. Now, you
+just go, and see if you can get it. Where do you apply?"
+
+"Wait, Thompson. I must not suffer you"----
+
+"Did you hear what I said, sir? where do you apply?"
+
+"At X.Y.Z." said I, "in Swallow street, Saint James's."
+
+"Then, don't you lose a minute. I shouldn't be surprised if the place is
+run down already. London's overstocked with tutorers and men of larning.
+You come along o' me, Billy, and don't you lose sight of this 'ere
+chance, my boy. If they wants a reference, tell 'em I'll be glad to wait
+upon 'em."
+
+Three days had not elapsed after this conversation, before my services
+were accepted by X.Y.Z.--and I had engaged to travel into Devonshire to
+enter at once upon my duties, as teacher in the dwelling-house of the
+Reverend Walter Fairman. X.Y.Z. was a man of business; and, fortunately
+for me, had known my father well. He was satisfied with my connexion,
+and with the unbounded recommendation which Thompson gave with me. Mr
+Fairman was incumbent of one of the loveliest parishes in England, and
+the guardian and teacher of six boys. My salary was fifty pounds per
+annum, with board and lodging. The matter was settled in a few hours,
+and before I had time to consider, my place was taken in the coach, and
+a letter was dispatched to Mr Fairman, announcing my intended departure.
+Nothing could exceed the joy of Thompson at my success--nothing could be
+kinder and more anxious than his valuable advice.
+
+"Now," he said as we walked together from the coach-office, "was I wrong
+in telling you that better things would turn up? Take care of yourself,
+and the best wrangler of the lot may be glad to change places with you.
+It isn't lots of larning, or lots of money, or lots of houses and
+coaches, that makes a man happy in this world. They never can do it; but
+they can do just the contrarery, and make him the miserablest wretch as
+crawls. _A contented mind_ is 'the one thing needful.' Take what God
+gives gratefully, and do unto others as you would that they should do
+unto you. That's a maxim that my poor father was always giving me, and,
+I wish, when I take the young 'uns to church, that they could always
+hear it, for human natur needs it."
+
+The evening before my setting out was spent with Thompson's family. I
+had received a special invitation, and Thompson, with the labouring
+sons, were under an engagement to the mistress of the house, to leave
+the workshop at least an hour earlier than usual. Oh, it was a sight to
+move the heart of one more hardened than I can boast to be, to behold
+the affectionate party assembled to bid me farewell, and to do honour to
+our leave-taking. A little feast was prepared for the occasion, and my
+many friends were dressed, all in their Sunday clothes, befittingly.
+There was not one who had not something to give me for a token. Mary had
+worked me a purse; and Mary blushed whilst her mother betrayed her, and
+gave the little keepsake. Ellen thought a pincushion might be useful;
+and the knitter of the large establishment provided me with comforters.
+All the little fellows, down to Billy himself, had a separate gift,
+which each must offer with a kiss, and with a word or two expressive of
+his good wishes. All hoped I would come soon again, and Aleck more than
+hinted a request that I would postpone my departure to some indefinite
+period which he could not name. Poor tremulous heart! how it throbbed
+amongst them all, and how sad it felt to part from them! Love bound me
+to the happy room--the only love that connected the poor outcast with
+the wide cold world. This was the home of my affections--could I leave
+it--could I venture once more upon the boisterous waters of life without
+regret and apprehension?
+
+Thompson kindly offered to accompany me on the following morning to the
+inn from which I was destined to depart, but I would not hear of it. He
+was full of business; had little time to spare, and none to throw away
+upon me. I begged him not to think of it, and he acquiesced in my
+wishes. We were sitting together, and his wife and children had an hour
+or two previously retired to rest.
+
+"Them's good children, ain't they, Stukely?" enquired Thompson, after
+having made a long pause.
+
+"You may well be proud of them," I answered.
+
+"It looked nice of 'em to make you a little present of something before
+you went. But it was quite right. That's just as it should be. I like
+that sort of thing, especially when a man understands the sperrit that a
+thing's given with. Now, some fellows would have been offended if any
+thing had been offered 'em. How I do hate all that!"
+
+"I assure you, Thompson, I feel deeply their kind treatment of their
+friend. I shall never forget it."
+
+"You ain't offended, then?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Well, now, I am so happy to hear it, you can't think," continued
+Thompson, fumbling about his breeches pocket, and drawing from it at
+length something which he concealed in his fist. "There, take that," he
+suddenly exclaimed; "take it, my old fellow, and God bless you. It's no
+good trying to make a fuss about it."
+
+I held a purse of money in my hand.
+
+"No, Thompson," I replied, "I cannot accept it. Do not think me proud or
+ungrateful; but I have no right to take it."
+
+"It's only twenty guineas, man, and I can afford it. Now look, Stukely,
+you are going to leave me. If you don't take it, you'll make me as
+wretched as the day is long. You are my friend, and my friend mustn't go
+amongst strangers without an independent spirit. If you have twenty
+guineas in your pocket, you needn't be worrying yourself about little
+things. You'll find plenty of ways to make the money useful. You shall
+pay me, if you like, when you grow rich, and we meets again; but take it
+now, and make John Thompson happy."
+
+In the lap of nature the troubled mind gets rest; and the wounds of the
+heart heal rapidly, once delivered there, safe from contact with the
+infectious world; and the bosom of the nursing mother is not more
+powerful or quick to lull the pain and still the sobs of her distressed
+ones. It is the sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to arrive at it is
+to secure shelter and to find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed,
+birthright and joy of angels, whither do those glimpses hover that we
+catch of thee in this tumultuous life, weak, faint, and transient though
+they be, melting the human soul with heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if
+not upon the everlasting hills, where the brown line divides the sky, or
+on the gentle sea, where sea and sky are one--a liquid cupola--or in the
+leafy woods and secret vales, where beauty lends her thrilling voice to
+silence? How often will the remembrance only of one bright spot--a
+vision of Paradise rising over the dull waste of my existence--send a
+glow of comfort to my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of repose which
+the harsh business of life cannot extinguish or disturb! And what a fair
+history comes with that shadowy recollection! How much of passionate
+condensed existence is involved in it, and how mysteriously, yet
+naturally connected with it, seem all the noblest feelings of my
+imperfect nature! The scene of beauty has become "a joy for ever."
+
+I recall a spring day--a sparkling day of the season of youth and
+promise--and a nook of earth, fit for the wild unshackled sun to skip
+along and brighten with his inconstant giddy light. Hope is everywhere;
+murmuring in the brooks, and smiling in the sky. Upon the bursting trees
+she sits; she nestles in the hedges. She fills the throat of mating
+birds, and bears the soaring lark nearer and nearer to the gate of
+Heaven. It is the first holiday of the year, and the universal heart is
+glad. Grief and apprehension cannot dwell in the human breast on such a
+day; and, for an hour, even _Self_ is merged in the general joy. I reach
+my destination; and the regrets for the past, and the fear for the
+future, which have accompanied me through the long and anxious journey,
+fall from the oppressed spirit, and leave it buoyant, cheerful,
+free--free to delight itself in a land of enchantment, and to revel
+again in the unsubstantial glories of a youthful dream. I paint the
+Future in the colours that surround me, and I confide in her again.
+
+It was noon when we reached the headquarters of the straggling parish of
+Deerhurst--its chief village. We had travelled since the golden sunrise
+over noble earth, and amongst scenes scarcely less heavenly than the
+blue vault which smiled upon them. Now the horizon was bounded by a
+range of lofty hills linked to each other by gentle undulations, and
+bearing to their summits innumerable and giant trees; these, crowded
+together, and swayed by the brisk wind, presented to the eye the figure
+of a vast and supernatural sea, and made the intervening vale of
+loveliness a neglected blank. Then we emerged suddenly--yes,
+instantaneously--as though designing nature, with purpose to surprize,
+had hid behind the jutting crag, beneath the rugged steep--upon a world
+of beauty; garden upon garden, sward upon sward, hamlet upon hamlet, far
+as the sight could reach, and purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes
+of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at
+intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake,
+buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions,
+larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty
+element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves,
+her flowers and gems, is on the shore to greet her.
+
+The entrance to the village is by a swift, precipitous descent. On
+either side are piled rude stones, placed there by a subtle hand, and
+with a poet's aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe the traveller with
+thoughts of other times--of ruined castles, and of old terrace walks.
+Already have the stones fulfilled their purpose, and the ivy, the brier,
+and the saxifrage have found a home amongst them. At the foot of the
+declivity, standing like a watchful mother, is the church--the small,
+the unpretending, the venerable and lovely village church. You do not
+see a house till she is passed. Before a house was built about her, she
+was an aged church, and her favoured graves were rich in heavenly clay.
+The churchyard gate; and then at once, the limited and quiet village,
+nestling in a valley and shut out from the world: beautiful and
+self-sufficient. Hill upon hill behind, each greener than the last--hill
+upon hill before, all exclusion, and nothing but her own surpassing
+loveliness to console and cheer her solitude. And is it not enough? What
+if she know little of the sea beyond its voice, and nothing of external
+life--her crystal stream, her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden plots,
+her variegated flowers and massive foliage, her shady dells and scented
+lanes are joys enough for her small commonwealth. Thin curling smoke
+that rises like a spirit from the hidden bosom of one green hillock,
+proclaims the single house that has its seat upon the eminence. It is
+the parsonage--my future home.
+
+With a trembling heart I left the little inn, and took my silent way to
+the incumbent's house. There was no eye to follow me, the leafy street
+was tenantless, and seemed made over to the restless sun and dissolute
+winds to wanton through it as they pleased. As I ascended, the view
+enlarged--beauty became more beauteous, silence more profound. I reached
+the parsonage gate, and my heart yearned to tell how much I longed to
+live and die on this sequestered and most peaceful spot. The
+dwelling-house was primitive and low; its long and overhanging roof was
+thatched; its windows small and many. A myrtle, luxuriant as a vine,
+covered its entire front, and concealed the ancient brick and wood. A
+raised bank surrounded the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted to a
+lawn fringed with the earliest flowers of the year. I rang the loud
+bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl gave me admittance to the house.
+In a room of moderate size, furnished by a hand as old at least as the
+grandsires of the present occupants, and well supplied with books, sat
+the incumbent. He was a man of fifty years of age or more, tall and
+gentlemanly in demeanour. His head was partly bald, and what remained of
+his hair was grey almost to whiteness. He had a noble forehead, a marked
+brow, and a cold grey eye. His mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual deep
+reflection, and the expression of every other feature tended to
+seriousness. The first impression was unfavourable. A youth, who was
+reading with the minister when I entered the apartment, was dismissed
+with a simple inclination of the head, and the Rev. Walter Fairman then
+pointed to a seat.
+
+"You have had a tedious journey, Mr Stukely," began the incumbent, "and
+you are fatigued, no doubt."
+
+"What a glorious spot this is, sir!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it is pretty," answered Mr Fairman, very coldly as I thought. "Are
+you hungry, Mr Stukely? We dine early; but pray take refreshment if you
+need it."
+
+I declined respectfully.
+
+"Do you bring letters from my agent?"
+
+"I have a parcel in my trunk, sir, which will be here immediately. What
+magnificent trees!" I exclaimed again, my eyes riveted upon a stately
+cluster, which were about a hundred yards distant.
+
+"Have you been accustomed to tuition?" asked Mr Fairman, taking no
+notice of my remark.
+
+"I have not, sir, but I am sure that I shall be delighted with the
+occupation. I have always thought so."
+
+"We must not be too sanguine. Nothing requires more delicate handling
+than the mind of youth. In no business is experience, great discernment
+and tact, so much needed as in that of instruction."
+
+"Yes, sir, I am aware of it."
+
+"No doubt," answered Mr Fairman quietly. "How old are you?"
+
+I told my age, and blushed.
+
+"Well, well," said the incumbent, "I have no doubt we shall do. You are
+a Cambridge man, Mr Graham writes me?"
+
+"I was only a year, sir, at the university. Circumstances prevented a
+longer residence. I believe I mentioned the fact to Mr Graham."
+
+"Oh yes, he told me so. You shall see the boys this afternoon. They are
+fine-hearted lads, and much may be done with them. There are six. Two of
+them are pretty well advanced. They read Euripides and Horace. Is
+Euripides a favourite of yours?"
+
+"He is tender, plaintive, and passionate," I answered; "but perhaps I
+may be pardoned if I venture to prefer the vigour and majesty of the
+sterner tragedian."
+
+"You mean you like Æschylus better. Do you write poetry, Mr Stukely? Not
+Latin verses, but English poetry."
+
+"I do not, sir."
+
+"Well, I am glad of that. It struck me that you did. Will you really
+take no refreshment? Are you not fatigued?"
+
+"Not in the least, sir. This lovely prospect, for one who has seen so
+little of nature as I have, is refreshment enough for the present."
+
+"Ah," said Mr Fairman, sighing faintly, "you will get accustomed to it.
+There is something in the prospect, but more in your own mind. Some of
+our poor fellows would be easily served and satisfied, if we could feed
+them on the prospect. But if you are not tired you shall see more of it
+if you will. I have to go down to the village. We have an hour till
+dinner-time. Will you accompany me?"
+
+"With pleasure, sir."
+
+"Very well." Mr Fairman then rang the bell, and the servant girl came
+in.
+
+"Where's Miss Ellen, Mary?" asked the incumbent.
+
+"She has been in the village since breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word
+that she was ill, and Miss took her the rice and sago that Dr Mayhew
+ordered."
+
+"Has Warden been this morning?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Foolish fellow. I'll call on him. Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman
+comes, give him that bottle of port wine; but tell him not to touch a
+drop of it himself. It is for his sick child, and it is committing
+robbery to take it. Let him have the blanket also that was looked out
+for him."
+
+"It's gone, sir. Miss sent it yesterday."
+
+"Very well. There is nothing more. Now, Mr Stukely, we will go."
+
+I have said already that the first opinion which I formed of the
+disposition of Mr Fairman was not a flattering one. Before he spoke a
+word, I felt disappointed and depressed. My impression after our short
+conversation was worse than the first. The natural effect of the scene
+in which I suddenly found myself, had been to prepare my ever too
+forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm and poetic temperament. Mr
+Fairman was many degrees removed from warmth. He spoke to me in a sharp
+tone of voice, and sometimes, I suspected, with the intention of mocking
+me. His _manner_, when he addressed the servant-girl, was not more
+pleasing. When I followed him from the room, I regretted the haste with
+which I had accepted my appointment; but a moment afterwards I entered
+into fairyland again, and the passing shadow left me grateful to
+Providence for so much real enjoyment. We descended the hill, and for a
+time, in silence, Mr Fairman was evidently engaged in deep thought, and
+I had no wish to disturb him. Every now and then we lighted upon a view
+of especial beauty, and I was on the point of expressing my unbounded
+admiration, when one look at my cool and matter-of-fact companion at
+once annoyed and stopped me.
+
+"Yes," said Mr Fairman at length, still musing. "It is very
+difficult--very difficult to manage the poor. I wonder if they are
+grateful at heart. What do you think, Mr Stukely?"
+
+"I have nothing to say of the poor, sir, but praise."
+
+Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and smiled unpleasantly.
+
+"It is the scenery, I suppose. That will make you praise every thing for
+the next day or so. It will not do, though. We must walk on our feet,
+and be prosaic in this world. The poor are not as poets paint them, nor
+is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect.
+The poets are like you--they have nothing to say but praise. Ah, me!
+they draw largely on their imaginations."
+
+"I do not, sir, in this instance," I answered, somewhat nettled. "My
+most valued friends are in the humblest ranks of life. I am proud to say
+so. I am not prepared to add, that the most generous of men are the most
+needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at
+the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves."
+
+"I believe you, Mr Stukely," answered the incumbent in a more feeling
+tone. "I am not fond of theories; yet that's a theory with which I would
+willingly pass through life; but it will not answer. It is knocked on
+the head every hour of the day. Perhaps it is our own fault. We do not
+know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant
+and helpless. Just step in here."
+
+We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill. It was a low
+dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it.
+One window was in the cob-wall. It had been fixed there originally,
+doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light,
+not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants,
+was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied
+the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A
+child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair,
+unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was
+heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and
+a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly
+countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire,
+and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an
+unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not
+twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There
+was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete
+article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed
+down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who
+sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor
+before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting,
+however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving
+family with bread?
+
+The man did not rise upon our entrance. He changed colour very slightly,
+and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.
+
+"Well, Jacob Warden," said the incumbent, "you are determined to brave
+it out, I see." The fellow did not answer.
+
+"When I told you yesterday that your idleness and bad habits were
+bringing you to ruin, you answered--_I was a liar_. I then said, that
+when you were sorry for having uttered that expression, you might come
+to the parsonage and tell me so. You have not been yet--I am grieved to
+say it. What have I ever done to you, Jacob Warden, that you should
+behave so wickedly? I do not wish you to humble yourself to me, but I
+should have been glad to see you do your duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I
+should give you up, and see you no more, for I fear you are a hardened
+man."
+
+"He hasn't had no work for a month," said the wife, in a tone of
+upbraiding, as if the minister had been the wilful cause of it.
+
+"And whose fault is that, Mrs Warden? There is work enough for sober and
+honest men in the parish. Why was your husband turned away from the
+Squire's?"
+
+"Why, all along of them spoons. They never could prove it agin him,
+that's one thing--though they tried it hard enough."
+
+"Come, come, Mrs Warden, if you love that man, take the right way to
+show it. Think of your children."
+
+"Yes; if I didn't--who would, I should like to know? The poor are
+trodden under foot."
+
+"Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor are taken care of, if they are deserving.
+God loves the poor, and commands us all to love them. Give me your
+Bible?" The woman hesitated a minute, and then answered--
+
+"Never mind the Bible, that won't get us bread."
+
+"Give me your Bible, Mrs Warden."
+
+"We have'nt got it. What's the use of keeping a Bible in the house for
+children as can't read, when they are crying for summat to eat?"
+
+"You have sold it, then?"
+
+"We got a shilling on it--that's all."
+
+"Have you ever applied to us for food, and has it been denied you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. The servant always looks grumpy at us when we come
+a-begging, and seems to begrudge us every mouthful. It's all very well
+to live on other persons' leavings. I dare say you don't give us what
+you could eat yourselves."
+
+"We give the best we can afford, Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with no
+such feeling as you suppose. How is the child? Is it better?"
+
+"Yes, no thanks to Doctor Mayhew either."
+
+"Did he not call, then?"
+
+"Call! Yes, but he made me tramp to his house for the physic, and when
+he passed the cottage the other day, I called after him; but devil a bit
+would he come back. We might have died first, of course: he knows, he
+isn't paid, and what does he care?"
+
+"It is very wrong of you to talk so. You are well aware that he was
+hurrying to a case of urgency, and could not be detained. He visited you
+upon the following day, and told you so."
+
+"Oh yes, the following day! What's that to do with it?"
+
+"Woman" exclaimed Mr Fairman, solemnly, "my heart bleeds for those poor
+children. What will become of them with such an example before their
+eyes? I can say no more to you than I have repeated a hundred times
+before. I would make you happy in this world if I could; I would save
+you. You forbid me. I would be your true friend, and you look upon me as
+an enemy. Heaven, I trust, will melt your heart! What is that child
+screaming for?"
+
+"What! she hasn't had a blessed thing to-day. We had nothing for her."
+
+Mr Fairman took some biscuits from his pockets, and placed them on the
+table. "Let the girl come in, and eat," said he. "I shall send you some
+meat from the village. Warden, I cannot tell you how deeply I feel your
+wickedness. I did expect you to come to the parsonage and say you were
+sorry. It would have looked well, and I should have liked it. You put it
+out of my power to help you. It is most distressing to see you both
+going headlong to destruction. May you live to repent! I shall see you
+again this evening, and I will speak to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely, our
+time is getting short."
+
+The incumbent spoke rapidly, and seemed affected. I looked at him, and
+could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I had
+at first imagined him.
+
+We pursued our way towards the village.
+
+"There, sir," said the minister in a quick tone of voice, "what is the
+beautiful prospect, and what are the noble trees, to the heart of that
+man? What have they to do at all with man's morality? Had those people
+never seen a shrub or flower, could they have been more impenetrable,
+more insolent and suspicious, or steeped in vice much deeper? That man
+wants only opportunity, a large sphere of action, and the variety of
+crime and motive that are to be found amongst congregated masses of
+mankind, to become a monster. His passions and his vices are as wilful
+and as strong as those of any man born and bred in the sinks of a great
+city. They have fewer outlets, less capability of mischief--and there is
+the difference."
+
+I ventured no remark, and the incumbent, after a short pause, continued
+in a milder strain.
+
+"I may be, after all, weak and inefficient. Doubtless great delicacy and
+caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to
+these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is
+useless to sow the seed. Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?"
+
+Mr Fairman stopped at the first house in the village--the prettiest of
+the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages before alluded to. Here he tapped
+softly, and a gentle foot that seemed to know the visitor hastened to
+admit him.
+
+"Well, Mary," said the minister, glancing round the room--a clean and
+happy-looking room it was--"where's Michael?"
+
+"He is gone, sir, as you bade him, to make it up with Cousin Willett. He
+couldn't rest easy, sir, since you told him that it was no use coming to
+church so long as he bore malice. He won't be long, sir."
+
+Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his grey eye might be, it did not seem so
+steady now.
+
+"Mary, that is good of him; tell him his minister is pleased. How is
+work with him?"
+
+"He has enough to do, to carry him to the month's end, sir."
+
+"Then at the month's end, Mary, let him come to the parsonage. I have
+something for him there. But we can wait till then. Have you seen the
+itinerary preacher since?"
+
+"It is not his time, sir. He didn't promise to come till Monday week."
+
+"Do neither you nor Michael speak with him, nor listen to his public
+preachings. I mean, regard him not as one having authority. I speak
+solemnly, and with a view to your eternal peace. Do not forget."
+
+Every house was visited, and in all, opportunity was found for the
+exercise of the benevolent feelings by which the incumbent was
+manifestly actuated. He lost no occasion of affording his flock sound
+instruction and good advice. It could not be doubted for an instant that
+their real welfare, temporal and everlasting, lay deeply in his heart. I
+was struck by one distinguishing feature in his mode of dealing with his
+people; it was so opposed to the doctrine and practice of Mr Clayton,
+and of those who were connected with him. With the latter, a certain
+degree of physical fervour, and a conventional peculiarity of
+expression, were insisted upon and accepted as evidences of grace and
+renewed life. With Mr Fairman, neither acquired heat, nor the more
+easily acquired jargon of a clique, were taken into account. He rather
+repressed than encouraged their existence; but he was desirous, and even
+eager, to establish rectitude of conduct and purity of feeling in the
+disciples around him: these were to him tangible witnesses of the
+operation of that celestial Spirit before whose light the mists of
+simulation and deceit fade unresistingly away. I could not help
+remarking, however, that in every cottage the same injunction was given
+in respect of the itinerant; the same solemnity of manner accompanied
+the command; the same importance was attached to its obedience. There
+seemed to me, fresh from the hands of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry
+and uncharitableness in all this. I did not hint at this effect upon my
+own mind, nor did I inquire into the motives of the minister. I was not
+pleased; but I said nothing. As if Mr Fairman read my very thoughts, he
+addressed me on the subject almost before the door of the last cottage
+was closed upon us.
+
+"_Bigoted_ and _narrow-minded,_ are the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the
+extremely liberal would characterize the line of conduct which I am
+compelled by duty to pursue. I cannot be frightened by harsh terms. I am
+the pastor of these people, and must decide and act for them. I am their
+shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor and ignorant, and unripe in
+judgment, and easily deceived by the shows and counterfeits of truth as
+the ignorant are, is it for me to hand them over to perplexity and risk?
+They are simple believers, and are contented. They worship God, and are
+at peace. They know their lot, and do not murmur at it. Is it right that
+they should be disturbed with the religious differences and theological
+subtleties which have already divided into innumerable sects the
+universal family of Christians whom God made one? Is it fair or merciful
+to whisper into their ears the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction,
+envy, and complaining, to which the uninformed of all classes but too
+eagerly listen? I have ever found the religious and the political
+propagandist united in the same individual. The man who proposes to the
+simple to improve his creed, is ready to point out the way to better his
+condition. He succeeds in rendering him unhappy in both, and there he
+leaves him. So would this man, and I would rather die for my people,
+than tamely give them over to their misery."
+
+A tall, stout, weather-beaten man, in the coarse dress of a fisherman,
+descending the hill, intercepted our way. It was the man Cuthbert,
+already mentioned by Mr Fairman. He touched his southwester to the
+incumbent.
+
+"How is the boy, Cuthbert?" asked the minister, stopping at the same
+moment.
+
+"All but well, sir. Doctor Mayhew don't mean to come again. It's all
+along of them nourishments that Miss Ellen sent us down. The Doctor says
+he must have died without them."
+
+"Well, Cuthbert, I trust that we shall find you grateful."
+
+"Grateful, sir!" exclaimed the man. "If ever I forget what you have done
+for that poor child, I hope the breath----" The brawny fisherman could
+say no more. His eyes filled suddenly with tears, and he held down his
+head, ashamed of them. He had no cause to be so.
+
+"Be honest and industrious, Cuthbert; give that boy a good example.
+Teach him to love his God, and his neighbour as himself. That will be
+gratitude enough, and more than pay Miss Ellen."
+
+"I'll try to do it, sir. God bless you!"
+
+We said little till we reached the parsonage again; but before I
+re-entered its gate the Reverend Walter Fairman had risen in my esteem,
+and ceased to be considered a cold and unfeeling man.
+
+We dined; the party consisting of the incumbent, the six students, and
+myself. The daughter, the only daughter and child of Mr Fairman, who was
+himself a widower, had not returned from the cottage to which she had
+been called in the morning. It was necessary that a female should be in
+constant attendance upon the aged invalid; a messenger had been
+despatched to the neighbouring village for an experienced nurse; and
+until her arrival Miss Fairman would permit no one but herself to
+undertake the duties of the sick chamber. It was on this account that we
+were deprived of the pleasure of her society, for her accustomed seat
+was at the head of her father's table. I was pleased with the pupils.
+They were affable and well-bred. They treated the incumbent with marked
+respect, and behaved towards their new teacher with the generous
+kindness and freedom of true young gentlemen. The two eldest boys might
+be fifteen years of age. The remaining four could not have reached their
+thirteenth year. In the afternoon I had the scholars to myself. The
+incumbent retired to his library, and left us to pass our first day in
+removing the restraint that was the natural accompaniment of our
+different positions, and in securing our intimacy. I talked of the
+scenery, and found willing listeners. They understood me better than
+their master, for they were worshippers themselves. They promised to
+show me lovelier spots than any I had met with yet; sacred corners,
+known only to themselves, down by the sea, where the arbute and
+laurustinus grew like trees, and children of the ocean. Then there were
+villages near, more beautiful even than their own; one that lay in the
+lap of a large hill, with the sea creeping round, or rolling at its feet
+like thunder, sometimes. What lanes, too, Miss Fairman knew of! She
+would take me into places worth the looking at; and oh, what drawings
+she had made from them! Their sisters had bought drawings, and paid very
+dearly for them too, that were not half so finely done! They would ask
+her to show me her portfolio, and she would do it directly, for she was
+the kindest creature living. It was not the worst trait in the
+disposition of these boys, that, whatever might be the subject of
+conversation, or from whatever point we might start in our discourse,
+they found pleasure in making all things bear towards the honour and
+renown of their young mistress. The scenery was nothing without Miss
+Fairman and her sketches. The house was dull without her, and the
+singing in the church, if she were ill and absent, was as different as
+could be. There were the sweetest birds that could be, heard warbling in
+the high trees that lined the narrow roads; but at Miss Fairman's window
+there was a nightingale that beat them all. The day wore on, and I did
+not see the general favourite. It was dusk when she reached the
+parsonage, and then she retired immediately to rest, tired from the
+labours of the day. The friend of the family, Doctor Mayhew, had
+accompanied Miss Fairman home; he remained with the incumbent, and I
+continued with my young companions until their bedtime. They departed,
+leaving me their books, and then I took a survey of the work that was
+before me. My duties were to commence on the following day, and our
+first subject was the tragedy of _Hecuba_. How very grateful did I feel
+for the sound instruction which I had received in early life from my
+revered pains-taking tutor, for the solid groundwork that he had
+established, and for the rational mode of tuition which he had from the
+first adopted. From the moment that he undertook to cultivate and inform
+the youthful intellect, this became itself an active instrument in the
+attainment of knowledge--not, as is so often the case, the mere idle
+depositary of encumbering _words_. It was little that he required to be
+gained by rote, for he regarded all acquisitions as useless in which the
+understanding had not the chiefest share. He was pleased to communicate
+facts, and anxious to discover, from examination, that the principles
+which they contained had been accurately seen and understood. Then no
+labour and perseverance on his part were deemed too great for his pupil,
+and the business of his life became his first pleasure. In the study of
+Greek, for which at an early age I evinced great aptitude, I learnt the
+structure of the language and its laws from the keen observations of my
+master, whose rules were drawn from the classic work before us--rather
+than from grammars. To this hour I retain the information thus obtained,
+and at no period of my life have I ever had greater cause for
+thankfulness, than when, after many months of idleness and neglect, with
+a view to purchase bread I opened, not without anxiety, my book again,
+and found that time had not impaired my knowledge, and that light shone
+brightly on the pages, as it did of old. Towards the close of the
+evening, I was invited to the study of Mr Fairman. Doctor Mayhew was
+still with him, and I was introduced to the physician as the teacher
+newly arrived from London. The doctor was a stout good-humoured
+gentleman of the middle height, with a cheerful and healthy-looking
+countenance. He was, in truth, a jovial man, as well as a great
+snuff-taker. The incumbent offered me a chair, and placed a decanter of
+wine before me. His own glass of port was untouched, and he looked
+serious and dejected.
+
+"Well, sir, how does London look?" enquired the doctor, "are the folks
+as mad as they used to be? What new invention is the rage now? What
+bubble is going to burst? What lord committed forgery last? Who was the
+last woman murdered before you started?"
+
+I confessed my inability to answer.
+
+"Well, never mind. There isn't much lost. I am almost ashamed of old
+England, that's the truth on't. I have given over reading the
+newspapers, for they are about as full of horrors as Miss
+What's-her-name's tales of the Infernals. What an age this is! all crime
+and fanaticism! Everyman and everything is on the rush. Come, Fairman,
+take your wine."
+
+Mr Fairman sat gazing on the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the
+request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned
+topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are
+about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an
+advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my
+father was alive, as a ship sailing along this coast keel upwards. You
+saw it, Fairman. It was just under the Everlasting Life Pill
+advertisement; and announced that the Reverend Mr Somebody would preach
+on the Sunday following, at some conventicle, when the public were
+invited to listen to him--and that the doors would be opened half an
+hour earlier than usual to prevent squeezing. That's modern religion,
+and it looks as much like ancient play-acting as two peas. Where will
+these marching days of improvement bring us to at last?"
+
+"Tell me, Mayhew," said Mr Fairman, "does it not surprise you that a
+girl of her age should be so easily fatigued?"
+
+"My dear friend, that makes the sixth time of asking. Let us hope that
+it will be the last. I don't know what you mean by '_so easily_'
+fatigued. The poor girl has been in the village all day, fomenting and
+poulticing old Mrs Barnes, and if it had been any girl but herself, she
+would have been tired out long before. Make your mind easy. I have sent
+the naughty puss to bed, and she'll be as fresh as a rose in the
+morning."
+
+"She must keep her exertions within proper bounds," continued the
+incumbent. "I am sure she has not strength enough to carry out her good
+intentions. I have watched her narrowly, and cannot be mistaken."
+
+"You do wrong, then, Fairman. Anxious watching creates fear, without the
+shadow of an excuse for it. When we have anything like a bad symptom, it
+is time to get uneasy."
+
+"Yes, but what do you call a bad symptom, Doctor?"
+
+"Why, I call your worrying yourself into fidgets, and teazing me into an
+ill temper, a shocking symptom of bad behaviour. If it continue, you
+must take a doze. Come, my friend, let me prescribe that glass of good
+old port. It does credit to the cloth."
+
+"Seriously, Mayhew, have you never noticed the short, hacking cough that
+sometimes troubles her?"
+
+"Yes; I noticed it last January for the space of one week, when there
+was not a person within ten miles of you who was not either hacking, as
+you call it, or blowing his nose from morning till night. The dear child
+had a cold, and so had you, and I, and everybody else."
+
+"And that sudden flush, too?"
+
+"Why, you'll be complaining of the bloom on the peach next! That's
+health, and nothing else, take my word for it."
+
+"I am, perhaps, morbidly apprehensive; but I cannot forget her poor
+mother. You attended her, Mayhew, and you know how suddenly that came
+upon us. Poor Ellen! what should I do without her!"
+
+"Fairman, join me in wishing success to our young friend here. Mr
+Stukely, here's your good health; and success and happiness attend you.
+You'll find little society here; but it is of the right sort, I can tell
+you. You must make yourself at home." The minister became more cheerful,
+and an hour passed in pleasant conversation. At ten o'clock, the horse
+of Doctor Mayhew was brought to the gate, and the gentleman departed in
+great good-humour. Almost immediately afterwards, the incumbent himself
+conducted me to my sleeping apartment, and I was not loth to get my
+rest. I fell asleep with the beautiful village floating before my weary
+eyes, and the first day of my residence at the parsonage closed
+peacefully upon me.
+
+It was at the breakfast table on the succeeding morning that I beheld
+the daughter of the incumbent, the favourite and companion of my pupils,
+and mistress of the house--a maiden in her twentieth year. She was
+simply and artlessly attired, gentle and retiring in demeanour, and
+femininely sweet rather than beautiful in expression. Her figure was
+slender, her voice soft and musical; her hair light brown, and worn
+plain across a forehead white as marble. The eye-brows which arched the
+small, rich, hazel eyes were delicately drawn, and the slightly aquiline
+nose might have formed a study for an artist. With the exception,
+however, of this last-named feature, there was little in the individual
+lineaments of the face to surprise or rivet the observer. Extreme
+simplicity, and perfect innocence--these were stamped upon the
+countenance, and were its charm. It was a strange feeling that possessed
+me when I first gazed upon her through the chaste atmosphere that dwelt
+around her. It was degradation deep and unaffected--a sense of shame and
+undeservedness. I remembered with self-abhorrence the relation that had
+existed between the unhappy Emma and myself, and the enormity and
+disgrace of my offence never looked so great as now, and here--in the
+bright presence of unconscious purity. She reassured and welcomed me
+with a natural smile, and pursued her occupation with quiet cheerfulness
+and unconstraint. I did not wonder that her father loved her, and
+entertained the thought of losing her with fear; for, young and gentle
+as she was, she evinced wisdom and age in her deep sense of duty, and in
+the government of her happy home. Method and order waited on her doings,
+and sweetness and tranquillity--the ease and dignity of a matron
+elevating and upholding the maiden's native modesty. And did she not
+love her sire as ardently? Yes, if her virgin soul spoke faithfully in
+every movement of her guileless face. Yes, if there be truth in tones
+that strike the heart to thrill it--in thoughts that write their meaning
+in the watchful eye, in words that issue straight from the fount of
+love, in acts that do not bear one shade of selfish purpose. It was not
+a labour of time to learn that the existence of the child, her peace and
+happiness, were merged in those of the fond parent. He was every thing
+to her, as she to him. She had no brother--he no wife: these natural
+channels of affection cut away, the stream was strong and deep that
+flowed into each other's hearts. My first interview with the young lady
+was necessarily limited. I would gladly have prolonged it. The morning
+was passed with my pupils, and my mind stole often from the work before
+me to dwell upon the face and form of her, whom, as a sister, I could
+have doated on and cherished. How happy I should have been, I deemed, if
+I had been so blessed. Useless reflection! and yet pleased was I to
+dwell upon it, and to welcome its return, as often as it recurred. At
+dinner we met again. To be admitted into her presence seemed the reward
+for my morning toil--a privilege rather than a right. What labour was
+too great for the advantage of such moments?--moments indeed they were,
+and less--flashes of time, that were not here before they had
+disappeared. We exchanged but few words. I was still oppressed with the
+conviction of my own unworthiness, and wondered if she could read in my
+burning face the history of shame. How she must avoid and despise me,
+thought I, when she has discovered all, and how bold and wicked it was
+to darken the light in which she lived with the guilt that was a part of
+me! Not the less did I experience this when she spoke to me with
+kindness and unreserve. The feeling grew in strength. I was conscious of
+deceit and fraud, and could not shake the knowledge off. I was taking
+mean advantage of her confidence, assuming a character to which I had no
+claim, and listening to the accents of innocence and virtue with the
+equanimity of one good and spotless as herself. In the afternoon the
+young students resumed their work. When it was over, we strolled amongst
+the hills; and, at the close of a delightful walk, found ourselves in
+the enchanting village. Here we encountered Miss Fairman and the
+incumbent, and we returned home in company. In one short hour we reached
+it. How many hours have passed since _that_ was ravished from the hand
+of Time, and registered in the tenacious memory! Years have floated by,
+and silently have dropped into the boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted;
+and these few minutes--sacred relics--live and linger in the world, in
+mercy it may be, to lighten up my lonely hearth, or save the whitened
+head from drooping. The spirit of one golden hour shall hover through a
+life, and shed glory where he falls. What are the unfruitful,
+unremembered years that rush along, frightening mortality with their
+fatal speed--an instant in eternity! What are the moments loaded with
+passion, intense, and never-dying--years, ages upon earth! Away with the
+divisions of time, whilst one short breath--the smallest particle or
+measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. Breathless and silent is the
+dewy eve. Trailing a host of glittering clouds behind him, the sun
+stalks down, and leaves the emerald hills in deeper green. The lambs are
+skipping on the path--the shepherd as loth to lead them home as they to
+go. The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back. The
+minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family. They hear
+the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them
+think it over. Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the
+twilight group. She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the
+good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us: she
+smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful
+eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss,
+and cannot bear their weight of happiness.
+
+Another day of natural gladness--and then the Sabbath; this not less
+cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding. The sun shone fair upon the
+ancient church, and made its venerable gray stones sparkle and look
+young again. The dark-green ivy that for many a year has clung there,
+looked no longer sad and sombre, but gay and lively as the newest of the
+new-born leaves that smiled on every tree. The inhabitants of the
+secluded village were already a-foot when we proceeded from the
+parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to
+join them. The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale;
+for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature. Willows
+and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the
+living wend their way beneath them, subdued to seriousness, it may be,
+by the breathless voice that dwells in every well-remembered mound.
+There is not one who does not carry on his brow the thoughts that best
+become it now. All are well dressed, all look cleanly and contented. The
+children are with their parents, their natural and best instructors.
+Whom should they love so well? To whom is honour due if not to them? The
+village owns no school to disannul the tie of blood, to warp and weaken
+the affection that holds them well together.
+
+All was quietness and decorum in the house of prayer. Every earnest eye
+was fixed, not upon Mr Fairman, but on the book from which the people
+prayed, in which they found their own good thoughts portrayed, their
+pious wishes told, their sorrow and repentance in clearest form
+described. Every humble penitent was on his knees. With one voice, loud
+and heartfelt, came the responses which spoke the people's acquiescence
+in all the pastor urged and prayed on their behalf. The worship over, Mr
+Fairman addressed his congregation, selecting his subject from the
+lesson of the day, and fitting his words to the capacities of those who
+listened. Let me particularly note, that whilst the incumbent pointed
+distinctly to the cross as the only ground of a sinner's hope, he
+insisted upon good works as the necessary and essential accompaniment of
+his faith. "Do not tell me, my dear friends," he said, at the conclusion
+of his address--"do not tell me that you believe, if your daily life is
+unworthy a believer. I will not trust you. What is your belief, if your
+heart is busy in contrivances to overreach your neighbour? What is it,
+if your mind is filled with envy, malice, hatred, and revenge? What if
+you are given over to disgraceful lusts--to drunkenness and debauchery?
+What if you are ashamed to speak the truth, and are willing to become a
+liar? I tell you, and I have warrant for what I say, that your conduct
+one towards another must be straightforward, honest, generous, kind, and
+affectionate, or you cannot be in a safe and happy state. You owe it to
+yourselves to be so; for if you are poor and labouring men, you have an
+immortal soul within you, and it is your greatest ornament. It is that
+which gives the meanest of us a dignity that no earthly honours can
+supply; a dignity that it becomes the first and last of us by every
+means to cherish and support. Is it not, my friends, degrading, fearful
+to know that we bear about with us the very image of our God, and that
+we are acting worse than the very brutes of the field? Do yourselves
+justice. Be pure--pure in mind and body. Be honest, in word and deed. Be
+loving to one another. Crush every wish to do evil, or to speak harshly;
+be brothers, and feel that you are working out the wishes of a
+benevolent and loving Father, who has created you for love, and smiles
+upon you when you do his bidding." There was more to this effect, but
+nothing need be added to explain the scope and tendency of his
+discourse. His congregation could not mistake his meaning; they could
+not fail to profit by it, if reason was not proof against the soundest
+argument. As quietly as, and, if it be possible, more seriously than,
+they entered the church, did the small band of worshippers, at the close
+of the service, retire from it. Could it be my fancy, or did the wife in
+truth cling closer to her husband--the father clasp his little boy more
+firmly in his hand? Did neighbour nod to neighbour more eagerly as they
+parted at the churchyard gate--did every look and movement of the many
+groups bespeak a spirit touched, a mind reproved? I may not say so, for
+my own heart was melted by the scene, and might mislead my judgment.
+There was a second service in the afternoon. This concluded, we walked
+to the sea-beach. In the evening Mr Fairman related a connected history
+from the Old Testament, whilst the pupils tracked his progress on their
+maps, and the narrative became a living thing in their remembrances.
+Serious conversation then succeeded; to this a simple prayer, and the
+day closed, sweetly and calmly, as a day might close in Paradise.
+
+The events of the following month partook of the character of those
+already glanced at. The minister was unremitting in his attendance upon
+his parishioners, and no day passed during which something had not been
+accomplished for their spiritual improvement or worldly comfort. His
+loving daughter was a handmaid at his side, ministering with him, and
+shedding sunshine where she came. The villagers were frugal and
+industrious; and seemed, for the most part, sensible of their
+incumbent's untiring efforts. Improvement appeared even in the cottage
+of the desperate Warden. Mr Fairman obtained employment for him. For a
+fortnight he had attended to it, and no complaint had reached the
+parsonage of misbehaviour. His wife had learned to bear her imagined
+wrongs in silence, and could even submit to a visit from her best friend
+without insulting him for the condescension. My own days passed smoothly
+on. My occupation grew every day more pleasing, and the results of my
+endeavours as gratifying as I could wish them. My pupils were attached
+to me, and I beheld them improving gradually and securely under their
+instruction. Mr Fairman, who, for a week together, had witnessed the
+course of my tuition, and watched it narrowly, was pleased to express
+his approbation in the warmest terms. Much of the coldness with which I
+thought he had at first encountered me disappeared, and his manner grew
+daily more friendly and confiding. His treatment was most generous. He
+received me into the bosom of his family as a son, and strove to render
+his fair habitation my genuine and natural home.
+
+Another month passed by, and the colour and tone of my existence had
+suffered a momentous change. In the acquirement of a fearful joy, I had
+lost all joy. In rendering every moment of my life blissful and
+ecstatic, I had robbed myself of all felicity. A few weeks before, and
+my state of being had realized a serenity that defied all causes of
+perturbation and disquiet. Now it was a sea of agitation and disorder;
+and a breath, a nothing had brought the restless waves upon the quiet
+surface. Through the kindness of Mr Fairman, my evenings had been almost
+invariably passed in the society of himself and his daughter. The lads
+were early risers, and retired, on that account, at a very early hour to
+rest. Upon their dismission, I had been requested to join the company in
+the drawing-room. This company included sometimes Doctor Mayhew, the
+neighbouring squire, or a chance visitor, but consisted oftenest only of
+the incumbent and his daughter. Aware of the friendly motive which
+suggested the request, I obeyed it with alacrity. On these occasions,
+Miss Fairman used her pencil, whilst I read aloud; or she would ply her
+needle, and soothe at intervals her father's ear with strains of music,
+which he, for many reasons, loved to hear. Once or twice the incumbent
+had been called away, and his child and I were left together. I had no
+reason to be silent whilst the good minister was present, yet I found
+that I could speak more confidently and better when he was absent. We
+conversed with freedom and unrestraint. I found the maiden's mind well
+stored--her voice was not more sweet than was her understanding clear
+and cloudless. Books had been her joy, which, in the season of
+suffering, had been my consolation. They were a common source of
+pleasure. She spoke of them with feeling, and I could understand her. I
+regarded her with deep unfeigned respect; but, the evening over, I took
+my leave, as I had come--in peace. Miss Fairman left the parsonage to
+pay a two-days' visit at a house in the vicinity. Until the evening of
+the first day I was not sensible of her absence. It was then, and at the
+customary hour of our reunion, that, for the first time, I experienced,
+with alarm, a sense of loneliness and desertion--that I became
+tremblingly conscious of the secret growth of an affection that had
+waited only for the time and circumstance to make its presence and its
+power known and dreaded. In the daily enjoyment of her society, I had
+not estimated its influence and value. Once denied it, and I dared not
+acknowledge to myself how precious it had become, how silently and
+fatally it had wrought upon my heart. The impropriety and folly of
+self-indulgence were at once apparent--yes, the vanity and
+wickedness--and, startled by what looked like guilt, I determined
+manfully to rise superior to temptation. I took refuge in my books; they
+lacked their usual interest, were ineffectual in reducing the ruffled
+mind to order. I rose and paced my room, but I could not escape from
+agitating thought. I sought the minister in his study, and hoped to
+bring myself to calm and reason by dwelling seriously on the business of
+the day--with him, the father of the lady, and _my master_. He was not
+there. He had left the parsonage with Doctor Mayhew an hour before. I
+walked into the open air restless and unhappy, relying on the freshness
+and repose of night to be subdued and comforted. It was a night to
+soften anger--to conquer envy--to destroy revenge--beautiful and bright.
+The hills were bathed in liquid silvery light, and on their heights, and
+in the vale, on all around, lay passion slumbering. What could I find on
+such a night, but favour and incitement, support and confirmation,
+flattery and delusion? Every object ministered to the imagination, and
+love had given that wings. I trembled as I pursued my road, and fuel
+found its unobstructed way rapidly to the flame within. Self-absorbed, I
+wandered on. I did not choose my path. I believed I did not, and I
+stopped at length--before the house that held her. I gazed upon it with
+reverence and love. One room was lighted up. Shadows flitted across the
+curtained window, and my heart throbbed sensibly when, amongst them, I
+imagined I could trace her form. I was borne down by a conviction of
+wrong and culpability, but I could not move, or for a moment draw away
+my look. It was a strange assurance that I felt--but I did feel it,
+strongly and emphatically--that I should see her palpably before I left
+the place. I waited for that sight in certain expectation, and it came.
+A light was carried from the room. Diminished illumination there, and
+sudden brightness against a previously darkened casement, made this
+evident. The light ascended--another casement higher than the last was,
+in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed her figure. She approached the
+window, and, for an instant--oh how brief!--looked into the heavenly
+night. My poor heart sickened with delight, and I strained my eyes long
+after all was blank and dark again.
+
+Daylight, and the employments of day, if they did not remove, weakened
+the turbulence of the preceding night. The more I found my passion
+acquiring mastery, with greater vigour I renewed my work, and with more
+determination I pursued the objects that were most likely to fight and
+overcome it. I laboured with the youths for a longer period. I undertook
+to prepare a composition for the following day which I knew must take
+much thought and many hours in working out. I armed myself at all
+points--but the evening came and found me once more conscious of a void
+that left me prostrate. Mr Fairman was again absent from home. I could
+not rest in it, and I too sallied forth, but this time, to the village.
+I would not deliberately offer violence to my conscience, and I shrunk
+from a premeditated visit to the distant house. My own acquaintances in
+the village were not many, or of long standing, but there were some half
+dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent's daughter. To one of these
+I bent my steps, with no other purpose than that of baffling time that
+hung upon me painfully and heavily at home. For a few minutes I spoke
+with the aged female of the house on general topics; then a passing
+observation--in spite of me--escaped my lips in reference to Miss Ellen.
+The villager took up the theme and expatiated widely. There was no end
+to what she had to say of good and kind for the dear lady. I could have
+hugged her for her praise. Prudence bade me forsake the dangerous
+ground, and so I did, to return again with tenfold curiosity and zest. I
+asked a hundred questions, each one revealing more interest and ardour
+than the last, and involving me in deeper peril. It was at length
+accomplished. My companion hesitated suddenly in a discourse, then
+stopped, and looked me in the face, smiling cunningly. "I tell you what,
+sir," she exclaimed at last, and loudly, "you are over head and ears in
+love, and that's the truth on't."
+
+"Hush, good woman," I replied, blushing to the forehead, and hastening
+to shut an open door. "Don't speak so loud. You mistake, it is no such
+thing. I shall be angry if you say so--very angry. What can you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say, sir. Why, do you know how old I am? Seventy-three. I
+think I ought to tell, and where's the harm of it? Who couldn't love the
+sweetest lady in the parish--bless her young feeling heart!"
+
+"I tell you--you mistake--you are to blame. I command you not to repeat
+this to a living soul. If it should come to the incumbent's ears"--
+
+"Trust me for that, sir. I'm no blab. He shan't be wiser for such as me.
+But do you mean to tell me, sir, with that red face of your'n, you
+haven't lost your heart--leave alone your trembling? ah, well, I hopes
+you'll both be happy, anyhow."
+
+I endeavoured to remonstrate, but the old woman only laughed and shook
+her aged head. I left her, grieved and apprehensive. My secret thoughts
+had been discovered. How soon might they be carried to the confiding
+minister and his unsuspecting daughter! What would they think of me! It
+was a day of anxiety and trouble, that on which Miss Fairman returned to
+the parsonage. I received my usual invitation; but I was indisposed, and
+did not go. I resolved to see her only during meals, and when it was
+impossible to avoid her. I would not seek her presence. Foolish effort!
+It had been better to pass hours in her sight, for previous separation
+made union more intense, and the passionate enjoyment of a fleeting
+instant was hoarded up, and became nourishment for the livelong day.
+
+It was a soft rich afternoon in June, and chance made me the companion
+of Miss Fairman. We were alone: I had encountered her at a distance of
+about a mile from the parsonage, on the sea-shore, whither I had walked
+distressed in spirit, and grateful for the privilege of listening in
+gloomy quietude to the soothing sounds of nature--medicinal ever. The
+lady was at my side almost before I was aware of her approach. My heart
+throbbed whilst she smiled upon me, sweetly as she smiled on all. Her
+deep hazel eye was moist. Could it be from weeping?
+
+"What has happened, Miss Fairman?" I asked immediately.
+
+"Do I betray my weakness, then?" she answered. "I am sorry for it; for
+dear papa tells all the villagers that no wise man weeps--and no wise
+woman either, I suppose. But I cannot help it. We are but a small family
+in the village, and it makes me very sad to miss the old faces one after
+another, and to see old friends dropping and dropping into the silent
+grave."
+
+As she spoke the church-bell tolled, and she turned pale, and ceased. I
+offered her my arm, and we walked on.
+
+"Whom do you mourn, Miss Fairman?" I asked at length.
+
+"A dear good friend--my best and oldest. When poor mamma was dying, she
+made me over to her care. She was her nurse, and was mine for years. It
+is very wrong of me to weep for her. She was good and pious, and is
+blest."
+
+The church-bell tolled again, and my companion shuddered.
+
+"Oh! I cannot listen to that bell," she said. "I wish papa would do away
+with it. What a withering sound it has! I heard it first when it was
+tolling for my dear mother. It fell upon my heart like iron then, and it
+falls so now."
+
+"I cannot say that I dislike the melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its
+messenger should not be gay."
+
+"It is the soul that sees and hears. Beauty and music are created
+quickly if the heart be joyful. So my book says, and it is true. You
+have had no cause to think that bell a hideous thing."
+
+"Yet I have suffered youth's severest loss. I have lost a mother."
+
+"You speak the truth. Yes, I have a kind father left me--and you"--
+
+"I am an orphan, friendless and deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman, you
+may be spared my fate for years."
+
+"Not friendless or deserted either, Mr Stukely," answered the young lady
+kindly; "papa does not deserve, I am sure, that you should speak so
+harshly."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did not mean to say that. He has been most
+generous to me--kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still
+must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He needs
+no greater punishment."
+
+"You must not talk so. Papa will, I am sure, be a father to you, as he
+is to all who need one. You do not know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is
+overflowing with tenderness and charity. You cannot judge him by his
+manner. He has had his share of sorrow and misfortune; and death has
+been at his door oftener than once. Friends have been unfaithful and men
+have been ungrateful; but trial and suffering have not hardened him. You
+have seen him amongst the poor, but you have not seen him as I have; nor
+have I beheld him as his Maker has, in the secret workings of his
+spirit, which is pure and good, believe me. He has received injury like
+a child, and dealt mercy and love with the liberality of an angel. Trust
+my father, Mr Stukely."--
+
+The maiden spoke quickly and passionately, and her neck and face
+crimsoned with animation. I quivered, for her tones communicated
+fire--but my line of conduct was marked, and it shone clear in spite of
+the clouds of emotion which strove to envelope and conceal it--as they
+did too soon.
+
+"I would trust him, Miss Fairman, and I do," I answered with a faltering
+tongue. "I appreciate his character and I revere him. I could have made
+my home with him. I prayed that I might do so. Heaven seemed to have
+directed my steps to this blissful spot, and to have pointed out at
+length a resting place for my tired feet. I have been most happy
+here--too happy--I have proved ungrateful, and I know how rashly I have
+forfeited this and every thing. I cannot live here. This is no home for
+me. I will go into the world again--cast myself upon it--do any thing. I
+could be a labourer on the highways, and be contented if I could see
+that I had done my duty, and behaved with honour. Believe me, Miss
+Fairman, I have not deliberately indulged--I have struggled, fought, and
+battled, till my brain has tottered. I am wretched and forlorn--but I
+will leave you--to-morrow--would that I had never come----." I could say
+no more. My full heart spoke its agony in tears.
+
+"What has occurred? What afflicts you? You alarm me, Mr Stukely."
+
+I had sternly determined to permit no one look to give expression to the
+feeling which consumed me, to obstruct by force the passage of the
+remotest hint that should struggle to betray me; but as the maiden
+looked full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance of me, and against
+all opposition, the tell-tale passion rising from my soul, and creeping
+to my eye. It would not be held back. In an instant, with one
+treacherous glance, all was spoken and revealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    By that dejected city, Arno runs,
+    Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.
+    There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes
+    Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.
+    And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring
+    Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing
+    Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,
+    And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,
+    Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest
+    My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:
+    For many griefs had wounded it, and more
+    Thy little hands could lighten were in store.
+    But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow
+    Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.
+    What then the bliss to see again thy face,
+    And all that Rumour has announced of grace!
+    I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.
+    O! could I sleep to wake again in May.
+
+    WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.
+
+
+_Sandt_.--Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice
+of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into
+their studies or their society.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--They should rather those than others. The young _must_
+cease to be young, and the unlearned _may_ cease to be unlearned.
+According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth
+against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have
+studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other
+courses than the paths of wisdom.
+
+_Sandt_.--Do you approve of the pursuit?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Who does not?
+
+_Sandt_.--None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the
+game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the
+slough. May I ask you another question?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Certainly.
+
+_Sandt_.--Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
+to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek
+information from you?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
+truth and happiness.
+
+_Sandt_.--If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from
+civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful
+persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at
+seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our
+consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what
+rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only
+to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is
+better than falsehood; and we come to that.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--How?
+
+_Sandt_.--No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to
+happiness--I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe
+that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we
+are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our
+tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer
+who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a
+truth--whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me
+a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet,
+the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has
+not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or
+reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his
+rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless
+for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even
+the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much
+lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of
+the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own
+scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for
+more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you,
+even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where
+the Old Serpent went before you.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic
+and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.
+
+_Sandt_.--I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the
+power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease,
+comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The idea is, truly, no humble one.
+
+_Sandt_.--A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The
+power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my
+aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine
+work of creating the capacity.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Childish! childish!--Men have cravings enow already; give
+them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be
+contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place
+us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power,
+without idle aspirations after impracticable good.
+
+_Sandt_.--O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of
+your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small
+and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Is this to me?
+
+_Sandt_.--To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could
+not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and
+travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.
+
+_Sandt_.--You sought celebrity.--I blame not that. The thick air of
+multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of
+solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping
+of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us
+come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What
+letters do they countenance--do they tolerate?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Plays.
+
+_Sandt_.--Playthings.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Travels.
+
+_Sandt_.--On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along
+which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke
+of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--We are not such drudges.
+
+_Sandt_.--Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can
+call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich
+possessions.
+
+_Sandt_.--None; not the highest.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost
+yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow
+them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force.
+The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude.
+The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that
+she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both;
+in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never
+more agitated than in the midst of peace.
+
+_Sandt_.--The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing
+that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that
+lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our
+homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and
+where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir,
+at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them,
+quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age--neither in
+difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself
+the tutor or the guardian of mankind.
+
+_Sandt_.--I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and
+gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the
+travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of
+princes in strange countries?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--They themselves.
+
+_Sandt_.--They have no more right to take you away from your country,
+than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to
+the land that bore you, and were not at liberty--(if right and liberty
+are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)--you were not
+at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
+freedom are these!
+
+_Sandt_.--A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the
+servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in
+his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that
+he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and
+tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you
+voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be
+coerced to act against Germans.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would not.
+
+_Sandt_.--Perhaps you think so.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Sir, I know my duty.
+
+_Sandt_.--We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the
+will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you
+left the ranks of your fellow-citizens--already have you taken the
+enlisting money and marched away.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
+polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak
+rather the language of books than of men.
+
+_Sandt_.--What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect
+than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men.
+I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the
+productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the
+continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to
+maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware
+that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can
+think of the matter, and bad enough is this.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our
+circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our
+patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical
+mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so
+minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and
+governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take
+pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out
+of place.
+
+_Sandt_.--We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is
+better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this
+indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He
+who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other,
+soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every
+thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men.
+Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and
+familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate
+for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with
+people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to
+those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others:
+but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We
+irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the
+water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those
+that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once
+with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them,
+and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must
+have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to
+us, will be useless.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at
+all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old
+enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no
+means deficient in the relations I bear to society.
+
+_Sandt_.--Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds
+can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover
+against the rain and the wind.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with
+large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my
+dear young man! and less enthusiastic.
+
+_Sandt_.--They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by
+force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must
+love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all,
+profess a parity.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.
+
+_Sandt_.--I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and
+kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could
+speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their
+ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died
+sadly!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of
+authority, your voice is gentle--almost plaintive.
+
+_Sandt_.--It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor
+require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each
+other for many years.
+
+_Sandt_.--What! should I have asked you such a question as the last,
+after long knowing you?
+
+_Kotzebue_, (_aside_.)--This resembles insanity.
+
+_Sandt_.--The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick
+apprehensions.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I really beg your pardon.
+
+_Sandt_.--I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness
+could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them
+grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again
+and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that
+fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the
+remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have
+held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have
+nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and
+security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful.
+Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that
+never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France
+falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and
+crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried
+in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the
+wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most
+literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those
+laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we
+surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled
+cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push
+us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the
+victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are
+the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed
+are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what
+they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you.
+There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.
+
+_Sandt_.--There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great,
+for instance, in our disunion.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.
+
+_Sandt_.--No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny
+princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns
+from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and
+spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured
+them, and slept upon their feathers.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of
+our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to
+us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages
+of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.
+
+_Sandt_.--Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
+and hirelings.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival
+us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.
+
+_Sandt_.--While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with
+England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on
+our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than
+they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their
+children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our
+desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and
+generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under
+disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose
+through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to
+be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and
+secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat
+by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in
+the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
+poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the
+future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush
+we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure
+at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms
+ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps
+of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow
+on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her
+venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am bound to oppose such a project.
+
+_Sandt_.--Say not so: in God's name, say not so.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and
+rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if
+possible.
+
+_Sandt._--Bound! I must then release you.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--How should you, young gentleman, release me?
+
+_Sandt_.--May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again:
+think better: spare me!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I will not betray you.
+
+_Sandt_.--That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me
+can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has
+been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper;
+here is your ink.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Do you imagine me an informer?
+
+_Sandt_.--From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood,
+the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good
+men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the
+bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to
+think of losing you! Be my friend!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would be.
+
+_Sandt_.--Be a German!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am.
+
+_Sandt_, (_having gone out_.)--Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is
+kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of
+the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I
+lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls:
+I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people
+together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim
+follows willingly. (_Enters again_.)
+
+Turn! die! (_strikes_.)
+
+Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with
+one guilty! and writhe longer!
+
+Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me.
+In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have
+sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals
+dishonour, commiseration covers it.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.
+
+A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.
+
+
+When the Empecinado, after escaping from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined his
+band, and again repaired to the favourite skirmishing ground on the
+banks of the Duero, he found the state of affairs in Old Castile
+becoming daily less favourable for his operations. The French overran
+the greater part of the province, and visited with severe punishment any
+disobedience of their orders; so that the peasantry no longer dared to
+assist the guerillas as they had previously done. Many of the villages
+on the Duero had become _afrancesados_, not, it is true, through love,
+but through dread of the invaders, and in the hope of preserving
+themselves from pillage and oppression. However much the people in their
+hearts might wish success to men like the Empecinado, the guerillas were
+too few and too feeble to afford protection to those who, by giving them
+assistance or information, would incur the displeasure of the French.
+The clergy were the only class that, almost without an exception,
+remained stanch to the cause of Spanish independence, and their purses
+and refectories were ever open to those who took up arms in its defence.
+
+Noways deterred by this unfavourable aspect of affairs, the Empecinado
+resolved to carry on the war in Old Castile, even though unaided and
+alone. He established his bivouac in the pine-woods of Coca, and sent
+out spies towards Somosierra and Burgos, to get information of some
+convoy of which the capture might yield both honour and profit.
+
+It was on the second morning after the departure of the spies, and a few
+minutes before daybreak, that the little camp was aroused by a shot from
+a sentry, placed on the skirt of the wood. In an instant every man was
+on his feet. It was the Empecinado's custom, when outlying in this
+manner, to make one-half his band sleep fully armed and equipped, with
+their horses saddled and bridled beside them; and a fortunate precaution
+it was in this instance. Scarcely had the men time to untether and
+spring upon their horses, when the sentry galloped headlong into the
+camp.
+
+"_Los Franceses! Los Franceses_!" exclaimed he, breathless with speed.
+
+One of the Empecinado's first qualities was his presence of mind, which
+never deserted him even in the most critical situations. Instantly
+forming up that moiety of his men which was already in the saddle, he
+left a detachment in front of those who were hastily saddling and
+arming, and with the remainder retired a little to the left of the open
+ground on which the bivouac was established. Almost before he had
+completed this arrangement, the jingling of arms and clattering of
+horses' feet were heard, and a squadron of French cavalry galloped down
+the glade. The Empecinado gave the word to charge, and as Fuentes at the
+head of one party advanced to meet them, he himself attacked them in
+flank. The French, not having anticipated much opposition from a foe
+whom they had expected to find sleeping, were somewhat surprized at the
+fierce resistance they met. A hard fight took place, rendered still more
+confused by the darkness, or rather by a faint grey light, which was
+just beginning to appear, and gave a shadowy indistinctness to
+surrounding objects. The Spaniards were inferior in number to their
+opponents, and it was beginning to go hard with them, when the remainder
+of the guerillas, now armed and mounted, came up to their assistance. On
+perceiving this accession to their adversaries' force, the French
+thought they had been led into an ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable
+order to the edge of the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for
+it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued
+for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in
+making one prisoner. This was a young man in the dress of a peasant, who
+being badly mounted, was easily overtaken. On being brought before the
+Empecinado, the latter with no small surprize recognized a native of
+Aranda, named Pedro Gutierrez, who was one of the emissaries he had sent
+out two days previously to get information concerning the movements of
+the enemy.
+
+With pale cheek and faltering voice, the prisoner answered the
+Empecinado's interrogatories. It appears that he had been detected as a
+spy by the French, who had given him his choice between a halter and the
+betrayal of his countrymen and employers. With the fear of death before
+his eyes, he had consented to turn traitor.
+
+The deepest silence prevailed among the guerillas during his narrative,
+and remained unbroken for a full minute after he had concluded. The
+Empecinado's brow was black as thunder, and his features assumed an
+expression which the trembling wretch well knew how to interpret.
+
+"_Que podia hacer, señores_?" said the culprit, casting an appealing,
+imploring glance around him. "The rope was round my neck; I have an aged
+father and am his only support. Life is very sweet. What could I do?"
+
+"_Die_!" replied the Empecinado, in his deep stern voice--"Die like a
+man _then_, instead of dying like a dog _now_!"
+
+He turned his back upon him, and ten minutes later, the body of the
+unfortunate spy was dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree,
+and the guerillas marched off to seek another and a safer bivouac.
+
+A few days after this incident the other spies returned, and after
+receiving their report, and consulting with his lieutenant, Mariano
+Fuentes, the Empecinado broke up the little camp, and led his band in
+the direction of the _camino réal_.
+
+Along that part of the high-road, from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which
+winds through the mountain range of Onrubias, an escort of fifty French
+dragoons was marching, about an hour before dusk, on an evening of early
+spring. Two carriages, and three or four heavily-laden carts, each drawn
+by half-a-dozen mules, composed the whole of the convoy; the value of
+which, however, might be deemed considerable, judging from the strength
+of the escort, and the precautions observed by the officer in command to
+avoid a surprise--precautions which were not of much avail; for, on
+reaching a spot where the road widened considerably, and was traversed
+by a broad ravine, the party was suddenly charged on either flank by
+double their number of guerillas. The dragoons made a gallant
+resistance, but it was a short one, for they had no room or time to form
+in any order, and were far overmatched in the hand-to-hand contest that
+ensued. With the very first who fled went a gentleman in civilian's
+garb, who sprang out of the most elegant of the two carriages, and
+mounting a fine Andalusian horse led by a groom, was off like the wind,
+disregarding the shrieks of his travelling companion, a female two or
+three-and-twenty years old, of great beauty, and very richly attired.
+The cries and alarm of the lady thus deserted were redoubled, when an
+instant later a guerilla of fierce aspect presented himself at the
+carriage-door.
+
+"Have no fear, señora," said the Empecinado, "you are in the hands of
+honourable men, and no harm shall be done you." And having by suchlike
+assurances succeeded in calming her terrors, he obtained from her some
+information as to the contents of the carts and carriages, as well as
+regarding herself and her late companion.
+
+The man who had abandoned her, and consulted his own safety by flying
+with the escort, was her husband, Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond
+merchant to the late King Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the unsettled
+state of things in Spain, he was hastening to take refuge in France,
+with his handsome wife and his great wealth--of the latter of which no
+inconsiderable portion was contained in the carriage, in the shape of
+caskets of jewellery, diamonds, and other valuables.
+
+Repairing to the neighbouring mountains, the guerillas proceeded to
+examine their booty, which the Empecinado permitted them to divide among
+themselves, with the exception of the carriage and its contents,
+including the lady, which he reserved for his own share.
+
+On the following day came letters from the French military governor of
+Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur Barbot, who had taken refuge in that
+town, and offered a large sum as ransom for his wife. To this
+application the Empecinado did not vouchsafe any answer, but marched off
+to his native village of Castrillo, taking with him jewels, carriage,
+and lady. The latter he established in the house of his brother Manuel,
+recommending her to the care of his sister-in-law, and commanding that
+she should be treated with all possible respect, and her wishes attended
+to on every point.
+
+The Empecinado's exultation at the success of his enterprize was great,
+but he little foresaw all the danger and trouble that his rich capture
+was hereafter to occasion him. He had become violently enamoured of his
+fair prisoner, and in order to have leisure to pay his court to her, he
+sent off his partida on a distant expedition under the command of
+Fuentes, and himself remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost to find
+favour in the eyes of the beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then in the
+prime of life, a remarkably handsome man, and notwithstanding that the
+French affected to treat him as a brigand, his courage and patriotism
+were admitted by the unprejudiced among all parties, and his bold and
+successful deeds had already procured him a degree of renown that was an
+additional recommendation of him to the fair sex. It may not, therefore,
+be deemed very surprising that, after the first few days of her
+captivity were passed, and she had become a little used to the novelty
+of her position, the lady began to consider the Empecinado with some
+degree of favour, and seemed not altogether disposed to be inconsolable
+in her widowhood. He on his part spared no pains to please her. His very
+nature seemed changed by the violence of his new passion; and so great
+was the metamorphosis that his best friends scarcely recognized him for
+the same man. He seemed totally to have forgotten the career to which he
+had devoted himself, and the hatred and war of extermination he had
+vowed against the French. The restless activity and spirit of enterprize
+which formed such distinguishing traits in his character, were
+completely lulled to sleep by the charms of the fair Barbot. Nor was the
+change in his external appearance less striking. Aware that the rude
+manners and attire of a guerilla were not likely to please the
+fastidious taste of a town-bred dame, he hastened to discard them. His
+rough bushy beard and mustaches were carefully trimmed and adjusted by
+the most expert barber of the neighbourhood; his sheepskin jacket, heavy
+boots, and jingling double-roweled spurs thrown aside, and in their
+place he assumed the national garb, so well adapted to show off a
+handsome person, and which, although now almost disused throughout
+Spain, far surpasses in elegance the prevailing costumes of the
+nineteenth century: a short light jacket of black velvet, and waistcoat
+of the richest silk, both profusely decorated with gold filigree
+buttons; purple velvet breeches fastened at the knee with bunches of
+ribands; silk stockings, and falling boots of chamois leather, by the
+most expert maker in Cordova; a crimson silk sash round his waist, and
+round his neck a silk handkerchief, of which the ends were drawn through
+a magnificent jewelled ring. A green velvet cap, ornamented with sables
+and silver, and an ample cloak trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of a
+commandant of French gendarmes, completed this picturesque costume.
+
+Thus attired, and mounted on a splendid horse, the Empecinado escorted
+the object of his new flame to all the fêtes and merry-makings of the
+surrounding country. Not a _romeria_ in the neighbouring villages, not a
+fair or a bull-fight in all the valley of the Duero, but were graced by
+the presence of Martin Diez and his dulcinea, whose fine horse and
+gallant equipment, but more especially the beauty of the rider, inspired
+universal admiration. As might be expected, many of those who had known
+the Empecinado a poor vine-dresser, became envious of his good fortune,
+and others who envied him not, were indignant at seeing him waste his
+time in such degrading effeminacy, instead of following up the career
+which he had so nobly begun. There was much murmuring, therefore, to
+which, however, he gave little heed; and several weeks had passed in the
+manner above described, when an incident occurred to rouse him from the
+sort of lethargy in which he was sunk.
+
+A despatch reached him from the Captain-General, Don Gregorio Cuesta,
+requiring his immediate presence at Ciudad Rodrigo, there to receive
+directions concerning the execution of a service of the greatest
+importance, and which was to be intrusted to him.
+
+This order had its origin in circumstances of which the Empecinado was
+totally ignorant. The jeweller Barbot, finding that neither large offers
+nor threats of punishment had any effect upon the Empecinado, who
+persisted in keeping his wife prisoner, made interest with the Duke of
+Infantado, then general of one of the Spanish armies, and besought him
+to exert his influence in favour of the captive lady, and to have her
+restored to her friends. The duke, who was a very important personage at
+the court of Charles the Fourth, and the favourite of Ferdinand the
+Seventh at the beginning of his reign, entertained a particular
+friendship for Barbot; and, if the _chronique scandaleuse_ of Madrid
+might be believed, a still more particular one for his wife. He
+immediately wrote to General Cuesta, desiring that the lady might be
+sent back to her husband without delay, as well as all the jewels and
+other spoil that had been seized by the Empecinado.
+
+With much difficulty did the guerilla make up his mind to abandon the
+inglorious position, and to go where duty called him. Strongly
+recommending his captive to his brother and sister-in-law, he set out
+for Ciudad Rodrigo, escorted by a sergeant and ten men of his partida.
+They had not proceeded half a mile from Castrillo, when, from behind a
+hedge bordering the road, a shot was fired, and the bullet slightly
+wounded the Empecinado's charger. Two of the escort pushed their horses
+through the hedge, and immediately returned, dragging between them a
+grey-haired old man, seventy years of age, who clutched in his wrinkled
+fingers a rusty carbine that had just been discharged.
+
+"He is surely mad!" exclaimed the Empecinado, gazing in astonishment at
+the venerable assassin. "_Dime, viejo_; do you know me? And why do you
+seek my life?"
+
+"_Si, si, te conozes_. You are the Empecinado--the bloody Empecinado.
+Give me back my Pedro, whom you murdered. _Ay di me! mi Pedrillo, te han
+matado!_"
+
+And the old man's frame quivered with rage, as he glared on the
+Empecinado with an expression of unutterable hate.
+
+One of the guerillas stepped forward--
+
+"'Tis old Gutierrez, the father of Pedro, who was hung in the Piñares de
+Coca, for betraying us to the French."
+
+"Throw his carbine into yonder pool, and leave the poor wretch," said
+the Empecinado; "his son deserved the death he met."
+
+"He missed his aim to-day, but he may point truer another time," said
+one of the men, half drawing a pistol from his holster.
+
+"Harm him not!" said the Empecinado sternly, and the party rode on.
+
+"_Maldito seas_!" screamed the old man, casting himself in the dust of
+the road, in a paroxysm of impotent fury. "_Maldito! Maldito! Ay de mi!
+mi Pedrillo!_"
+
+And his curses and lamentations continued till the guerillas were out of
+hearing.
+
+On arriving at Ciudad Rodrigo, the Empecinado went immediately to
+General Cuesta, who, although he did not receive him unkindly, could not
+but blame him greatly for the enormous crime he had committed in
+carrying off a lady who was distinguished by so mighty a personage as
+the Duke of Infantado. He told him it was absolutely necessary to devise
+some plan by which the Duke's anger might be appeased. Murat also had
+sent a message to the central junta, saying, that if satisfaction were
+not given, he would send troops to lay waste the whole district of
+Penafiel, in which Castrillo was situated; and it was probable, that if
+he had not done so already, it was because a large portion of the
+inhabitants of that district were believed to be well affected to the
+French. Without exactly telling him what he must do, the old general
+gave him a despatch for the _corregidor_ of Penafiel, and desired him to
+present himself before that functionary, and concert with him the
+measures to be taken.
+
+The Empecinado took his leave, and was quitting the governor's palace
+when he overtook at the door an _avogado_, who was a countryman of his,
+and whom he had left at Castrillo when he set out from that place. The
+sight of this man was a ray of light to the Empecinado, who immediately
+suspected that his enemies were intriguing against him. He proposed to
+the lawyer that they should walk to the inn, to which the latter
+consented. They had to traverse a lonely place, known by the name of San
+Francisco's Meadow, and on arriving there, behind the shelter of some
+walls, the Empecinado seized the advocate by the collar, and swore he
+would strangle him if he did not instantly confess what business had
+brought him to Ciudad Rodrigo, as well as all the plans or plots against
+the Empecinado to which he might be privy.
+
+The lawyer, who had known Diez from his childhood, and was fully aware
+of his desperate character and of his own peril, trembled for his life,
+and besought him earnestly to use no violence, for that he was willing
+to tell all he knew. Thereupon the Empecinado loosened his grasp, which
+had wellnigh throttled the poor avogado, and cocking a pistol, as a sort
+of warning to the other to tell the truth, bade him sit down beside him
+and proceed with his narrative.
+
+The lawyer informed him that the _ayuntamiento_ or corporation of
+Castrillo, and those of all the towns and villages of the district,
+found themselves in great trouble on account of the convoy he had
+intercepted, and more particularly of the lady whom he kept prisoner,
+and whose friends it appeared were persons of much influence with both
+contending parties, for that the junta and the French had alike demanded
+her liberty; and while the latter were about to send troops to put the
+whole country to fire and sword, the former, as well as the Spanish
+generals, had refused to afford them any protection against the
+consequences of her detention, and accused the ayuntamiento and the
+priests of encouraging the Empecinado to hold her in captivity. He
+himself had been sent to Ciudad Rodrigo to beg General Cuesta's advice,
+and the general had declared himself unable to assist them, but
+recommended them to restore the lady and treasure, if they did not wish
+the French to lay waste the country, and take by force the bone of
+contention.
+
+The Empecinado, suspecting that General Cuesta had not used all due
+frankness with him in this matter, handed to the lawyer the letter that
+had been given him for the corregidor of Penafiel, and compelled him,
+much against his will, to open and read it. Its contents coincided with
+what the avogado had told him; the general advising the corregidor to
+use every means to compromise the matter, rather than wait till the
+French should do themselves justice by the strong hand.
+
+Perceiving that, from various motives, every body was against him in
+this matter, the Empecinado bethought himself how he should get out of
+the scrape.
+
+"As an old friend and countryman, and more especially as a lawyer," said
+he to the avogado, "you are the most fitting man to give me advice in
+this difficulty. Tell me, then, what I ought to do, in order that our
+native town, which is innocent in the matter, should suffer no
+prejudice."
+
+"You speak now like a sensible man," replied the other, "and as a friend
+will I advise you. Let us immediately set off to Penafiel, deliver the
+general's letter to the corregidor, and take him with us to Castrillo.
+There, for form's sake, an examination of your conduct in the affair can
+take place. You shall give up the jewels, the carriage, and the lady,
+and set off immediately to join your partida."
+
+"To the greater part of that I willingly agree," said the Empecinado.
+"The jewels are buried in the cellar, and the carriage is in the stable.
+Take both when you list. But as to the lady, before I give her up, I
+will give up my own soul. She is my property; I took her in fair fight,
+and at the risk of my life."
+
+"You will think better of it before we get to Castrillo," replied the
+lawyer.
+
+The Empecinado shook his head, but led the way to the inn, where they
+took horse, and the next day reached Penafiel, whence they set out the
+following morning for Castrillo, which is a couple of leagues further,
+accompanied by the corregidor, his secretary, and two alguazils. The
+Empecinado was induced to leave his escort at Penafiel, in order that
+the sort of _pro formâ_ investigation which was to be gone through might
+not appear to have taken place under circumstances of intimidation. The
+avogado started a couple of hours earlier than the rest of the party, to
+have things in readiness, so that the proceedings might be got through
+as rapidly as possible.
+
+It was about eight o'clock on a fine summer's morning that the
+Empecinado and his companions reached Castrillo. As they entered the
+town, an old mendicant, who was lying curled up like a dog in the
+sunshine under the porch of a house, lifted his head at the noise of the
+horses. As his eyes rested upon Diez, he made a bound forward with an
+agility extraordinary in one of his years, and fell almost under the
+feet of the Empecinado's horse, making the startled animal spring aside
+with a violence and suddenness sufficient to unhorse many a less
+practised rider than the one who bestrode him. The Empecinado lifted his
+whip in anger, but the old man, who had risen to his feet, showed no
+sign of fear, and as he stood in the middle of the road, and immediately
+in the path of the Empecinado, the latter recognized the wild features
+and long grey hair of old Gutierrez.
+
+"_Maldito seas_!" cried the old man, extending his arms towards the
+guerilla. "Murderer! the hour of vengeance is nigh. I saw it in my
+dreams. My Pedrillo showed me his assassin trampled under the feet of
+horses. _Asesino! Venga la hora de tu muerte!_"
+
+And the old man, who was half crazed by his misfortunes, relapsed into
+an incoherent strain of lamentations for his son, and curses upon him
+whom he called his murderer.
+
+The Empecinado, who, on recognizing old Gutierrez, had lowered his
+riding-whip, and listened unmoved to his curses and predictions, rode
+forward, explaining as he went, to the astonished corregidor, the scene
+that had just occurred. A little further on he separated from his
+companions, giving them rendezvous at ten o'clock at the house of the
+ayuntamiento. Proceeding to his brother's dwelling, he paid a visit to
+Madame Barbot, breakfasted with her, and then prepared to keep his
+appointment. He placed a brace of pistols and a poniard in his belt, and
+taking a loaded _trabuco_ or blunderbuss, in his hand, wrapped himself
+in his cloak so as to conceal his weapons, and repaired to the
+town-hall.
+
+He found the tribunal already installed, and every thing in readiness.
+Saluting the corregidor, he began pacing up and down the room without
+taking off his cloak. The corregidor repeatedly urged him to be seated,
+but he refused, and continued his walk, replying to the questions that
+were put to him, his answers to which were duly written down. About a
+quarter of an hour had passed in this manner, when a noise of feet and
+talking was heard in the street, and the Empecinado, as he passed one of
+the windows that looked out upon the _plaza_, saw, with no very
+comfortable feelings, that a number of armed peasants were entering the
+town hall. He perceived that he was betrayed, but his presence of mind
+stood his friend, and with his usual promptitude, he in a moment decided
+how he should act. Without allowing it to appear that he had any
+suspicion of what was going on, he walked to the door of the audience
+chamber, and before any one could interfere, shut and locked it. Then
+stepping up to the corregidor, he threw off his cloak, and presented his
+trabuco at the magistrate's head.
+
+"Señor Corregidor," said he, "this is not our agreement, but a base act
+of treachery. Commend yourself to God, for you are about to die."
+
+The corregidor was so dreadfully terrified at these words, and at the
+menacing action of the Empecinado, that he swooned away, and fell down
+under the table--the escribano fled into an adjoining chamber, and
+concealed himself under a bed--while the alguazils, trembling with fear,
+threw themselves upon their knees, and petitioned for mercy. The
+Empecinado, finding himself with so little trouble master of the field
+of battle, took possession of the papers that were lying upon the table,
+and, unlocking the door, proceeded to the principal staircase, which he
+found occupied by inhabitants of the town, armed with muskets and
+fowling-pieces. Placing his blunderbuss under his arm, with his hand
+upon the trigger, "Make way!" cried he; "the first who moves a finger
+may reckon upon the contents of my trabuco." His menace and resolute
+character produced the desired effect; a passage was opened, and he left
+the house in triumph. On reaching the street, however, he found a great
+crowd of men, women, and even children, assembled, who occupied the
+plaza and all the adjacent streets, and received him with loud cries of
+"Death to the Empecinado! _Muera el ladron y mal Cristiano_!" The armed
+men whom he had left in the town-house fired several shots at him from
+the windows, but nobody dared to lay hands upon him, as he marched
+slowly and steadily through the crowd, trabuco in hand, and casting
+glances on either side that made those upon whom they fell shrink
+involuntarily backwards.
+
+On the low roof of one of the houses of the plaza, that formed the angle
+of the Calle de la Cruz, or street of the cross, old Gutierrez had taken
+his station. With the fire of insanity in his bloodshot eyes, and a grin
+of exultation upon his wasted features, he witnessed the persecution of
+the Empecinado, and while his ears drank in the yells and hootings of
+the multitude, he added his shrill cracked voice to the uproar. When the
+shots were fired from the town-hall, he bounded and capered upon the
+platform, clapping his meagre fingers together in ecstasy; but as the
+Empecinado got further from the house, and the firing was discontinued,
+an expression of anxiety replaced the look of triumph that had lighted
+up the old maniac's face. Diez still moved on unhurt, and was now within
+a few paces of the house on which Gutierrez had perched himself. The old
+man's uneasiness increased. "Va a escapar!" muttered he to himself;
+"they will let him escape. Oh, if I had a gun, my Pedrillo would soon be
+avenged!"
+
+The Empecinado was passing under the house. A sudden thought struck
+Gutierrez. Stamping with his foot, he broke two or three of the tiles on
+which he was standing, and snatching up a large heavy fragment, he
+leaned over the edge of the roof to get a full view of the Empecinado,
+who was at that moment leaving the plaza and entering the Calle de la
+Cruz. In five seconds more he would be out of sight. As it was, it was
+only by leaning very far forward that Gutierrez could see him, walking
+calmly along, and keeping at bay the angry but cowardly mob that yelped
+at his heels, like a parcel of village curs pursuing a bloodhound, whose
+look alone prevents their too near approach.
+
+Throwing his left arm round a chimney, the old man swung himself
+forward, and with all the force that he possessed, hurled the tile at
+the object of his hate. The missile struck the Empecinado upon the
+temple, and he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the ground.
+
+"_Viva_!" screamed Gutierrez; but a cry of agony followed the shout of
+exultation. The chimney by which the old man supported himself was loose
+and crumbling, and totally unfit to bear his weight as he hung on by it,
+and leaned forward to gloat over his vengeance. It tottered for a
+moment, and then fell with a crash into the street. The height was not
+great, but the pavement was sharp and uneven; the old man pitched upon
+his head, and when lifted up was already a corpse.
+
+When the mob saw the Empecinado fall, they threw themselves upon him
+with as much ferocity as they had previously shown cowardice, and beat
+and ill-treated him in every possible manner. Not satisfied with that,
+they bound him hand and foot, and pushed him through a cellar window,
+throwing after him stones, and every thing they could find lying about
+the street. At last, wearied by their own brutality, they left him for
+dead, and he remained in that state till nightfall, when the corregidor
+and the ayuntamiento proceeded to inspect his body, in order to certify
+his death, and have him buried. When he was brought out of the cellar,
+however, they perceived he still breathed, and sent for a surgeon, and
+also for a priest to administer the last sacraments. They then carried
+him upon a ladder to the _posito_, or public granary, a strong building,
+where they considered he would be in safety, and put him to bed, bathed
+in blood and covered with wounds and bruises.
+
+The corregidor, fearing that the news of the riot, and of the death of
+the Empecinado, would reach Penafiel, and that the escort which had been
+left there, and the many partizans that Diez had in that town, would
+come over to Castrillo to avenge his death, persuaded one of the curés
+or parish priests of the latter place, to go over to Penafiel in all
+haste, and, counterfeiting great alarm, to spread the report that the
+French had entered Castrillo, seized the Empecinado, and carried him off
+to Aranda. This was accordingly done; and the Empecinado's escort being
+made aware of the vicinity of the French and the risk they ran,
+immediately mounted their horses and marched to join Mariano Fuentes,
+accompanied by upwards of fifty young men, all partizans of the
+Empecinado, and eager to revenge him. This matter being arranged, the
+corregidor had the jewels that were buried in the cellar of Manuel Diez
+dug up, and having taken possession of them, and installed Madame Barbot
+with all due attention in one of the principal houses of the town, he
+forwarded a report to General Cuesta of all that had occurred. The
+general immediately sent an escort to conduct the lady and the treasure
+to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ordered that as soon as the Empecinado was in a
+state to be moved, he should also be sent under a strong guard to that
+city.
+
+Meanwhile, the Empecinado's vigorous constitution triumphed over the
+injuries he had received, and he was getting so rapidly better, that for
+his safer custody the corregidor thought it necessary to have him
+heavily ironed. Deeming it impossible he should escape, and there being
+no troops in the village, no sentry was placed over him, so that at
+night his friends were able to hold discourse with him through the
+grating of one of the windows of the posito. In this manner he contrived
+to send a message to his brother Manuel, who, having also got into
+trouble on account of Madame Barbot's detention, had been compelled to
+take refuge in the mountains of Bilbuena, three leagues from Castrillo.
+Manuel took advantage of a dark night to steal into the town in
+disguise, and to speak with the Empecinado. He informed him that the
+superior of the Bernardine Monastery, in the Sierra de Balbuena, had
+been advised that it was the intention of the Empecinado's enemies to
+deliver him over to the French, in order that they might shoot him. The
+Empecinado replied, that he strongly suspected there was some such plot
+in agitation, and desired his brother to seek out Mariano Fuentes, and
+order him to march his band into the neighbourhood of Castrillo, and
+that on their arrival he would send them word what to do.
+
+Eight days elapsed, and the Empecinado was now completely cured of his
+wounds, so that he was in much apprehension lest he should be sent off
+to Ciudad Rodrio before the arrival of Fuentes. On the eighth night,
+however, his brother came to the window, and informed him that the
+partida was in the neighbourhood, and only waited his orders to march
+upon Castrillo, rescue him, and revenge the treatment he had received.
+This the Empecinado strongly enjoined them not to do, but desired his
+brother to come to his prison door at two o'clock the next morning with
+a led horse, and that he had the means to set himself at liberty. Manuel
+Diez did as he was ordered, wondering, however, in what manner the
+Empecinado intended to get out of the posito, which was a solidly
+constructed edifice with a massive door and grated windows. But the next
+night, when the guerilla heard the horses approaching his prison, he
+seized the door by an iron bar that traversed it on the inner side, and,
+exerting his prodigious strength, tore it off the hinges as though it
+had been of pasteboard. His feet being fastened together by a chain, he
+was compelled to sit sideways upon the saddle; but so elated was he to
+find himself once more at liberty that he pushed his horse into a
+gallop, and with his fetters clanking as he went, dashed through the
+streets of Castrillo, to the astonishment and consternation of the
+inhabitants, who knew not what devil's dance was going on in their
+usually quiet town.
+
+At Olmos, a village a quarter of a league from Castrillo, the fugitives
+halted, and roused a smith, who knocked off the Empecinado's irons.
+After a short rest at the house of an approved friend they remounted
+their horses, and a little after daybreak reached the place where
+Fuentes had taken up his bivouac. The Empecinado was received with great
+rejoicing, and immediately resumed the command. He passed a review of
+his band, and found it consisted of two hundred and twenty men, all well
+mounted and armed.
+
+Great was the alarm of the inhabitants of Castrillo when they found the
+prison broken open and the prisoner gone; and their terror was increased
+a hundred-fold, when a few hours later news was brought that the
+Empecinado was marching towards the town at the head of a strong body of
+cavalry. Some concealed themselves in cellars and suchlike
+hiding-places, others left the town and fled to the neighbouring woods;
+but the majority, despairing of escape by human means from the terrible
+anger of the Empecinado, shut themselves up in their houses, closed the
+doors and windows, and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance from the
+impending evil. Never had there been seen in Castrillo such a counting
+of rosaries and beating of breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling of
+aves and paters, as upon that morning.
+
+At noon the Empecinado entered the town at the head of his band,
+trumpets sounding, and the men firing their pistols and carbines into
+the air, in sign of joy at having recovered their leader. Forming up the
+partida in the market-place, the Empecinado sent for the corregidor and
+other authorities, who presented themselves before him pale and
+trembling, and fully believing they had not five minutes to live.
+
+"Fear nothing!" said the Empecinado, observing their terror. "It is
+certain I have met foul treatment at your hands; and it was the harder
+to bear coming from my own countrymen and townsfolk. But you have been
+misled, and will one day repent your conduct. I have forgotten your ill
+usage, and only remember the poverty of my native town, and the misery
+in which this war has plunged many of its inhabitants."
+
+So saying, he delivered to the alcalde and the parish priests a hundred
+ounces of gold for the relief of the poor and support of the hospital,
+and ten more to be spent in a _novillada_, or bull-bait and festival for
+the whole town. Cutting short their thanks and excuses, he left
+Castrillo and marched to the village of Sacramenia, where he quartered
+his men, and, accompanied by Mariano Fuentes, went to pay a visit to a
+neighbouring monastery. The monks received him with open arms and a
+hearty welcome, hailing him as the main prop of the cause of
+independence in Old Castile. They sat down to dinner in the refectory;
+and the conversation turning upon the state of the country, the
+Empecinado expressed his unwillingness to carry on the war in that
+province, on account of the little confidence he could place in the
+inhabitants, so many of whom had become _afrancesados_; and as a proof
+of this, he related all that had occurred to him at Castrillo. Upon
+hearing this the abbot, who was a man distinguished for his talents and
+patriotism, recommended Diez to lead his band to New Castile, where he
+would not have to encounter the persecutions of those who, having known
+him poor and insignificant, envied him his good fortune, and sought to
+throw obstacles in his path. He offered to get him letters from the
+general of the order of San Bernardo to the superiors of the various
+monasteries, in order that he might receive such assistance and support
+as they could give, and he might chance to require.
+
+"No one is a prophet in his own country," said the good father; "Mahomet
+in his native town of Medina met with the same ill-treatment that you,
+Martin Diez, have encountered in the place of your birth. Abandon, then,
+a province which does not recognize your value, and go where your
+reputation has already preceded you, to defend the holy cause of Spain
+and of religion."
+
+Struck by the justice of this reasoning, the Empecinado resolved to
+change the scene of his operations, and the next morning marched his
+squadron in the direction of New Castile.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.
+
+HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME.
+
+
+After Jack and Martin parted company, you may remember that Jack, who
+had turned his face northward, got into high favour with the landlord of
+the North Farm Estate, who, being mightily edified with his discourses
+and sanctimonious demeanour, and not aware of his having been mad
+before, or being, perchance, just as mad himself--took him in, made much
+of him, gave him a cottage upon his manor to live in, and built him a
+tabernacle in which he might hold forth when the spirit moved him. In
+process of time, however, it happened that North Farm and the Albion
+Estates came into the possession of one proprietor, Esquire Bull, in
+whose house Martin had always been retained as domestic chaplain--at
+least, ever since that desperate scuffle with Lord Peter and his crew,
+when he tried to land some Spanish smugglers on the coast, for the
+purpose of carrying off Martin, and establishing himself in Squire
+Bull's house in his stead. Squire Bull, who was a man of his word, and
+wished to leave all things on North Farm as he found them, Jack and his
+tabernacle included, undertook at once to pay him a reasonable salary,
+with the free use of his house and tabernacle to him and his heirs for
+ever. But knowing that on a previous occasion, (which you may
+recollect,[46]) Jack's melancholy had gone so far that he had hanged
+himself, though he was cut down just before giving up the ghost, and by
+dint of bloodletting and galvanism, had been revived; and also that,
+notwithstanding his periodical fits and hallucinations, he could beat
+even Peter himself, who had been his instructor, for cunning and
+casuistry, he took care that, before Jack was allowed to take possession
+under his new lease, every thing should be made square between them. So
+he had the terms of their indenture all written out on parchment,
+signed, sealed, and delivered before witnesses, and even got a private
+Act of Parliament carried through, for the purpose of making every thing
+between them more secure. And well it was for the Squire that he
+bethought himself of his precaution in time, as you will afterwards
+hear.
+
+     [46] John Bull, Part IV. ch. ii.
+
+This union of the two entailed properties in the Bull family, brought
+Jack and Martin a good deal more into one anothers' company than they
+had formerly been; and 'twas clear, that Jack, who had now got somewhat
+ashamed of his threadbare raiment, and tired of his spare oatmeal diet,
+was mightily struck with the dignified air and comfortable look of
+Martin, and grudged him the frequency with which he was invited to
+Squire Bull's table. By degrees, he began to conform his own uncouth
+manner to an imitation of his. He wore a better coat, which he no longer
+rubbed against the wall to take the gloss from off it; he ceased to
+interlard all his ordinary speech with texts of Scripture; his snuffle
+abated audibly; he gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody, and lost, in
+a great measure, his aversion to Christmas tarts and plum-pudding. After
+a time, he might even be seen with a fishing-rod over his shoulder; then
+he contrived sundry improvements in gun-locks and double-barrels, for
+which he took out a patent, and in fact did not entirely escape the
+suspicion of being a poacher. He held assemblies in his house, where at
+times he allowed a little singing; nay, on one occasion, a son of
+his--for he had now a large family--was found accompanying a psalm-tune
+upon the (barrel) organ, and it was rumoured about the house, that Jack,
+though he thought it prudent to disclaim this overture, had no great
+objection to it. Be that as it may, it is certain, that instead of his
+old peaked hat and band, Jack latterly took to wearing broad-brimmed
+beavers, which he was seen trying to mould into a spout-like shape, much
+resembling a shovel. And so far had the transformation gone, that the
+Vicar of Fudley, meeting him one evening walking to an assembly arrayed
+in a court coat, with this extraordinary hat upon his head, and a pair
+of silver buckles in his shoes, pulled off his hat to him at a little
+distance, mistaking him for a near relation of Martin, if not for Martin
+himself.
+
+There was no great harm you will think in all these whims, and for my
+own part, I believe that Jack was never so honest a fellow as he was
+during this time, when he was profiting by Martin's example. He kept his
+own place, ruling his family in a quiet and orderly way, without
+disturbing the peace of his neighbours: and seemed to have forgotten his
+old tricks of setting people by the ears, and picking quarrels with
+constables and justices of the peace. Howbeit, those who knew him
+longest and best, always said that this was too good to last: that with
+him these intervals of sobriety and moderation were always the prelude
+to a violent access of his peculiar malady, and that by-and-bye he would
+break out again, and that there would be the devil to pay, and no pitch
+hot.
+
+It so happened that Squire Bull had a good many small village schools on
+his Estate of North Farm, to which the former proprietors had always
+been in the custom of appointing the ushers themselves; and much to
+Jack's annoyance, when Squire Bull succeeded, the latter had taken care
+in his bargain with him, to keep the right of appointment to these in
+his own hand. But, at the same time, he told Jack fairly, that as he had
+no wish to dabble in Latin, Greek, or school learning himself, he left
+him at full liberty to say whether those whom he appointed were fit for
+the situation or not--so that if they turned out to be ignoramuses,
+deboshed fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack had only to say so on good
+grounds, and they were forthwith sent adrift. Matters went on for a time
+very smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was even said that Jack was
+inclined to carry his complaisance rather far, and after a time seldom
+troubled himself much about the usher's qualifications, provided his
+credentials were all right. He might ask the young fellow, who presented
+John's commission, perhaps, what was the first letter of the Greek
+alphabet? what was Latin for beef and greens? or where Moses was when
+the candle was blown out?--but if the candidate answered these questions
+correctly, and if there were no scandal or _fama clamosa_ against him,
+as Jack in his peculiar jargon expressed it, he generally shook hands
+with him at once, put the key of the schoolhouse in his hand, and told
+him civilly to walk up-stairs.
+
+The truth was, however, that in this respect Jack had little reason to
+complain; for though the Squire, in the outset, may not have been very
+particular as to his choice, and it was said once or twice gave an
+ushership to an old exciseman, on account of his skill in mensuration of
+fluids, he had latterly become very particular, and would not hear of
+settling any body as schoolmaster on North Farm, who did not come to him
+with an excellent character, certified by two or three respectable
+householders at least. But, strangely enough, it was observed that just
+in proportion as the Squire became more considerate, Jack became more
+arrogant, pestilent, and troublesome. Now-a-days he was always
+discovering some objection to the Squire's appointments: one usher, it
+seemed, spoke too low, another too loud, one used an ear-trumpet,
+another a pair of grass-green spectacles; one had no sufficient gifts
+for flogging; another flogged either too high or too low--(for Jack was
+like the deserter, there was no pleasing him as to the mode of
+conducting the operation;) and, finally, another was rejected because he
+was unacquainted with the vernacular of Ossian--to the great injury and
+damage, as was alleged, of two Highland chairmen, who at an advanced
+period of life were completing their education in the school in
+question. At first Squire Bull, honest gentleman, had given in to these
+strange humours on the part of Jack, believing that this new-born zeal
+on his part was in the main conscientious, though he could not help
+thinking it at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous. He had
+even gone so far, occasionally, as to send Jack a list of those to whom
+he proposed giving the usherships, accompanied with a polite note, in
+some such terms as these, "Squire Bull presents his respects, and begs
+his good friend Jack will read over the enclosed list, and take the
+trouble of choosing for himself;" a request with which Jack was always
+ready to comply. And, further, as Jack had always a great hankering
+after little-goes and penny subscriptions of every kind, and was
+eternally trumpeting forth some new nostrum or _scheme_ of this kind, as
+he used to call it, the Squire had been prevailed upon to purchase from
+him a good many tickets for these schemes from time to time, for which
+he always paid in hard cash, though I have never heard that any of them
+turned up prizes, except it may have been to Jack himself.
+
+Jack, as we have said, grew bolder as the Squire became more complying,
+thinking that, in the matter of these appointments, as he had once got
+his hand in, it would be his own fault if he could not contrive to
+wriggle in his whole body. It so happened, too, that just about the very
+time that one of John's usherships became vacant, one of those
+atrabilious and hypochondriac fits came over Jack, with which, as we
+have said, he was periodically afflicted, and which, though they
+certainly unsettled his brain a little, only served, as in the case of
+other lunatics, to render him, during the paroxysm, more cunning,
+inventive, and mischievous. After moving about in a moping way for a day
+or two--mumbling in corners, and pretending to fall on his knees, in his
+old fashion, in the midst of the street, he suddenly got up, flung his
+broad-brimmed beaver into the kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt, so
+as to expose his large ears as of old, ran home, pulled his rusty black
+doublet out of the chest where it had lain for years, squeezing it on as
+he best could--for he had got somewhat corpulent in the mean time--and
+thus transfigured, he set out to consult the village attorney, with whom
+it was observed he remained closeted for several hours, turning over
+Burns' Justice, and perusing an office-copy of his indenture with the
+Squire--a planetary conjunction from which those who were astrologically
+given boded no good.
+
+What passed between these worthies on this occasion--whether the
+attorney really persuaded Jack that, if he set about it, he would
+undertake to find him a flaw in his contract with Squire Bull, which
+would enable him to take the matter of the usherships into his own hand,
+and to do as he pleased; or whether Jack--as he seemed afterwards to
+admit in private--believed nothing of what the attorney told him, but
+was resolved to take advantage of the Squire's good-nature, and to run
+all risks as to the result, 'tis hard to say. Certain it was, however,
+that Jack posted down at once from the attorney's chamber to the village
+school, which happened to be then vacant, and gathering the elder boys
+about him, he told them he had reason to believe the Squire was about to
+send them another usher, very different from the last, who was a mortal
+enemy to marbles, pitch-and-toss, chuck-farthing, ginger-bread, and half
+holydays; with a corresponding liking to long tasks and short commons;
+that the use of the cane would be regularly taught, along with that of
+the globes, accompanied with cuts and other practical demonstrations;
+that the only chance of escaping this visitation was to take a bold
+line, and show face to the usher at once, since otherwise the chance
+was, that at no distant period they might be obliged to do the very
+reverse.
+
+Jack further reasoned the matter with the boys learnedly, somewhat in
+this fashion--"That as no one could have so strong an interest in the
+matter, so no one could be so good a judge of the qualifications of the
+schoolmaster as the schoolboy; that the close and intimate relation
+between these parties was of the nature of a mutual contract, in the
+formation of which both had an equal right to be consulted; so that,
+without mutual consent, or, as it were, a harmonious call by the boys,
+there could be no valid ushership, but a mere usurpation of the power of
+the tawse, and unwarrantable administration of the birchen twig; that,
+further, this latter power involved a fundamental feature, in which they
+could not but feel they had all a deep interest--and which, he might
+say, lay at the bottom of the whole question; that he himself perfectly
+remembered that, in former days, the schoolboys had always exercised
+this privilege, which he held to be equally salutary and constitutional;
+and that he would, at his leisure, show them a private memorandum-book
+of his own, in which, though he had hitherto said nothing about it, he
+had found an entry to that effect made some thirty years before. In
+short, he told them, if they did not wish to be rode over rough-shod,
+they must stand up boldly for themselves, and try to get all the schools
+in the neighbourhood to join them, if necessary, in a regular
+barring-out, or general procession, in which they were to appear with
+flags and banners, bearing such inscriptions as the following: "_Pro
+aris et focis_"--"Liberty is like the air we breathe," &c. &c., and,
+lastly, in large gilt capitals--"_No usher to be intruded into any
+school contrary to the will of the scholars in schoolroom assembled_."
+And, in short, that this process was to be repeated until they succeeded
+in getting quit of Squire Bull's usher, and getting an usher who would
+flog them with all the forbearance and reserve with which Sancho
+chastised his own flesh while engaged in the process of disenchanting
+Dulcinea del Toboso. At the same time, with that cunning which was
+natural to him, Jack took care to let the scholars know that _his_ name
+was not to be mentioned in the transaction; and that, if they were asked
+any questions, they must be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for that
+matter, that they objected to John's usher from no personal dislike to
+the man himself, and without having received fee or reward, in the shape
+of apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar, or sweetmeats
+whatever--or sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or other current coin
+of the realm.
+
+It will be readily imagined that this oration of Jack, pronounced as it
+was with some of his old unction, and accompanied with that miraculous
+and subtle twist of the tongue which we have described in a former
+chapter,[47] produced exactly the effect upon his audience which might
+be expected. The boys were delighted--tossed up their caps--gave Jack
+three cheers, and told him if he stood by them they would stand by him,
+and that they were much mistaken if they did not contrive to make the
+schoolhouse too hot for any usher whom Squire Bull might think fit to
+send them.
+
+     [47] Tale of a Tub. Sect. xi.
+
+It happened not long after, as Jack had anticipated, that one morning a
+young man called upon with a letter from the Squire, intimating that he
+had named him to the vacant ushership; and requesting Jack to examine
+into his qualifications as usual. Jack begged him to be seated, and
+(having privately sent a message to the schoolboys) continued to
+entertain him with enquiries as to John's health and the state of the
+weather, till he heard, by the noise in the court, that the boys had
+arrived. In they marched accordingly, armed with horn-books, primers,
+slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales, and copy-books, taking up their station
+near the writing-desk. The young usher-elect, though he thought this a
+whimsical exhibition, supposed that the urchins had been brought there
+only to do honour to his examination, and accordingly begged Jack, as he
+was in a hurry, to proceed. "Fair and softly, young man," said Jack, in
+his blandest tones; "we must first see what these intelligent young
+gentlemen have got to say to that. Tom, my fine fellow, here is a
+gentleman sent by Squire Bull to be your usher. What do you say to him?"
+"I don't like him," said Tom. "May I venture to ask why?" said the
+usher, putting in a word. "Don't like him," repeated Tom. "Don't like
+him neither," said Dick. "And no mistake," added Peter, with a grin,
+which immediately circulated round the school. "It is quite impossible,"
+said Jack, "under existing circumstances, that the matter can proceed
+any further; it is plain the school can never be edified by such an
+usher. But, stop, that there may be no misconception on the subject.
+Here you, Smith--do you really mean to say, on soul and conscience, you
+don't think this respectable gentleman can do you any good?" Of course,
+Smith stated that his mind was quite made up on the subject. "Come here,
+Jenkins," said Jack, beckoning to another boy; "tell the truth
+now--honour bright, remember. Has any body given or promised you any
+apples, parliament, or other sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to vote
+against the usher?" Jenkins, who had just wiped his lips of the last
+remains of a gingerbread cake, which somehow or other had dropped into
+his pocket by accident, protested, on his honour, that he was quite
+above such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated purely by a conscientious
+zeal for the cause of flogging all over the world. "The scruples of
+these intelligent and ingenuous youths," said John, turning to the
+usher, "must, in conscience, receive effect; the law, as laid down in my
+copy of Squire Bull's own contract, is this--'That noe ushere be
+yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in
+schoole-roome assembled.' So, with your permission, we will adjourn the
+consideration of the case till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas, if
+that be more convenient." And, so saying, he left John's letter lying on
+the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished
+usher.
+
+Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and
+mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and
+chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had
+really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old
+his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to
+the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected,
+and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an
+extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain--generating
+therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations--than to any
+settled intention on Jack's part to pick a quarrel with him or evade
+performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not
+under the influence of hypochondria. And having this notion as to Jack's
+motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village
+lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of
+purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment--and without resorting to a
+strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended
+him to adopt--he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours,
+which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries.
+"I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy
+into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore
+him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire
+it, before the Justices of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred to one but
+he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a
+decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when
+he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit
+with a good grace.'"
+
+So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the
+usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings,
+who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused
+performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day
+appointed, attended by the attorney--though for that matter he might
+have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all
+equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills
+and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect
+of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting
+distinctions and Jesuistical casuistries, notwithstanding his dislike to
+the man himself, he had a certain admiration, founded on a secret
+affinity of nature. Indeed it was wonderful to observe how, with all
+Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended, he took after him in so many
+points--insomuch that at times, their look, voice, manner, and way of
+thinking, were so closely alike, that those who knew them best might
+very well have mistaken them for each other. The usher having produced
+the Squire's copy of the indenture, pointed out the clause by which Jack
+became bound to examine and admit to the schools on North Farm any
+qualified usher whom the Squire might send--as the condition on which he
+was to retain his right to the tabernacle and his own mansion upon the
+Farm--at the same time showing Jack's seal and signature at the bottom
+of the deed. Jack, being called upon by the justices to show cause,
+pulled out of his pocket an old memorandum-book--very greasy, musty, and
+ill-flavoured--and which, from the quantity of dust and cobwebs with
+which it was overlaid, had obviously been lying on the shelf for half a
+century at least. This he placed in the hands of his friend Snacks the
+attorney, pointing out to him a page or two which he had marked with his
+thumb nail, as appropriate to the matter in hand. And there, to be sure,
+was to be found, among a quantity of other nostrums, recipes, cooking
+receipts, prescriptions, and omnium-gatherums of all kinds, an entry to
+this effect:--"That no ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye
+wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled." Whereupon the
+attorney maintained, that, as this memorandum-book of Jack's was plainly
+of older date than the indenture, and had evidently been seen by the
+Squire at or prior to the time of signing, as appeared from some of the
+entries which it contained being incorporated in the deed, it must be
+presumed, that its whole contents, though not to be found in the
+indenture _per expressum_, or _totidem verbis_, were yet included
+therein _implicitly_, or in a latent form, inasmuch as they were not
+_per expressum_ excluded therefrom;--this being, as you will recollect,
+precisely the argument which Jack had borrowed from Peter, when the
+latter construed their father's will in the question as to the
+lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots; and very much of the same
+kind with that celebrated thesis which Peter afterwards maintained in
+the matter of the brown loaf. And though he was obliged to admit (what
+indeed from the very look of the book he could not well dispute) that no
+such rule had ever been known or acted upon--and on the contrary that
+Jack, until this last occasion, had always admitted the Squire's ushers
+without objection whatsoever; yet he contended vehemently, that now that
+his conscience was awakened on the subject, the past must be laid out of
+view; and that the old memorandum-book, as part and parcel of the
+indenture itself, must receive effect; and farther, that whether he,
+Jack, was right or wrong in this matter, the Justices had no right to
+interfere with them.
+
+But the Justices, on looking into this antiquated document, found that,
+besides this notandum, the memorandum-book contained a number of other
+entries of a very extraordinary kind--such, for instance, as that Martin
+was no better than he should be, and ought to be put down speedily: that
+Squire Bull had no more right to nominate ushers than he had to be Khan
+of Tartary: that that right belonged exclusively to Jack himself, or to
+the schoolboys under Jack's control and direction: that Jack was to have
+the sole right of laying down rules for his own government, and of
+enforcing them against himself by the necessary compulsitors, if the
+case should arise; thus, that Jack should have full powers to censure,
+fine, punish, flog, flay, banish, imprison, or set himself in the stocks
+as often as he should think fit; but that whether Jack did right or
+wrong, in any given case, Jack was himself to be the sole judge, and
+neither Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of the Peace was to have one
+word to say to him or his proceedings in the matter: on the contrary,
+that any such interference on their part, was to be regarded as a high
+grievance and misdemeanour on their part, for which Jack was to be
+entitled at the least to read them a lecture from the writing-desk, and
+shut the schoolroom door in their own or their children's face.
+
+There were many other whimsical and extravagant things contained in this
+private note-book, so much so, that it was evident no man in his senses
+could ever have intended to make them part of his bargain with Jack. But
+the matter was put beyond a doubt by the usher producing the original
+draft of the indenture, on which some of these crotchets, including this
+fancy about the right of the schoolboys to reject the usher if they did
+not like him, had been _interlined_ in Jack's hand: but all of which the
+Squire, on revising the deed, had scored out with his own pen, adding in
+the margin, opposite to the very passage, the words, in italics--"_See
+him damned first.--J.B._" And as it could not be disputed that Jack and
+the Squire ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting all this
+nonsense--the Justices had no hesitation in holding, that Jack's private
+memorandum-book, even if he had always carried it in his breeches
+pocket, and quoted it on all occasions, instead of leaving it--as it was
+plain he had done--for many a long year, in some forgotten corner of his
+trunk or lumber-room, could no more affect the construction of the
+indenture between himself and Squire, or afford him any defence against
+performance of his part of that indenture, than if he had founded on the
+statutes of Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug, Fee-Faw-Fum, or any
+other Emperor of China for the time being. And so, after hearing very
+deliberately all that the attorney for Jack had to say to the contrary,
+they decided that Jack must forthwith proceed to examine the usher, and
+give him possession, if qualified, of the schoolhouse and other
+appurtenances; or else make up his mind to a thundering action of
+damages if he did not.
+
+The Justices thought that Jack, on hearing the case fairly stated, and
+their opinion given against him, with a long string of cases in point,
+would yield, and give the usher possession in the usual way; but no: no
+sooner was the sentence written out than Jack entered an appeal to the
+Quarter-sessions. There the whole matter was heard over again, at great
+length, before a full bench; but after Jack and his attorney had spoken
+till they were tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a moment's
+hesitation, confirmed the sentence of the Justices, with costs.
+
+Jack, who had blustered exceedingly as to his chances of bamboozling the
+Quarter-sessions, and quashing the sentence of the Justices, looked
+certainly not a little discomfited at the result of his appeal. For some
+days after, he was observed to walk about looking gloomy and
+disheartened, and was heard to say to some of his family, that he began
+to think matters had really gone too far between him and his good friend
+the Squire, to whom he owed his bread; that, on second thoughts, he
+would give up the point about intruding ushers on the schools, and see
+whether the Squire might not be prevailed on to arrange matters on an
+amicable footing; and that he would take an opportunity, the next time
+he had an assembly at his house, of consulting his friends on the
+subject. And had Jack stuck to this resolution, there is little doubt
+that, by some device or other, he would have gained all he wanted; for
+the Squire, being an easy, good-natured man, and wishing really to do
+his duty in the matter of the ushership, would probably, if Jack had
+yielded in this instance with a good grace, have probably allowed him in
+the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of
+everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose
+up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his
+countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify
+his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a
+long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no
+one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices
+and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not
+understand a word of Jack's contract, and knew nothing of black-letter
+whatever; but that, nevertheless, as they had decided against him, he,
+as a loyal subject, must and would submit;--not, however, that he had
+the least idea of taking the Squire's usher, or any other usher
+whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the schoolboys' wishes; _that_, he
+begged to say, he would never hear of:--still he would obey the law by
+laying no claim himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering with the
+usher's drawing it; and yet that he could not exactly answer for others
+not doing so;"--Jack knowing all the time, that, claim as he might, he
+himself had no more right to the salary than to the throne of the
+Celestial Empire; while, on the other hand, by locking up the
+schoolroom, and keeping the key in his pocket, he had rendered it
+impossible for the poor wight of an usher to recover one penny of
+it--the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of
+the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manoeuvre, had
+contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove
+the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got
+a _private_ friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme
+had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the
+case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund which would have
+belonged to the unlucky usher--in terms, as he said, of some old
+arrangement made by the Squire's predecessor as to school-salaries
+during vacancy; to be applied, as the writ very coolly stated it, "for
+behoof of Jack's destitute widow, in the event of his decease, and of
+his numerous and indigent family."
+
+Many of Jack's own family, who were present on this occasion,
+remonstrated with him on the subject, foreseeing that if he went on as
+he had begun and threatened to proceed, he must soon come to a rupture
+with the Squire, which could end in nothing else than his being turned
+out of house and hall, and thrown adrift upon the wide world, without a
+penny in his pocket. But the majority--who were puffed up with more than
+Jack's own madness and had a notion that by sheer boldness and bullying
+on their part, the Squire would, after a time, be sure to give way,
+encouraged Jack to go on at all hazards, and not to retract a hair's
+breadth in his demands. And Jack, who had now become mischievously
+crazed on the subject, and began to be as arrogant and conceited of his
+own power and authority, as ever my Lord Peter had been in his proudest
+and most pestilential days, was not slow to follow their advice.
+
+'Twas of no consequence that a friend of the Squire's, who had known
+Jack long, and had really a great kindness towards him, tried to bring
+about an arrangement between him and the Squire upon very handsome
+terms. He had a meeting with Jack;--at which he talked the matter over
+in a friendly way--telling him that though the Squire must reserve in
+his own hands the nomination of his own ushers, he had always been
+perfectly willing to listen to reason in any objections that might be
+taken to them; only some reason he must have, were it only that Jack
+could not abide the sight of a red-nosed usher:--let that reason, such
+as it was, be put on paper, and he would consider of it; and if, from
+any peculiar idiosyncracy in Jack's temperament and constitution, he
+found that his antipathy to red noses was unsuperable, probably he would
+not insist on filling up the vacancy with a nose of that colour. Jack,
+who was always more rational when alone than when he had got the
+attorney and the more frantic members of his family at his elbow,
+acknowledged, as he well might, that all this seemed very reasonable;
+and that he really thought that on these terms the Squire and he would
+have little difficulty in coming to an agreement. So they parted,
+leaving the Squire's friend under the impression that all was right, and
+that he had only to get an agreement to that effect drawn out, signed
+and sealed by the parties.
+
+Next morning, however, he received a letter by the penny-post, written
+no doubt in Jack's hand, but obviously dictated by the attorney, in
+these terms:--
+
+     "Honoured Sir--Lest there should be any misconception between
+     us as to our yesterday's conversation, I have put into writing
+     the substance of what was agreed on between us, which I
+     understand to be this: that there shall be no let or impediment
+     to the Squire's full and absolute right of naming an usher in
+     all cases of vacancy; that I shall have an equally full right
+     to object to the said usher for any reasons that may be
+     satisfactory to myself, and thereupon to exclude him from the
+     school; leaving it to the Squire, if he pleases, to send
+     another, whom I shall have the right of handling in the same
+     fashion, with this further proviso, that if the Squire does not
+     fill up the office to my satisfaction within half-a-year, I
+     shall be entitled to take the appointment into my own hands. I
+     need hardly add that no Justices of the Peace are to take
+     cognizance of anything done by me in the matter, be it good,
+     bad, or indifferent. Hoping that this statement of our mutual
+     views will be found correct and satisfactory--I remain, your
+     humble servant,
+
+     "JACK."
+
+The moment the Squire's friend perused this missive, he saw plainly that
+all hope of bringing Jack to his senses was at an end; and that under
+the advice of evil counsellors, lunatic friends, and lewd fellows of the
+baser sort, Jack would shortly bring himself and his family to utter
+ruin.
+
+And now, as might be expected, Jack's disorder, which had hitherto been
+comparatively of the calm and melancholy kind, broke out into the most
+violent and phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes raved incoherently, for
+hours together, against the Squire; often, in the midst of his speeches,
+he was assailed with epileptic fits, during which he displayed the
+strangest contortions and most laughable gestures; he threw entirely
+aside the decent coat he had worn for some time back, and habitually
+attired himself in the old and threadbare raiment, which he had worn
+after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously sent to the right-about
+by Lord Peter, and even ran about the streets with his band tied round
+his peaked beaver, bearing thereon the motto--"_Nemo me impune
+lacessit_." If his madness had only led him to make a spectacle and
+laughing-stock of himself, by these wild vagaries and mountebank
+exhibitions, all had been well, but this did not satisfy Jack; his old
+disposition for a riot had returned, and a riot, right or wrong, he was
+determined to have. So he set to work to frighten the women of the
+village with stories, as to the monsters whom the Squire would send
+among them as ushers, who would do nothing but teach their children
+drinking, chuck-farthing, and cock-fighting; to the schoolboys
+themselves, talked of the length, breadth, and thickness, of the usher's
+birch, which he assured them was dipped in vinegar every evening, in
+order to afford a more agreeable stimulus to the part affected; he plied
+them with halfpence and strong beer; exhorted them to insurrections and
+barrings-out; taught them how to mock at any usher who would not submit
+to be Jack's humble servant; and by gibes and scurril ballads, which he
+would publish in the newspapers, try to make his life a burden to him.
+He also instructed them how best to stick darts into his wig, cover his
+back with spittle, fill his pockets with crackers, burn assafoetida in
+the fire, extinguish the candles with fulminating powder, or blow up the
+writing-desk by a train of combustibles. Above all, he counselled the
+urchins to stand firm the next time that John sent an usher down to that
+quarter, and vehemently to protest for the doctrine of election as to
+their own usher, and reprobation as to the Squire's; assuring them, that
+provided they took his advice, and followed the plan which he would
+afterwards impart to them in confidence at the proper time, he could
+almost take it upon himself to say, that in a short time, no tyrannical
+usher, or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should venture to show his face,
+with or without tawse or ferule, within the boundaries of North Farm.
+
+It was not long before an opportunity offered of putting these precious
+schemes in practice; for shortly afterwards, the old usher of a school
+on the northermost boundary of the North Farm estates having died, the
+ushership became vacant, and John, as usual, appointed a successor in
+his room. Being warned this time by what had taken place on the last
+occasion, the Squire took care to apply beforehand to the Justices of
+the Peace--got a peremptory _mandamus_ from them, directing Jack to
+proceed forthwith, and, after the usual trials, to put the usher in
+possession of the schoolhouse by legal form, and without re-regard to
+any protest or interruption from any or all of the schoolboys put
+together. So down the usher proceeded, accompanied by a posse of
+constables and policemen of various divisions, till they arrived at the
+schoolhouse, which lay adjacent to the churchyard, and then demanded
+admittance. It happened that in this quarter resided some of Jack's
+family, who, as we have already mentioned, differed from him entirely,
+thinking him totally wrong in the contest with the Squire and being
+completely satisfied that all his glosses upon his contract were either
+miserable quibbles or mere hallucinations, and that it was his duty, so
+long as he ate John's bread, and slept under John's roof, to perform
+fairly the obligations he had come under:--and so, on reading the
+Justices' warrant, which required them, on pain of being set in the
+stocks, and forfeiture of two shillings and sixpence of penalty, besides
+costs, to give immediate possession to the Squire's usher, they at once
+resolved to obey, called for the key of the schoolhouse, and proceeded
+to the door, accompanied by the usher and the authorities, for the
+purpose of complying with the warrant and admitting the usher as in
+times past. But on arriving there, never was there witnessed such a
+scene of confusion. The churchyard was crowded with ragamuffins of every
+kind, from all the neighbouring parishes; scarcely was there a sot or
+deboshed fellow within the district who had not either come himself or
+found a substitute; gipsies, beggarwomen, and thimbleriggers were thick
+as blackberries; while Jack himself--who, upon hearing of what was going
+forward, had come down by the night coach with all expedition--was
+standing on a tombstone near the doorway, and holding forth to the whole
+bevy of rascals whom he had assembled about him. It was evident from his
+tones and gestures that Jack had been exciting the mob in every possible
+way; but as the justices and the constables drew near, he changed the
+form of his countenance, pulled a psalm-book out of his pocket, and,
+with much sanctity and appearance of calmness, gave out the tune; in
+which the miscellaneous assemblage around him joined, with similar
+unction and devotion. When the procession reached the door, they found
+the whole inside of the schoolhouse already packed with urchins and
+blackguards of all kinds, who, having previously gained admission by the
+window, had forcibly barricaded the door against the constables, being
+assisted in the defence thereof by the mob without, who formed a double
+line, and kept hustling the poor usher and the constables from side to
+side, helping themselves to a purse or two in passing, and calling out
+at the same time, "take care of pickpockets"--occasionally amusing
+themselves also by playfully smashing the beaver of some of the justices
+of the peace over their face, to the tune of "all round my hat," sung in
+chorus, on the Mainzerian system, amidst peals of laughter.
+
+Meantime Jack was skipping up and down upon the tombstone, calling out
+to his myrmidons--"Good friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your
+spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very
+handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly
+entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the
+respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of
+his--though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just
+provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a
+third--"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder
+puddle--the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there;
+though, to be sure, the ground _is_ slippery, and the thing _might_
+happen, in a manner without any one's being able to prevent it." And so
+on he went, taking care to say nothing for which the justices could
+afterwards venture to commit him to Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring
+up the rabble to the utmost, by nods, looks, winks, and covert speeches,
+intended to convey exactly the opposite meaning from what the words
+bore.
+
+At last by main force, and after a hard scuffle, the constables
+contrived to force the schoolhouse door open, and so to make way for the
+justices, the usher, and those of Jack's family who, as we have seen
+already, had made up their minds to give the usher possession, to enter.
+But having entered, the confusion and bedevilment was ten times worse
+than even in the churchyard itself. The benches were lined with a pack
+of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments, and with leather at the
+knees, from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a
+Scotch bagpiper, flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant performer
+on the hurdygurdy, accompanied by his monkey--who in the course of his
+circuit through the village, had that morning received a special
+retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion;
+while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen
+years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl,
+with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the
+writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence--till the
+Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he
+opened his mouth than the whole multitude burst forth as if the
+confusion of tongues had taken place for the first time; twenty spoke
+together, ten whistled, as many more sang psalms and obscene songs
+alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes
+that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the
+hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in
+which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the
+honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones,
+tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and
+desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, in
+the most agreeable confusion.
+
+One of the justices tried to speak, but even from the first it was all
+dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded through two sentences, when his
+oration was extinguished as suddenly and by the same means as the
+conflagration of the Royal Palace at Lilliput. After many attempts to
+obtain a hearing, it became obvious that all chance of doing so in the
+schoolhouse was at an end; and so the usher, the justices, and the rest,
+adjourned to the next ale-house, where they had the usher's commission
+quietly read over in presence of the landlord and the waiter, and handed
+him over the keys of the house before the same witnesses; of all which,
+and of their previous deforcement by a mob of rapscallions, they took
+care to have an instrument regularly drawn out by a notary-public.
+Thereafter they ordered a rump and dozen, being confident that as the
+day was bitterly cold, and the snow some feet deep upon the ground, the
+courage of the rioters would be cooled before they had finished dinner;
+and so it was, for towards evening, the temperature having descended
+considerably beneath the freezing point, the mob, who had now exhausted
+their beer and gin, and who saw that there was no more fun to be
+expected for the day, began to disperse each man to his home, so that
+before nightfall the coast was clear; on which the justices, with the
+_posse comitatus_, escorted the usher to the schoolhouse, opened the
+door, put him formally in possession, and, wishing him much good of his
+new appointment, departed.
+
+But how did Jack, you will ask, bear this rebuff on the part of his own
+kin? Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he became furious, and seemed to
+have lost all natural feelings towards his own flesh and blood. He
+summoned such of his family as had given admission to the usher before
+him, called a sort of court-martial of the rest of his relations to
+enquire into their conduct; and, notwithstanding the accused protested
+that they had the highest respect and regard for Jack, were his humble
+servants to command in all ordinary matters, and only acted in this
+instance in obedience to the justices' warrant, (the which, if they had
+disobeyed, they were certain to have been at that moment cooling their
+heels in the stocks,) Jack, who was probably worked up to a kind of
+frenzy by his more violent of his inmates, kicked them out of the room,
+and sent a set of his myrmidons after them, with instructions to tear
+their coats off their backs, strip them of their wigs and small-clothes,
+and turn them into the street. Against this the unlucky wights appealed
+to the justices for protection, who, to be sure, sent down some
+policemen, who beat off the mob, and enabled them to make their doors
+fast against Jack and his emissaries. But beyond that they could give
+them little assistance; for though Jack and his abettors could not
+actually venture upon a trespass by forcing their way within doors, they
+contrived to render the very existence of all who were not of their way
+of thinking miserable. If it was an usher who, in spite of all their
+efforts to exclude him, had fairly got admittance into the schoolhouse,
+they set up a sentry-box at his very door, in which a rival usher held
+forth on Cocker and the alphabet; they drew off a few stray boys from
+the village school, and this detachment, recruited and reinforced by all
+the idlers of the neighbourhood, to whom mischief was sport, was
+studiously instructed to keep up a perpetual whistling, hooting,
+howling, hissing, and imitations of the crowing of a cock, so as to
+render it impossible for the usher and boys within the school to hear or
+profit by one word that was said. If the scholars within were told to
+say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked
+how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be
+"ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some
+ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper,
+headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:--"We have just
+learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a
+hundred miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately been detected in various
+acts of forgery, petty larceny, sedition, high treason, burglary, &c.
+&c. If this report be not officially contradicted by the said usher
+within a fortnight, by advertisement, duly inserted and paid for in this
+newspaper, we shall hold the same to be true." Or sometimes more
+mysteriously thus:--"Delicacy forbids us to allude to the shocking
+reports which are current respecting the usher of Mullaglass. Christian
+charity would lead us to hope they were unfounded, but Christian verity
+compels us to state that we believe every word of them." And though Jack
+and his editor sometimes overshot their mark, and got soused in damages
+at the instance of those whom they had libelled, yet Jack, who found
+that it answered his ends, persevered, and so kept the whole
+neighbourhood in hot water.
+
+You would not believe me were I to tell you of half the tyrannical and
+preposterous pranks which he performed about this period; but some of
+them I can't help noticing. He had picked up some subscriptions, for
+instance, from charitable folks in the neighbourhood, to build a school
+upon a remote corner of North Farm, where not a single boy had learned
+his alphabet within the memory of man; and what, think ye, does he do
+with the money, but insists on clapping down the new school exactly
+opposite the old school in the village, merely to spite the poor usher,
+against whom he had taken a dislike--though there was no more need to
+build a school there than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle. Again,
+having ascertained that one of his servants had been seen shaking hands
+with some of Jack's family with whom he had quarrelled as above
+mentioned, he refused to give him a character, though the poor fellow
+was only thinking of taking service somewhere in the plantations.
+
+Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts, however, it sometimes happened that
+when an usher was appointed he could not get up a sufficient cabal
+against him, and that even the schoolboys, knowing something of the man
+before, had no objection to him. In such cases Jack resorted to various
+schemes in order to cast the candidate upon his examinations. Sometimes
+he would shut him up in a small closet, telling him he must answer a
+hundred and fifty questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry, within
+as many minutes, and that he would be allowed the assistance of
+Johnson's Dictionary, and the _Gradus ad Parnassum_, for the purpose. At
+other tines he would ask the candidate, with a bland smile, what was his
+opinion of things in general, and of the dispute between him (Jack) and
+the Squire in particular; and if that question was not answered to his
+satisfaction, he remitted him to his studies. When no objection could be
+made to the man's parts, Jack would say that he had scruples of
+conscience, because he doubted whether his commission had been fairly
+come by, or whether he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound note to
+obtain it. At last he did not even take the trouble of going through
+this farce, but would at once, if he disliked the look of the man's
+face, tell him he was busy at the moment;--that he might lay the
+Squire's letter on the table, and call again that day six months for an
+answer. He no longer pretended, in fact, to any fairness or justice in
+his dealings; for though those who sided with him might be guilty of all
+the offences in the calendar, Jack continued to wink so hard, and shut
+his ears so close, as not to see or hear of them; while as to the
+unhappy wights who differed from him, he had the eyes of Argus and the
+ear of Dionysius, and the tender mercies of a Spanish inquisitor,
+discovering _scandalum magnatum_ and high treason in ballads which they
+had written twenty years before, and in which Jack, though he received a
+presentation copy at the time, had never pretended, up to that moment,
+to detect the least harm.
+
+The last of these freaks which I shall here mention took place on this
+wise. Jack had never been accustomed to invite any one to his assemblies
+but the ushers who had been appointed by the Squire, and it was always
+understood that they alone had a vote in all vestry matters. But when
+John quarrelled with his family, as above mentioned, and a large part of
+the oldest and most respectable of his relatives drew off from him, it
+occurred to Jack that he could bring in a set of new auxiliaries, upon
+whose vote he could count in all his family squabbles, or his deputes,
+with Squire Bull; and the following was the device he fell upon for that
+end.
+
+Here and there upon North Farm, where the village schools were crowded,
+little temporary schoolhouses had been run up, where one or two of the
+monitors were accustomed to teach such of the children as could not be
+accommodated in the larger school. But these assistants had always been
+a little looked down upon, and had never been allowed a seat at Jack's
+board. Now, however, he began to change his tone towards them, and to
+court and flatter them on all occasions. One fine morning he suddenly
+made his appearance on the village green, followed by some of his
+hangers on, bearing a theodolite, chains, measuring rods, sextants,
+compasses, and other instruments of land-surveying. Jack set up his
+theodolite, took his observations, began noting measurements, and laying
+down the bases of triangles in all directions, then, having summed up
+his calculations with much gravity, gave directions to those about him
+to line off with stakes and ropes the space which he pointed out to
+them, and which in fact enclosed nearly half the village. In the course
+of these operations, the usher, who had witnessed these mathematical
+proceedings of Jack from the window, but could not comprehend what the
+man would be at, sallied forth, and accosting Jack, asked him what he
+meant by these strange lines of circumvallation. "Why," answered Jack,
+"I have been thinking for some time past of relieving you of part of
+your heavy duties, and dividing the parish-school between you and your
+assistant; so in future you will confine yourself to the space outside
+the ropes, and leave all within the inclosure to him." It was in vain
+that the usher protested he was quite equal to the duty; that the boys
+liked him, and disliked his assistant; that if the village was thus
+divided, the assistant would be put upon a level with him, and have a
+vote in the vestry, to which he had no more right than to a seat in the
+House of Commons. Jack was not to be moved from his purpose, but gave
+orders to have a similar apportionment made in most of the neighbouring
+villages, and then inviting the assistants to a party at his house, he
+had them sworn in as vestrymen, telling them, that in future they had
+the same right to a seat at his board as the best of John's ushers had.
+Here again, however, he found he had run his head against a wall, and
+that he was not the mighty personage he took himself for; for, on a
+complaint to the justices of the peace, a dozen special constables were
+sent down, who tore up the posts, removed the ropes, and demolished all
+Jack's inclosures in a trice.
+
+These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic. He now began to
+quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had
+gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly
+they would never set foot in it again. He burst forth into loud
+invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his
+penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when
+Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom
+and Jack there had long been a bloody feud. Jack now denounced Martin in
+set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said
+he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of
+setting the Squire's mind against him (Jack)--whereas poor Martin, till
+provoked by Jack's abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind
+word against him. Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did
+not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly
+against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and
+knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack
+chose to tell them. He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour,
+at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which
+he endured. He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him;
+that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding
+his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one
+occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff's officer had made his way into his
+house and served him with a writ of _fieri facias_ even in the midst of
+one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could
+not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the
+corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in
+short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety--and all this
+because he had done his best to save them and their children from the
+awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers. At the conclusion of
+these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly
+women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be
+applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private
+advantage.
+
+Jack, however, with all his craze, was too knowing not to see that the
+women, beyond advancing him a few shillings at a time, would do little
+for his cause so far as any terms with Squire Bull was concerned; so,
+with the view of making a last attack upon the Squire, and driving him
+into terms, he began to look about for assistance among those with whom
+he had previously been at loggerheads. It cost him some qualms before he
+could so far abase his stomach as to do so; but at last he ventured to
+address a long and pitiful letter to Hugh, in which he set forth all his
+disputes with John, and dwelt much on his scruples of conscience; begged
+him to forget old quarrels, and put down his name to a Round Robin,
+which he was about to address to the Squire in his own behalf. To this
+epistle Hugh answered as follows:--"Dearly beloved,--my bowels are
+grieved for your condition, but I see only one cure for your scruples of
+conscience. Strip off the Squire's livery, and give up your place, as I
+did, and your peace of mind will be restored to you. In the mean time, I
+do not see very well why I should help you to pocket the Squire's wages,
+and do nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit of meekness and
+forgiveness--HUGH." After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily believe, saw
+there was little hope of assistance from that quarter.
+
+As a last resource, he called a general meeting of his friends, at which
+it was resolved to present the proposed Round Robin to John, signed by
+as many names as they could muster; in which Jack, who seemed to be of
+opinion that the more they asked the greater was their chance of getting
+something at least, set forth the articles he wanted, and without which,
+he told John, he could no longer remain in his house; but that he and
+his relatives and friends would forthwith, if this petition was
+rejected, walk out, to the infinite scandal of the neighbourhood,
+leaving the Squire without a teacher or a writing-master within fifty
+miles to supply their place. They demanded that the Squire should give
+up the nomination of the ushers entirely, though in whose favour they
+did not explain; and that Jack was in future to be a law unto himself,
+and to be supreme in all matters of education, with power to himself to
+define in what such matters consisted. On these requests being conceded,
+they stated that they would continue to give their countenance to the
+Squire as in times past; otherwise the whole party must quit possession
+incontinently. Jack prevailed on a good many to sign this
+document--though some did not like the idea of walking out, demurred,
+and added after the word _incontinently_, "i.e. when convenient,"--and
+thus signed, they put the Round Robin under a twopenny cover, and
+dispatched it to "John Bull, Esquire"--with haste.
+
+If they really thought the Squire was to be bullied into these terms by
+this last sally, they found themselves consumedly mistaken; for after a
+time down came a long and perfectly civil letter from the Squire's
+secretary, telling them their demands were totally out of the question,
+and that the Squire would see them at the antipodes sooner than comply
+with them.
+
+Did Jack then, you will ask, walk out as he had threatened, when he got
+the Squire's answer? Not he. He now gave notice that he intended to
+apply for an Act of Parliament on the subject: and that, in the
+meantime, the matter might stand over. Meantime, and in case matters
+should come to the worst, he is busily engaged begging all over the
+country, for cash to erect a new wooden tenement for him, in the event
+of his having to leave his old one of stone and lime. Some say even that
+he has been seen laying down several pounds of gunpowder in the cellar
+of his present house, and has been heard to boast of his intention to
+blow up his successor when he takes possession; but for my own part, and
+seeing how he has shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is no nearer
+removing than he was a year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially to
+several people, that even if his new house were all ready for him, he
+could not, with his asthmatic tendency, think of entering it for a
+twelvemonth or so, till the lath and plaster should be properly
+seasoned. Of all this, however, we shall hear more anon.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.
+
+BY A COCKNEY.
+
+
+When any one thinks of French literature, there immediately rises before
+him a horrid phantasmagoria of repulsive objects--murders, incests,
+parricides, and every imaginable shape of crime that horror e'er
+conceived or fancy feigned. He sees the whole efforts of a press,
+brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has
+hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the
+happiness of domestic life--marriage deliberately written down, and
+proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and
+strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords
+and strongest lances are wielded by women. Those women are received into
+society--men's wives and daughters associate with them--and their books
+are noticed in the public journals without any allusions to the
+Association for the prevention of vice, but rather with the praises
+which, in other times and countries, would have been bestowed on works
+of genius and virtue. The taste of the English public has certainly
+deteriorated within the last few years; and popularity, the surest index
+of the public's likings, though not of the writer's deservings, has
+attended works of which the great staple has been crime and
+blackguardism. A certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy energy, has
+enabled the writer to throw an interest round pickpockets and murderers;
+and if this interest were legitimately produced, by the exhibition of
+human passions modified by the circumstances of the actor--if it arose
+from the development of one real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering
+man's heart, we could only wonder at the author's choice of such a
+subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge that he had widened our
+sphere of knowledge--and made us feel, as we all do, without taking the
+same credit for it to ourselves that the old blockhead in France does,
+that being human, we have sympathies with all, even the lowest and
+wickedest of our kind. But the interest those works excite arises from
+no such legitimate source--not from the development of our common
+nature, but from the creation of a new one--from startling contrasts,
+not of two characters but of one--tenderness, generosity in one page;
+fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English _tastes_ are
+so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of
+cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press--our English
+_morals_ would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which
+forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The
+very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their
+female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to
+contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions
+of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine--high in
+rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty--has for the hero a
+villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes--we are
+not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut
+throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. He
+is the philosopher,--the instructor--the guide. The object of _his_
+introduction is to show the iniquity of human laws--the object of _her_
+introduction is to show the absurdity of the institution of marriage.
+This would never be tolerated in England. Again, a married woman is
+presented to us--for the sympathy which with us attends a young couple
+to the church-door, only begins in France after they have left it: as a
+child she has been betrothed to a person of her own rank--at five or six
+incurable idiocy takes possession of her proposed husband--but when she
+is eighteen the marriage takes place--the husband is a mere child still;
+for his intellect has continued stationary though his body has reached
+maturity--a more revolting picture was never presented than that of the
+condition of the idiot's wife--her horror of her husband--and of course
+her passion for another. The most interesting scenes between the lovers
+are constantly interrupted by the hideous representative of matrimony,
+the grinning husband, who rears his slavering countenance from behind
+the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate wife with a sacred awe for the
+holy obligations of marriage.
+
+Again, a dandy of fifty is presented to us, whose affection for his ward
+has waited, of course, till she is wedded to another, to ripen into
+love. He still continues her protector against the advances of others;
+for jealousy is a good point of character in every one but the husband,
+and there it is only ridiculous. The husband in this case is another
+admirable specimen of the results of wedlock for life--he is a
+chattering, shallow pretender--a political economist, prodigiously dull
+and infinitely conceited--an exaggerated type of the Hume-Bowring
+statesman--and, as is naturally to be expected, our sympathies are
+awakened for the wretched wife, and we rejoice to see that her beauty
+and talents, her fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated by a dashing
+young fellow, who outwits our original friend the dandy of fifty and the
+philosophical deputé; the whole leaving a pleasing impression on the
+reader's mind from the conviction that the heroine is no longer
+neglected.
+
+From the similarity of these stories--and they are only taken at random
+from a great number--it will be seen that the spirit of almost all of
+them is the same. But when we go lower in the scale, and leave the class
+of philosophic novels, we find their tales of life and manners still
+more absurd in their total untrueness than the others were hateful in
+their design. There is a novel just now appearing in one of the most
+widely-circulated of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely overdone, that
+if it had been meant for a caricature of the worst parts of our own
+hulk-and-gallows authors, it would have been very much admired; but
+meant to be serious, powerful, harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is
+a most curious exhibition of a nation's taste and a writer's audacity.
+The _Mysteries of Paris_, by Eugene Sue, has been dragging its slow
+length along for a long time, and gives no sign of getting nearer its
+denouement than when it began. A sovereign prince is the hero--his own
+daughter, whom he has disowned, the heroine; and the tale commences by
+his fighting a man on the street, and taking a fancy to his unknown
+child, who is the inhabitant of one of the lowest dens in the St Giles'
+of Paris! The other _dramatis personæ_ are convicts, receivers of stolen
+goods, murderers, intriguers of all ranks--the aforesaid prince,
+sometimes in the disguise of a workman, sometimes of a pickpocket,
+acting the part of a providence among them, rewarding the good and
+punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah
+McGregor--the lawful wife of the prince--her brother Tom, and Sir Walter
+Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and
+flurried--first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in
+country farms, and then in halls and palaces--and so intermixed and
+confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of
+the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds.
+How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and
+we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his
+poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step.
+Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of
+France, and in the _Mystères de Paris_ the most confirmed glutton of
+such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst of such depraved and
+revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of satisfaction, though not of the
+loftiest kind, to turn to the coarse fun and ludicrous descriptions of
+Paul de Kock. And, after all, our friend Paul has not many more sins
+than coarseness and buffoonery to answer for. As to his attempting, of
+set purpose, to corrupt people's morals, it never entered into his head.
+He does not know what morals are; they never form any part of his idea
+of manners or character. If a good man comes in his way, he looks at him
+with a strange kind of unacquaintance that almost rises into respect;
+but he is certainly more affectionate, and on far better terms, with men
+about town--amative hairdressers, flirting grisettes, and the whole
+genus, male and female, of the epiciers. It would no doubt be an
+improvement if the facetious Paul could believe in the existence of an
+honest woman; but such women as come in his way he describes to the
+life. A ball in a dancing-master's private room up six pairs of stairs,
+a pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner at a restaurateur's, or a
+family consultation on a proposal of marriage, are far more in Paul's
+way than tales of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity. One is only
+sorry, in the midst of so much gaiety and good-humour, to stumble on
+some scene or sentiment that gives on the inclination to throw the book
+in the fire, or start, like Cæsar, on the top of the diligence to pull
+the author's ears. But the next page sets all right again; and you go on
+laughing at the disasters of my neighbour Raymond, or admiring the
+graces or Chesterfieldian politeness of M. Bellequeue. French nature
+seems essentially different from all the other natures hitherto known;
+and yet, though so new, there never rises any doubt that it is _a_
+nature, a reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and not a sham. The
+personages presented to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely, in the strict
+sense of the word, be called human beings; but they are French beings of
+real flesh and blood, speaking and thinking French in the most decided
+possible manner, and at intervals possessed of feelings which make us
+inclined to include them in the great genus _homo_, though with so many
+inseparable accidents, that it is impossible for a moment to shut one's
+eyes to the species to which they belong. But such as they are in their
+shops, and back-parlours, and ball-rooms, and _fêtes champêtres_, there
+they are in Paul de Kock--nothing extenuated, little set down in
+malice--vain, empty, frivolous, good-tempered, gallant, lively, and
+absurd. Let us go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the
+anniversary of the marriage of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the day of St
+Eustache.
+
+"At a little distance from the ball, towards the middle of the wood, a
+numerous party is seated on the grass, or rather on the sand; napkins
+are spread on the ground, and covered with plates and cold meat and
+fruits. The bottles are placed in the cool shade, the glasses are filled
+and emptied rapidly; good appetites and open air make every thing appear
+excellent. They make plates out of paper, and toss pieces of paté and
+sausage to each other. They eat, they drink, they sing, they laugh and
+play tricks. It seems a struggle who shall be funniest. It is well known
+that all things are allowable in the country; and the cits now assembled
+in the wood of Romainville seem fully persuaded of the fact. A jolly old
+governor of about fifty tries to carve a turkey, and can't succeed. A
+little woman, very red, very fat, and very round, hastens to seize a
+limb of the bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly old governor at the
+other--the leg separates at last, and the lady goes sprawling on the
+grass, while the gentleman topples over in the opposite direction with
+the remainder of the animal in his hand. The shouts of laughter
+redouble, and M. Moutonnet--such is the name of the jolly old
+governor--resumes his place, declaring that he will never try to carve
+any thing again. 'I knew you would never be able to manage it,' said a
+large woman bluntly, in a tone that agreed exactly with her starched and
+crabbed features. She was sitting opposite the stout gentleman, and had
+seen with indignation the alacrity with which the little lady had flown
+to M. Moutonnet's assistance.
+
+"'In the twenty years we have been married,' she continued, 'have you
+ever carved any thing at home, sir?'
+
+"'No, my dear, that's very true;' replied the stout gentleman in a
+submissive voice, and trying to smile his better half into good-humour.
+
+"'You don't know how to help a dish of spinach, and yet you attempt a
+dish like that!'
+
+"'My dear--in the country, you know----'
+
+"'In the country, sir, as in the town, people shouldn't try things they
+can't perform.'
+
+"'You know, Madame Moutonnet, that generally I never attempt any
+thing--but to day'----
+
+"'To day you should have done as you do on other days,' retorted the
+lady.
+
+"'Ah, but, my love, you forget that this is Saint Eustache----'
+
+"'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!' is repeated in chorus by the whole
+company, and the glasses are filled and jingled as before.
+
+"'To the health of Eustache; Eustache for ever!'
+
+"'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,' replied M. Moutonnet graciously
+smiling--'and yours, my angel.'
+
+"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume
+an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M.
+Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue
+St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever
+protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has
+kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till
+eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and
+ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the
+bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an
+old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall
+presently become better acquainted.
+
+"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not
+commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all
+things. When she is in good-humour--a somewhat extraordinary
+occurrence--she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of
+coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the
+corner of the Rue Mauconseil--for it is famous for its liberal allowance
+of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his
+wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a
+promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the
+country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the
+fête-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder
+the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men--so true is it
+that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was
+born with simple tastes--she required to be led and managed like a
+child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen,
+so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think
+yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions
+every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M.
+Moutonnet has no fear of that--he has no passions--he knows nothing but
+his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very
+happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself
+be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is
+a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never
+was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded
+she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to
+every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her
+husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame
+Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A
+daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and
+Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at
+eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced.
+But Eugenie has been educated severely--and although possessed of a good
+deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a
+single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness,
+grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has
+received from nature--her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the
+bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish--or rather she scarcely
+ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads
+them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little
+arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror
+every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft
+and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed
+by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In
+short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first
+sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more
+regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we
+have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party
+who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint
+Eustache.
+
+"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M.
+Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who
+is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the
+fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even
+puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking,
+and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly
+breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on--for she is determined to
+have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very
+lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an
+expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom
+she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll,
+by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a
+young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes
+when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six
+months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has
+undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.
+
+"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly
+countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated
+beside Eugenie. M. Dupont--such is his name--is a rich grocer of the Rue
+aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are
+becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very
+aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat,
+give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably
+with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two
+watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great
+satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own
+remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the
+presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a
+bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where
+there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the
+Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant
+gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious
+rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he
+overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and
+perfumes--accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in
+sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has
+a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little
+Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes
+as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a
+little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never
+could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were
+delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'
+
+"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every
+opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs
+every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old
+clerk of the laceman--M. Bidois--who waits for Madame Moutonnet's
+permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she
+is not looking--is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard;
+who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that
+she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her
+neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all
+the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with
+handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is
+intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of
+calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose
+name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame
+Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him
+to the fête of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party
+who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."
+
+We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the
+party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the
+foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people
+who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to
+compare M. Moutonnet and _his_ friends, with any laceman and _his_
+friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in
+the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a
+perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at
+Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom--and as to admitting
+such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the
+unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon
+think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three
+friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for
+not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic
+manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems
+no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he
+is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has
+no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet
+seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever,
+superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed
+volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are
+all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other
+hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all
+other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated,
+but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme
+disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The
+husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the
+shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or
+seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a
+gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies
+torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely
+flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks
+are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich
+perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to
+them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters;
+whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any
+affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical
+attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real
+unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's
+character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more
+interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a
+Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only
+acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or
+the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo
+enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester
+warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may
+be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single
+exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to
+distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the
+world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of
+citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether
+our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible--all three of which
+epithets are generally applicable to the same individual--or that they
+have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic
+habits of the animal--it is certain that, however better they may be
+qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far
+less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that
+wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either
+been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie
+never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he
+does in _Rob Roy_. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the
+universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the
+prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which
+he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of
+Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude
+town--consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge
+of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit
+subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable
+Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in
+the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long
+ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon
+him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of
+the harem--threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as
+he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes
+scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from
+odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and
+brigands--but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops,
+and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set
+of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because
+non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take
+his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No
+decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the
+appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their
+rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course
+of the _chaine Anglaise_ beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at
+the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the
+above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his
+daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of
+going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have
+left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C.
+But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser--for the mere
+gleaner of beards is not intended by the name--into his own amusements.
+In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
+and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the
+offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his
+graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a
+very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is
+whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner,
+with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and
+his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend
+goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and
+water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night
+of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the
+order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and
+being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has
+a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to
+be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a
+tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his
+hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats
+himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and
+thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong
+ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions.
+Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with
+dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his
+next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their
+sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music
+now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a
+strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the
+coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the
+landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is
+over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is
+now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a
+distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box
+to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so
+full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that
+he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher,
+who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic
+performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces
+a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song,
+where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers,
+are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
+admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last,
+time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr
+Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts
+he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great
+comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in
+the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in
+the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into
+mischief from an overdose of _eau sucrée_, though sometimes he certainly
+becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of _vin ordinaire_; and
+nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink
+which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French
+population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative,
+and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small
+beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We
+constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of
+excitement after two rounds of a bottle--jostling the peasants, and
+talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what
+a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or
+two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious
+disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other
+from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling
+women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant
+mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and
+swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster--but not a single blow!
+The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish
+into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful _mêlée_, the
+violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a
+marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these
+methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we
+confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on
+the claret-cork)--all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to
+work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a
+manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel
+kind.
+
+The affectations of a French cit, when that nondescript animal
+condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those
+of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts--he talks about
+the opera--likes to know artists and authors--and, though living up five
+or six pairs of stairs in a narrow lane, gives _soirées_ and
+_conversazionés_. More ludicrous all this, and decidedly less
+disgusting, than the assumptions of our man-milliners and fishmongers.
+There is short sketch by Paul de Kock, called a _Soirée Bourgeoise_,
+which we translate entire, as an illustration of this curious phase of
+French character; and we shall take an early opportunity of bringing
+before our readers the essays of the daily feuilletonists of the
+Parisian press, which give a clearer insight into the peculiarities of
+French domestic literature than can be acquired in any other quarter.
+
+
+A CIT'S SOIREE.
+
+Lights were observed some time ago, in the four windows of an apartment
+on the second floor of a house in the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite so
+brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers, but still it announced something.
+These four windows, with lights glancing in them all, had an air of
+rejoicing, and the industrious inhabitants of the Rue Grenetat, who
+don't generally go to much expense for illumination, even in their
+shops, looked at the four windows which eclipsed the street lamps in
+their brilliancy, and said, "There's certainly something very
+extraordinary going on this evening at M. Lupot's!" M. Lupot is an
+honest tradesman, who has retired from business some time. After having
+sold stationary for thirty years, without ever borrowing of a neighbour,
+or failing in a payment, M. Lupot, having scraped together an income of
+three hundred and twenty pounds, disposed of his stock in trade, and
+closed his ledger, to devote himself entirely to the pleasures of
+domestic life with his excellent spouse, Madam Felicité Lupot--a woman
+of an amazingly apathetic turn of mind, who did admirably well in the
+shop as long as she had only to give change for half-crowns, but whose
+abilities extended no further. But this had not prevented her from
+making a very good wife to her husband, (which proves that much talent
+is not required for that purpose,) and presenting him with a daughter
+and a son.
+
+The daughter was the eldest, and had attained her seventeenth year; and
+M. Lupot, who spared nothing on her education, did not despair of
+finding a husband for her with a soul above sticks of sealing-wax and
+wafers--more especially as it was evident she had no turn for trade, and
+believed she had a decided genius for the fine arts--for she had painted
+her father as a shepherd with his crook, when she was only twelve, and
+had learned a year after to play "Je suis Lindore" by ear on the piano.
+M. Lupot was proud of his daughter, who was thus a painter and a
+musician; who was a foot taller than her papa; who held herself as
+upright as a Prussian grenadier; who made a curtsy like Taglioni, who
+had a Roman nose three times the size of other people's, a mouth to
+match, and eyes so arch and playful, that it was difficult to discover
+them. The boy was only seven; he was allowed to do whatever he chose--he
+was so very young; and Monsieur Ascanius availed himself of the
+permission, and was in mischief from morning to night. His father was
+too fond of him to scold him, and his mother wouldn't take the trouble
+to get into a passion.
+
+Well, then, one morning M. Lupot soliloquized--"I have a good fortune, a
+charming family, and a wife who has never been in a rage; but all this
+does not lead to a man's being invited, courted, and made much of in the
+world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove and red sealing-wax, I have
+seen nobody but a few friends--retired tradesmen like myself--who drop
+in to take a hand at _vingt-et-un_, or loto; but I wish more than
+that--my daughter must not live in so narrow a circle; my daughter has a
+decided turn for the arts; I ought to have artists to my house. I will
+give soirées, tea-parties--yes, with punch at parting, if it be
+necessary. We shall play _bouillote_ and _écarte_, for my daughter can't
+endure loto. Indeed, I wish to set people talking about my re-unions,
+and to find a husband for Celanire worthy of her." M. Lupot was seated
+near his wife, who was seated on an elastic sofa, and was caressing a
+cat on her knee. He said to her--
+
+"My dear Felicité, I intend to give soirées--to receive lots of company.
+We live in too confined a sphere for our daughter, who was born for the
+arts--and for Ascanius, who, it strikes me, will make some noise in the
+world."
+
+Madame Lupot continued to caress the cat, and replied, "Well, what have
+I to do with that? Do I hinder you from receiving company? If it doesn't
+cause me any trouble--for I must tell you first of all, you musn't count
+on me to help you"--
+
+"You will have nothing at all to do, my dear Felicité, but the honours
+of the house."
+
+"I must be getting up every minute"--
+
+"You do it so gracefully," replied the husband--"I will give all the
+orders, and Celanire will second me."
+
+Mademoiselle was enchanted with the intention of her sire, and threw her
+arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh yes! papa," she said, "invite as many as you can, I will learn to
+play some country-dances that we may have a ball, and finish my head of
+Belisarius--you must get it framed for the occasion."
+
+And the little Ascanius whooped and hollo'd in the middle of the room.
+"I shall have tea and punch and cakes. I'll eat every thing!"
+
+After this conversation M. Lupot had set to work. He went to his friends
+and his friends' friends--to people he hardly knew, and invited them to
+his party, begging them to bring any body with them they liked. M. Lupot
+had formerly sold rose-coloured paper to a musician, and drawing pencils
+to an artist. He went to his ancient customers, and pressed them to come
+and to bring their professional friends with them. In short, M. Lupot
+was so prodigiously active that in four days he had run through nearly
+the whole of Paris, caught an immense cold, and spent seven shillings in
+cab hire. Giving an entertainment has its woes as well as its pleasures.
+
+The grand day, or rather the grand evening, at last arrived. All the
+lamps were lighted, and they had even borrowed some from their
+neighbours; for Celanire had discovered that their own three lamps
+did not give light enough both for the public-room and the
+supper-room--(which on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.) It was the
+first time that M. Lupot had borrowed any thing--but also it was the
+first time that M. Lupot gave a soirée.
+
+From the dawn of day M. Lupot was busy in preparation: He had ordered in
+cakes and refreshments; bought sundry packs of cards, brushed the
+tables, and tucked up the curtains. Madame Lupot had sat all the time
+quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from time to time, "I'm afraid 'twill
+be a troublesome business all this receiving company."
+
+Celanire had finished her Belisarius, who was an exact likeness of Blue
+Beard, and whom they had honoured with a Gothic frame, and placed in a
+conspicuous part of the room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed with
+amazing care. She had a new gown, her hair plaited _à la Clotilde_. All
+this must make a great sensation. Ascanius was rigged out in his best;
+but this did not hinder him from kicking up a dust in the room, from
+getting up on the furniture, handling the cards, and taking them to make
+houses; from opening the cupboards, and laying his fingers on the cakes.
+
+Sometimes M. Lupot's patience gave way, and he cried, "Madame, I beg
+you'll make your son be quiet." But Madame Lupot answered without
+turning her head, "Make him quiet yourself, M. Lupot--You know very well
+it's _your_ business to manage him."
+
+It was now eight o'clock, and nobody was yet arrived. Mademoiselle
+looked at her father, who looked at his wife, who looked at her cat. The
+father of the family muttered every now and then--"Are we to have our
+grand soirée all to ourselves?" And he cast doleful looks on his lamps,
+his tables, and all his splendid preparations. Mademoiselle Celanire
+sighed and looked at her dress, and then looked in the mirror. Madame
+Lupot was as unmoved as ever, and said, "Is this what we've turned every
+thing topsy-turvy for?" As for little Ascanius, he jumped about the
+room, and shouted, "If nobody comes, what lots of cakes we shall have!"
+At last the bell rang. It is a family from the Rue St Denis, retired
+perfumers, who have only retained so much of their ancient profession,
+that they cover themselves all over with odours. When they enter the
+room, you feel as if a hundred scent-bottles were opened at once. There
+is such a smell of jasmine and vanille, that you have good luck if you
+get off without a headache. Other people drop in. M. Lupot does not know
+half his guests, for many of them are brought by others, and even these
+he scarcely knows the names of. But he is enchanted with every thing. A
+young fashionable is presented to him by some unknown third party, who
+says, "This is one of our first pianists, who is good enough to give up
+a great concert this evening to come here." The next is a famous singer,
+a lion in musical parties, who is taken out every where, and who will
+give one of his latest compositions, though unfortunately labouring
+under a cold. This man won the first prize at the Conservatory, an
+unfledged Boildieu, who will be a great composer of operas--when he can
+get librettos to his music, and music to his librettos. The next is a
+painter. He has shown at the exhibition--he has had wonderful success.
+To be sure nobody bought his pictures, because he didn't wish to sell
+them to people that couldn't appreciate them. In short, M. Lupot sees
+nobody in his rooms that is not first-rate in some way or other. He is
+delighted with the thought--ravished, transported. He can't find words
+enough to express his satisfaction at having such geniuses in his house.
+For their sakes he neglects his old friends--he scarcely speaks to them.
+It seems the new-comers, people he has never seen before, are the only
+people worthy of his attentions. Madame Lupot is tired of getting up,
+curtsying, and sitting down again. But her daughter is radiant with joy;
+her husband goes from room to room, rubbing his hands, as if he had
+bought all Paris, and got it a bargain. And little Ascanius never comes
+out of the bed-room without his mouth full. But it is not enough to
+invite a large party; you must know how to amuse them; it is a thing
+which very few people have the art of, even those most accustomed to
+have soirées. In some you get tired, and you are in great ceremony; you
+must restrict yourself to a conversation that is neither open, nor
+friendly, nor amusing. In others, you are pestered to death by the
+amphitryon, who is perhaps endowed with the bump of music, and won't
+leave the piano for fear some one else should take his place. There are
+others fond of cards, who only ask their friends that they may make up a
+table. Such individuals care for nothing but the game, and don't trouble
+themselves whether the rest of their guests are amused or not. Ah! there
+are few homes that know how to receive their company, or make every body
+pleased. It requires a tact, a cleverness, an absence of self, which
+must surely be very unusual since we see so few specimens of them in the
+soirées we attend.
+
+M. Lupot went to and fro--from the reception-room to the bed-chamber,
+and back again--he smiled, he bowed, and rubbed his hands. But the
+new-comers, who had not come to his house to see him smile and rub his
+hands, began to say, in very audible whispers, "Ah, well, do people pass
+the whole night here looking at each other? Very delightful--very!"
+
+M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation with a big man in spectacles,
+with a neckcloth of great dimensions, and who makes extraordinary faces
+as he looks round on the company. M. Lupot has been told, that the
+gentleman with the large neckcloth is a literary man, and that he will
+probably be good enough to read or recite some lines of his own
+composition. The ancient stationer coughs three times before venturing
+to address so distinguished a character, but says at last--"Enchanted to
+see at my house a gentleman so--an author of such----"
+
+"Ah, you're the host here, are you?--the master of the house?"--said the
+man in the neckcloth.
+
+"I flatter myself I am--with my wife, of course--the lady on the
+sofa--you see her? My daughter, sir--she's the tall young lady, so
+upright in her figure. She designs, and has an excellent touch on the
+piano. I have a son also--a little fiend--it was he who crept this
+minute between my legs--he's an extraordinary clev----"
+
+"There is one thing, sir," replied the big man, "that I can't
+comprehend--a thing that amazes me--and that is, that people who live in
+the Rue Grenetat should give parties. It is a miserable street--a horrid
+street--covered eternally with mud--choked up with cars--a wretched part
+of the town, dirty, noisy, pestilential--bah!"
+
+"And yet, sir, for thirty years I have lived here."
+
+"Oh Lord, sir, I should have died thirty times over! When people live in
+the Rue Grenetat they should give up society, for you'll grant it is a
+regular trap to seduce people into such an abominable street. I"----
+
+M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing his hands. He moves off from the
+big man in the spectacles, whose conversation had by no means amused
+him, and he goes up to a group of young people who seem examining the
+Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.
+
+"They're admiring my daughter's drawing," said M. Lupot to himself; "I
+must try to overhear what these artists are saying." The young people
+certainly made sundry remarks on the performance, plentifully intermixed
+with sneers of a very unmistakable kind.
+
+"Can you make out what the head is meant for?"
+
+"Not I. I confess I never saw any thing so ridiculous."
+
+"It's Belisarius, my dear fellow."
+
+"Impossible!--it's the portrait of some grocer, some relation, probably,
+of the family--look at the nose--the mouth--"
+
+"It is intolerable folly to put a frame to such a daub."
+
+"They must be immensely silly."
+
+"Why, it isn't half so good as the head of the Wandering Jew at the top
+of a penny ballad."
+
+M. Lupot has heard enough. He slips off from the group without a word,
+and glides noiselessly to the piano. The young performer who had
+sacrificed a great concert to come to his soirée, had sat down to the
+instrument and run his fingers over the notes.
+
+"What a spinnet!" he cried--"what a wretched kettle! How can you expect
+a man to perform on such a miserable instrument? The thing is
+absurd--hear this A--hear this G--it's like a hurdygurdy--not one note
+of it in tune!" But the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding,
+and played incessantly, thumping the keys with such tremendous force,
+that every minute a chord snapped; when such a thing happened--he burst
+into a laugh, and said, "Good! there's another gone--there will soon be
+none left."
+
+M. Lupot flushed up to the ears. He felt very much inclined to say to
+the celebrated performer, "Sir, I didn't ask you here to break all the
+chords of my piano. Let the instrument alone if you don't like it, but
+don't hinder other people from playing on it for our amusement."
+
+But the good M. Lupot did not venture on so bold a speech, which would
+have been a very sensible speech nevertheless; and he stood quietly
+while his chords were getting smashed, though it was by no means a
+pleasant thing to do.
+
+Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to her father. She is distressed at the
+way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but
+she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old
+neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar.
+
+It is not without some difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his
+daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a
+smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the
+gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ,
+and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to
+hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time
+with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much
+the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see on a mantelpiece.
+Nevertheless Mademoiselle Lupot essays her ballad; but she can never
+manage to overtake her accompanier, who, instead of following the
+singer, seems determined to make no alteration in the movement of his
+head and feet. The ballad is a failure--Celanire is confused, she has
+mistaken her notes--she loses her recollection; and, instead of hearing
+his daughter's praises, M. Lupot overhears the young people
+whispering--"It wouldn't do in a beer-shop."
+
+"I must order in the tea," thought the ex-stationer--"it will perhaps
+put them into good-humour."
+
+And M. Lupot rushes off to give instructions to the maid; and that old
+individual, who has never seen such a company before, does not know how
+to get on, and breaks cups and saucers without mercy, in the effort to
+make haste.
+
+"Nannette, have you got ready the other things you were to bring in with
+the tea?--the muffins--the cakes?"
+
+"Yes, sir"--replied Nannette--"all is ready--every thing will be in in a
+moment."
+
+"But there is another thing I told you, Nannette--the sandwiches."
+
+"The witches, sir?--the sand?"--enquired the puzzled Nannette.
+
+"It is an English dish--I explained it to you before--slices of bread
+and butter, with ham between."
+
+"Oh la, sir!" exclaimed the maid--"I have forgotten that ragoût--oh
+dear!"
+
+"Well--make haste, Nannette; get ready some immediately, while my
+daughter hands round the tea and muffins--you can bring them in on a
+tray."
+
+The old domestic hurries into the kitchen grumbling at the English
+dainty, and cuts some slices of bread and covers them with butter; but
+as she had never thought of the ham, she cogitates a long time how she
+can supply the want of it--at last, on looking round, she discovers a
+piece of beef that had been left at dinner.
+
+"Pardieu," she says, "I'll cut some lumps of this and put them on the
+bread. With plenty of salt they'll pass very well for ham--they'll drive
+me wild with their English dishes--they will."
+
+The maid speedily does as she says, and then hurries into the room with
+a tray covered with her extempore ham sandwiches.
+
+Every body takes one,--for they have grown quite fashionable along with
+tea. But immediately there is an universal murmur in the assembly. The
+ladies throw their slices into the fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on
+the furniture, and they cry--"why the devil do people give us things
+like these?--they're detestable."
+
+"It's my opinion, God forgive me! the man means to feed us with scraps
+from the pig-trough," says another.
+
+"It's a regular do, this soirée," says a third.
+
+"The tea is disgustingly smoked," says a fourth.
+
+"And all the little cakes look as if they had been fingered before,"
+says the fifth.
+
+"Decidedly they wish to poison us," says the big man in the neckcloth,
+looking very morose.
+
+M. Lupot is in despair. He goes in search of Nannette, who has hidden
+herself in the kitchen; and he busies himself in gathering up the
+fragments of the bread and butter from the floor and the fireplace.
+
+Madame Lupot says nothing; but she is in very bad humour, for she has
+put on a new cap, which she felt sure would be greatly admired; and a
+lady has come to her and said--
+
+"Ah, madame, what a shocking head-dress!--your cap is very
+old-fashioned--those shapes are quite gone out."
+
+"And yet, madame," replies Madame Lupot, "I bought it, not two days ago,
+in the Rue St Martin."
+
+"Well, madame--Is that the street you go to for the fashions? Go to
+Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous Gaillon--you'll get delicious caps
+there--new fashions and every thing so tasteful: for Heaven's sake,
+madame, never put on that cap again. You look, at least, a hundred."
+
+"It's worth one's while, truly," thought Madame Lupot, "to tire one's
+self to death receiving people, to be treated to such pretty
+compliments."
+
+Her husband, in the meanwhile, continued his labours in pursuit of the
+rejected sandwiches.
+
+The big man in spectacles, who wondered that people could live in the
+Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless, of coming there for nothing. He
+has seated himself in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, and
+informs the company that he is going to repeat a few lines of his own to
+them.--The society seems by no means enchanted with the announcement,
+but forms itself in a circle, to listen to the poet. He coughs and
+spits, wipes his mouth, tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has the lamps
+raised, the doors shut, asks a tumbler of sugar and water, and passes
+his hand through his hair. After continuing these operations for some
+minutes, the literary man at last begins. He spouts his verses in a
+voice enough to break the glasses; before he has spoken a minute, he has
+presented a tremendous picture of crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds,
+sufficient to appal the stoutest hearts, when suddenly a great crash
+from the inner room attracts universal attention. It is the young
+Ascanius, who was trying to get a muffin on the top of a pile of dishes,
+and has upset the table, with muffin, and dishes, and all on his own
+head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain the cause of the dreadful cries of
+his son; the company follow him, not a little rejoiced to find an excuse
+for hearing no more of the poem; and the poet, deprived in this way of
+an audience, gets up in a furious passion, takes his hat, and rushes
+from the room, exclaiming--"It serves me right. How could I have been
+fool enough to recite good verses in the Rue Grenetat!"
+
+Ascanius is brought in and roars lustily, for two of the dishes have
+been broken on his nose; and as there is no chance now, either of poetry
+or music, the party have recourse to cards--for it is impossible to sit
+all night and do nothing.
+
+They make up a table at _bouillote_, and another at _ecarté_. M. Lupot
+takes his place at the latter. He is forced to cover all the bets when
+his side refuses; and M. Lupot, who never played higher than shilling
+stakes in his life, is horrified when they tell him--"You must lay down
+fifteen francs to equal our stakes."
+
+"Fifteen francs!" says M. Lupot, "what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"It means, that you must make up the stakes of your side, to what we
+have put down on this. The master of the house is always expected to
+make up the difference."
+
+M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays down his fifteen francs and loses
+them; next game the deficiency is twenty. In short, in less than half an
+hour, the ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His eyes start out of his
+head--he scarcely knows where he is; and to complete his misery, the
+opposite party, in lifting up the money they have won, upset one of the
+lamps he had borrowed from his neighbours, and smashed it into fifty
+pieces.
+
+At last the hour of separation comes. The good citizen has been anxious
+for it for a long time. All his gay company depart, without even wishing
+good-night to the host who has exerted himself so much for their
+entertainment. The family of the Lupots are left alone; Madame, overcome
+with fatigue, and vexed because her cap had been found fault with;
+Celanire, with tears in her eyes, because her music and Belisarius had
+been laughed at; and Ascanius sick and ill, because he has nearly burst
+himself with cakes and muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the unhappiest of
+all, thinking of his ninety francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette
+gathered up the crumbs of the sandwiches, and muttered--"Do they think
+people make English dishes to have them thrown into the corners of the
+room?"
+
+"It's done," said M. Lupot; "I shall give no more soirées. I begin to
+think I was foolish in wishing to leave my own sphere. When people of
+the same class lark and joke each other, it's all very well; but when
+you meddle with your superiors, and they are uncivil, it hurts your
+feelings. Their mockery is an insult, and you don't get over it soon. My
+dear Celanire, I shall decidedly try to marry you to a stationer."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.
+
+THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.
+
+OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.
+
+
+The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in our last for the admiration and
+instruction of remote ages. When the nineteenth century shall be long
+out of date, and centuries in general out of their _teens_, posterity
+will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure
+undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the
+macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in
+our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is,
+after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his
+_monomania_, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly
+be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if,
+indeed, it can be said to injure him who glories in his vocation--who is
+the echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.
+
+The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to
+society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold
+iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families,
+and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the
+text of Scripture, which commandeth us, "in whatever station we are,
+therewith to be content."
+
+The gentility-monger is a family man, having a house somewhere in
+Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is sometimes a man of independent
+fortune--how acquired, nobody knows; that is his secret, his mystery. He
+will let no one suppose that he has ever been in trade; because, when a
+man intends gentility-mongering, it must never be known that he has
+formerly carried on the tailoring, or the shipping, or the
+cheese-mongering, or the fish-mongering, or any other mongering than the
+gentility-mongering. His house is very stylishly furnished; that is to
+say, as unlike the house of a man of fashion as possible--the latter
+having only things the best of their kind, and for use; the former
+displaying every variety of extravagant gimcrackery, to impress you with
+a profound idea of combined wealth and taste, but which, to an educated
+eye and mind only, conveys a lively idea of ostentation. When you call
+upon a gentility-monger, a broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike
+footman, in Aurora plushes, ushers you to a drawing-room, where, on
+tables round, and square, and hexagonal, are set forth jars, porcelain,
+china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed parrots under bell-glasses;
+corals, minerals, and an infinity of trumpery, among which albums,
+great, small, and intermediate, must by no means be forgotten.
+
+The room is papered with some _splendacious_ pattern in blue and gold; a
+chandelier of imposing gingerbread depends from the richly ornamented
+ceiling; every variety of ottoman, lounger, settee, is scattered about,
+so that to get a chair involves the right-of-search question; the
+bell-pulls are painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels carpet of flaming
+colours, curtains with massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous frames;
+prints, after Ross, of her Majesty and Prince Albert, of course; and
+mezzotints of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for whom the
+gentility-monger has a profound respect, and of whom he talks with a
+familiarity showing that it is not _his_ fault, at least, if these
+exalted personages do not admit him to the honour of their acquaintance.
+
+In fact, you see the drawing-room is not intended for sitting down in,
+and when the lady appears, you are inclined to believe she never sits
+down; at least the full-blown swell of that satin skirt seems never
+destined to the compression of a chair. The conversation is as
+usual--"Have you read the morning paper?"--meaning the Court Circular
+and fashionable intelligence; "do you know whether the Queen is at
+Windsor or Claremont, and how long her Majesty intends to remain;
+whether town is fuller than it was, or not so full; when the next
+Almacks' ball takes place; whether you were at the last drawing-room,
+and which of the fair _debutantes_ you most admire; whether Tamburini is
+to be denied us next year?" with many lamentations touching the possible
+defection, as if the migrations of an opera thrush were of the least
+consequence to any rational creature--of course you don't say so, but
+lament Tamburini as if he were your father; "whether it is true that we
+are to have the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito, this season; and what
+a heaven of delight we shall experience from the united action of these
+twenty supernatural pettitoes." You needn't express yourself after this
+fashion, else you will shock miss, who lounges near you in an agony of
+affected rapture: you must sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your cane,
+and say "divine--yes--hope it may be so--exquisite--_exquisite_." This
+naturally leads you to the last new songs, condescendingly exhibited to
+you by miss, if you are _somebody_, (if _nobody_, miss does not appear;)
+you are informed that "_My heart is like a pickled salmon_" is dedicated
+to the Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon you are favoured with sundry
+passages (out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages, &c., of that
+illustrious family; you are asked whether Bishop is the composer of "_I
+saw her in a twinkling_," and whether the _minor_ is not fine? Miss
+tells you she has transposed it from G to C, as suiting her voice
+better--whereupon mamma acquaints you, that a hundred and twenty guineas
+for a harp is moderate, she thinks; you think so too, taking that
+opportunity to admire the harp, saying that you saw one exactly like it
+at Lord (any Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in St James's Square.
+This produces an invitation to dinner; and with many lamentations on
+English weather, and an eulogium on the climate of Florence, you pay
+your parting compliments, and take your leave.
+
+At dinner you meet a claret-faced Irish absentee, whose good society is
+a good dinner, and who is too happy to be asked any where that a good
+dinner is to be had; a young silky clergyman, in black curled whiskers,
+and a white _choker_; one of the meaner fry of M.P.'s; a person who
+_calls himself_ a foreign count; a claimant of a dormant peerage; a
+baronet of some sort, not above the professional; sundry propriety-faced
+people in yellow waistcoats, who say little, and whose social position
+you cannot well make out; half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age,
+dressed in grand style, with turbans of imposing _tournure_; and a
+young, diffident, equivocal-looking gent who sits at the bottom of the
+table, and whom you instinctively make out to be a family doctor, tutor,
+or nephew, with expectations. No young ladies, unless the young ladies
+of the family, appear at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers;
+because the motive of the entertainment is pride, not pleasure; and
+therefore prigs and frumps are in keeping, and young women with brains,
+or power of conversation, would only distract attention from the grand
+business of life, that is to say, dinner; besides, a seat at table here
+is an object, where the expense is great, and nobody is asked for his or
+her own sake, but for an object either of ostentation, interest, or
+vanity. Hospitality never enters into the composition of a
+gentility-monger: he gives a dinner, wine, and a shake of the hand, but
+does not know what the word _welcome_ means: he says, now and then, to
+his wife "My dear, I think we must give a dinner;" a dinner is
+accordingly determined on, cards issued three weeks in advance, that you
+may be premeditatedly dull; the dinner is gorgeous to repletion, that
+conversation may be kept as stagnant as possible. Of those happy
+surprize invitations--those unexpected extemporaneous dinners, that as
+they come without thinking or expectation, so go off with _eclat_, and
+leave behind the memory of a cheerful evening--he has no idea; a man of
+fashion, whose place is fixed, and who has only himself to please, will
+ask you to a slice of crimped cod and a hash of mutton, without
+ceremony; and when he puts a cool bottle on the table, after a dinner
+that he and his friend have really enjoyed, will never so much as
+apologize with, "my dear sir, I fear you have had a wretched dinner," or
+"I wish I had known: I should have had something better." This affected
+depreciation of his hospitality he leaves to the gentility-monger, who
+will insist on cramming you with fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are
+like to burst; and then, by way of apology, get his guests to pay the
+reckoning in plethoric laudation of his mountains of victual.
+
+If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after
+the appointed time, although you arrived to a _minute_, as every
+Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the
+gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and
+has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host,
+hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of
+Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats
+attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the
+other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow
+waistcoats, and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig
+of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of
+miss, asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back
+of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening
+parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and
+another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every
+opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes
+with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud
+but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a
+prolonged _rat-tat-tat_ announces the arrival of the noble beast, the
+lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in
+the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the
+day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed
+coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a
+sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by
+the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and
+wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.
+
+As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not
+strictly understood, the host desires Honourable Sniftky to take down
+miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master
+of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where
+you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has
+inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.
+
+You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that
+distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky,
+_ex-officio_, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy
+round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured
+by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in
+attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of
+assize, go circuit.
+
+Then comes hobnobbing, with an interlocutory dissertation upon a
+_plateau, candelabrum_, or some other superfluous machine, in the centre
+of the table. One of the professed diners-out, discovers for the
+twentieth time an inscription in dead silver on the pedestal, and
+enquires with well-affected ignorance whether that is a _present_; the
+gentility-monger asks the diner-out to wine, as he deserves, then enters
+into a long apologetical self-laudation of his exertions in behalf of
+the CANNIBAL ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION, AND BRITISH SUBJECT
+TRANSPORTATION SOCIETY, (some emigration crimping scheme, in short,) in
+which his humble efforts to diffuse civilization and promote
+Christianity, however unworthy, ("No, no!" from the diner-out,) gained
+the esteem of his fellow-labourers, and the approbation of his own
+con----"Shall I send you some fish, sir?" says the man at the foot of
+the table, addressing himself to the Honourable Sniftky, and cutting
+short the oration.
+
+A monstrous salmon and a huge turbot are now dispensed to the hungry
+multitude; the gentility-monger has no idea that the biggest turbot is
+not the best; he knows it is the _dearest_, and that is enough for him;
+he would have his dishes like his cashbook, to show at a glance how much
+he has at his banker's. When the flesh of the guests has been
+sufficiently fishified, there is an _interregnum_, filled up with
+another circuit of wine, until the arrival of the _pièces de
+resistance_, the imitations of made dishes, and the usual _etceteras_.
+The conversation, meanwhile, is carried on in a _staccato_ style; a
+touch here, a hit there, a miss almost every where; the Honourable
+Sniftky turning the head of mamma with affected compliments, and
+hobnobbing to himself without intermission. After a sufficiently tedious
+interval, the long succession of wasteful extravagance is cleared away
+with the upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a look from our hostess,
+rise with dignity and decorously retire, miss modestly bringing up the
+rear--the man at the foot of the table with the handle of the door in
+one hand, and a napkin in the other, bowing them out.
+
+Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair
+closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive
+dinner, can be jovial _to order_. The wine goes round, and laudations go
+with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr
+Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking
+only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several
+speakers, as much as to say, "What a fellow you are, to talk;" the host
+essays a _bon-mot_, or tells a story bordering on the _ideal_, which he
+thinks is fashionable, and shows that he knows life; the Honourable
+Sniftky drinks claret from a beer-glass, and after the third bottle
+affects to discover his mistake, wondering what he could be thinking of;
+this produces much laughter from all save the professed diners-out, who
+dare not take such a liberty, and is _the_ jest of the evening.
+
+When the drinkers, drinkables, and talk are quite exhausted, the noise
+of a piano recalls to our bewildered recollections the ladies, and we
+drink their healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending that it is
+foreign-post night at the Foreign Office, walks off without even a bow
+to the assembled diners, the gentility-monger following him submissively
+to the door; then returning, tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone,
+he's such a good-natured fellow, while the gentleman so characterized
+gets into his cab, drives to his club, and excites the commiseration of
+every body there, by relating how he was bored with an old _ruffian_,
+who insisted upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner in Bryanston Square;
+at which there are many "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" and "what could you
+expect?--Bryanston Square!--served you right."
+
+In the mean time, the guests, relieved of the presence of the Honourable
+Sniftky, are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor,
+or something of that sort) waxes jocular, and gives decided indications
+of something like "how came you so;" the man at the foot of the table
+contradicts one of the diners-out, and is contradicted in turn by the
+baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured
+man, supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of
+the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands' Aborigines Protection
+Society, in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the
+dormant peerage retails his pedigree, pulling to pieces the
+attorney-general, who has expressed an opinion hostile to his
+pretensions.
+
+In the mean time, the piano is joined by a harp, in musical solicitation
+of the company to join the ladies in the drawing-room; they do so,
+looking flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs, sip tea, the
+younger beaux turning over, with miss, Books of Beauty and Keepsakes: at
+eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with
+a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the
+evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a
+bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless,
+stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual,
+selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon,
+assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where
+gulosity has been unrelieved by one single sally of wit, humour,
+good-nature, humanity, or charity; where you come without a welcome, and
+leave without a friend.
+
+The whole art of the gentility-mongers of all sorts in London, and _à
+fortiori_ of their wives and families, is to lay a tax upon social
+intercourse as nearly as possible amounting to a prohibition; their
+dinners are criminally wasteful, and sinfully extravagant to this end;
+to this end they insist on making _price_ the test of what they are
+pleased to consider _select society_ in their own sets, and they
+consequently cannot have a dance without guinea tickets nor a _pic-nic_
+without dozens of champagne. This shows their native ignorance and
+vulgarity more than enough; genteel people go upon a plan directly
+contrary, not merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying themselves
+without extravagance or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers
+would do well to imitate people of fashion.
+
+The exertions a gentility-monger will make, to rub his skirts against
+people above him; the humiliations, mortifications, snubbing, he will
+submit to, are almost incredible. One would hardly believe that a
+retired tradesman, of immense wealth, and enjoying all the respect that
+immense wealth will secure, should actually offer large sums of money to
+a lady of fashion, as an inducement to procure for him cards of
+invitation to her _set_, which he stated was the great object of his
+existence. Instead of being indignant at his presumption, the lady in
+question, pitying the poor man's folly, attempted to reason with him,
+assuring him with great truth that whatever might be his wealth, his
+power or desire of pleasing, he would be rendered unhappy and
+ridiculous, by the mere dint of pretension to a circle to which he had
+no legitimate claim, and advising him, as a friend, to attempt some more
+laudable and satisfactory ambition.
+
+All this good advice was, however, thrown away; our gentility-monger
+persevered, contriving somehow to gain a passport to some of the _outer_
+circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed, laughed at, and honoured
+with the _soubriquet_ (he was a pianoforte maker) of the _Semi-Grand_!
+
+We know another instance, where two young men, engaged in trade in the
+city, took a splendid mansion at the West End, furnished it sumptuously,
+got some desperate knight or baronet's widow to give parties at their
+house, inviting whomsoever she thought proper, at their joint expense.
+It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows succeeded in getting into
+good society, not indeed in the _Court Circular_, but in the--_Gazette_.
+
+There is another class of gentility-mongers more to be pitied than the
+last; those, namely, who are endeavouring to "make a connexion," as the
+phrase is, by which they may gain advancement in their professions, and
+are continually on the look-out for introductions to persons of quality,
+their hangers-on and dependents. There is too much of this sort of thing
+among medical men in London, the family nature of whose profession
+renders connexion, private partiality, and personal favour, more
+essential to them than to others. The lawyer, for example, need not be a
+gentility-monger; he has only to get round attorneys, for the
+opportunity to show what he can do, when he has done this, in which a
+little toadying, "_on the sly_," is necessary--all the rest is easy. The
+court and the public are his judges; his powers are at once appreciable,
+his talent can be calculated, like the money in his pocket; he can now
+go on straight forward, without valuing the individual preference or
+aversion of any body.
+
+But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women,
+and an inexhaustible variety of _sotto voce_ contrivances, must needs
+have a tendency to create a subserviency of spirit and of manner, which
+naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering: where realities, such
+as medical experience, reading, and skill, are remotely, or not at all,
+appreciable, we must take up with appearances; and of all appearances,
+the appearance of proximity to people of fashion is the most taking and
+seductive to people _not_ of fashion. It is for this reason that a
+rising physician, if he happen to have a lord upon his sick or visiting
+list, never has done telling his plebeian patients the particulars of
+his noble case, which they swallow like almond milk, finding it an
+excellent _placebo_.
+
+As it is the interest of a gentility-monger, and his constant practice,
+to be attended by a fashionable physician, in order that he may be
+enabled continually to talk of what Sir Henry thinks of this, and how
+Sir Henry objects to that, and the opinion of Sir Henry upon t'other, so
+it is the business of the struggling doctor to be a gentility-monger,
+with the better chance of becoming one day or other a fashionable
+physician. Acting on this principle, the poor man must necessarily have
+a house in a professional neighbourhood, which usually abuts upon a
+neighbourhood fashionable or exclusive; he must hire a carriage by the
+month, and be for ever stepping in and out of it, at his own door,
+keeping it purposely bespattered with mud to show the extent of his
+visiting acquaintance; he must give dinners to people "who _may_ be
+useful," and be continually on the look-out for those lucky accidents
+which have made the fortunes, and, as a matter of course, the _merit_,
+of so many professional men.
+
+He becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society, which gives him the chance of
+conversing with a lord, and the right of entering a lord's (the
+president's) house, which is turned into sandwich-shop four times a-year
+for his reception; this, being the nearest approach he makes to
+acquaintance with great personages, he values with the importance it
+deserves.
+
+His servants, with famine legibly written on their bones, are assiduous
+and civil; his wife, though half-starved, is very genteel, and at her
+dinner parties burns candle-ends from the palace.[48]
+
+     [48] In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St.
+     James's Street, may be seen stumps, or, as the Scotch call
+     them, _doups_ of wax-lights, with the announcement "Candle-ends
+     from Buckingham Palace." These are eagerly bought up by the
+     gentility-mongers, who burn, or it may be, in the excess of
+     their loyalty, _eat_ them!
+
+If you pay her a morning visit, you will have some such conversation as
+follows.
+
+"Pray, Mr ----, is there any news to-day?"
+
+"Great distress, I understand, throughout the country."
+
+"Indeed--the old story, shocking--very.--Pray, have you heard the
+delightful news? The Princess-Royal has actually cut a tooth!"
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, I assure you; and the sweet little royal love of a martyr has
+borne it like a hero."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+"Positively, I assure you; Doctor Tryiton has just returned from a
+consultation with his friend Sir Henry, upon a particularly difficult
+case--Lord Scruffskin--case of elephantiasis I think they call it, and
+tells me that Sir Henry has arrives express from Windsor with the news."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Do you think, Mr ----, there will be a general illumination?"
+
+"Really, madam, I cannot say."
+
+"_There ought to be_, [with emphasis.] You must know, Mr ----, Dr
+Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter a beautifully bound copy of his
+work on ulcerated sore throat; he says there is a great analogy between
+ulcers of the throat and den--den--den--something, I don't know
+what--teething, in short. If nothing comes of it, Dr Tryiton, thank
+Heaven, can do without it; but you know, Mr ----, it may, on a future
+occasion, be _useful to our family_."
+
+If there is, in the great world of London, one thing more spirit-sinking
+than another, it is to see men condemned, by the necessities of an
+overcrowded profession, to sink to the meannesses of pretension for a
+desperate accident by which they may insure success. When one has had an
+opportunity of being behind the scenes, and knowing what petty shifts,
+what poor expedients of living, what anxiety of mind, are at the bottom
+of all this empty show, one will not longer marvel that many born for
+better things should sink under the difficulties of their position, or
+that the newspapers so continually set forth the miserably unprovided
+for condition in which they so often are compelled to leave their
+families. To dissipate the melancholy that always oppresses us when
+constrained to behold the ridiculous antics of the gentility-mongers,
+which we chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation--let us contrast
+the hospitality of those who, with wiser ambition, keep themselves, as
+the saying is, "_to themselves_;" and, as a bright example, let us
+recollect our old friend Joe Stimpson.
+
+Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller in Bermondsey, the architect
+of his own fortune, which he has raised to the respectable elevation of
+somewhere about a quarter of a million sterling. He is now in his
+seventy-second year, has a handsome house, without and pretension,
+overlooking his tanyard. He has a joke upon prospects, calling you to
+look from the drawing-room window at his tanpits, asking you if you ever
+saw any thing like that at the west end of the town; replying in the
+negative, Joe, chuckling, observes that it is the finest prospect _he_
+ever saw in his life, and although he has been admiring it for half a
+century, he has not done admiring it yet. Joe's capacity for the
+humorous may be judged of by this specimen; but in attention to business
+few can surpass him, while his hospitality can command a wit whenever he
+chooses to angle for one with a good dinner. He has a wife, a venerable
+old smiling lady in black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes; three
+daughters, unmarried; and a couple of sons, brought up, after the London
+fashion, to inherit their father's business, or, we might rather say,
+_estate_.
+
+Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain unmarried, we cannot say, nor would
+it be decorous to enquire; but hearing them drop a hint now and then
+about visits, "a considerable time ago," to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we
+are led, however reluctantly in the case of ladies _now_ evangelical, to
+conclude, their attention has formerly been directed to
+gentility-mongering at these places of fashionable resort; the tanyard
+acting as a repellent to husbands of a social position superior to their
+own, and their great fortunes operating in deterring worthy persons of
+their own station from addressing them; or being the means of inducing
+them to be too prompt with refusals, these amiable middle-aged young
+ladies are now "on hands," paying the penalty of one of the many curses
+that pride of wealth brings in its train. At present, however, their
+"affections are set on things above;" and, without meaning any thing
+disrespectful to my friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet, and Susan
+Stimpson are certainly the three least agreeable members of the family.
+The sons are, like all other sons in the houses of their fathers,
+steady, business-like, unhappy, and dull; they look like fledged birds
+in the nest of the old ones, out of place; neither servants nor masters,
+their social position is somewhat equivocal, and having lived all their
+lives in the house of their father, seeing as he sees, thinking as he
+thinks, they can hardly be expected to appear more than a brace of
+immature Joe Stimpsons. They are not, it is true, tainted with much of
+the world's wickedness, neither have they its self-sustaining trials,
+its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles, or that experience which is
+gathered only by men who quit, when they can quit it, the petticoat
+string, and the paternal despotism of even a happy home. As for the old
+couple, time, although silvering the temples and furrowing the front, is
+hardly seen to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder of either, much less
+to put his finger on eyes, ears, or lips--the two first being yet as
+"wide awake," and the last as open to a joke, or any other good thing,
+as ever they were; in sooth, it is no unpleasing sight to see this jolly
+old couple with nearly three half centuries to answer for, their
+affection unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and temper undisturbed by the
+near approach, beyond hope of respite, of that stealthy foe whose
+assured advent strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson, if he thinks of
+death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down
+stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far
+from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring.
+The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife,
+unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual
+absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings,
+somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven,
+they don't care who goes to ----," a place that Virgil and Tasso have
+taken much pains in describing, but which the old gentleman sufficiently
+indicates by one emphatic monosyllable.
+
+Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates cant and humbug, and has no
+prejudices--hating the French he will not acknowledge is a prejudice,
+but considers the bounden duty of an Englishman; and, though fierce
+enough upon other subjects of taxation, thinks no price too high for
+drubbing them. He was once prevailed upon to attempt a journey to Paris;
+but having got to Calais, insisted upon returning by the next packet,
+swearing it was a shabby concern, and he had seen enough of it.
+
+He takes in the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ because his father did it before
+him--but he never reads it; he takes pride in a corpulent dog, which is
+ever at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache, and swears at any
+body who calls it _tic-douloureux._
+
+When you go to dine with him, you are met at the door by a rosy-checked
+lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles a hearty welcome, and assures
+you, though an utter stranger, of the character of the house and its
+owner. You are conducted to the drawing-room, a plain, substantial,
+_honest_-looking apartment; there you find the old couple, and are
+received with a warmth that gives assurance of the nearest approach to
+what is understood by _home_. The sons, released from business, arrive,
+shake you heartily by the hand, and are really glad to see you; of the
+daughters we say nothing, as there is nothing in _them_.
+
+The other guests of the day come dropping in--all straightforward,
+business-like, free, frank-hearted fellows--aristocrats of wealth, the
+best, because the _unpretending_, of their class; they come, too,
+_before_ their time, for they know their man, and that Joe Stimpson
+keeps nobody waiting for nobody. When the clock--for here is no
+_gong_--strikes five, you descend to dinner; plain, plentiful, good, and
+well dressed; no tedious course, with long intervals between; no
+oppressive _set-out_ of superfluous plate, and what, perhaps, is not the
+least agreeable accessory, no piebald footmen hanging over your chair,
+whisking away your plate before you have done with it, and watching
+every bit you put into your mouth.
+
+Your cherry-cheeked friend and another, both in the family from
+childhood, (another good sign of the house,) and looking as if they
+really were glad--and so they are--to have an opportunity of obliging
+you, do the servitorial offices of the table; you are sure of a glass of
+old sherry, and you may call for strong beer, or old port, with your
+cheese--or, if a Scotchman, for a dram--without any other remark than an
+invitation to "try it again, and make yourself comfortable."
+
+After dinner, you are invited, as a young man, to smoke a cigar with the
+"boys," as Joe persists in calling them. You ascend to a bed-room, and
+are requested to keep your head out o' window while smoking, lest the
+"Governor" should snuff the fumes when he comes up stairs to bed: while
+you are "craning" your neck, the cherry-cheeked lass enters with brandy
+and water, and you are as merry and easy as possible. The rest of the
+evening passes away in the same unrestrained interchange of friendly
+courtesy; nor are you permitted to take your leave without a promise to
+dine on the next Sunday or holiday--Mrs Stimpson rating you for not
+coming last Easter Sunday, and declaring she cannot think "why young men
+should mope by themselves, when she is always happy to see them."
+
+Honour to Joe Stimpson and his missus! They have the true _ring_ of the
+ancient coin of hospitality; none of your hollow-sounding _raps_: they
+know they have what I want, _a home_, and they will not allow me, at
+their board, to know that I want one: they compassionate a lonely,
+isolated man, and are ready to share with him the hearty cheer and
+unaffected friendliness of their English fireside: they know that they
+can get nothing by me, nor do they ever dream of an acknowledgment for
+their kindness; but I owe them for many a social day redeemed from
+cheerless solitude; many an hour of strenuous labour do I owe to the
+relaxation of the old wainscotted dining-room at Bermondsey.
+
+Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all who are satisfied with their station,
+happy in their home, have no repinings after empty sounds of rank and
+shows of life; and who extend the hand of friendly fellowship to the
+homeless, _because they have no home_!
+
+
+THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.
+
+     "There is a quantity of talent latent among men, ever rising to
+     the level of the great occasions that call it forth."
+
+This illustration, borrowed by Sir James Mackintosh from chemical
+science, and so happily applied, may serve to indicate the undoubted
+truth, that talent is a _growth_ as much as a _gift_; that circumstances
+call out and develop its latent powers; that as soil, flung upon the
+surface from the uttermost penetrable depths of earth, will be found to
+contain long-dormant germs of vegetable life, so the mind of man, acted
+upon by circumstances, will ever be found equal to a certain sum of
+production--the amount of which will be chiefly determined by the force
+and direction of the external influence which first set it in motion.
+
+The more we reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more,
+that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing
+in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various
+countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that
+example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing
+after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds,
+and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes
+of expression; in brief, that great occasions will have great
+instruments, and there never was yet a noted time that had not noted
+men. Dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial times will make, if they
+do not find, dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial men: in times when
+ostentation and expense are the measures of respect, when men live
+rather for the world's opinion than their own, poverty becomes not only
+the evil but the shame, not only the curse but the disgrace, and will be
+shunned by every man as a pestilence; every one will fling away
+immortality, to avoid it; will sink, as far as he can, his art in his
+trade; and _he_ will be the greatest genius who can turn most money.
+
+It may be urged that true genius has the power not only to _take_
+opportunities, but to make them: true, it may make such opportunities as
+the time in which it lives affords; but these opportunities will be
+great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise.
+All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low
+Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon,
+a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but
+which we take leave to designate the "_dot-and-carry-one_" century. If a
+Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five
+seconds would elapse until he would be "_hooked_" off to the
+station-house by Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D division, with an
+exulting mob of men and boys hooting at his heels: if Demosthenes or
+Cicero, disguised as Chartist orators, mounting a tub at Deptford, were
+to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against
+Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division,
+with a _posse_ of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator
+from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice
+of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
+point of view with any other vagabond.
+
+What is become of the eloquence of the bar? Why is it that flowery
+orators find no grist coming to their mills? How came it that, at
+Westminster Hall, Charles Philips missed his market? What is the reason,
+that if you step into the Queen's Bench, or Common Pleas, or Exchequer,
+you will hear no such thing as a speech--behold no such animal as an
+orator--only a shrewd, plain, hard-working, steady man, called an
+attorney-general, or a sergeant, or a leading counsel, quietly talking
+over a matter of law with the judge, or a matter of fact with the jury,
+like men of business as they are, and shunning, as they would a
+rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments, figures, flowers, and the obsolete
+embroidery of rhetoric?
+
+The days of romantic eloquence are fled--the great constitutional
+questions that called forth "thoughts that breathe, and words that
+burn," from men like Erskine, are _determined_. Would you have men
+oratorical over a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about an action of trespass
+on the case, or a rule to compute?
+
+To be sure, when Follett practised before committees of the House of
+Commons, and, by chance, any question involving points of interest and
+difficulty in Parliamentary law and practice came before the Court,
+there was something worth hearing: the _opportunity_ drew out the _man_,
+and the _orator_ stepped before the _advocate_. Even now, sometimes, it
+is quite refreshing to get a topic in these Courts worthy of Austin, and
+Austin working at it. But no man need go to look for orators in our
+ordinary courts of law; judgment, patience, reading, and that rare
+compound of qualities known and appreciated by the name of _tact_, tell
+with judges, and influence juries; the days of _palaver_ are gone, and
+the talking heroes extinguished for ever.
+
+All this is well known in London; but the three or four millions (it may
+be _five_) of great men, philosophers, poets, orators, patriots, and the
+like, in the rural districts, require to be informed of this our
+declension from the heroics, in order to appreciate, or at least to
+understand, the modesty, sobriety, business-like character, and division
+of labour, in the vast amount of talent abounding in every department of
+life in London.
+
+London overflows with talent. You may compare it, for the purpose of
+illustration, to one of George Robins' patent filters, into which pours
+turbid torrents of Thames water, its sediment, mud, dirt, weeds, and
+rottenness; straining through the various _strata_, its grosser
+particles are arrested in their course, and nothing that is not pure,
+transparent, and limpid is transmitted. In the great filter of London
+life, conceit, pretension, small provincial abilities, _pseudo_-talent,
+_soi-disant_ intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung out again. True
+genius is tested by judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty,
+privation; and, passing through many ordeals, persevering, makes its way
+through all; and at length, in the fulness of time, flows forth, in
+acknowledged purity and refinement, upon the town.
+
+There is a perpetual onward, upward tendency in the talent, both high
+and low, mechanical and intellectual, that abounds in London:
+
+     "Emulation hath a thousand sons,"
+
+who are ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time
+to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but
+step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied--you are
+edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle
+slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to
+be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses
+you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you
+_live_ but while you _labour_, and are no longer remembered than while
+you are reluctant to repose.
+
+Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated
+upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise
+and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although _knowledge_
+diffused immortalizes itself, diffused _talent_ is but a shallow pool,
+glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated; _concentrated_, it
+is a well, from whose depths perpetually may we draw the limpid waters.
+Therefore is the talent of London concentrated, and the division of
+labour minute. When we talk of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, in
+a provincial place, we recognize at once a man who embraces all that his
+opportunities present him with, in whatever department of his
+profession. The lawyer is, at one and the same time, advocate, chamber
+counsel, conveyancer, pleader; the doctor an accoucheur, apothecary,
+physician, surgeon, dentist, or at least, in a greater or less degree,
+unites in his own person, these--in London, distinct and
+separate--professions, according as his sphere of action is narrow or
+extended; the country journalist is sometimes proprietor, editor,
+sub-editor, traveller, and canvasser, or two or more of these
+heterogeneous and incompatible avocations. The result is, an obvious,
+appreciable, and long-established superiority in that product which is
+the result of minutely divided labour.
+
+The manufacture of a London watch or piano will employ, each, at least
+twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers, importers, and venders of the
+raw material used in these articles; every one of these tradesmen shall
+be nay, _must_ be, the best of their class, or at least the best that
+can be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are
+held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment
+enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same
+with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be
+placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor,
+a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to
+understand the case; each of these doctors shall have read lectures and
+published books, and made himself known for his study and exclusive
+attention to one of the "thousand ills that flesh is heir to:" the
+latter shall go through the hands of dozens of men skilful in that
+branch of the law connected with the particular injury. So it is with
+every thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both,
+that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute
+division of labour, and the minute division of labour reacts upon the
+market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs
+of a legitimate superiority.
+
+Hence the superior intelligence of working men, of all classes, high and
+low, in the World of London; hence that striving after excellence, that
+never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that
+so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place; hence the
+improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow;
+hence speculation, enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants of less
+extended spheres of action.
+
+Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent,
+genius, skill, _tact_, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by
+no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better
+classes, stand prominently before their fellows _socially_, or, that one
+is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after anybody in the
+World of London.
+
+In this respect, no capital, no country on the face of the earth,
+resembles us; every where else you will find a leading class, giving a
+tone to society, and moulding it in some one or other direction; a
+predominating _set_, the pride of those who are _in_, the envy of those
+who are _below_ it. There is nothing of this kind in London; here every
+man has his own set, and every man his proper pride. In every set,
+social or professional, there are great names, successful men, prominent;
+but the set is nothing the greater for them: no man sheds any lustre
+upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister a whit more thought of
+because he and Lyndhurst are of the same profession.
+
+Take a look at other places: in money-getting places, you find society
+following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of 'Change: every man
+knows the worth of every other man, that is to say, _what_ he is worth.
+
+A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is _there_ a man good for _so_
+much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten
+thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the
+aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you
+are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to "doing a
+bill."
+
+Go abroad, to Rome for example--You are smothered beneath the petticoats
+of an ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northern courts of
+Europe--You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in
+military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every
+turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing.
+Make your way into Germany--What do you find there? an aristocracy of
+functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von,
+Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von,
+crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess--for the women there
+must be _better_-half even in their titles--you find society led, or, to
+speak more correctly, society _consisting_ of functionaries, and they,
+every office son of them, and their wives--nay, their very curs--alike
+insolent and dependent. "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at
+_me_!" There, to get into society, you must first get into a place: you
+must contrive to be the _servant_ of the public before you are permitted
+to be the _master_: you must be paid by, before you are in a condition
+to despise, the _canaille_.
+
+Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English
+people, as respects the supremacy of honest industry, its independent
+exercise, and the comparative insignificance of aristocracies,
+conventionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there we find a provincial
+and a Parisian aristocracy--the former a servile mob of placemen, one in
+fifty, at least, of the whole population; and the latter--oh! my poor
+head, what a _clanjaffrey_ of _journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes_,
+dramatists, novelists, _vaudivellistes_, poets, literary ladies, lovers
+of literary ladies, _hommes de lettres, claqueurs, littérateurs,
+gérants, censeurs, rapporteurs_, and _le diable boiteux_ verily knows
+what else!
+
+These people, with whom, or at least with a great majority of whom,
+common sense, sobriety of thought, consistency of purpose, steady
+determination in action, and sound reasoning, are so sadly eclipsed by
+their vivacity, _empressement_, prejudice, and party zeal, form a
+prominent, indeed, _the_ prominent aristocracy of the _salons_: and only
+conceive what must be the state of things in France, when we know that
+Paris acts upon the provinces, and that Paris is acted upon by this
+foolscap aristocracy, without station, or, what is perhaps worse,
+enjoying station without property; abounding in maddening and exciting
+influences, but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed,
+_ungenius-like_ qualities of patience, prudence, charity, forbearance,
+and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn nation, more than any other
+in Europe, stands in need.
+
+When, in the name of goodness, is the heart of the philanthropist to be
+gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled over the earth? When are
+paltry family intrigues to cease, causing the blood of innocent
+thousands to be shed? When will the aristocracy of genius in France give
+over jingling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes "_gloire_" and
+"_victoire_," and apply themselves to objects worthy of creatures
+endowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if they must have fighting, if
+it is their nature, if the prime instinct with them is the thirst of
+human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound on their
+fellow-countrymen to war with England, to war with Spain, to war with
+every body, while snug in their offices, doing their little best to
+bleed nations with their pen!
+
+Why does not the foolscap aristocracy rush forth, inkhorn in hand, and
+restore the glories (as they call them) of the Empire, nor pause till
+they mend their pens victorious upon the brink of the Rhine.
+
+To resume: the aristocracies of our provincial capitals are those of
+literature in the one, and lickspittling in the other: mercantile towns
+have their aristocracies of money, or muckworm aristocracies: Rome has
+an ecclesiastical--Prussia, Russia, military aristocracies: Germany, an
+aristocracy of functionaries: France has two, or even three, great
+aristocracies--the military, place-hunting, and foolscap.
+
+Now, then, attend to what we are going to say: London is cursed with no
+predominating, no overwhelming, no _characteristic_ aristocracy. There
+is no _set_ or _clique_ of any sort or description of men that you can
+point to, and say, that's the London set. We turn round and desire to be
+informed what set do you mean: every _salon_ has its set, and every
+pot-house its set also; and the frequenters of each set are neither
+envious of the position of the other, nor dissatisfied with their own:
+the pretenders to fashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of high
+life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel set, who want the proper
+self-respecting pride which every distinct aristocracy maintains in the
+World of London.
+
+We are a great firmament, a moonless azure, glowing with stars of all
+magnitudes, and myriads of _nebulæ_ of no magnitudes at all: we move
+harmoniously in our several orbits, minding our own business, satisfied
+with our position, thinking, it may be, with harmless vanity, that we
+bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all
+terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks,
+are our meteors, our _auroræ_, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
+athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our
+tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our
+clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and
+we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday
+of our own bustling time beholds us dimly; but posterity regards us as
+it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies
+his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial
+bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his _ephemeris_
+such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.
+
+If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order--to
+true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal
+equality of outward condition, that republicanism of everyday life,
+which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather
+honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic
+hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming
+interest.
+
+Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred
+great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small
+talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are never told, as a great
+favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead, the phrenologist, is to be there,
+and that we can have our "bumps" felt for nothing; or that the Chevalier
+Doembrownski (a London pickpocket in disguise) is expected to recite a
+Polish ode, accompanying himself on the Jew's harp; we are not bored
+with the misconduct of the librarian, who _never_ has the first volume
+of the last new novel, or invited to determine whether Louisa Fitzsmythe
+or Angelina Stubbsville deserves to be considered the heroine; we are
+not required to be in raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or Clara Novello
+are expected, or to break our hearts with disappointment because they
+didn't come: the arrival, performances, and departure, of Ducrow's
+horses, or Wombwell's wild beasts, affect us with no extraordinary
+emotion; even Assizes time concerns most of us nothing.
+
+Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace in London is the aristocracy of
+wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a provincial town, keeps her carriage, and
+is at once the envy and the scandal of all the Ladies who have to
+proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr Bill Wright,
+the banker, the respected, respectable, influential, twenty per cent
+Wright, in London is merely a licensed dealer in money; he visits at
+Camberwell Hill, or Hampstead Heath, or wherever other tradesmen of his
+class delight to dwell; his wife and daughters patronize the Polish
+balls, and Mr Bill Wright, jun., sports a stall at the (English) opera;
+we are not overdone by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs Bill Wright, or
+the Misses Bill Wright, nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright the younger: in
+a word, we don't care a crossed cheque for the whole Bill Wrightish
+connexion.
+
+What are carriages, or carriage-keeping people in London? It is not
+here, as in the provinces, by their carriages shall you know them; on
+the contrary, the carriage of a duchess is only distinguishable from
+that of a _parvenu_, by the superior expensiveness and vulgarity of the
+latter.
+
+The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth with us, defeats the end it aims
+at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and
+admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to
+contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once
+recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do
+not, all extrinsic and adventitious expenditure availeth its disbursers
+nothing.
+
+What animal on earth was ever so inhumanly preposterous as a lord
+mayor's footman, and yet it takes sixty guineas, at the least, to make
+that poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?
+
+No, sir; in London we see into, and see through, all sorts of
+pretension: the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever kind of quackery
+and imposture. When I say _we_, I speak of the vast multitudes forming
+the educated, discriminating, and thinking classes of London life. We
+pass on to _what_ a man _is_, over _who_ he is, and what he _has_; and,
+with one of the most accurate observers of human character and nature to
+whom a man of the world ever sat for his portrait--the inimitable La
+Bruyere--when offended with the hollow extravagance of vulgar riches, we
+exclaim--"_Tu te trompes, Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant, ce
+grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent, et ces six bêtes qui te
+trainent, tu penses qu'on t'en estime d'avantage: ou ecarte tout cet
+attirail qui t'est étranger, pour pénétrer jusq'a toi qui n'es qu'un
+fat_."
+
+In London, every man is responsible for himself, and his position is the
+consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist,
+or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society
+in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his
+private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity.
+Society marks the line between the _public_ and the _social_ man; and
+this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England,
+will enable a public man to confound.
+
+Wherever you are invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by
+any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great
+man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some
+quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small
+tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent
+excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form
+the Cockney school proper of art, literature, the drama, every thing;
+and they go about seeking praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects, with
+their mouths wide open; they pursue their prey in troops, like Jackals,
+and like them, utter at all times a melancholy, complaining howl; they
+imagine that the world is in a conspiracy not to admire them, and they
+would bring an action against the world if they could. But as that is
+impossible, they are content to rail against the world in good set
+terms; they are always puffing in the papers, but in a side-winded way,
+yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly,
+monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention.
+They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they
+admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears
+to the rest of mankind.
+
+These are the men who cultivate extensive tracts of forehead, and are
+deeply versed in the effective display of depending ringlets and
+ornamental whiskers; they dress in black, with white _chokers_, and you
+will be sure to find a lot of them at evening parties of the middling
+sort of doctors, or the better class of boarding-houses.
+
+This class numbers not merely literary men, but actors, artists,
+adventuring politicians, small scientifics, and a thousand others, who
+have not energy or endurance to work their way in solitary labour, or
+who feel that they do not possess the power to go alone.
+
+Public men in London appear naked at the bar of public opinion; laced
+coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail nothing, because these things
+are common, and have the common fate of common things, to be cheaply
+estimated. The eye is satiated with them, they come like shadows, so
+depart; but they do not feed the eye of the mind; the understanding is
+not the better for such gingerbread; we are compelled to look out for
+some more substantial nutriment, and we try the inward man, and test his
+capacity. Instead of measuring his bumps, like a landsurveyor, we
+dissect his brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, whether he be
+high or low, in whatever department of life, not by what he says he can
+do, or means to do, but by what he _has_ done. By this test is every man
+of talent tried in London; this is his grand, his formal difficulty, to
+get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into
+circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by
+the _ring_ of the customer and the _bite_ of the critic; for the
+opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to _wedge_ in, the
+_purchase_ whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on
+the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of
+praise, he must await the long winter of "hope deferred" passing away.
+Patience, the _courage_ of the man of talent, he must exert for many a
+dreary and unrewarded day; he must see the quack and the pretender lead
+an undiscerning public by the nose, and say nothing; nor must he exult
+when the too-long enduring public at length kicks the pretender and the
+quack into deserved oblivion. From many a door that will hereafter
+gladly open for him, he must be content to be presently turned away.
+Many a scanty meal, many a lonely and unfriended evening, in this vast
+wilderness, must he pass in trying on his armour, and preparing himself
+for the fight that he still believes _will_ come, and in which his
+spirit, strong within him, tells him he must conquer. While the night
+yet shrouds him he must labour, and with patient, and happily for him,
+if, with religious hope, he watch the first faint glimmerings of the
+dawning day; for his day, if he is worthy to behold it, will come, and
+he will yet be recompensed "by that time and chance which happeneth to
+all." And if his heart fails him, and his coward spirit turns to flee,
+often as he sits, tearful, in the solitude of his chamber, will the
+remembrance of the early struggles of the immortals shame that coward
+spirit. The shade of the sturdy Johnson, hungering, dinnerless, will
+mutely reproach him for sinking thus beneath the ills that the
+"scholar's life assail." The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith, pursued
+to the gates of a prison by a mercenary wretch who fattened upon the
+produce of that lovely mind, smiling upon him, will bid him be of good
+cheer. A thousand names, that fondly live in the remembrance of our
+hearts, will he conjure up, and all will tell the same story of early
+want, and long neglect, and lonely friendlessness. Then will reproach
+himself, saying, "What am I, that I should quail before the misery that
+broke not minds like these? What am I, that I should be exempt from the
+earthly fate of the immortals?"
+
+Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power
+has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation,
+difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should
+come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent
+assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and
+friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others
+in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude
+of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the
+unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who,
+successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques,
+coteries, and _conversazionés_, and all the littleness of inferior fry:
+that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or
+that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should
+live for and with such men alone.
+
+But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of
+_pseudo_ talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt,
+miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou
+father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast
+thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the
+schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and
+contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged
+cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and
+the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of
+managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and _claqueurs_,
+and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence
+bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of
+contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute
+necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a
+pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the
+coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O
+Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:--Time misspent, industry
+misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently
+applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions,
+solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!
+
+True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives
+to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no _social_ pre-eminence,
+nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we
+may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all
+other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of
+themselves: they are _individually_ admired, not worshipped as a
+congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their
+public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his
+closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar,
+the man of rank, the politician, the _millionaire_, must merge in the
+gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own
+person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or
+submitted to any where else.
+
+The rewards of intellectual labour applied to purposes of remote, or not
+immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the
+loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be
+worth mentioning, and pity 'tis that it should be so. The law, the
+church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair
+and legitimate remuneration for independent labour, but they have their
+several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward
+when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure
+of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigour crave some haven
+of repose, or, at the least, some mitigated toil, with greater security
+of income: some place of honour with repose--the ambition of declining
+years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and
+other professions in this country, has often been insisted upon with
+great reason: it has been said, and truly said, that not only do these
+prizes reward merit already passed through its probationary stages, but
+serve as inducements to all who are pursuing the same career. It is not
+so much the example of the prize-holder, as the _prize_, that stimulates
+men onward and upward: without the hope of reaching one of those
+comfortable stations, hope would be extinguished, talent lie fallow,
+energy be limited to the mere attainment of subsistence; great things
+would not be done, or attempted, and we would behold only a dreary level
+of indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true of professions, in which,
+after a season of severe study, a term of probation, the knowledge
+acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of
+every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force
+will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is
+perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is
+considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own
+pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and
+figures!
+
+A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the
+conveyancer, the equity craftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of
+that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is
+liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy
+throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect
+the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labour to make a
+respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years
+sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the
+hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power
+exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a
+recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes
+the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of
+course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with,
+recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his
+success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and
+pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of
+a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling
+weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion.
+
+For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox,
+humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set
+himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should
+preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor
+understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on
+respectably. If he is ambitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, he
+must have been a free-thinking reviewer, have written pamphlets, or made
+a fuss about the Greek particle, or, what will avail him more than all,
+have been tutor to a minister of state.
+
+Thus you perceive, for men whose education is _intellectual_, but whose
+practice is more or less _mechanical_, you have many great,
+intermediate, and little prizes in the lottery of life; but where, on
+the contrary, are the prizes for the historian, transmitting to
+posterity the events, and men, and times long since past; where the
+prize of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic, the epic, or the lyric
+poet, the essayist, and all whose works are likely to become the
+classics of future times; where the prize of the public journalist, who
+points the direction of public opinion, and, himself without place,
+station, or even name, teaches Governments their duty, and prevents
+Ministers of State becoming, by hardihood or ignorance, intolerable
+evils; where the prize of the great artist, who has not employed himself
+making faces for hire, but who has worked in loneliness and isolation,
+living, like Barry, upon raw apples and cold water, that he might
+bequeath to his country some memorial worthy the age in which he lived,
+and the art _for_ which he lived? For these men, and such as these, are
+no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful country sets apart for them
+no places where they can retire in the full enjoyment of their fame;
+condemned to labour for their bread, not in a dull mechanical routine of
+professional, official, or business-like duties, but in the most severe,
+most wearing of all labour, _the labour of the brain_, they end where
+they begun. With struggling they begin life, with struggling they make
+their way in life, with struggling they end life; poverty drives away
+friends, and reputation multiplies enemies. The man whose thoughts will
+become the thoughts of our children, whose minds will be reflected in
+the mirror of _his_ mind, who will store in their memories his household
+words, and carry his lessons in their hearts, dies not unwillingly, for
+he has nothing in life to look forward to; closes with indifference his
+eyes on a prospect where no gleam of hope sheds its sunlight on the
+broken spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble friends to a lowly
+sepulchre, and the newspapers of some days after give us the following
+paragraph:--
+
+"We regret to be obliged to state that Dr ----, or ---- ----, Esq. (as
+the case may be) died, on Saturday last at his lodgings two pair back in
+Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his cottage (a miserable cabin where he
+retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is our melancholy duty to
+inform our readers that this highly gifted and amiable man, who for so
+many years delighted and improved the town, and who was a most strenuous
+supporter of the (Radical or Conservative) cause, (_it is necessary to
+set forth this miserable statement to awaken the gratitude of faction
+towards the family of the dead_,) has left a rising family totally
+unprovided for. We are satisfied that it is only necessary to allude to
+this distressing circumstance, in order to enlist the sympathies, &c.
+&c., (in short, _to get up a subscription_)."
+
+We confess we are at a loss to understand why the above advertisement
+should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted with only the interpolation
+of name and date, when any man dies who has devoted himself to pursuits
+of a purely intellectual character. Nor are we unable to discover in the
+melancholy, and, as it would seem, unavoidable fates of such men,
+substantial grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy of talent to
+the pursuit of professional distinction, accompanied by profit, of which
+our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to
+suffer, the consequences.
+
+In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of
+the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite
+as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to
+pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on
+the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will
+be inadequate to maintain the energies even of _great_ minds, in a
+contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any
+man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual
+treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with
+unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse
+than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and
+dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite
+clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for
+merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that
+can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent
+should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their
+subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or
+that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to
+derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never
+extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by
+unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.
+
+We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very
+heartily bid them farewell.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST LAMB.
+
+BY DELTA.
+
+    A shepherd laid upon his bed,
+    With many a sigh, his aching head,
+    For him--his favourite boy--on whom
+    Had fallen death, a sudden doom.
+    "But yesterday," with sobs he cried,
+    "Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,
+    Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,
+    Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!
+    It cannot be that thou art gone;
+    It cannot be, that now, alone,
+    A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,
+    Whilst thou within its bosom lie?
+    Methinks I see thee smiling there,
+    With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,
+    As thou were wont, when fondling me,
+    To clasp my neck from off my knee!
+    Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,
+    My boy, or else my heart will break!"
+
+    Each adding to that father's woes,
+    A thousand bygone scenes arose;
+    At home--a field--each with its joy,
+    Each with its smile--and all his boy!
+    Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,
+    With darkness and with doubt opprest;
+    Now sank despondent, while amain
+    Unnerving tears fell down like rain:
+    Air--air--he breathed, yet wanted breath--
+    It was not life--it was not death--
+    But the drear agony between,
+    Where all is heard, and felt, and seen--
+    The wheels of action set ajar;
+    The body with the soul at war.
+    'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find
+    A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;
+    Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went--
+    The noon from midnight's azure tent
+    Shone down, and, with serenest light,
+    Flooded the windless plains of night;
+    The lake in its clear mirror show'd
+    Each little star that twinkling glow'd;
+    Aspens, that quiver with a breath,
+    Were stirless in that hush of death;
+    The birds were nestled in their bowers;
+    The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;
+    Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven
+    A while its sinless calm had given
+    To lower regions, lest despair
+    Should make abode for ever there;
+    So tranquil--so serene--so bright--
+    Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.
+
+    O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,
+    His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;
+    And, placid, in that calm profound,
+    His silent flocks lay slumbering round:
+    With flowing mantle, by his side,
+    Sudden, a stranger he espied,
+    Bland was his visage, and his voice
+    Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.--
+    "Why is thy mourning thus?" he said,
+    "Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?
+    Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so
+    Abroad despairing thou dost go?
+    As if the God who gave thee breath,
+    Held not the keys of life and death!
+    When from the flocks that feed about,
+    A single lamb thou choosest out,
+    Is it not that which seemeth best
+    That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?
+    Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,
+    With his choice little ones below
+    Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks
+    Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,
+    Early, ere sin hath render'd dim
+    The image of the seraphim!"
+
+    Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;
+    Again within his bosom burn'd
+    The light of faith; and, from that day,
+    He trode serene life's onward way.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+COMTE.
+
+     _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, par M. Auguste Comte.
+
+
+It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work,
+written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of
+truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the
+mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate
+views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a
+thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the
+more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had
+passed over its surface. Some such experience have we just had. Our
+Conservative principles, our calm and patient manner of viewing things,
+have rarely received a stronger corroboration than from the perusal or
+the extraordinary work of M. Comte--a work written, assuredly, for no
+such comfortable purpose, but for the express object (so far as we can
+at present state it to our readers) of re-organizing political society,
+by means of an intellectual reformation amongst political thinkers.
+
+We would not be thought to throw an idle sneer at those generous hopes
+of the future destiny of society which have animated some of the noblest
+and most vigorous minds. It is no part of a Conservative philosophy to
+doubt on the broad question of the further and continuous improvement of
+mankind. Nor will the perusal of M. Comte's work induce, or permit, such
+a doubt. But while he leaves with his reader a strong impression of the
+unceasing development of social man, he leaves a still stronger
+impression of the futile or mischievous efforts of those--himself
+amongst the number--who are thrusting themselves forward as the peculiar
+and exclusive advocates of progress and improvement. He exhibits himself
+in the attitude of an innovator, as powerless in effect as he is daring
+to design; whilst, at the same time, he deals a _crashing_ blow (as upon
+rival machinators) on that malignant party in European politics, whether
+it call itself liberal or of the movement, whose most distinct aim seems
+to be to unloose men from the bonds of civil government. We, too,
+believe in the silent, irresistible progress of human society, but we
+believe also that he is best working for posterity, as well as for the
+welfare of his contemporaries, who promotes order and tranquil effort in
+his own generation, by means of those elements of order which his own
+generation supplies.
+
+That which distinguishes M. Comte's work from all other courses of
+philosophy, or treatises upon science, is the attempt to reduce to
+the _scientific method_ of cogitation the affairs of human
+society--morality, politics; in short, all those general topics which
+occupy our solitary and perplexed meditation, or sustain the incessant
+strife of controversy. These are to constitute a new science, to be
+called _Social Physics_, or _Sociology_. To apply the Baconian, or, as
+it is here called, the positive method, to man in all phases of his
+existence--to introduce the same fixed, indissoluble, imperturbable
+order in our ideas of morals, politics, and history, that we attain to
+astronomy and mechanics, is the bold object of his labours. He does not
+here set forth a model of human society based on scientific conclusions;
+something of this kind is promised us in a future work; in the present
+undertaking he is especially anxious to compel us to think on all such
+topics in the scientific method, _and in no other_. For be it known,
+that science is not only weak in herself, and has been hitherto
+incompetent to the task of unravelling the complicate proceedings of
+humanity, but she has also a great rival in the form of theologic
+method, wherein the mind seeks a solution for its difficulties in a
+power above nature. The human being has contracted an inveterate habit
+of viewing itself as standing in a peculiar relation to a supreme
+Architect and Governor of the world--a habit which in many ways, direct
+and indirect, interferes, it seems, with the application of the positive
+method. This habit is to be corrected; such supreme Architect and
+Governor is to be dismissed from the imagination of men; science is to
+supply the sole mode of thought, and humanity to be its only object.
+
+We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary book, and this is an epithet
+which our readers are already fully prepared to apply. But the book, in
+our judgment, is extraordinary in more senses than one. It is as
+remarkable for the great mental energy it displays, for its originality
+and occasional profundity of thought, as it is for the astounding
+conclusions to which it would conduct us, for its bold paradoxes, and
+for what we can designate no otherwise than its egregious errors. As a
+discipline of the mind, so far as a full appreciation is concerned of
+the scientific method, it cannot be read without signal advantage. The
+book is altogether an anomaly; exhibiting the strangest mixture that
+ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual
+power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither
+does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and
+destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned.
+Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how
+they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our
+intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal
+temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure,
+will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills
+move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and
+be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and
+stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.
+
+For the _style_ of M. Comte's work, it is not commendable. The
+philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for
+excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so
+remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of
+writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which
+characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are
+occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices
+of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the
+great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow
+distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them
+of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and
+the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its
+prolixity, has become intolerable.
+
+Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features,
+remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising
+hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a
+manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers
+will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors--supposing we
+are capable of coping with them--are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as
+we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics,
+eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar
+vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to
+preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more
+calculated to render us content with an _empirical_ condition of
+tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here
+presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to
+substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the
+social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley
+of human thought. Upon that portion of the _Cours de Philosophie
+Positive_ which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not
+intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our
+limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M.
+Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any
+justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the
+subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.
+
+And first, as to the title of the work, _Philosophie Positive_, which
+has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons
+which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words;
+they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been
+given of the object he had in view.
+
+     "There is doubtless," he says, in his _Avertissement_, "a close
+     resemblance between my _Philosophie Positive_, and what the
+     English, especially since the days of Newton, understand by
+     _Natural Philosophy_. But I would not adopt this last
+     expression, any more than that of _Philosophy of the Sciences_,
+     which would have perhaps been still more precise, because
+     neither of these has yet been extended to all orders of
+     phenomena, whilst _Philosophie Positive_, in which I comprehend
+     the study of the social phenomena, as well as all others,
+     designs a uniform manner of reasoning applicable to all
+     subjects on which the human mind can be exerted. Besides which,
+     the expression _Natural Philosophy_ is employed in England to
+     denote the aggregate of the several sciences of observation,
+     considered even in their most minute details; whereas, by the
+     title of _Philosophie Positive_, I intimate, with regard to the
+     several positive sciences, a study of them only in their
+     generalities, conceiving them as submitted to a uniform method,
+     and forming the different parts of a general plan of research.
+     The term which I have been led to construct is, therefore, at
+     once more extended and more restricted than other
+     denominations, which are so far similar that they have
+     reference to the same fundamental class of ideas."
+
+This very announcement of M. Comte's intention to comprehend in his
+course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels
+us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application
+of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free
+agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional
+interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a
+manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it
+be possible to make of the affairs of society--legislation and politics,
+for instance--a department of science?
+
+The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of
+enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt
+hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that
+to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and
+dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content
+ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal
+facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of
+qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in
+the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the
+statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of
+guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing
+them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still
+more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in
+his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in
+under his conclusions _all_ the political truths he is master of! He
+reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the
+usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone
+to others of more extensive or more urgent application.
+
+But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the
+task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the
+half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only
+prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is
+here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict
+application of _the method_. There is, however, one essential,
+distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in
+the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same
+scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world
+that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and
+incessant _developement_ which humanity has displayed, and is still
+displaying. Who can tell us that that _experience_ on which a fixed and
+positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From
+age to age that experience is enlarging.
+
+In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and
+continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears
+new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable
+sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of
+childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not
+the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we
+possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before
+a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism,
+notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself,
+and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this
+department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is
+otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at
+work--has a progressive movement--_grows_ from age to age. He discovers,
+he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor;
+his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here
+_new facts_ are actually from time to time starting into existence; new
+elements are introduced into society, which science could not have
+foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have
+been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of
+speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey
+society, a _creator_. In short, that stability in the order of events,
+that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science
+depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such
+degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or
+developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the
+scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us,
+but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but
+half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts _we are_ in
+our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some
+extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need
+to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but
+variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand
+such a race as ours.
+
+What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of
+society than that of property?--a law which so justly governs all our
+political reasonings, and determines the character of our political
+measures the most prospective--a law which M. Comte has not failed
+himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of
+demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so
+that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress?
+That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in
+the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of
+property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all
+regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as
+far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the
+basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it
+must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in
+man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a
+quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we
+should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our
+proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted.
+Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been
+manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the
+individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the
+participated prosperity of the general body--where the good of the whole
+should be felt as the interest of each. _How_ such a principle is to be
+established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that
+no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the
+circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and
+establish such a principle--this is what no scientific mind would
+venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of
+activity, nor need it, nor _can_ it, pass beyond that sphere. We know
+that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an
+attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we
+know this also, that _at no time_ can its opposite principle be
+established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous
+harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where
+it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our
+convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no
+confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different
+principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be
+intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for
+their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?
+
+"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the
+impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of
+his age--"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of
+ancient times, (_la plus forte tête de toute l'antiquité_,) could not
+conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable
+abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."--Vol. iv.
+p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a
+fundamental law.
+
+There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which
+bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot
+now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the
+comparative _happiness_ of the savage and the civilized man. He will not
+entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and
+contents himself with asserting the fuller _development_ of his nature
+displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale
+for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was
+there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of
+our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind--of
+the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are,
+for the most part, practically decided by those who have to _feel_; but
+to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the
+task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to
+establish a _standard measure_ for human felicity.
+
+We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science.
+A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the
+examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the
+moralist, the jurist, and the politician--though it is worthy of
+observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some
+measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently
+and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author,
+for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental
+law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of
+this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of
+a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will
+not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of
+society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which
+secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and
+obeyed.
+
+With relation to the _past_, and in one point of view--namely, so far as
+regards the development of man in his speculative career--our
+Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the
+peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific
+survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the
+threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a _new law_,
+which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest
+state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M.
+Comte's system--as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work--as
+it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific
+manner--as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to
+explain the _provisional existence_ of all theology, explaining it in
+the past, and removing it from the future--it becomes necessary to enter
+into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers'
+attention to the following statement of it:--
+
+     "In studying the entire development of the human intelligence
+     in its different spheres of activity, from its first efforts
+     the most simple up to our own days, I believe I have discovered
+     a great fundamental law, to which it is subjected by an
+     invariable necessity, and which seems to me capable of being
+     firmly established, whether on those proofs which are furnished
+     by a knowledge of our organization, or on those historical
+     verifications which result from an attentive examination of the
+     past. The law consists in this--that each of our principal
+     conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively
+     through three different states of theory: the _theologic_, or
+     fictitious; the _metaphysic_, or abstract; the scientific, or
+     _positive_. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature,
+     employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods
+     of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially
+     different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic
+     method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method.
+     Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of
+     conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually
+     exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point
+     of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite
+     state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of
+     transition.
+
+     "In the _theologic_ state, the human mind, directing its
+     researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes
+     and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its
+     attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things,
+     represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct
+     and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less
+     numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the
+     apparent anomalies of the universe.
+
+     "In the _metaphysic_ state, which is, in its essence, a
+     modification of the former, the supernatural agents are
+     displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
+     abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of
+     engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena--whose
+     explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its
+     corresponding entity.
+
+     "At last, in the _positive_ state the human mind, recognizing
+     the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
+     search after the origin and destination of the universe, and
+     the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
+     itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of
+     ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is
+     to say, their invariable relations of succession and of
+     similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real
+     terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established
+     between the various individual phenomena and certain general
+     facts, the number of which the progress of science tends
+     continually to diminish.
+
+     "The _theologic_ system has reached the highest state of
+     perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted
+     the providential action of one only being for the capricious
+     agency of the numerous independent divinities who had
+     previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the
+     _metaphysic_ system consists in conceiving, instead of the
+     different special entities, one great general entity, _nature_,
+     considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection
+     of the _positive_ system, towards which it unceasingly tends,
+     though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be
+     the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular
+     cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of
+     gravitation."--Vol. I. p. 5.
+
+After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the
+necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early
+period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought
+whatever, he proceeds thus:--
+
+     "It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to
+     proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass
+     abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the
+     _theologic_ to the _positive_ philosophy. Theology and physics
+     are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a
+     character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one
+     to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of
+     intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that
+     very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the
+     natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no
+     other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena,
+     for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity
+     residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely
+     as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by
+     degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of
+     these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they
+     are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but
+     the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what
+     other process our understanding could pass from considerations
+     purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the
+     theologic to the positive _régime_."--P. 13.
+
+We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition
+that theology is not the _last_, as well as the _first_, of our forms of
+thought--against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work,
+made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its
+appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great
+argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of
+theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous
+for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more
+displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject,
+though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified
+by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought
+conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with
+this protest, and with adding--as a fact of experience, which, in
+estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted
+on--that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident.
+Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation
+requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great
+article of religion--that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the
+remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times,
+men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to
+the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact
+that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their
+inductive labours by assigning that _unity_ and _correlation_ which
+science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining
+intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in
+this age to find a reflective man who does not read _thought_ in this
+unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in
+some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to
+see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference
+of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to
+blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating
+this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.
+
+Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration
+of the _new law_. That there is, in the statement here made of the
+course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of
+truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be
+traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be
+at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling
+of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have
+welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a
+_law_--a scientific law--which from its nature admits of no exception;
+at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of
+necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some
+branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be
+understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in
+cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely
+difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they
+bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application
+of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on
+this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find
+the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically
+speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger
+commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"--that,
+in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and
+proportions, both _theologic_ and _positive_.
+
+What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the _succession_ of these
+several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here
+called the positive method of thought is not equally _spontaneous_ to
+the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its
+development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its
+complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and
+an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified,
+or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have
+been a portion of his experience entertained merely _as experience_. The
+very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a
+practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces
+observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a
+theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on
+the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The
+rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates
+the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and
+then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
+
+Or does M. Comte mean this only--which we presume to be the case--that
+these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to
+maturity? If so, what necessity for this _metaphysic_ apparatus for the
+sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive
+and theological, has its independent source, and is equally
+spontaneous--if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though
+in different stages of development, the function attributed to the
+metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it;
+there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law
+of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of
+invariable sequence, between the phenomena?
+
+Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his
+two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between
+which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are _not_
+equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature
+precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition,
+it would follow--since the mind, or _organization_, of man remains from
+age to age the same in its fundamental powers--that, at this very time,
+no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of
+knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic.
+Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be
+eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a
+theology of the rudest description--a result certainly not contemplated
+by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they _are_ equally
+spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we
+repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed
+to the _metaphysic_ of effectuating a transition between them? And how
+can we describe that as a scientific _law_ in which there is confessedly
+no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The
+statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or
+laws, capable of explaining it.
+
+Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in
+a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps,
+concluded that this author could not have here required their assent,
+strictly speaking, to a _law_, but that he used the term vaguely, as
+many writers have done--meaning nothing more by it than a course of
+events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this
+impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth
+contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed
+M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he
+requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the
+recognized laws of science--to that of gravitation for instance, to
+which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his
+work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think
+what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could
+not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social
+science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the
+past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at
+once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates
+our mundane affairs.
+
+It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of
+the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto
+unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival
+in the field--theology--which, besides imparting its own supernatural
+tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions.
+Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those
+tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly
+above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule
+absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by
+explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is
+destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate,
+it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or
+has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure--otherwise
+it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the
+office which the law of development we have just considered is intended
+to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must
+now leave our readers to decide.
+
+Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and
+exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect
+the _hierarchy_, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several
+sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most
+intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish
+from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as
+seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review
+of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and
+independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which
+presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage
+of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge
+acquired in the one preceding.
+
+     "The positive philosophy," he tells us, "falls naturally into
+     five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of
+     succession is determined by the necessary or invariable
+     subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions)
+     of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics,
+     (_la physique_,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social
+     physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the
+     most abstract, the most remote from humanity; they influence
+     all others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena
+     considered by the last are, on the contrary, the most
+     complicated, the most concrete, the most directly interesting
+     to man; they depend more or less on all the preceding
+     phenomena, without exercising on them any influence. Between
+     these two extremes, the degrees of speciality, of complication
+     and personality, of phenomena, gradually increase, as well as
+     their successive dependence."--Vol. I. p. 96.
+
+The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt
+out of this _hierarchy_? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are
+wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit--where are
+they? They are dismissed from their labours--their place is occupied by
+others--and what was considered as having substance and reality in their
+proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist
+is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto
+an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician,
+with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte
+considers the _mind_ as one of those abstract entities which it is the
+first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man,
+of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his
+_mind_. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the _metaphysic_
+stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory
+psychology, the last transformation of theology!"--though, by the way,
+so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the
+_metaphysic_ condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old,
+quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether
+M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not
+stay to discuss--it were too wide a question; but thus much we can
+briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as
+underrates, the _kind of research_ to which psychologists are addicted.
+As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole
+passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of
+demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole
+class of Parisian _savans_, added something to the piquancy of the
+style?
+
+     "Such has gradually become, since the time of Bacon, the
+     preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present
+     assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even
+     which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians
+     devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to
+     delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting
+     their doctrines as founded also upon the observation of facts.
+     For this purpose they have, in these later times, attempted to
+     distinguish, by a very singular subtilty, two sorts of
+     observations of equal importance, the one external, the other
+     internal; the last of which is exclusively destined for the
+     study of intellectual phenomena. This is not the place to enter
+     into the special discussion of this sophism. I will limit
+     myself to indicate the principal consideration, which clearly
+     proves that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by
+     itself, is a pure illusion.
+
+     "Not a long while ago men imagined they had explained vision by
+     saying that the luminous action of bodies produces on the
+     retina pictures representative of external forms and colours.
+     To this the physiologists [query, the _physiologists_] have
+     objected, with reason, that if it was _as images_ that the
+     luminous impressions acted, there needed another eye within the
+     eye to behold them. Does not a similar objection hold good
+     still more strikingly in the present case?
+
+     "It is clear, in fact, from an invincible necessity, that the
+     human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own.
+     For by whom can the observation be made? It is conceivable
+     that, relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe himself in
+     regard to the passions which animate him, from this anatomical
+     reason, that the organs which are the seat of them are distinct
+     from those destined to the function of observation. Though each
+     man has had occasion to make on himself such observations, yet
+     they can never have any great scientific importance; and the
+     best means of knowing the passions will be always to observe
+     them without; [_indeed_!] for every state of passion very
+     energetic--that is to say, precisely those which it would be
+     most essential to examine, are necessarily incompatible with
+     the state of observation. But as to observing in the same
+     manner intellectual phenomena, while they are proceeding, it is
+     manifestly impossible. The thinking individual cannot separate
+     himself in two parts, of which the one shall reason, and the
+     other observe it reasoning. The organ observed and the organ
+     observing being in this case identical, how can observation be
+     carried on?
+
+     "This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd.
+     And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory
+     it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you
+     to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external
+     sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every
+     intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in
+     making the most simple calculation, what would become of your
+     _internal_ observation? On the other hand, after having thus,
+     by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of
+     intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in
+     contemplating the operations passing in your mind--while there
+     is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one
+     day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the
+     stage."--P. 34.
+
+They seem transferred to the stage already--so completely burlesqued is
+the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does
+not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember
+previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual
+effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no
+difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being
+much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of
+objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them,
+in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering,
+in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness
+to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate,
+this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in
+search--something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be
+applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary
+course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply
+pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences;
+observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but
+which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human
+being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology,
+let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as
+speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of
+the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone
+that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so
+exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the
+fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately
+absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which
+at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so
+far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his
+consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And
+how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the
+cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of
+craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal
+observations which he is pleased here to deride?
+
+His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several
+received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous,
+application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a
+portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall
+we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before
+opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will
+not be beside our object to take a glance at the _method_ itself, as
+applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it
+is called--to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.
+
+We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of
+the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated
+mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline--to make room
+for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid
+waste.
+
+Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of
+their succession--such is the material of science. All enquiry into
+causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory;
+the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed,
+perhaps, to have a meaning--such is the supreme dictate of the method,
+and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is
+the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities,
+than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard
+from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen,
+gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying
+experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The
+museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to
+another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as
+strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls
+through space--ask not how!--the mathematician will tell you at what
+rate it flies--let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations
+are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous
+transformations--the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of
+proportions--names and figures both--_why_ these transmutations take
+place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from
+the earth, and _grow_, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with
+delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask
+what is _life?_ Science will generalize the fact to you--give you its
+formula for the expression of _growth, decomposition, and
+recomposition_, under circumstances not as yet very accurately
+collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since
+stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such
+subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it
+needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain!
+Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his
+formula of decomposition and recomposition. As _attraction_ in the
+planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical
+expression, so _life_ in the plant is to be known only as decomposition
+and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it
+as such--no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall
+tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will
+believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will
+believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something
+I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what
+life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks
+why? Child! I respond, that the hands _do_ move is an ultimate fact--so,
+represent it to yourself--and here, moreover, is the law of their
+movement--the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter
+revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you--more you
+cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye
+upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.
+
+But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this
+beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth--what is
+this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined
+motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing,
+seeking, this way and that, its pasture?--what have we here?
+_Irritability and a tissue._ Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the
+philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself--what is this?
+_Sensation and a nerve._ Does the nerve _feel_? you inconsiderately ask,
+or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which
+sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the
+philosopher. _There is sensation_--you cannot express the fact in
+simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope,
+on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask
+not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of
+ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the
+thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more
+perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to
+have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the
+surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something
+else within him, _think_?--does the organization of that worm, or
+something else within it, _feel_?--they are virtually the same
+questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science.
+Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like
+sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we
+can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with
+me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with
+which it is, or _was_, connected.
+
+All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this _method_,
+for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it
+imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and
+well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that
+leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of
+steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem,
+by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to
+Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on
+earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it
+rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable
+abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our
+intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the
+fantastic, inexplicable interval.
+
+We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of
+_Physique Social_. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if
+our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall
+reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the
+work--perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole--where, in order
+to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte
+enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more
+or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being
+to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of
+organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the
+purpose of exposition will allow:--
+
+     "It is impossible to deny that the political world is
+     intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of
+     _order_ are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of
+     religious and military power, regarded especially in its
+     constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the
+     philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents
+     incontestably the _theologic_ state of the social science. All
+     our ideas of _progress_ continue to be exclusively deduced from
+     a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from
+     Protestantism, has taken in the last age its final form and
+     complete development; the doctrines of which constitute, in
+     reality, the _metaphysic_ state of politics. Different classes
+     of society adopt the one or the other of these, just as they
+     are disposed to feel chiefly the want of conservation or that
+     of amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these antagonist
+     doctrines present themselves in all their plenitude, and with
+     their primitive homogeneity; they are found less and less in
+     this form, except in minds purely speculative. But the
+     monstrous medley which men attempt in our days of their
+     incompatible principles, cannot evidently be endowed with any
+     virtue foreign to the elements which compose it, and tends
+     only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.
+
+     "However pernicious may be at present the theologic doctrine,
+     no true philosophy can forget that the formation and first
+     development of modern societies were accomplished under its
+     benevolent tutelage; which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate
+     in the historical portion of this work. But it is not the less
+     incontestably true that, for about three centuries, its
+     influence has been, amongst the nations most advanced,
+     essentially retrograde, notwithstanding the partial services it
+     has throughout that period rendered. It would be superfluous to
+     enter here into a special discussion of this doctrine, in order
+     to show its extreme insufficiency at the present day. The
+     deplorable absence of all sound views of social organization
+     can alone account for the absurd project of giving, in these
+     times, for the support of social order, a political system
+     which has already been found unable to sustain itself before
+     the spontaneous progress of intelligence and of society. The
+     historical analysis which we shall subsequently institute of
+     the successive changes which have gradually brought about the
+     entire dissolution of the catholic and feudal system, will
+     demonstrate, better than any direct argument, its radical and
+     irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other
+     method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than
+     by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable
+     proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when
+     hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and
+     attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence,
+     to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial
+     for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration,
+     and the character, are all left equally obscure."...--P.14
+
+     "In a point of view strictly logical, the social problem might
+     be stated thus:--construct a doctrine that shall be so
+     rationally conceived that it shall be found, as it develops
+     itself, to be still always consistent with its own principles.
+     Neither of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition,
+     even by the rudest approximation. Both display numerous and
+     direct contradictions, and on important points. By this alone
+     their utter insufficiency is clearly exhibited. The doctrine
+     which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be
+     recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it
+     is an _intellectual reorganization_ that is first wanted--a
+     re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our
+     social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation.
+     Should this regeneration be accomplished in one intelligence
+     only, (and such must necessarily be its manner of
+     commencement,) its extension would be certain; for the number
+     of intelligences to be convinced can have no influence except
+     as a question of time. I shall not fail to point out, when the
+     proper opportunity arrives, the eminent superiority, in this
+     respect, of the positive philosophy, which, once extended to
+     social phenomena, will necessarily combine the ideas of men in
+     a strict and complete manner, which in no other way can be
+     attained."--P. 20.
+
+M. Comte then mentions some of the inconsistencies of the theologic
+school.
+
+     "Analyze, for example, the vain attempts, so frequently renewed
+     during two centuries by so many distinguished minds, to
+     subordinate, according to the theologic formula, reason to
+     faith; it is easy to recognize the radical contradiction this
+     attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme
+     judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of
+     which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid
+     decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic
+     school, the illustrious _De Maistre_, himself affords a proof,
+     as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction
+     in his philosophy, when, renouncing all theologic weapons, he
+     labours in his principal work to re-establish the Papal
+     supremacy on purely historical and political reasonings,
+     instead of limiting himself to command it by right divine--the
+     only mode in true harmony with such a doctrine, and which a
+     mind, at another epoch, would not certainly have hesitated to
+     adopt."--P. 25.
+
+After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school,
+he turns to the _metaphysic_, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes
+_doctrine critique_, for M. Comte is rich in names.
+
+     "In submitting, in their turn, the _metaphysic_ doctrine to a
+     like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though
+     exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it
+     has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of
+     progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal
+     political improvements accomplished in the course of the three
+     last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a _negative_
+     description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its
+     dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when
+     viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to
+     the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state,
+     necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.
+
+     "By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity
+     inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social
+     system to another can never be direct and continuous; it
+     supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of
+     interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and
+     duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation
+     to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though
+     undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a
+     class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we
+     see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_--a
+     source which at once explains the indispensable services it has
+     hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now
+     opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies....
+
+     "Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the
+     metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a
+     normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and
+     transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of
+     political notions, the most fundamental, it represents
+     government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of
+     society, against which it sedulously places itself in a
+     constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed
+     incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity,
+     in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to
+     leave it no other than the simple functions of general police,
+     without any essential participation in the supreme direction of
+     the action of the collective body or of its social development.
+
+     "Approaching to a more detailed examination of this doctrine,
+     it is evident that the absolute right of free examination
+     (which, connected as it is with the liberty of the press and
+     the freedom of education, is manifestly its principal and
+     fundamental dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the
+     consecration, under the vicious abstract form common to all
+     metaphysic conceptions, of that transitional state of unlimited
+     liberty in which the human mind has been spontaneously placed,
+     in consequence of the irrevocable decay of the theologic
+     philosophy, and which must naturally remain till the
+     establishment in the social domain of the positive method.[49]
+     ... However salutary and indispensable in its historical
+     position, this principle opposes a grave obstacle to the
+     reorganization of society, by being erected into an absolute
+     and permanent dogma. To examine always without deciding ever,
+     would be deemed great folly in any individual. How can the
+     dogmatic consecration of a like disposition amongst all
+     individuals, constitute the definitive perfection of the social
+     order, in regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so
+     peculiarly important, and so difficult, to establish? Is it not
+     evident, on the contrary, that such a disposition is, from its
+     nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as, if it could be
+     indefinitely prolonged, it must hinder every true mental
+     organization?
+
+     "No association whatever, though destined for a special and
+     temporary purpose, and though limited to a small number of
+     individuals, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal
+     confidence, both intellectual and moral, between its members,
+     each one of whom finds a continual necessity for a crowd of
+     notions, to the formation of which he must remain a stranger,
+     and which he cannot admit but on the faith of others. By what
+     monstrous exception can this elementary condition of all
+     society be banished from that total association of mankind,
+     where the point of view which the individual takes, is most
+     widely separated from that point of view which the collective
+     interest requires, and where each member is the least capable,
+     whether by nature or position, to form a just appreciation of
+     these general rules, indispensable to the good direction of his
+     personal activity. Whatever intellectual development we may
+     suppose possible, in the mass of men it is evident, that social
+     order will remain always necessarily incompatible with the
+     permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into
+     endless discussion the first principles even of society....
+
+     "The dogma of _equality_ is the most essential and the most
+     influential after that which I have just examined, and is,
+     besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the
+     unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly
+     leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental
+     character--an equality of intelligence. In its bearing on the
+     ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of
+     modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of
+     the old social classification. But this function constitutes
+     the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which
+     tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since
+     its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis
+     of every new classification. For, whatever that basis may be,
+     it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to
+     all intelligent men, can now only signify the triumph of the
+     inequalities developed by modern civilization, over those which
+     had predominated in the infancy of society....
+
+     "The same philosophical appreciation is applicable with equal
+     ease to the dogma of the _sovereignty of the people_. Whilst
+     estimating, as is fit, the indispensable transitional office of
+     this revolutionary dogma, no true philosopher can now
+     misunderstand the fatal anarchical tendency of this
+     metaphysical conception, since in its absolute application it
+     opposes itself to all regular institution, condemning
+     indefinitely all superiors to an arbitrary dependence on the
+     multitude of their inferiors, by a sort of transference to the
+     people of the much-reprobated right of kings."
+
+     [49] "There is," says M. Comte here in a note, which consists
+     of an extract from a previous work--"there is no liberty of
+     conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in
+     physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit
+     to the principles established in these sciences by competent
+     men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the ancient
+     principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed,
+     there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established
+     principles."
+
+As our author had shown how the _theologic_ philosophy was inconsistent
+often with itself, so, in criticising the _metaphysics_, he exposes here
+also certain self-contradictions. He reproaches it with having, in its
+contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and
+adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was
+engaged in destroying.
+
+     "Thus," he says, "there arose a Christianity more and more
+     simplified, and reduced at length to a vague and powerless
+     theism, which, by a strange medley of terms, the metaphysicians
+     distinguished by the title of _natural religion_, as if all
+     religion was not inevitably _supernatural_. In pretending to
+     direct the social reorganization after this vain conception,
+     the metaphysic school, notwithstanding its destination purely
+     revolutionary, has always implicitly adhered, and does so,
+     especially and distinctly, at the present day, to the most
+     fundamental principle of the ancient political doctrine--that
+     which represents the social order as necessarily reposing on a
+     theological basis. This is now the most evident, and the most
+     pernicious inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine. Armed with
+     this concession, the school of Bossuet and De Maistre will
+     always maintain an incontestable logical superiority over the
+     irrational detractors of Catholicism, who, while they proclaim
+     the want of a religious organization, reject, nevertheless, the
+     elements indispensable to its realization. By such a concession
+     the revolutionary school concur in effect, at the present day,
+     with the retrograde, in preventing a right organization of
+     modern societies, whose intellectual condition more and more
+     interdicts a system of politics founded on theology."
+
+Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political
+parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to
+abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author)
+displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one
+of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions
+to make. We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly
+_conservative_, and this quotation has already borne us out. For without
+implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here
+put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in
+Westminster Hail, _if this be so_, then it follows that we of the
+retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England--seeing this
+country has not progressed so rapidly as France--we of the stationary
+party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory
+though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been
+revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political
+world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no
+proper office but that of destruction--if its nature be essentially
+transitional--can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our
+present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred? Shall
+we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our
+church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange? M. Comte
+would not advise so irrational a proceeding.
+
+But M. Comte has himself a _constructive_ doctrine; M. Comte will give
+us in exchange--what? The Scientific Method!
+
+We have just seen something of this scientific method. M. Comte himself
+is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the
+multitude. Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an
+altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race
+of _savans_ or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to
+exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the
+truths to which that method shall give birth. This class will take under
+its control all that relates to education. It will be the seat of the
+moral power, not of the administrative. This, together with some
+arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the
+fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all
+that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of
+society.
+
+We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which
+lies at the basis of all this--how far it is possible to construct a
+science of Sociology. There is only one way in which the question can be
+resolved in the affirmative--namely, by constructing the science.
+
+Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order
+of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the
+purposes of government. We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the
+chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed
+principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the
+graduated politician. But it is worth while to consider what it is we do
+when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the
+astronomer. We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts
+which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these
+facts we must be able to comprehend. We follow him as he explains the
+facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a
+rational conviction. Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any
+knowledge whatever of the subject--any chemistry or astronomy at all.
+Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as
+that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of
+understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by
+it. We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which
+can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.
+
+In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility
+of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side
+of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of
+their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the
+apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume
+it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of
+the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once
+taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a
+submission of their reason to political teachers--teachers who have no
+sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated
+authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very
+reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a
+difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true
+Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.
+
+We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be
+simply classed amongst the _Destructives_, so little applicable to the
+generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it
+is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great
+sacrifices.
+
+The fifth volume--the most remarkable, we think, of the whole--contains
+that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the
+foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any
+expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of
+original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above
+all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte
+has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical
+facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete
+matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the
+volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are
+shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.
+
+We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we
+must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind,
+he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of
+Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that
+primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which _things themselves_
+were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a
+life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.
+
+     "Exclusively habituated, for so long a time, to a theology
+     eminently metaphysic, we must feel at present greatly
+     embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive
+     mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been
+     confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied
+     the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to
+     the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would,
+     no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of
+     worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present
+     day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we
+     are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a
+     difficulty in conceiving it, yet each one of us has but to
+     retrace his own mental history, to detect the essential
+     characters of this initial state. Nay, even eminent thinkers of
+     the present day, when they allow themselves to be involuntarily
+     ensnared (under the influence, but partially rectified, of a
+     vicious education) to attempt to penetrate the mystery of the
+     essential production of any phenomenon whose laws are not
+     familiar to them, they are in a condition personally to
+     exemplify this invariable instinctive tendency to trace the
+     generation of unknown effects to a cause analogous to life,
+     which is no other, strictly speaking, than the principle of
+     fetishism....
+
+     "Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated, has always
+     necessarily for its base pure fetishism, which deifies
+     instantly each body and each phenomenon capable of exciting the
+     feeble thought of infant humanity. Whatever essential
+     transformations this primitive philosophy may afterwards
+     undergo, a judicious sociological analysis will always expose
+     to view this primordial base, never entirely concealed, even in
+     a religious state the most remote from the original point of
+     departure. Not only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy has
+     presented, at the time of its greatest splendour, the
+     established and prolonged coexistence, in the several castes of
+     the hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs, since the
+     inferior ranks still remained in simple fetishism, whilst the
+     higher orders were in possession of a very remarkable
+     polytheism, and the most exalted of its members had probably
+     raised themselves to some form of monotheism; but we can at all
+     times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in the theologic spirit
+     traces of this original fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst
+     subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical forms. What, in
+     reality, is that celebrated conception of a soul of the world
+     amongst the ancients, or that analogy, more modern, drawn
+     between the earth and an immense living animal, and other
+     similar fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the pomp of
+     philosophical language? And, in our own days even, what is this
+     cloudy pantheism which so many metaphysicians, especially in
+     Germany, make great boast of, but generalized and systematized
+     fetishism enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze the
+     vulgar."--Vol. V. p. 38.
+
+He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to
+the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the
+labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The
+mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to
+transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we
+feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our
+own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute
+unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with
+quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition
+of the rude intellect.
+
+     "All observable bodies," he says "being thus immediately
+     personified and endowed with passions suited to the energy of
+     the observed phenomena, the external world presents itself
+     spontaneously to the spectator in a perfect harmony, such as
+     never again has been produced, and which must have excited in
+     him a peculiar sentiment of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us
+     in the present day to be characterized, even when we refer back
+     with a meditation the most intense on this cradle of humanity."
+
+Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and
+censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of
+man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The
+principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many
+respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application;
+but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the
+origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst
+rude thinkers--we do not find any condition of mankind which displays
+that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author
+would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly
+a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of
+fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this
+animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with
+a desire to explain _their_ phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied
+relation between those objects and the human being. The _charm_ or the
+_amulet_--some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases,
+or bring good-luck--grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading
+the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of
+granting his prayer.[50]
+
+     [50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism
+     in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand,
+     and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only
+     who never read _The Doctor_, will be surprised to find it
+     quoted on a grave occasion:--
+
+     "The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is
+     known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for
+     witchcraft, _feitiço_; the vernacular name is _Bossum_, or
+     _Bossifoe_. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every
+     village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a
+     rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree,
+     is generally the national Fetish. The king's is usually the
+     largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one,
+     take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless--a
+     stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the
+     worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
+     and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The
+     ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his
+     family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling
+     them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
+     in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and
+     with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on
+     that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this
+     superstition, but believed in it, and practised it
+     themselves."--Vol. V. p. 136.
+
+We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating
+the impracticable _unmanageable_ nature of our author's generalizations
+when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the
+development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to
+extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such
+scientific precision, fixed it.
+
+     "Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the
+     religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the
+     most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at
+     present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent
+     and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a
+     less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the
+     more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has
+     naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance--an importance
+     extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I
+     shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism
+     supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being
+     truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an
+     inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary
+     will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to
+     comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious
+     _régime_ to the other."--P. 97.
+
+The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of
+generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects,
+and classified them into one species, so they approximated the
+corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal
+Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from
+matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became
+a god.
+
+     "For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a
+     character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their
+     indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a
+     special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less
+     extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only,
+     from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
+     resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary
+     to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a
+     chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a
+     god--that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
+     whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist,
+     properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this
+     would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily
+     endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the
+     similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks,
+     led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what
+     was _common_ in these objects, this abstract being could no
+     longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the
+     forest."--P. 101.
+
+This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is
+utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate
+a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any
+natural event is _invisible_, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism;
+it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be
+theologically explained--and there is no event in nature more likely to
+suggest such explanation--the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it
+must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose
+mind had not been solely and purely _scientific_, would have created for
+itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]
+
+     [51] At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is
+     taken, the _Doctor_ tells a story which, if faith could be put
+     in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves, (and
+     such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,)
+     might deserve a place in the history of superstition.
+
+     "One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a
+     reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a
+     boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful
+     schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear
+     produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used
+     every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12761 ***
diff --git a/12761-h/12761-h.htm b/12761-h/12761-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1845bfd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/12761-h/12761-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,15812 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html lang="EN">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+    "text/html; charset=UTF-8">
+    <title>Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. 53, No. 329.</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         }
+    HR { width: 33%;
+	margin-top: 1em;
+	margin-bottom: 1em;
+       }
+    hr.full {width: 100%;}
+    BODY{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */
+    .note     {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */
+    .blkquot  {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
+    .pagenum  {display: none; } /* page numbers */
+    .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 2em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem p           {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem p.i1        {margin-left: 1em;}
+    .poem p.i2        {margin-left: 2em;}
+    .poem p.i3        {margin-left: 3em;}
+    .poem p.i4        {margin-left: 4em;}
+    .poem .caesura    {vertical-align: -200%;}
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+   </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12761 ***</div>
+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE</h1>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>NO. CCCXXIX. MARCH, 1843. VOL. LIII.</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s1">AMMAL&Aacute;T BEK. A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARL&Iacute;NSKI</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s2">POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.&mdash;NO. VI.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s3">CALEB STUKELY. PART XII.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s4">IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. SANDT AND KOTZEBUE</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s5">THE JEWELLER'S WIFE. A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s6">THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER&mdash;HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s7">PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS, BY A COCKNEY</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s8">THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s9">THE LOST LAMB. BY DELTA</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s10">COMTE</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329-footnotes">[FOOTNOTES]</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="page281" id="page281" title="page281"></a>
+<a name="bw329s1" id="bw329s1"></a>
+<h2>AMMAL&Aacute;T BEK.</h2>
+
+<h3>A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS.</h3>
+
+<p>TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARL&Iacute;NSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A.
+OF CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL
+LYCEUM OF TSARSKO&Euml; SELO.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.</h3>
+
+<p>The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental neighbours
+with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of no very
+recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem to possess
+us:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;&mdash;&mdash;tenet insanabile multos</p>
+<p><i>Terrarum</i> <span lang="EL" title="kakoithes">&kappa;&alpha;&kappa;&omicron;&eta;&theta;&epsilon;&sigmaf;</span>, et &aelig;gro in corde senescit:&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>when the press groans with &quot;Tours,&quot; &quot;Trips,&quot; &quot;Hand-books,&quot; &quot;Journeys,&quot;
+&quot;Visits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England knows
+very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social condition, manners,
+and literature of one of the most powerful among her continental sisters.</p>
+
+<p>The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in the
+reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that epoch, so
+auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by Chancellor in 1554,
+has never since been relaxed: the two nations have advanced, each at its own
+pace, and by its own paths, towards the sublime goal of improvement and
+civilization&mdash;have stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle for the weal and
+liberty of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and Elizabeth
+is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter and of Catharine.
+The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be found in any indifference
+or want of curiosity on the part of English travellers. There is no lack of
+pilgrims annually leaving the bank of Thames,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;With cockle hat and staff,</p>
+<p class="i2">With gourd and sandal shoon;&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>armed duly with note-book and &quot;patent Mordan,&quot; directing their wandering
+steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a very
+<a class="pagenum" name="page282" id="page282" title="page282"></a>short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince a foreigner
+how defective, and often how false, is the information given by travellers respecting
+the social and national character of the Russians. These abundant
+and singular misrepresentations are not, of course, voluntary; and it may not
+be useless to point out their principal sources.</p>
+
+<p>The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the language,
+and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten track&mdash;from
+St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny N&oacute;vgorod, without
+any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may enjoy, during a
+visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which the higher classes are so
+justly celebrated; but his association with the nobility will be found an absolute
+obstacle to the making even a trifling progress in the Russian language;
+which, though now regaining a degree of attention from the elevated
+classes,<a name="footnotetag1" id="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a>
+too long denied to it by those with whom their native tongue <i>was</i> an unfashionable
+one&mdash;he would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very
+frequent opportunities of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a determination
+to study the noble and interesting language of the country, an intention of
+remaining here long enough to learn it, he was often discouraged by the belief,
+that the literature was too poor to repay his time and labour. Besides,
+the Russian language has so little relation to the other European tongues&mdash;it
+stands so much alone, and throws so little direct light upon any of them, that
+another obstacle was thrown into his way.</p>
+
+<p>The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all derived,
+more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the whole south
+and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon the other cognate
+dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental tongues facilitates,
+nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand others, which are less languages
+of distinct type than dialects of the same speech, offshoots from the
+same stock.</p>
+
+<p>Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in every
+disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German periodicals
+with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched rags of translation
+which are all that has been hitherto done towards the reproduction, in
+our own language, of the literature of Russia. These versions were made by
+persons utterly unacquainted with the country, the manners, and the people, or
+made after the Russian had been distilled through the alembic of a previous
+French or German translation.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation sooner
+than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than honourable to the
+literary enterprise of England, that the present is the first attempt to introduce
+to the British public any work of Russian Prose Fiction whatever, with any
+thing like a reasonable selection of subject and character, at least <i>directly</i> from
+the original language.</p>
+
+<p>The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of
+&quot;Russian Anthology,&quot; and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would appear
+at first sight an exception to that indifference to the productions of Russian
+genius of which we have accused the English public; and the popularity
+of that collection would be an additional encouragement to the hope, that our
+charge may be, if not ill-founded, at least exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>We are willing to believe, that the degree&mdash;if we are rightly informed, no
+slight one&mdash;of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in England,
+was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme incompetency with which
+the translations they contained were executed.</p>
+
+<p>It is always painful to find fault&mdash;more painful to criticise with severity&mdash;the
+work of a person whose motive was the same as that which actuates the present
+<a class="pagenum" name="page283" id="page283" title="page283"></a>publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness<a
+name="footnotetag2" id="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> exhibited in the versions
+in question tends to give a false and disparaging idea of the value and the tone
+of Russian poetry, we may be excused for our apparent uncourteousness in
+thus pointing out their defects.</p>
+
+<p>It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a brief
+sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin, growth, and fortunes
+of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In doing this we shall
+content ourselves with noting, as briefly as possible, the events which preceded
+and accompanied the birth of letters in Russia, and the evolution of a literature
+not elaborated by the slow and imperceptible action of time, but bursting,
+like the armed Pallas, suddenly into light.</p>
+
+<p>In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the department
+of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety, though not
+without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more fully the intellectual
+annals of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril<a
+name="footnotetag3" id="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> and
+Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious
+boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisl&aacute;ff, Sviatop&oacute;lk, and K&oacute;tsel, then chiefs
+of the Moravians.</p>
+
+<p>The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek alphabet,
+to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain sounds which do not
+occur in the Greek language,<a name="footnotetag4" id="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> to add a number of other signs borrowed from
+the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So closely, indeed, did this alphabet,
+called the Cyrillian, follow the Greek characters, that the use of the
+aspirates was retained without any necessity.</p>
+
+<p>These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the Russian)
+varied surprisingly little in their form,<a name="footnotetag5" id="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> and perhaps without any change
+whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern alphabet of the Russian language;
+an examination of which would go far, in our opinion, to settle the
+long agitated question respecting the ancient pronunciation of the classic languages,
+particularly as Cyril and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a
+language totally foreign from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.</p>
+
+<p>In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the first
+monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril immediately
+after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken at Thessalonika
+was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely Greek
+words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of the version
+<a class="pagenum" name="page284" id="page284" title="page284"></a>being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the Scriptures were not translated
+into any specific spoken dialect at all; but that a kind of <i>mezzo-termine</i>
+was selected&mdash;or rather formed&mdash;for the purpose. What we have advanced
+derives a still stronger degree of probability from the circumstance, that the
+Slavonic Bible follows the Greek <i>construction</i>. This Bible, with slight changes
+and corrections produced by three or four revisions made at different periods,
+is that still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language
+of the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the
+Bible forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper
+classes&mdash;who are instructed in this <i>dead</i> language, precisely as an Italian must
+study Latin in order to read the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history, towers,
+like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid, one colossal
+figure&mdash;that of Vlad&iacute;mir Sviatosl&aacute;vitch; the first to surmount the bloody
+splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet<a name="footnotetag6" id="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> with the mildly-radiant Cross of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>From the conversion to Christianity of Vlad&iacute;mir and his subjects&mdash;passing
+over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for
+about 250 years&mdash;we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have
+been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century&mdash;the one the written
+or learned, the other the spoken language.</p>
+
+<p>The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were translated:
+and this remained the learned or official language for a long period.
+In this&mdash;or in an imitation of this, effected with various degrees of success&mdash;were
+compiled the different collections of Monkish annals which form the
+treasury whence future historians were to select their materials from among
+the valuable, but confused accumulations of facts; in this the solemn acts of
+Government, treaties, codes, &amp;c., were composed; and the few writings which
+cannot be comprised under the above classes<a name="footnotetag7" id="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> were naturally compiled in the
+language, emphatically that of the Church and of learning.</p>
+
+<p>The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much
+allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran,
+like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a half the fertile
+plains of central and southern Russia, contented themselves with exacting
+tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire
+of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced
+hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue.<a
+name="footnotetag8" id="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>It is to the reign of Alex&eacute;i Mikh&aacute;ilovitch, who united Little Russia to
+Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the
+country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little Russian,
+tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit of classicism which
+so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.</p>
+
+<p>The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future
+fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would possibly have
+brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia such as we now find it,
+had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of
+Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing&mdash;if, indeed, they may not be called
+in some measure impeding&mdash;forces. That giant hand which broke down the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page285" id="page285" title="page285"></a>long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of
+Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West
+to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying
+and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was national&mdash;that
+hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse the infant seedling
+of literature; and the command and example of Peter perhaps rather
+favoured the imitation of what was good in other languages, than the production
+of originality in his own.</p>
+
+<p>This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems to
+derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number of foreign
+words which make the Russian of Peter's time</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;A Babylonish dialect;&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an
+infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms
+which might have been&mdash;have, indeed, since been&mdash;translated into words of
+Russian form and origin. A review of the literary progress made at this
+time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very
+large proportion of translations, but very few original productions.</p>
+
+<p>From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note: we
+shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian
+literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction,
+and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this
+kind, living and dead.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will
+be convenient to keep in mind) three languages&mdash;the Slavonic, to which we
+have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from
+which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably raise
+a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing this important
+starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon the circumstance,
+that the literature is&mdash;as we have stated&mdash;divisible into two distinct and widely
+differing regions. It will be sufficiently accurate to date the origin of the
+modern Russian literature at about a century back from the present time;
+and to consider Lomon&oacute;soff as its founder. Mikh&aacute;il Vass&iacute;lievitch Lomon&oacute;soff,
+born in 1711, is the author who may with justice be regarded as the
+Chaucer or the Boccacio of the North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments,
+distinguished in almost every department of literature, and in many
+of the walks of science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose
+principles he had fixed as a grammarian.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in
+conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumar&oacute;koff and Kher&aacute;skoff, he laid
+the foundations of the Russian literature.</p>
+
+<p>Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the reverence
+due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's letters, it will be
+sufficient to remark, that Soumar&oacute;koff was the first to introduce tragedy and
+opera, and Kher&aacute;skoff, the author of two epic poems which we omit to particularize,
+as not coming within our present scope, wrote a work entitled
+&quot;Cadmus and Harmonia,&quot; which may be considered as the first romance.
+It is a narrative and metaphysical work, which we should class as a &quot;prose
+poem;&quot; the style being considerably elevated above the tone of the &quot;Musa
+pedestris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The name of Em&iacute;n comes next in historical, though not literary, importance:
+though the greater part of his productions consists of translations, particularly
+of those shorter pieces of prose fiction called by the Italians &quot;novelle,&quot;
+he was the author of a few original pieces, now but little read; his
+style bears the marks, like that of Kher&aacute;skoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want
+of finish.</p>
+
+<p>The reputation of Karamz&iacute;n is too widely spread throughout Europe to
+render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by him
+to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he commenced
+a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first chapters.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page286" id="page286" title="page286"></a>Nar&eacute;jniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia&mdash;or rather of the South
+or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of vivacity, but as they are
+deformed by defects both in style and taste, his reputation has become almost
+extinct. We cannot quit this division of our subject, which refers to romantic
+fiction anterior to the appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning
+the names of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished
+as having produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical
+event&mdash;Polev&oacute;i and Best&oacute;njeff&mdash;the latter of whom wrote, under the
+name of Marl&iacute;nski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high
+and deserved reputation.</p>
+
+<p>It is with Zag&oacute;skin that we may regard the regular historical novel&mdash;viewing
+that species of composition as exemplified in the works of Scott&mdash;as having
+commenced.</p>
+
+<p>With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is so
+extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory allusion
+to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing which, we shall
+attend more exclusively to those productions of which the subject or treatment
+is purely national.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zag&oacute;skin, whose
+historical romance &quot;Yo&uacute;riy Milosl&aacute;ffskiy,&quot; met with great and permanent
+success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most interesting crisis in the
+Russian history, when the valour of M&iacute;nin enabled his countrymen to shake
+off the hated yoke of Poland. His other work, &quot;Roslavle&oacute;ff,&quot; is less interesting:
+the period is 1812. We may also mention his &quot;Iskons&iacute;tel&quot;&mdash;&quot;the
+Tempter&quot;&mdash;a fantastic story, in which an imaginary being is represented as
+mingling with and influencing the affairs of real life.</p>
+
+<p>Of Boulg&aacute;rin, we may mention, besides his &quot;Ivan Vu&iacute;jgin,&quot; a romance in the
+manner of &quot;Gil Blas,&quot; the scenery and characters of which are entirely Russian,
+two historical novels of considerable importance. &quot;The False Dim&iacute;tri,&quot; and
+&quot;Mazeppa,&quot;&mdash;the hero of the latter being <i>a real person</i>, and not, as most
+readers are aware, a fictitious character invented by Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Next comes the name of Laj&eacute;tchnikoff, whose &quot;Last Page&quot; possesses a
+reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The action
+passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great, and Catharine
+plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Gl&uuml;ck, becoming empress
+at the conclusion. The &quot;House of Ice,&quot; by the same writer, is perhaps
+more generally known than the preceding work. The last-named romance
+depicts with great spirit the struggle between the Russian and foreign parties
+in the reign of Anna Iv&aacute;novna. But perhaps the most remarkable work of
+Laj&eacute;tchnikoff is the romance entitled &quot;Bassourm&aacute;n,&quot; the scene of which is
+laid under Iv&aacute;n III., surnamed the Great.<a name="footnotetag9"
+id="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> Another Polev&oacute;i (Nikol&aacute;i) produced
+a work of great merit:&mdash;&quot;The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord,&quot; a very
+faithful picture of the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the
+circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe to
+Polev&oacute;i a wild story entitled &quot;Abbaddon.&quot; Veltman produced, under the
+title of &quot;Kostsh&eacute;i the Deathless,&quot; a historical study of the manners of the
+twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust to omit
+the name of a lady, the Countess Sh&iacute;shkin, who produced the historical novel
+&quot;Mikh&aacute;il Vass&iacute;lievitch Sk&oacute;pin-Sh&uacute;isky,&quot; which obtained great popularity.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesque career of Lomon&oacute;soff gave materials for a romantic biography
+of that poet, the work of Xenoph&oacute;nt Polev&oacute;i, resembling, in its mixture
+of truth and fiction, the &quot;Wahrheit und Dichtung&quot; of Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those exhibiting
+scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been neglected.
+Kal&aacute;shnikoff wrote &quot;The Merchant J&aacute;loboff's Daughter,&quot; and the &quot;Kamtchad&aacute;lka,&quot;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page287" id="page287" title="page287"></a>both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia; the former
+painting various parts of that wild and interesting country, the latter confined
+more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtch&aacute;tka. Besides G&oacute;gol, whose
+easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many humorous sketches of
+provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitch&eacute;ff, whose &quot;Kh&oacute;lmsky Family&quot;
+possesses much interest; but the delineations of G&oacute;gol depend so much for
+their effect upon delicate shades of manner, &amp;c., that it is not probable they
+can ever be effectively reproduced in another language.</p>
+
+<p>Mentioning Per&oacute;ffsky, whose &quot;Monast&iacute;rka&quot; gives a picture of Russian
+interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation.
+His &quot;Trip to Germany&quot; describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of
+a very curious race&mdash;the Germans of St Petersburg; and &quot;Tch&eacute;rnaia J&eacute;nstchina,&quot;
+&quot;the Black Woman,&quot; presents a picture of Russian society, which
+was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.</p>
+
+<p>The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British readers to
+a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most unaccountably neglected by the
+English public, the present would not be a fit occasion to enter with any
+minuteness into the history of Russian letters, or to give, in fact, more than a
+passing allusion to its chief features; the translator hopes that he will be excused
+for the meagreness of the present notice.</p>
+
+<p>He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any increasing
+desire on the part of his countrymen to become more accurately
+acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is convinced, of a very
+high degree of respect and admiration. How could that acquaintance be so
+delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the interchange of literature? The
+great works of English genius are read, studied, and admired, throughout the
+vast empire of Russia; the language of England is rapidly and steadily extending,
+and justice, no less than policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions
+respecting the social and domestic character, no less than the
+history, of Russia, should be dispelled by truth.</p>
+
+<p>The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to specify
+one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the present romance,
+as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in England the literature
+of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the facts and
+characters are all strictly true;<a name="footnotetag10" id="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a> besides this, the author passed many years
+in the Caucasus, and made full use of the opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming
+familiar with the language, manners, and scenery of a region on
+which the attention of the English public has long been turned with peculiar
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it is
+hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public always
+&quot;<i>novitatis avida</i>,&quot; and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with the &quot;Bismillahs&quot;
+and &quot;Mashallahs&quot; of the ordinary oriental novels, may find some
+piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life&mdash;that of the Caucasian Tartars.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for
+which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon the
+method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian orthography,
+as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as <i>zh</i>, &amp;c.
+&amp;c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the correct pronunciation.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page288" id="page288" title="page288"></a>Throughout these pages the vowels <i>a, e, i, o, y</i>, are supposed to be pronounced
+as in French, the diphthong <i>ou</i> as in the word <i>you</i>, the <i>j</i> always with
+the French sound.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the combinations of consonants employed, <i>kh</i> has the gutteral
+sound of the <i>ch</i> in the Scottish word <i>loch</i>, and <i>gh</i> is like a rather rough
+or coarse aspirate.</p>
+
+<p>The simple <i>g</i> is invariably to be uttered hard, as in <i>gun</i> or <i>gall</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid the possibility of errors, the combination <i>tch</i>, though not a very
+soft one to the eye, represents a Russian sound for which there is no character
+in English. It is, of course, uttered as in the word <i>watch</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As a great deal of the apparent discord of Russian words, as pronounced by
+foreigners, arises from ignorance of the place of the accent, we have added a
+sign over every polysyllable word, indicating the part on which the stress is
+to be laid.</p>
+
+<p>The few preceding rules will, the translator hopes, enable his countrymen
+to <i>attack</i> the pronunciation of the Russian names without the ancient dread
+inspired by terrific and complicated clusters of consonants; and will perhaps
+prove to them that the language is both an easy and a melodious one.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p><i>St Petersburg, November</i> 10, 1842.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+<p>&quot;Be slow to offend&mdash;swift to revenge!&quot;</p>
+<p><i>Inscription on a dagger of Daghest&aacute;n.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was Djoum&aacute;.<a name="footnotetag11" id="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Not far from
+Bouin&aacute;ki, a considerable village of
+Northern Daghest&aacute;n, the young Tartars
+were assembled for their national
+exercise called &quot;djig&iacute;tering;&quot; that is,
+the horse-race accompanied by various
+trials of boldness and strength. Bouin&aacute;ki
+is situated upon two ledges of
+the precipitous rocks of the mountain:
+on the left of the road leading from
+Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above
+the town, the crest of Caucasus, feathered
+with wood; on the right, the
+shore, sinking imperceptibly, spreads
+itself out into meadows, on which the
+Caspian Sea pours its eternal murmur,
+like the voice of human multitudes.</p>
+
+<p>A vernal day was fading into evening,
+and all the inhabitants, attracted
+rather by the coolness of the breeze
+than by any feeling of curiosity, had
+quitted their s&aacute;klas,<a name="footnotetag12" id="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> and assembled
+in crowds on both sides of the road.
+The women, without veils, and with
+coloured kerchiefs rolled like turbans
+round their heads, clad in the long
+chemise,<a name="footnotetag13" id="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> confined by the short arkhalo&uacute;kh,
+and wide toum&aacute;ns,<a name="footnotetag14" id="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> sat in
+rows, while strings of children sported
+before them. The men, assembled in
+little groups, stood, or rested on their
+knees;<a name="footnotetag15" id="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> others, in twos or threes,
+walked slowly round, smoking tobacco
+in little wooden pipes: a cheerful
+buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded
+the clattering of hoofs, and
+the cry &quot;katch, katch!&quot; (make way!)
+from the horsemen preparing for the
+race.</p>
+
+<p>Nature, in Daghest&aacute;n, is most
+lovely in the month of May. Millions
+of roses poured their blushes over the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page289" id="page289" title="page289"></a>crags; their odour was streaming in
+the air; the nightingale was not silent
+in the green twilight of the wood, almond-trees,
+all silvered with their
+flowers, arose like the cupolas of a
+pagoda, and resembled, with their
+lofty branches twined with leaves,
+the minarets of some Mussulman
+mosque. Broad-breasted oaks, like
+sturdy old warriors, rose here and
+there, while poplars and chenart-trees,
+assembled in groups and surrounded
+by underwood, looked like children
+ready to wander away to the mountains,
+to escape the summer heats.
+Sportive flocks of sheep&mdash;their fleeces
+speckled with rose-colour; buffaloes
+wallowing in the mud of the fountains,
+or for hours together lazily butting
+each other with their horns; here and
+there on the mountains noble steeds,
+which moved (their manes floating on
+the breeze) with a haughty trot along
+the hills&mdash;such is the frame that encloses
+the picture of every Mussulman
+village. On this Djoum&aacute;, the
+neighbourhood of Bouin&aacute;ki was more
+than usually animated. The sun
+poured his floods of gold on the dark
+walls of the flat-roofed s&aacute;klas, clothing
+them with fantastic shadows, and
+adding beauty to their forms. In the
+distance, crawling along the mountain,
+the creaking arbas<a name="footnotetag16" id="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> flitted among
+the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past
+them, before
+them, flew a horseman, raising the
+dust along the road ... the mountain
+crest and the boundless sea gave
+grandeur to this picture, and all nature
+breathed a glow of life.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He comes, he comes!&quot; was murmured
+through the crowd; all was in
+motion. The horsemen, who till now
+had been chattering with their acquaintance
+on foot, or disorderedly
+riding about the meadow, now leaped
+upon their steeds, and dashed forward
+to meet the cavalcade which was descending
+to the plain: it was Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, the nephew of the Shamkh&aacute;l<a name="footnotetag17" id="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a>
+of Tarki, with his suite. He
+was habited in a black Persian cloak,
+edged with gold-lace, the hanging
+sleeves thrown back over his shoulders.
+A Turkish shawl was wound
+round his arkhalo&uacute;kh, which was made
+of flowered silk. Red shalw&aacute;rs were
+lost in his yellow high-heeled riding-boots.
+His gun, dagger, and
+pistol, glittered with gold and silver
+arabesque work. The hilt of his
+sabre was enriched with gems. The
+Prince of Tarki was a tall, well-made
+youth, of frank countenance; black
+curls streamed behind his ears from
+under his cap&mdash;a slight mustache
+shaded his upper lip&mdash;his eyes glittered
+with a proud courtesy. He rode
+a bright bay steed, which fretted under
+his hand like a whirlwind. Contrary
+to custom, the horse's caparison was
+not the round Persian housing, embroidered
+all over with silk, but the
+light Circassian saddle, ornamented
+with silver on a black ground; and
+the stirrups were of the black steel of
+Kharam&aacute;n, inlaid with gold. Twenty
+no&uacute;kers<a name="footnotetag18" id="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> on spirited horses, and
+dressed in cloaks glittering with lace,
+their caps cocked jauntily, and leaning
+affectedly on one side, pranced
+and sidled after him. The people
+respectfully stood up before their Bek,
+and bowed, pressing their right hand
+upon their right knee. A murmur of
+whispered approbation followed the
+young chief as he passed among the
+women. Arrived at the southern extremity
+of the ground, Ammal&aacute;t stopped.
+The chief people, the old men
+leaning upon their sticks, and the
+elders of Bouin&aacute;ki, stood round in a
+circle to catch a kind word from the
+Bek; but Ammal&aacute;t did not pay them
+any particular attention, and with cold
+politeness replied in monosyllables to
+the flatteries and obeisances of his inferiors.
+He waved his hand; this was
+the signal to commence the race.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty of the most fiery horsemen
+dashed forward, without the slightest
+order or regularity, galloping onward
+and back again, placing themselves in
+all kinds of attitudes, and alternately
+passing each other. At one moment
+<a class="pagenum" name="page290" id="page290" title="page290"></a>they jostled one another from the
+course, and at the same time held in
+their horses, then again they let them
+go at full gallop over the plain. After
+this, they each took slender sticks,
+called djigid&iacute;s, and darted them as they
+rode, either in the charge or the pursuit,
+and again seizing them as they
+flew, or picking them up from the
+earth. Several tumbled from their
+saddles under the strong blows; and
+then resounded the loud laugh of the
+spectators, while loud applauses greeted
+the conqueror; sometimes the horses
+stumbled, and the riders were thrown
+over their heads, hurled off by a double
+force from the shortness of their
+stirrups. Then commenced the shooting.
+Ammal&aacute;t Bek had remained a
+little apart, looking on with apparent
+pleasure. His no&uacute;kers, one after the
+other, had joined the crowd of djig&iacute;terers,
+so that, at last, only two were
+left by his side. For some time he
+was immovable, and followed with
+an indifferent gaze the imitation of an
+Asiatic combat; but by degrees his
+interest grew stronger. At first he
+watched the cavaliers with great attention,
+then he began to encourage
+them by his voice and gestures, he
+rose higher in his stirrups, and at last
+the warrior-blood boiled in his veins,
+when his favourite no&uacute;ker could not
+hit a cap which he had thrown down
+before him. He snatched his gun
+from his attendants, and dashed forward
+like an arrow, winding among
+the sporters. &quot;Make way&mdash;make way!&quot;
+was heard around, and all, dispersing
+like a rain-cloud on either side, gave
+place to Ammal&aacute;t Bek.</p>
+
+<p>At the distance of a verst<a name="footnotetag19" id="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> stood ten
+poles with caps hanging on them.
+Ammal&aacute;t rode straight up to them,
+waved his gun round his head, and
+turned close round the pole; as he
+turned he stood up in his stirrups,
+turned back&mdash;bang!&mdash;the cap tumbled
+to the ground; without checking his
+speed he reloaded, the reins hanging
+on his horse's neck&mdash;knocked off another,
+then a third&mdash;and so on the
+whole ten. A murmur of applause
+arose on all sides; but Ammal&aacute;t,
+without stopping, threw his gun into
+the hands of one of his no&uacute;kers, pulled
+out a pistol from his belt, and with
+the ball struck the shoe from the hind
+foot of his horse; the shoe flew off,
+and fell far behind him; he then again
+took his gun from his no&uacute;ker, and
+ordered him to gallop on before him.
+Quicker than thought both darted
+forward. When half-way round the
+course, the no&uacute;ker drew from his
+pocket a rouble, and threw it up in
+the air. Ammal&aacute;t raised himself in
+the saddle, without waiting till it fell;
+but at the very instant his horse stumbled
+with all his four legs together,
+and striking the dust with his nostrils,
+rolled prostrate. All uttered a cry of
+terror; but the dexterous horseman,
+standing up in the stirrups, without
+losing his seat, or even leaning forward,
+as if he had been aware that he
+was going to fall, fired rapidly, and
+hitting the rouble with his ball, hurled
+it far among the people. The crowd
+shouted with delight&mdash;&quot;Igeed, igeed!
+(bravo!) Alla valla-ha!&quot; But Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, modestly retiring, dismounted
+from his steed, and throwing
+the reins to his djillad&aacute;r, (groom,) ordered
+him immediately to have the
+horse shod. The race and the shooting
+was continued.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment there rode up to
+Ammal&aacute;t his emdj&eacute;k,<a name="footnotetag20" id="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> Saphir-Ali, the
+son of one of the poor beks of Bouin&aacute;ki,
+a young man of an agreeable
+exterior, and simple, cheerful character.
+He had grown up with Ammal&aacute;t,
+and therefore treated him with great
+familiarity. He leaped from his horse,
+and nodding his head, exclaimed&mdash;&quot;No&uacute;ker
+M&eacute;met Raso&uacute;l has knocked
+up the old cropped<a name="footnotetag21" id="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> stallion, in trying
+to leap him over a ditch seven
+paces wide.&quot; &quot;And did he leap it?&quot;
+cried Ammal&aacute;t impatiently. &quot;Bring
+him instantly to me!&quot; He went to
+meet the horse&mdash;and without putting
+his foot in the stirrup, leaped into the
+saddle, and galloped to the bed of a
+mountain-torrent. As he galloped, he
+pressed the horse with his knee, but
+the wearied animal, not trusting to his
+strength, bolted aside on the very
+<a class="pagenum" name="page291" id="page291" title="page291"></a>brink, and Ammal&aacute;t was obliged to
+make another turn. The second time,
+the steed, stimulated by the whip,
+reared up on his hind-legs in order to
+leap the ditch, but he hesitated, grew
+restive, and resisted with his fore-feet.
+Ammal&aacute;t grew angry. In vain did
+Saphir-Ali entreat him not to force
+the horse, which had lost in many a
+combat and journey the elasticity of
+his limbs. Ammal&aacute;t would not listen
+to any thing; but urging him with a
+cry, and striking him with his drawn
+sabre for the third time, he galloped
+him at the ravine; and when, for the
+third time, the old horse stopped short
+in his stride, not daring to leap, he
+struck him so violently on the head
+with the hilt of his sabre, that he fell
+lifeless on the earth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the reward of faithful service!&quot;
+said Saphir-Ali, compassionately,
+as he gazed on the lifeless
+steed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the reward of disobedience!&quot;
+replied Ammal&aacute;t, with flashing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing the anger of the Bek, all
+were silent. The horsemen, however,
+continued their djig&iacute;tering.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly was heard the thunder
+of Russian drums, and the bayonets
+of Russian soldiers glittered as
+they wound over the hill. It was a
+company of the Kour&iacute;nsky regiment
+of infantry, sent from a detachment
+which had been dispatched to Ako&uacute;sh,
+then in a state of revolt, under Sheikh
+Ali Khan, the banished chief of Derbend.
+This company had been protecting
+a convoy of supplies from Derbend,
+whither it was returning by the
+mountain road. The commander of
+the company, Captain &mdash;&mdash;, and one
+officer with him, rode in front. Before
+they had reached the race-course,
+the retreat was beaten, and the company
+halted, throwing aside their
+havresacks and piling their muskets,
+but without lighting a fire.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of a Russian detachment
+could have been no novelty to
+the inhabitants of Daghest&aacute;n in the
+year 1819; and even yet, it must be
+confessed, it is an event that gives
+them no pleasure. Superstition made
+them look on the Russians as eternal
+enemies&mdash;enemies, however, vigorous
+and able; and they determined, therefore,
+not to injure them but in secret,
+by concealing their hatred under a
+mask of amity. A buzz spread among
+the people on the appearance of the
+Russians: the women returned by
+winding paths to the village, not forgetting,
+however, to gaze secretly at
+the strangers. The men, on the contrary,
+threw fierce glances at them
+over their shoulders, and began to assemble
+in groups, discussing how they
+might best get rid of them, and relieve
+themselves from the podv&oacute;d<a name="footnotetag22" id="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a>, and so
+on. A multitude of loungers and boys,
+however, surrounded the Russians as
+they reposed upon the grass. Some
+of the Kekkho&uacute;ds (starosts<a name="footnotetag23" id="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a>) and
+Tehao&uacute;shes (desi&aacute;tniks<a name="footnotetag24" id="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a>) appointed
+by the Russian Government, hastily
+advancing to the Captain, pulled off
+their caps, after the usual salutation,
+&quot;Khot ghialdi!&quot; (welcome!) and
+&quot;Yakshimo&uacute;sen, tazamo&uacute;sen, sen-ne-ma-mo&uacute;sen,&quot;
+(I greet you,) arrived
+at the inevitable question at a meeting
+of Asiatics, &quot;What news?&quot;&mdash;&quot;Na
+khaber?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The only news with me is, that
+my horse has cast a shoe, and the
+poor devil is dead lame,&quot; answered
+the Captain in pretty good Tartar:
+&quot;and here is, just <i>&aacute;propos</i>, a blacksmith!&quot;
+he continued, turning to a
+broad-shouldered Tartar, who was
+filing the fresh-shod hoof of Ammal&aacute;t's
+horse. &quot;Koun&aacute;k! (my friend,)&mdash;shoe
+my horse&mdash;the shoes are ready&mdash;'tis
+but the clink of a hammer, and
+'tis done in a moment!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith turned sulkily towards
+the Captain a face tanned by his
+forge and by the sun, looked from the
+corners of his eyes at his questioner,
+stroked the thick mustache which
+overshadowed a beard long unrazored,
+and which might for its bristles have
+done honour to any boar; flattened
+his ar&aacute;kshin (bonnet) on his head,
+and coolly continued putting away his
+tools in their bag.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you understand me, son of a
+wolf race?&quot; said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand you well,&quot; answered
+the blacksmith,&mdash;&quot;you want your
+horse shod.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page292" id="page292" title="page292"></a>&quot;And I should advise you to shoe
+him,&quot; replied the Captain, observing
+on the part of the Tartar a desire to
+jest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-day is a holiday: I will not
+work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will pay you what you like for
+your work; but I tell you that, whether
+you like it or not, you must do what
+I want.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The will of Allah is above ours;
+and he does not permit us to work on
+Djoum&aacute;. We sin enough for gain on
+common days, so on a holiday I do
+not wish to buy coals with silver.&quot;<a name="footnotetag25" id="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;But were you not at work just
+now, obstinate blockhead? Is not
+one horse the same as another?
+Besides, mine is a real Mussulman&mdash;look
+at the mark<a name="footnotetag26" id="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a>&mdash;the blood of Karab&aacute;kh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All horses are alike; but not so
+those who ride them: Ammal&aacute;t Bek
+is my aga (lord.)&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is, if you had taken it into
+your head to refuse him, he would have
+had your ears cropped; but you will
+not work for me, in the hope that I
+would not dare to do the same. Very
+well, my friend! I certainly will not
+crop your ears, but be assured that I
+will warm that orthodox back of yours
+with two hundred pretty stinging
+nogaikas (lashes with a whip) if you
+won't leave off your nonsense&mdash;do you
+hear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hear&mdash;and I answer as I did before:
+I will not shoe the horse&mdash;for I
+am a good Mussulman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I will make you shoe him,
+because I am a good soldier. As you
+have worked at the will of your Bek,
+you shall work for the need of a Russian
+officer&mdash;without this I cannot proceed.
+Corporals, forward!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time a circle of gazers
+had been extending round the obstinate
+blacksmith, like a ring made in
+the water by casting a stone into it.
+Some in the crowd were disputing the
+best places, hardly knowing what they
+were running to see; and at last more
+cries were heard: &quot;It is not fair&mdash;it
+cannot be: to-day is a holiday: to-day
+it is a sin to work!&quot; Some of the
+boldest, trusting to their numbers,
+pulled their caps over their eyes, and
+felt at the hilts of their daggers, pressing
+close up to the Captain, and crying
+&quot;Don't shoe him, Al&eacute;kper! Do
+nothing for him: here's news, my masters!
+What new prophets for us are
+these unwashed Russians?&quot; The Captain
+was a brave man, and thoroughly
+understood the Asiatics. &quot;Away, ye
+rascals!&quot; he cried in a rage, laying
+his hand on the butt of his pistol. &quot;Be
+silent, or the first that dares to let an
+insult pass his teeth, shall have them
+closed with a leaden seal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This threat, enforced by the bayonets
+of some of the soldiers, succeeded
+immediately: they who were timid
+took to their heels&mdash;the bolder held
+their tongues. Even the orthodox
+blacksmith, seeing that the affair was
+becoming serious, looked round on all
+sides, and muttered &quot;Nedjelaim?&quot;
+(What can I do?) tucked up his
+sleeves, pulled out from his bag the
+hammer and pincers, and began to
+shoe the Russian's horse, grumbling
+between his teeth, &quot;<i>Vala billa beetmi
+eddeem</i>, (I will not do it, by God!)&quot;
+It must be remarked that all this took
+place out of Ammal&aacute;t's presence. He
+had hardly looked at the Russians,
+when, in order to avoid a disagreeable
+rencontre, he mounted the horse
+which had just been shod, and galloped
+off to Bouin&aacute;ki, where his house
+was situated.</p>
+
+<p>While this was taking place at one
+end of the exercising ground, a horseman
+rode up to the front of the
+reposing soldiers. He was of middling
+stature, but of athletic frame, and was
+clothed in a shirt of linked mail, his
+head protected by a helmet, and in
+full warlike equipment, and followed
+by five no&uacute;kers. By their dusty
+dress, and the foam which covered
+their horses, it might be seen that they
+had ridden far and fast. The first
+horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers,
+advanced slowly along the piles
+of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids
+of fire-arms. The no&uacute;kers, following
+the steps of their master, far
+from turning aside, coolly rode over
+the scattered weapons. The sentry,
+who had challenged them while they were
+yet at some distance, and warned
+them not to approach, seized the bit
+<a class="pagenum" name="page293" id="page293" title="page293"></a>of the steed bestridden by the mail-coated
+horseman, while the rest of the
+soldiers, enraged at such an insult
+from a Mussulman, assailed the party
+with abuse. &quot;Hold hard! Who are
+you?&quot; was the challenge and question
+of the sentinel. &quot;Thou must be a
+raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan
+Akhmet Khan of Av&aacute;r,&quot;<a name="footnotetag27" id="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a> coolly
+answered the man in mail, shaking off
+the hand of the sentry from his reins.
+&quot;I think last year I left the Russians
+a keepsake at B&aacute;shli. Translate that
+for him,&quot; he said to one of his no&uacute;kers.
+The Av&aacute;retz repeated his words
+in pretty intelligible Russian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis Akhmet Khan! Akhmet
+Khan!&quot; shouted the soldiers. &quot;Seize
+him! hold him fast! down with him!
+pay him for the affair of B&aacute;shli<a name="footnotetag28" id="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a>&mdash;the
+villains cut our wounded to pieces.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Away, brute!&quot; cried Sultan Akhmet
+Khan to the soldier who had again
+seized the bridle of his horse&mdash;&quot;I am
+a Russian general.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A Russian traitor!&quot; roared a multitude
+of voices; &quot;bring him to the
+Captain: drag him to Derbend, to
+Colonel Verkh&oacute;ffsky.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis only to hell I would go with
+such guides!&quot; said Akhmet, with a
+contemptuous smile, and making his
+horse rear, he turned him to the right
+and left; then, with a blow of the
+nogaik,<a name="footnotetag29" id="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a> he made him leap into the
+air, and disappeared. The no&uacute;kers
+kept their eye on the movements of
+their chief, and uttering their warcry,
+followed his steps, and overthrowing
+several of the soldiers, cleared a
+way for themselves into the road. After
+galloping off to a distance of scarce
+a hundred paces, the Khan rode away
+at a slow walk, with an expression of
+the greatest <i>sang-froid</i>, not deigning
+to look back, and coolly playing with
+his bridle. The crowd of Tartars
+assembled round the blacksmith attracted
+his attention. &quot;What are
+you quarrelling about, friends?&quot; asked
+Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining
+in his horse.</p>
+
+<p>In sign of respect and reverence,
+they all applied their hands to their
+foreheads when they saw the Khan.
+The timid or peaceably disposed among
+them, dreading the consequences, either
+from the Russians or the Khan, to
+which this rencontre might expose
+them, exhibited much discomfiture at
+the question; but the idle, the ruffian,
+and the desperate&mdash;for all beheld with
+hatred the Russian domination&mdash;crowded
+turbulently round him with
+delight. They hurriedly told him
+what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you stand, like buffaloes,
+stupidly looking on, while they force
+your brother to work like a brute
+under the yoke!&quot; exclaimed the Khan,
+gloomily, to the bystanders; &quot;while
+they laugh in your face at your customs,
+and trample your faith under
+their feet! and ye whine like old women,
+instead of revenging yourselves
+like men! Cowards! cowards!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can we do?&quot; cried a multitude
+of voices together; &quot;the Russians
+have cannon&mdash;they have bayonets!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And ye, have ye not guns? have
+ye not daggers? It is not the Russians
+that are brave, but ye that are
+cowards! Shame of Mussulmans!
+The sword of Daghest&aacute;n trembles
+before the Russian whip. Ye are
+afraid of the roll of the cannon; but
+ye fear not the reproach of cowardice.
+The ferm&aacute;n of a Russian pr&iacute;stav<a name="footnotetag30" id="footnotetag30"></a><a href="#footnote30"><sup>30</sup></a> is
+holier to you than a chapter of the
+Koran. Siberia frightens you more
+than hell. Did your forefathers act,
+did your forefathers think thus? They
+counted not their enemies, they calculated
+not. Outnumbered or not,
+they met them, bravely fought them,
+and gloriously died! And what fear
+ye? Have the Russians ribs of iron?
+Have their cannon no breach? Is it
+not by the tail that you seize the scorpion?&quot;
+This address stirred the crowd.
+The Tartar vanity was touched to the
+quick. &quot;What do we care for them?
+Why do we let them lord it over us
+<a class="pagenum" name="page294" id="page294" title="page294"></a>here?&quot; was heard around. &quot;Let us
+liberate the blacksmith from his work&mdash;let
+us liberate him!&quot; they roared, as
+they narrowed their circle round the
+Russian soldiers, amidst whom Al&eacute;kper
+was shoeing the captain's horse.
+The confusion increased. Satisfied
+with the tumult he had created, Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, not wishing to mix
+himself up in an insignificant brawl,
+rode out of the crowd, leaving two
+no&uacute;kers to keep alive the violent spirit
+among the Tartars, while, accompanied
+by the remainder, he rode rapidly
+to the ootakh<a name="footnotetag31" id="footnotetag31"></a><a href="#footnote31"><sup>31</sup></a> of Ammal&aacute;t.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mayest thou be victorious,&quot; said
+Sultan Akhmet Khan to Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, who received him at the threshold.
+This ordinary salutation, in the
+Circassian language, was pronounced
+with so marked an emphasis, that
+Ammal&aacute;t as he kissed him, asked,
+&quot;Is that a jest or a prophecy, my fair
+guest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That depends on thee,&quot; replied
+the Sultan. &quot;It is upon the right
+heir of the Shamkhal&aacute;t<a name="footnotetag32" id="footnotetag32"></a><a href="#footnote32"><sup>32</sup></a> that it
+depends to draw the sword from the
+scabbard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To sheath it no more, Khan? An
+unenviable destiny. Methinks it is
+better to reign in Bouin&aacute;ki, than for
+an empty title to be obliged to hide
+in the mountains like a jackal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To bound from the mountains like
+a lion, Ammal&aacute;t; and to repose, after
+your glorious toils, in the palace of
+your ancestors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To repose? Is it not better not
+to be awakened at all?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you behold but in a dream
+what you ought to possess in reality?
+The Russians are giving you the
+poppy, and will lull you with tales,
+while another plucks the golden
+flowers of the garden.&quot;<a name="footnotetag33" id="footnotetag33"></a><a href="#footnote33"><sup>33</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I do with my force?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Force&mdash;that is in thy soul,
+Ammal&aacute;t!... Despise dangers and
+they bend before you.... Dost thou
+hear that?&quot; added Sultan Akhmet
+Khan, as the sound of firing reached
+them from the town. &quot;It is the voice
+of victory!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Saphir-Ali rushed into the chamber
+with an agitated face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bouin&aacute;ki is in revolt,&quot; he hurriedly
+began; &quot;a crowd of rioters
+has overpowered the detachment, and
+they have begun to fire from the
+rocks.&quot;<a name="footnotetag34" id="footnotetag34"></a><a href="#footnote34"><sup>34</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rascals!&quot; cried Ammal&aacute;t, as he
+threw his gun over his shoulder.
+&quot;How dared they to rise without me!
+Run, Saphir-Ali, threaten them with
+my name; kill the first who disobeys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have done all I could to restrain
+them,&quot; said Saphir-Ali, &quot;but none
+would listen to me, for the no&uacute;kers of
+Sultan Akhmet Khan were urging
+them on, saying that he had ordered
+them to slay the Russians.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! did my no&uacute;kers say
+that?&quot; asked the Khan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They did not say so much, but
+they set the example,&quot; said Saphir-Ali.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In that case they have done well,&quot;
+replied Sultan Akhmet Khan: &quot;this
+is brave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What hast thou done, Khan!&quot;
+cried Ammal&aacute;t, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What you might have done long
+ago!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I justify myself to the
+Russians?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With lead and steel.... The
+firing is begun.... Fate works for
+you ... the sword is drawn ... let us
+go seek the Russians!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are here!&quot; cried the Captain,
+who, followed by two men, had
+broken through the disorderly ranks
+of the Tartars, and dashed into the
+house of their chief. Confounded by
+the unexpected outbreak in which
+he was certain to be considered a
+party, Ammal&aacute;t saluted his enraged
+<a class="pagenum" name="page295" id="page295" title="page295"></a>guest&mdash;&quot;Come in peace!&quot; he said to
+him in Tartar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I care not whether I come in
+peace or no,&quot; answered the Captain,
+&quot;but I find no peaceful reception in
+Bouin&aacute;ki. Thy Tartars, Ammal&aacute;t,
+have dared to fire upon a soldier of
+mine, of yours, a subject of our
+Tsar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In very deed, 'twas absurd to fire
+on a Russian,&quot; said the Khan, contemptuously
+stretching himself on the
+cushions of the divan, &quot;when they
+might have cut his throat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here is the cause of all the mischief,
+Ammal&aacute;t!&quot; said the Captain,
+angrily, pointing to the Khan; &quot;but
+for this insolent rebel not a trigger
+would have been pulled in Bouin&aacute;ki!
+But you have done well, Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, to invite Russians as friends,
+and to receive their foe as a guest, to
+shelter him as a comrade, to honour
+him as a friend! Ammal&aacute;t Bek, this
+man is named in the order of the
+commander-in-chief; give him up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain,&quot; answered Ammal&aacute;t,
+&quot;with us a guest is sacred. To give
+him up would be a sin upon my soul,
+an ineffaceable shame upon my head;
+respect my entreaty; respect our
+customs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will tell you, in your turn&mdash;respect
+the Russian laws. Remember
+your duty. You have sworn allegiance
+to the Tsar, and your oath obliges
+you not to spare your own brother
+if he is a criminal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rather would I give up my brother
+than my guest, Sir Captain! It
+is not for you to judge my promises
+and obligations. My tribunal is Allah
+and the padishah! In the field,
+let fortune take care of the Khan;
+but within my threshold, beneath my
+roof, I am bound to be his protector,
+and I will be!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you shall be answerable for
+this traitor!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Khan had lain in haughty silence
+during this dispute, breathing
+the smoke from his pipe: but at the
+word &quot;traitor,&quot; his blood was fired,
+he started up, and rushed indignantly
+to the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Traitor, say you?&quot; he cried.
+&quot;Say rather, that I refused to betray
+him to whom I was bound by promise.
+The Russian padishah gave
+me rank, the sardar<a name="footnotetag35" id="footnotetag35"></a><a href="#footnote35"><sup>35</sup></a> caressed me&mdash;and
+I was faithful so long as they demanded
+of me nothing impossible or
+humiliating. But, all of a sudden, they
+wished me to admit troops into Av&aacute;r&mdash;to
+permit fortresses to be built
+there; and what name should I have
+deserved, if I had sold the blood and
+sweat of the Av&aacute;retzes, my brethren!
+If I had attempted this, think ye that
+I could have done it? A thousand
+free daggers, a thousand unhired bullets,
+would have flown to the heart of
+the betrayer. The very rocks would
+have fallen on the son who could betray
+his father. I refused the friendship
+of the Russians; but I was not
+their enemy&mdash;and what was the reward
+of my just intentions, my honest
+counsels? I was deeply, personally
+insulted by the letter of one of your
+generals, whom I had warned. That
+insolence cost him dear at B&aacute;shli ... I
+shed a river of blood for some few
+drops of insulting ink, and that river
+divides us for ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That blood cries for vengeance!&quot;
+replied the enraged Captain. &quot;Thou
+shalt not escape it, robber!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor thou from me!&quot; shouted the
+infuriated Khan, plunging his dagger
+into the body of the Captain, as he
+lifted his hand to seize him by the collar.
+Severely wounded, the officer
+fell groaning on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thou hast undone me!&quot; cried
+Ammal&aacute;t, wringing his hands. &quot;He
+is a Russian, and my guest!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are insults which a roof
+cannot cover,&quot; sullenly replied the
+Khan. &quot;The die is cast: it is no
+time to hesitate. Shut your gate, call
+your people, and let us attack the
+enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An hour ago I had no enemy ... there
+are no means now for repulsing
+them ... I have neither powder nor
+ball ... The people are dispersed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They have fled!&quot; cried Saphir-Ali
+in despair. &quot;The Russians are
+advancing at full march over the hill.
+They are close at hand!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If so, go with me, Ammal&aacute;t!&quot;
+said the Khan. &quot;I rode to Tchetchn&aacute;
+yesterday, to raise the revolt along
+<a class="pagenum" name="page296" id="page296" title="page296"></a>the line ... What will be the end,
+God knows; but there is bread in the
+mountains. Do you consent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us go!&quot; ... replied Ammal&aacute;t,
+resolvedly.... &quot;When our
+only safety is in flight, it is no time
+for disputes and reproaches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! horses, and six no&uacute;kers with
+me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And am I to go with you?&quot; said
+Saphir-Ali, with tears in his eyes&mdash;&quot;with
+you for weal or woe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, my good Saphir-Ali, no.
+Remain you here to govern the household,
+that our people and the strangers
+may not seize every thing. Give my
+greeting to my wife, and take her
+to my father-in-law, the Shamkh&aacute;l.
+Forget me not, and farewell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They had barely time to escape at
+full gallop by one gate, when the Russians
+dashed in at the other.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>The vernal noon was shining upon
+the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud
+voices of the moollahs had called the
+inhabitants of Tchetchn&aacute; to prayer.
+By degrees they came forth from the
+mosques, and though invisible to each
+other from the towers on which they
+stood, their solitary voices, after awaking
+for a moment the echoes of the
+hills, sank to stillness in the silent
+air.</p>
+
+<p>The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a
+Turkish devotee, one of those missionaries
+annually sent into the mountains
+by the Divan of Stamboul, to
+spread and strengthen the faith, and
+to increase the detestation felt by the
+inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing
+on the roof of the mosque,
+having performed the usual call, ablution,
+and prayer. He had not been long
+installed as moollah of Ig&aacute;li, a
+village of Tchetchn&aacute;; and plunged in
+a deep contemplation of his hoary
+beard, and the circling smoke-wreaths
+that rose from his pipe, he gazed from
+time to time with a curious interest
+on the mountains, and on the defiles
+which lay towards the north, right
+before his eyes. On the left arose the
+precipitous ridges dividing Tchetchn&aacute;
+from Av&aacute;r, and beyond them glittered
+the snows of Caucasus; s&aacute;klas scattered
+disorderly along the ridges half-way
+up the mountain, and narrow
+paths led to these fortresses built by
+nature, and employed by the hill-robbers
+to defend their liberty, or secure
+their plunder. All was still in the
+village and the surrounding hills;
+there was not a human being to be
+seen on the roads or streets; flocks of
+sheep were reposing in the shade of
+the cliffs; the buffaloes were crowded
+in the muddy swamps near the springs,
+with only their muzzles protruded
+from the marsh. Nought save the
+hum of the insects&mdash;nought save the
+monotonous chirp of the grasshoppers
+indicated life amid the breathless
+silence of the mountains; and Hadji
+Suleiman, stretched under the cupola,
+was intensely enjoying the stillness
+and repose of nature, so congenial to
+the lazy immobility of the Turkish
+character. Indolently he turned his
+eyes, whose fire was extinguished, and
+which no longer reflected the light of
+the sun, and at length they fell upon
+two horsemen, slowly climbing the
+opposite side of the declivity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;N&eacute;phtali!&quot; cried our Moollah,
+turning towards a neighbouring s&aacute;kla,
+at the gate of which stood a saddled
+horse. And then a handsome Tchetchenetz,
+with short cut beard, and
+shaggy cap covering half his face, ran
+out into the street. &quot;I see two horsemen,&quot;
+continued the Moollah; &quot;they
+are riding round the village!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most likely Jews or Armenians,&quot;
+answered N&eacute;phtali. &quot;They do not
+choose to hire a guide, and will break
+their necks in the winding road. The
+wild-goats, and our boldest riders,
+would not plunge into these recesses
+without precaution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, brother N&eacute;phtali; I have
+been twice to Mecca, and have seen
+plenty of Jews and Armenians every
+where. But these riders look not like
+Hebrew chafferers, unless, indeed, they
+exchange steel for gold in the mountain
+road. They have no bales of
+merchandise. Look at them yourself
+from above; your eyes are surer than
+mine; mine have had their day, and
+done their work. There was a time
+when I could count the buttons on a
+Russian soldier's coat a verst off, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page297" id="page297" title="page297"></a>my rifle never missed an infidel; but
+now I could not distinguish a ram of
+my own afar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this time N&eacute;phtali was at the
+side of the Moollah, and was examining
+the travellers with an eagle
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The noonday is hot, and the road
+rugged,&quot; said Suleiman; &quot;invite the
+travellers to refresh themselves and
+their horses: perhaps they have news:
+besides, the Koran commands us to
+show hospitality.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With us in the mountains, and
+before the Koran, never did a stranger
+leave a village hungry or sad; never
+did he depart without tchourek,<a name="footnotetag36" id="footnotetag36"></a><a href="#footnote36"><sup>36</sup></a> without
+blessing, without a guide; but these
+people are suspicious: why do they
+avoid honest men, and pass our village
+by by-roads, and with danger to their
+life?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems that they are your countrymen,&quot;
+said Suleiman, shading his
+eyes with his hand: &quot;their dress is
+Tchetchn&aacute;. Perhaps they are returning
+from a plundering exhibition, to
+which your father went with a hundred
+of his neighbours; or perhaps they are
+brothers, going to revenge blood for
+blood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Suleiman, that is not like us.
+Could a mountaineer's heart refrain
+from coming to see his countrymen&mdash;to
+boast of his exploits against the
+Russians, and to show his booty?
+These are neither avengers of blood
+nor Abreks&mdash;their faces are not covered
+by the b&aacute;shlik; besides, dress is deceptive.
+Who can tell that those are
+not Russian deserters! The other
+day a K&aacute;zak, who had murdered his
+master, fled from Goumbet-Ao&uacute;l with
+his horse and arms.... The devil is
+strong!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is strong in them in whom
+the faith is weak, N&eacute;phtali;&mdash;yet, if
+I mistake not, the hinder horseman
+has hair flowing from under his cap.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I be pounded to dust, but it
+is so! It is either a Russian, or, what
+is worse, a Tartar Shageed.<a name="footnotetag37" id="footnotetag37"></a><a href="#footnote37"><sup>37</sup></a> Stop a
+moment, my friend; I will comb your
+zilfl&aacute;rs for you! In half-an-hour I will
+return, Suleiman, either with them,&mdash;or
+one of us three shall feed the mountain
+berkoots (eagles.)&quot;</p>
+
+<p>N&eacute;phtali rushed down the stairs,
+threw the gun on his shoulders, leapt
+into his saddle and dashed down the
+hill, caring neither for furrow nor stone.
+Only the dust arose, and the pebbles
+streamed down after the bold horseman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alla akb&eacute;r!&quot; gravely exclaimed
+Suleiman, and lit his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>N&eacute;phtali soon came up with the
+strangers. Their horses were covered
+with foam, and the sweat-drops rained
+from them on the narrow path by
+which they were climbing the mountain.
+The first was clothed in a shirt
+of mail, the other in the Circassian
+dress: except that he wore a Persian
+sabre instead of a sh&aacute;shka,<a name="footnotetag38" id="footnotetag38"></a><a href="#footnote38"><sup>38</sup></a> suspended
+by a laced girdle. His left arm was
+covered with blood, bound up with a
+handkerchief, and supported by the
+sword-knot. The faces of both were
+concealed. For some time he rode
+behind them along the slippery path,
+which overhung a precipice; but at
+the first open space he galloped by
+them, and turned his horse round.
+&quot;Sal&aacute;m aleikom!&quot; said he, opposing
+their passage along the rugged and
+half-built road among the rocks, as he
+made ready his arms. The foremost
+horseman suddenly wrapped his bo&uacute;rka<a name="footnotetag39" id="footnotetag39"></a><a href="#footnote39"><sup>39</sup></a>
+round his face, so as to leave
+visible only his knit brows: &quot;Aleikom
+Sal&aacute;m!&quot; answered he, cocking his
+gun, and fixing himself in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God give you a good journey!&quot;
+said N&eacute;phtali. repeating the usual salutation,
+and preparing, at the first
+hostile movement, to shoot the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God give you enough of sense not
+to interrupt the traveller,&quot; replied his
+antagonist, impatiently: &quot;What would
+you with us, Koun&aacute;k?&quot;<a name="footnotetag40" id="footnotetag40"></a><a href="#footnote40"><sup>40</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I offer you rest, and a brother's
+repast, barley and stalls for your horses.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page298" id="page298" title="page298"></a>My threshold flourishes by hospitality:
+the blessing of the stranger increaseth
+the flock, and giveth sharpness to the
+sword of the master. Fix not the seal
+of reproach on our whole village. Let
+them not say, 'They have seen travellers
+in the heat of noon, and
+have not refreshed them nor sheltered
+them.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We thank you for your kindness;
+but we are not wont to take forced
+hospitality; and haste is even more
+necessary for us than rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ride to your death without a
+guide.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Guide!&quot; exclaimed the traveller;
+&quot;I know every step of the Caucasus.
+I have been where your serpents
+climb not, your tigers cannot mount,
+your eagles cannot fly. Make way,
+comrade: thy threshold is not on
+God's high-road, and I have no time
+to prate with thee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not yield a step, till I know
+who and whence you are!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Insolent scoundrel, out of my way,
+or thy mother shall beg thy bones
+from the jackall and the wind! Thank
+your luck, N&eacute;phtali, that thy father
+and I have eaten one another's salt;
+and often have ridden by his side in
+the battle. Unworthy son! thou art
+rambling about the roads, and ready to
+attack the peaceable travellers, while
+thy father's corse lies rotting on the
+fields of Russia, and the wives of the
+Kaz&aacute;ks are selling his arms in the
+bazar. N&eacute;phtali, thy father was slain
+yesterday beyond the T&eacute;rek. Dost
+thou know me now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sultan Akhmet Khan!&quot; cried the
+Tchetchenetz, struck by the piercing
+look and by the terrible news. His
+voice was stifled, and he fell forward
+on his horse's neck in inexpressible
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I am Sultan Akhmet Khan!
+but grave this in your memory, N&eacute;phtali&mdash;that
+if you say to any one, 'I
+have seen the Khan of Av&aacute;r,' my vengeance
+will live from generation to
+generation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The strangers passed on, the Khan
+in silence, plunged, as it seemed, in
+painful recollections; Ammal&aacute;t (for it
+was he) in gloomy thought. The dress
+of both bore witness to recent fighting;
+their mustaches were singed by the
+priming, and splashes of blood had
+dried upon their faces; but the proud
+look of the first seemed to defy to the
+combat fate and chance; a gloomy
+smile, of hate mingled with scorn, contracted
+his lip. On the other hand,
+on the features of Ammal&aacute;t exhaustion
+was painted. He could hardly turn
+his languid eyes; and from time to time
+a groan escaped him, caused by the
+pain of his wounded arm. The uneasy
+pace of the Tartar horse, unaccustomed
+to the mountain roads, renewed
+the torment of his wound. He
+was the first to break the silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why have you refused the offer of
+these good people? We might have
+stopped an hour or two to repose,
+and at dewfall we could have proceeded.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You think so, because you feel
+like a young man, dear Ammal&aacute;t: you
+are used to rule your Tartars like
+slaves, and you fancy that you can
+conduct yourself with the same ease
+among the free mountaineers. The
+hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;&mdash;we
+are defeated and flying. Hundreds
+of brave mountaineers&mdash;your
+no&uacute;kers and my own&mdash;have fallen in
+fight with the Russians; and the
+Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight
+the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan,
+which they are wont to behold the
+star of victory! To accept the beggar's
+repast, perhaps to hear reproaches
+for the death of fathers and sons, carried
+away by me in this rash expedition&mdash;'twould
+be to lose their confidence
+for ever. Time will pass, tears
+will dry up; the thirst of vengeance
+will take place of grief for the dead;
+and then again Sultan Akhmet will be
+seen the prophet of plunder and of
+blood. Then again the battle-signal
+shall echo through the mountains, and
+I shall once more lead flying bands of
+avengers into the Russian limits. If I
+go now, in the moment of defeat, the
+Tchetchenetz will judge that Allah
+giveth and taketh away victory. They
+may offend me by rash words, and
+with me an offence is ineffaceable; and
+the revenge of a personal offence would
+obstruct the road that leads me to the
+Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel
+with a brave people&mdash;and destroy
+the idol of glory on which they are
+wont to gaze with rapture? Never
+does man appear so mean as in weakness,
+when every one can measure
+his strength with him fearlessly: besides,
+you need a skilful leech, and
+nowhere will you find a better than at
+my house. To-morrow we shall be at
+home; have patience until then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page299" id="page299" title="page299"></a>With a gesture of gratitude Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek placed his hand upon his heart
+and forehead: he perfectly felt the
+truth of the Khan's words, but exhaustion
+for many hours had been
+overwhelming him. Avoiding the villages,
+they passed the night among the
+rocks, eating a handful of millet boiled
+in honey, without the mountaineers
+seldom set out on a journey.
+Crossing the Koi-So&uacute; by the bridge
+near the Ashe&eacute;rt, quitting its northern
+branch, and leaving behind them
+And&eacute;h, and the country of the Boulin&eacute;tzes
+of the Koi-So&uacute;, and the naked
+chain of Salata&oacute;u. A rude path lay
+before them, winding among forests
+and cliffs terrible to body and soul;
+and they began to climb the last chain
+which separated them on the north
+from Khounz&aacute;kh or Av&aacute;r, the capital of
+the Khans. The forest, and then the
+underwood, had gradually disappeared
+from the naked flint of the mountain,
+on which cloud and tempest could
+hardly wander. To reach the summit,
+our travellers were compelled to ride
+alternately to the right and to the left,
+so precipitous was the ascent of the
+rocks. The experienced steed of the
+Khan stepped cautiously and surely
+from stone to stone, feeling his way
+with his hoofs, and when they slipped,
+gliding on his haunches down the declivities:
+while the ardent fiery horse
+of Ammal&aacute;t, trained in the hills of
+Daghest&aacute;n, fretted, curveted, and
+slipped. Deprived of his customary
+grooming, he could not support a two
+days' flight under the intense cold
+and burning sunshine of the mountains,
+travelling among sharp rocks, and
+nourished only by the scanty herbage
+of the crevices. He snorted heavily
+as he climbed higher and higher; the
+sweat streamed from his poitrel; his
+large nostrils were dry and parched,
+and foam boiled from his bit. &quot;Allah
+berek&eacute;t!&quot; exclaimed Ammal&aacute;t, as
+he reached the crest from which there
+opened before him a view of Av&aacute;r:
+but at the very moment his exhausted
+horse fell under him; the blood spouted
+from his open mouth, and his last
+breath burst the saddle-girth.</p>
+
+<p>The Khan assisted the Bek to extricate
+himself from the stirrups; but
+observed with alarm that his efforts
+had displaced the bandage on Ammal&aacute;t's
+wounded arm, and that the blood
+was soaking through it afresh. The
+young man, it seemed, was insensible
+to pain; tears were rolling down his
+face upon the dead horse. So one
+drop fills not, but overflows the cup.
+&quot;Thou wilt never more bear me like
+down upon the wind,&quot; he said, &quot;nor
+hear behind thee from the dust-cloud
+of the race, the shouts, unpleasing to
+the rival, the acclamations of the
+people: in the blaze of battle no more
+shalt thou carry me from the iron rain
+of the Russian cannon. With thee I
+gained the fame of a warrior&mdash;why
+should I survive, or it, or thee?&quot; He
+bent his face upon his knee, and remained
+silent a long time, while the
+Khan carefully bound up his wounded
+arm: at length Ammal&aacute;t raised his
+head: &quot;Leave me!&quot; he cried, resolutely:
+&quot;leave, Sultan Akhmet Khan,
+a wretch to his fate! The way is long,
+and I am exhausted. By remaining
+with me, you will perish in vain. See!
+the eagle soars around us; he knows
+that my heart will soon quiver beneath
+his talons, and I thank God! Better
+find an airy grave in the maw of a bird
+of prey, than leave my corse beneath
+a Christian foot. Farewell, linger
+not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For shame, Ammal&aacute;t! you trip
+against a straw....! What
+the great harm? You are wounded,
+and your horse is dead. Your wound
+will soon healed, and we will find
+you a better horse! Allah sendeth not
+misfortunes alone. In the flower of
+your age, and the full vigour of your
+faculties, it is a sin to despair. Mount
+my horse, I will lead him by the bridle,
+and by night we shall be at home.
+Time is precious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For me, time is no more, Sultan
+Ahkmet Khan ... I thank you
+heartily for your brotherly care, but I
+cannot take advantage of it ... you
+yourself cannot support a march on
+foot after such fatigue. I repeat ...
+leave me to my fate. Here, on these
+inaccessible heights, I will die free and
+contented ... And what is there to
+recall me to life! My parents lie under
+the earth, my wife is blind, my uncle
+and father-in-law the Shamkh&aacute;l are
+cowering at Tarki before the Russians
+... the Giaour is revelling in my
+native land, in my inheritance; and I
+myself an a wanderer from my home,
+a runaway from battle. I neither can,
+nor ought to live.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ought <i>not</i> to talk such nonsense,
+dear Ammal&aacute;t:&mdash;and nothing
+but fever can excuse you. We are
+<a class="pagenum" name="page300" id="page300" title="page300"></a>created that we may live longer than
+our fathers. For wives, if one has
+not teazed you enough, we will find
+you three more. If you love not the
+Shamkh&aacute;l, yet love your own inheritance&mdash;you
+ought to live, if but for
+that; since to a dead man power is
+useless, and victory impossible. Revenge
+on the Russians is a holy duty:
+live, if but for that. That we are
+beaten, is no novelty for a warrior;
+to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls
+to us. Allah gives fortune; but a man
+creates his own glory, not by fortune,
+but by firmness. Take courage, my
+friend Ammal&aacute;t.... You are
+wounded and weak; I am strong from
+habit, and not fatigued by flight.
+Mount! and we may yet live to beat
+the Russians.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colour returned to Ammal&aacute;t's
+face ... &quot;Yes, I will live for revenge!&quot;
+he cried: &quot;for revenge both
+secret and open. Believe me, Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I
+accept your generosity! Henceforth
+I am yours; I swear by the graves of
+my fathers.... I am yours! Guide
+my steps, direct the strokes of my arm;
+and if ever, drowned in softness, I forget
+my oath, remind me of this moment,
+of this mountain peak: Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek will awake, and his dagger will
+be lightning!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Khan embraced him, as he lifted
+the excited youth into the saddle.
+&quot;Now I behold in you the pure blood
+of the Em&iacute;rs!&quot; said he: &quot;the burning
+blood of their children, which flows in
+our veins like the sulphur in the entrails
+of the rocks, which, ever and
+anon inflaming, shakes and topples
+down the crags.&quot; Steadying with one
+hand the wounded man in the saddle,
+the Khan began cautiously to descend
+the rugged croft. Occasionally the
+stones fell rattling from under their
+feet, or the horse slid downward over
+the smooth granite, so that they were
+well pleased to reach the mossy slopes.
+By degrees, creeping plants began to
+appear, spreading their green sheets;
+and, waving from the crevices like fans,
+they hung down in long ringlets like
+ribbons or flags. At length they reached
+a thick wood of nut-trees; then
+came the oak, the wild cherry, and,
+lower still, the tchin&aacute;r,<a name="footnotetag41" id="footnotetag41"></a><a href="#footnote41"><sup>41</sup></a> and the tchind&aacute;r.
+The variety, the wealth of vegetation,
+and the majestic silence of the
+umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary
+adoration of the wild strength
+of nature. Ever and anon, from the
+midnight darkness of the boughs, there
+dawned, like the morning, glimpses of
+meadows, covered with a fragrant carpet
+of flowers untrodden by the foot
+of man. The pathway at one time
+lost itself in the depth of the thicket;
+at another, crept forth upon the edge
+of the rock, below which gleamed and
+murmured a rivulet, now foaming over
+the stones, then again slumbering on
+its rocky bed, under the shade of the
+barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants,
+sparkling with their rainbow tails,
+flitted from shrub to shrub; flights of
+wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes
+in an horizontal troop, sometimes
+like a column, rising to the sky; and
+sunset flooded all with its airy purple,
+and light mists began to rise from the
+narrow gorges: every thing breathed
+the freshness of evening. Our travellers
+were now near the village of Aki,
+and separated only by a hill from
+Khounz&aacute;kh. A low crest alone divided
+them from that village, when
+the report of a gun resounded from
+the mountain, and, like an ominous
+signal, was repeated by the echoes
+of the cliffs. The travellers halted
+irresolute: the echoes by degrees sank
+into stillness. &quot;Our hunters!&quot; cried
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, wiping the
+sweat from his face: &quot;they expect
+me not, and think not to meet me
+here! Many tears of joy, and many of
+sorrow, do I bear to Khounz&aacute;kh!&quot;
+Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in
+the face of Akhmet Khan. Vividly
+does every soft and every savage sentiment
+play on the features of the Asiatic.</p>
+
+<p>Another report soon interrupted his
+meditation; then another, and another.
+Shot answered shot, and at length
+thickened into a warm fire. &quot;'Tis
+the Russians!&quot; cried Ammal&aacute;t, drawing
+his sabre. He pressed his horse
+with the stirrup, as though he would
+have leaped over the ridge at a single
+bound; but in a moment his strength
+failed him, and the blade fell ringing
+on the ground, as his arm dropped
+heavily by his side. &quot;Khan!&quot; said
+he, dismounting, &quot;go to the succour
+of your people; your face will be
+<a class="pagenum" name="page301" id="page301" title="page301"></a>worth more to them than a hundred
+warriors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Khan heard him not; he was
+listening intently for the flight of the
+balls, as if he would distinguish those
+of the Russian from the Av&aacute;rian.
+&quot;Have they, besides the agility of the
+goat, stolen the wings of the eagle
+of Kazb&eacute;c? Can they have reached
+our inaccessible fastnesses?&quot; said he,
+leaning to the saddle, with his foot already
+in the stirrup. &quot;Farewell, Ammal&aacute;t!&quot;
+he cried at length, listening to
+the firing, which now grew hotter: &quot;I
+go to perish on the ruins I have made,
+after striking like a thunderbolt!&quot; At
+this moment a bullet whistled by, and
+fell at his feet. Bending down and
+picking it up, his face was lighted with
+a smile. He quietly took his foot from
+the stirrup, and turning to Ammal&aacute;t,
+&quot;Mount!&quot; said he, &quot;you shall presently
+find with your own eyes an answer
+to this riddle. The Russian bullets
+are of lead; but this is copper<a name="footnotetag42" id="footnotetag42"></a><a href="#footnote42"><sup>42</sup></a>&mdash;an
+Av&aacute;retz, my dear countryman. Besides,
+it comes from the south, where
+the Russians cannot be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They ascended to the summit of the
+crest, and before their view opened two
+villages, situated on the opposite sides
+of a deep ravine; from behind them
+came the firing. The inhabitants
+sheltering themselves behind rocks and
+hedges, were firing at each other. Between
+them the women were incessantly
+running, sobbing and weeping
+when any combatant, approaching the
+edge of the ravine, fell wounded. They
+carried stones, and, regardless of the
+whistling of the balls, fearlessly piled
+them up, so as to make a kind of defence.
+Cries of joy arose from one side or the
+other, as a wounded adversary was
+carried from the field; a groan of sorrow
+ascended in the air when one of
+their kinsmen or comrades was hit.
+Ammal&aacute;t gazed at the combat for some
+time with surprise, a combat in which
+there was a great deal more noise than
+execution. At length he turned an
+enquiring eye upon the Khan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With us these are everyday affairs!&quot;
+he answered, delightedly marking
+each report. &quot;Such skirmishes
+cherish among us a warlike spirit and
+warlike habits. With you, private
+quarrels end in a few blows of the dagger;
+among us they become the common
+business of whole villages, and any
+trifle is enough to occasion them. Probably
+they are fighting about some cow
+that has been stolen. With us it is no
+disgrace to steal in another village&mdash;the
+shame is, to be found out. Admire the
+coolness of our women; the balls are
+whizzing about like gnats, yet they pay
+no attention to them! Worthy wives
+and mothers of brave men! To be
+sure, there would be eternal disgrace
+to him who could wound a woman,
+yet no man can answer for a ball. A
+sharp eye may aim it; but blind chance
+carries it to the mark. But darkness
+is falling from heaven, and dividing
+these enemies for a moment. Let us
+hasten to my kinsmen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing but the experience of the
+Khan could have saved our travellers
+from frequent falls in the precipitous
+descent to the river Ouz&eacute;n. Ammal&aacute;t
+could see scarcely any thing before
+him; the double veil of night and
+weakness enveloped his eyes; his head
+turned: he beheld, as it were in a
+dream, when they again mounted an
+eminence, the gate and watch-tower of
+the Khan's house. With an uncertain
+foot he dismounted in a courtyard,
+surrounded by shouting no&uacute;kers
+and attendants; and he had hardly stepped
+over the grated threshold when his
+breath failed him&mdash;a deadly paleness
+poured its snow over the wounded
+man's face; and the young Bek, exhausted
+by loss of blood, fatigued by
+travel, hunger, and anguish of soul,
+fell senseless on the embroidered carpets.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s2" id="bw329s2"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page302" id="page302" title="page302"></a>
+<h2>POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.</h2>
+
+<h3>No. VI.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE LAY OF THE BELL.</h3>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Vivos voco&mdash;Mortuous plango&mdash;Fulgura frango.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,</p>
+<p class="i2">Awaits the mould of bak&egrave;d clay.</p>
+<p class="i1">Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">THE BELL that shall be born to-day!</p>
+<p class="i4">And wearily now,</p>
+<p class="i4">With the sweat of the brow,</p>
+<p>Shall the work win its grace in the master's eye,</p>
+<p>But the blessing that hallows must come from high.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">And well an earnest word beseems</p>
+<p class="i2">The work the earnest hand prepares;</p>
+<p class="i1">Its load more light the labour deems,</p>
+<p class="i2">When sweet discourse the labour shares.</p>
+<p class="i1">So let us ponder&mdash;nor in vain&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">What strength has wrought when labour wills;</p>
+<p class="i1">For who would not the fool disdain</p>
+<p class="i2">Who ne'er can feel what he fulfills?</p>
+<p class="i1">And well it stamps our Human Race,</p>
+<p class="i2">And hence the gift TO UNDERSTAND,</p>
+<p class="i1">When in the musing heart we trace</p>
+<p class="i2">Whate'er we fashion with the hand.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">From the fir the fagot take,</p>
+<p class="i2">Keep it, heap it hard and dry,</p>
+<p class="i1">That the gather'd flame may break</p>
+<p class="i2">Through the furnace, wroth and high.</p>
+<p class="i4">Smolt the copper within&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Quick&mdash;the brass with the tin,</p>
+<p>That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell</p>
+<p>May flow in the right course glib and well.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">What now these mines so deeply shroud,</p>
+<p class="i2">What Force with Fire is moulding thus,</p>
+<p class="i1">Shall from yon steeple, oft and loud,</p>
+<p class="i2">Speak, witnessing of us!</p>
+<p class="i1">It shall, in later days unfailing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;</p>
+<p class="i1">Its solemn voice with Sorrow wailing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Or choral chiming to Devotion.</p>
+<p class="i1">Whatever sound in man's deep breast</p>
+<p class="i2">Fate wakens, through his winding track,</p>
+<p class="i1">Shall strike that metal-crown&egrave;d crest,</p>
+<p class="i2">Which rings the moral answer back.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">See the silvery bubbles spring!</p>
+<p class="i2">Good! the mass is melting now!</p>
+<p class="i1">Let the salts we duly bring</p>
+<p class="i2">Purge the flood, and speed the flow.</p>
+<p class="i4">From the dross and the scum,</p>
+<p class="i4">Pure, the fusion must come;</p>
+<p>For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,</p>
+<p>That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page303" id="page303" title="page303"></a>
+<p class="i1">That voice, with merry music rife,</p>
+<p class="i2">The cherish'd child shall welcome in;</p>
+<p class="i1">What time the rosy dreams of life,</p>
+<p class="i2">In the first slumber's arms begin.</p>
+<p class="i1">As yet in Time's dark womb unwarning,</p>
+<p class="i2">Repose the days, or foul or fair;</p>
+<p class="i1">And watchful o'er that golden morning,</p>
+<p class="i2">The Mother-Love's untiring care!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">And swift the years like arrows fly&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">No more with girls content to play,</p>
+<p class="i1">Bounds the proud Boy upon his way,</p>
+<p class="i1">Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,</p>
+<p class="i1">With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;</p>
+<p class="i1">And, wearied with the wish to roam,</p>
+<p class="i1">Again seeks, stranger-like, the Father-Home.</p>
+<p class="i1">And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks</p>
+<p class="i2">Out from its native morning skies,</p>
+<p class="i1">With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,</p>
+<p class="i2">The Virgin stands before his eyes.</p>
+<p class="i1">A nameless longing seizes him!</p>
+<p class="i2">From all his wild companions flown;</p>
+<p class="i1">Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;</p>
+<p class="i2">He wanders all alone.</p>
+<p class="i1">Blushing, he glides where'er she move;</p>
+<p class="i2">Her greeting can transport him;</p>
+<p class="i1">To every mead to deck his love,</p>
+<p class="i2">The happy wild flowers court him!</p>
+<p class="i1">Sweet Hope&mdash;and tender Longing&mdash;ye</p>
+<p class="i2">The growth of Life's first Age of Gold;</p>
+<p class="i1">When the heart, swelling, seems to see</p>
+<p class="i2">The gates of heaven unfold!</p>
+<p>O Love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,</p>
+<p>Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Browning o'er the pipes are simmering,</p>
+<p class="i2">Dip this fairy rod within;</p>
+<p class="i1">If like glass the surface glimmering,</p>
+<p class="i2">Then the casting may begin.</p>
+<p class="i4">Brisk, brisk to the rest&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Quick!&mdash;the fusion to test;</p>
+<p>And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign,</p>
+<p>If the ductile and brittle united combine.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,</p>
+<p>And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,</p>
+<p class="i1">Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong:</p>
+<p>So be it with thee, if for ever united,</p>
+<p>The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;</p>
+<p class="i1">Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Lovely, thither are they bringing,</p>
+<p class="i2">With her virgin wreath, the Bride!</p>
+<p class="i1">To the love-feast clearly ringing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Tolls the church-bell far and wide!</p>
+<p class="i1">With that sweetest holyday,</p>
+<p class="i2">Must the May of Life depart;</p>
+<p class="i1">With the cestus loosed&mdash;away</p>
+<p class="i2">Flies ILLUSION from the heart!</p>
+<p class="i3">Yet Love lingers lonely,</p>
+<p class="i4">When Passion is mute,</p>
+<p class="i3">And the blossoms may only</p>
+<p class="i4">Give way to the fruit.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page304" id="page304" title="page304"></a>
+<p class="i2">The Husband must enter</p>
+<p class="i3">The hostile life,</p>
+<p class="i3">With struggle and strife,</p>
+<p class="i3">To plant or to watch,</p>
+<p class="i3">To snare or to snatch,</p>
+<p class="i3">To pray and importune,</p>
+<p class="i2">Must wager and venture</p>
+<p class="i3">And hunt down his fortune!</p>
+<p>Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,</p>
+<p>And the garners are fill'd with the gold of the grain,</p>
+<p>Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!</p>
+<p class="i2">Within sits Another,</p>
+<p class="i3">The thrifty Housewife;</p>
+<p class="i2">The mild one, the mother&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i3">Her home is her life.</p>
+<p class="i2">In its circle she rules,</p>
+<p class="i2">And the daughters she schools,</p>
+<p class="i3">And she cautions the boys,</p>
+<p class="i2">With a bustling command,</p>
+<p class="i2">And a diligent hand</p>
+<p class="i3">Employ'd she employs;</p>
+<p class="i2">Gives order to store,</p>
+<p class="i2">And the much makes the more;</p>
+<p>Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,</p>
+<p>And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;</p>
+<p>And she hoards in the presses, well polish'd and full,</p>
+<p>The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;</p>
+<p>Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavour</p>
+<p>Rests never!</p>
+<p class="i1">Blithe the Master (where the while</p>
+<p class="i1">From his roof he sees them smile)</p>
+<p class="i2">Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;</p>
+<p class="i1">There, the beams projecting far,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the laden store-house are,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the granaries bow'd beneath</p>
+<p class="i2">The blessings of the golden grain;</p>
+<p class="i1">There, in undulating motion,</p>
+<p class="i1">Wave the corn-fields like an ocean.</p>
+<p class="i1">Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">&quot;My house is built upon a rock,</p>
+<p class="i1">And sees unmoved the stormy shock</p>
+<p class="i2">Of waves that fret below!&quot;</p>
+<p class="i1">What chain so strong, what girth so great,</p>
+<p class="i1">To bind the giant form of Fate?&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">Swift are the steps of Woe.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">Now the casting may begin;</p>
+<p class="i3">See the breach indented there:</p>
+<p class="i2">Ere we run the fusion in,</p>
+<p class="i3">Halt&mdash;and speed the pious prayer!</p>
+<p class="i4">Pull the bung out&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">See around and about</p>
+<p class="i1">What vapour, what vapour&mdash;God help us!&mdash;has risen?&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">What, friend, is like the might of fire</p>
+<p class="i2">When man can watch and wield the ire?</p>
+<p class="i2">Whate'er we shape or work, we owe</p>
+<p class="i2">Still to that heaven-descended glow.</p>
+<p class="i2">But dread the heaven-descended glow,</p>
+<p class="i2">When from their chain its wild wings go,</p>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page305" id="page305" title="page305"></a>
+<p class="i2">When, where it listeth, wide and wild</p>
+<p class="i2">Sweeps the free Nature's free-born Child!</p>
+<p class="i2">When the Frantic One fleets,</p>
+<p class="i3">While no force can withstand,</p>
+<p class="i2">Through the populous streets</p>
+<p class="i3">Whirling ghastly the brand;</p>
+<p class="i2">For the Element hates</p>
+<p class="i2">What Man's labour creates,</p>
+<p class="i3">And the work of his hand!</p>
+<p class="i2">Impartially out from the cloud,</p>
+<p class="i3">Or the curse or the blessing may fall!</p>
+<p class="i2">Benignantly out from the cloud</p>
+<p class="i3">Come the dews, the revivers of all!</p>
+<p class="i2">Avengingly our from the cloud</p>
+<p class="i3">Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!</p>
+<p class="i2">Hark&mdash;a wail from the steeple!&mdash;aloud</p>
+<p class="i2">The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!</p>
+<p class="i3">Look&mdash;look&mdash;red as blood</p>
+<p class="i4">All on high!</p>
+<p class="i3">It is not the daylight that fills with its flood</p>
+<p class="i4">The sky!</p>
+<p class="i3">What a clamour awaking</p>
+<p class="i3">Roars up through the street,</p>
+<p class="i3">What a hell-vapour breaking</p>
+<p class="i4">Rolls on through the street,</p>
+<p class="i3">And higher and higher</p>
+<p class="i3">Aloft moves the Column of Fire!</p>
+<p class="i3">Through the vistas and rows</p>
+<p class="i3">Like a whirlwind it goes,</p>
+<p class="i3">And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.</p>
+<p class="i2">Beams are crackling&mdash;posts are shrinking&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">Walls are sinking&mdash;windows clinking&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Children crying&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Mothers flying&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)</p>
+<p class="i1">Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!</p>
+<p class="i1">Hurry and skurry&mdash;away&mdash;away,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the face of the night is as clear as day!</p>
+<p class="i3">As the links in a chain,</p>
+<p class="i3">Again and again</p>
+<p class="i2">Flies the bucket from hand to hand;</p>
+<p class="i3">High in arches up rushing</p>
+<p class="i3">The engines are gushing,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,</p>
+<p class="i1">With a road on the breast of the element bounds.</p>
+<p class="i3">To the grain and the fruits,</p>
+<p class="i3">Through the rafters and beams,</p>
+<p class="i1">Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!</p>
+<p class="i1">As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,</p>
+<p class="i3">Rush the flames to the sky</p>
+<p class="i3">Giant-high;</p>
+<p class="i1">And at length,</p>
+<p class="i1">Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!</p>
+<p class="i1">With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,</p>
+<p class="i1">And submits to his doom!</p>
+<p class="i3">Desolate</p>
+<p class="i2">The place, and dread</p>
+<p class="i2">For storms the barren bed.</p>
+<p class="i2">In the deserted gaps that casements were,</p>
+<p class="i2">Looks forth despair;</p>
+<p class="i2">And, where the roof hath been,</p>
+<p class="i2">Peer the pale clouds within!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page306" id="page306" title="page306"></a>
+<p class="i3">One look</p>
+<p class="i4">Upon the grave</p>
+<p class="i4">Of all that Fortune gave</p>
+<p class="i3">The loiterer took&mdash;</p>
+<p>Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,</p>
+<p>One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>The faces that he loves</i>! He counts them o'er&mdash;</p>
+<p>And, see&mdash;not one dear look is missing from <i>that</i> store!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Now clasp'd the bell within the clay&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">The mould the mingled metals fill&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Oh, may it, sparkling into day,</p>
+<p class="i2">Reward the labour and the skill!</p>
+<p class="i3">Alas! should it fail,</p>
+<p class="i3">For the mould may be frail&mdash;</p>
+<p>And still with our hope must be mingled the fear&mdash;</p>
+<p>And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">To the dark womb of sacred earth</p>
+<p class="i2">This labour of our hands is given,</p>
+<p class="i1">As seeds that wait the second birth,</p>
+<p class="i2">And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!</p>
+<p class="i1">Ah seeds, how dearer far than they</p>
+<p class="i2">We bury in the dismal tomb,</p>
+<p class="i1">Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray</p>
+<p class="i1">That suns beyond the realm of day</p>
+<p class="i2">May warm them into bloom!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i3">From the steeple</p>
+<p class="i4">Tolls the bell,</p>
+<p class="i3">Deep and heavy,</p>
+<p class="i4">The death-knell!</p>
+<p class="i1">Measured and solemn, guiding up the road</p>
+<p class="i1">A wearied wanderer to the last abode.</p>
+<p class="i2">It is that worship'd wife&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">It is that faithful mother!<a name="footnotetag43" id="footnotetag43"></a><a href="#footnote43"><sup>43</sup></a></p>
+<p>Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,</p>
+<p>From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.</p>
+<p>Far from those blithe companions, born</p>
+<p>Of her, and blooming in their morn;</p>
+<p>On whom, when couch'd, her heart above</p>
+<p>So often look'd the Mother-Love!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,</p>
+<p class="i2">And never, never more to come&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">She dwells within the shadowy land,</p>
+<p class="i2">Who was the Mother of that Home!</p>
+<p class="i1">How oft they miss that tender guide,</p>
+<p class="i2">The care&mdash;the watch&mdash;the face&mdash;the MOTHER&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">And where she sate the babes beside,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sits with unloving looks&mdash;ANOTHER!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">While the mass is cooling now,</p>
+<p class="i2">Let the labour yield to leisure,</p>
+<p class="i1">As the bird upon the bough,</p>
+<p class="i2">Loose the travail to the pleasure.</p>
+<p class="i3">When the soft stars awaken,</p>
+<p class="i3">Each task be forsaken!</p>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page307" id="page307" title="page307"></a>
+<p>And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,</p>
+<p>If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Gleesome and gay,</p>
+<p class="i1">On the welcoming way,</p>
+<p class="i1">Through the wood glides the wanderer home!</p>
+<p class="i1">And the eye and ear are meeting,</p>
+<p class="i1">Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Now, the wonted shelter near,</p>
+<p class="i1">Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;</p>
+<p class="i1">Creaking now the heavy wain,</p>
+<p class="i1">Reels with the happy harvest grain.</p>
+<p class="i1">Which with many-coloured leaves,</p>
+<p class="i1">Glitters the garland on the sheaves;</p>
+<p class="i1">And the mower and the maid</p>
+<p class="i1">Bound to the dance beneath the shade!</p>
+<p class="i1">Desert street, and quiet mart;&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Silence is in the city's heart;</p>
+<p class="i1">Round the taper burning cheerly,</p>
+<p class="i1">Gather the groups HOME loves so dearly;</p>
+<p class="i1">And the gate the town before</p>
+<p class="i1">Heavily swings with sullen roar!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Though darkness is spreading</p>
+<p class="i2">O'er earth&mdash;the Upright</p>
+<p class="i1">And the Honest, undreading,</p>
+<p class="i2">Look safe on the night.</p>
+<p class="i1">Which the evil man watching in awe,</p>
+<p class="i1">For the Eye of the Night is the Law!</p>
+<p class="i2">Bliss-dower'd: O daughter of the skies,</p>
+<p>Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ</p>
+<p>Blends like to like in light and joy&mdash;</p>
+<p>Builder of Cities, who of old</p>
+<p>Call'd the wild man from waste and wold.</p>
+<p>And in his hut thy presence stealing,</p>
+<p>Roused each familiar household feeling;</p>
+<p class="i1">And, best of all the happy ties,</p>
+<p>The centre of the social band,&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>The Instinct of the Fatherland!</i></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">United thus&mdash;each helping each,</p>
+<p class="i2">Brisk work the countless hands for ever;</p>
+<p class="i1">For nought its power to strength can teach,</p>
+<p class="i2">Like Emulation and Endeavour!</p>
+<p class="i1">Thus link'd the master with the man,</p>
+<p class="i2">Each in his rights can each revere,</p>
+<p class="i1">And while they march in freedom's van,</p>
+<p class="i2">Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!</p>
+<p class="i1">To freemen labour is renown!</p>
+<p class="i2">Who works&mdash;gives blessings and commands;</p>
+<p class="i1">Kings glory in the orb and crown&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">Be ours the glory of our hands.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>Long in these walls&mdash;long may we greet</p>
+<p>Your footfalls, Peace and concord sweet!</p>
+<p>Distant the day, Oh! distant far,</p>
+<p>When the rude hordes of trampling War</p>
+<p class="i1">Shall scare the silent vale;</p>
+<p class="i1">And where,</p>
+<p class="i1">Now the sweet heaven when day doth leave</p>
+<p class="i1">The air;</p>
+<p class="i1">Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of Eve;</p>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page308" id="page308" title="page308"></a>
+<p class="i1">Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,</p>
+<p class="i1">From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Now, its destined task fulfill'd,</p>
+<p class="i2">Asunder break the prison-mould;</p>
+<p class="i1">Let the goodly Bell we build,</p>
+<p class="i2">Eye and heart alike behold.</p>
+<p class="i3">The hammer down heave,</p>
+<p class="i3">Till the cover it cleave.</p>
+<p>For the Bell to rise up to the freedom of day,</p>
+<p>Destruction must seize on the shape of the clay.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">To break the mould, the master may,</p>
+<p class="i2">If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;</p>
+<p class="i1">But woe, when on its fiery way</p>
+<p class="i2">The metal seeks itself to pour.</p>
+<p class="i1">Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Exploding from its shattered home,</p>
+<p class="i1">And glaring forth, as from a hell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Behold the red Destruction come!</p>
+<p class="i1">When rages strength that has no reason,</p>
+<p class="i1"><i>There</i> breaks the mould before the season;</p>
+<p class="i1">When numbers burst what bound before,</p>
+<p class="i1">Woe to the State that thrives no more!</p>
+<p class="i1">Yea, woe, when in the City's heart,</p>
+<p class="i2">The latent spark to flame is blown;</p>
+<p class="i1">And Millions from their silence start,</p>
+<p class="i2">To claim, without a guide, their own!</p>
+<p class="i1">Discordant howls the warning Bell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Proclaiming discord wide and far,</p>
+<p class="i1">And, born but things of peace to tell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:</p>
+<p class="i1">&quot;Freedom! Equality!&quot;&mdash;to blood,</p>
+<p class="i2">Rush the roused people at the sound!</p>
+<p class="i1">Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,</p>
+<p class="i2">And banded murder closes round!</p>
+<p class="i1">The hy&aelig;na-shapes, that women were!</p>
+<p class="i2">Jest with the horrors they survey;</p>
+<p class="i1">They hound&mdash;they rend&mdash;they mangle there&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">As panthers with their prey!</p>
+<p class="i1">Nought rests to hallow&mdash;burst the ties</p>
+<p class="i2">Of life's sublime and reverent awe;</p>
+<p class="i1">Before the Vice the Virtue flies,</p>
+<p class="i2">And Universal Crime is Law!</p>
+<p class="i1">Man fears the lion's kingly tread;</p>
+<p class="i2">Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;</p>
+<p class="i1">And still the dreadliest of the dread,</p>
+<p class="i2">Is Man himself in error!</p>
+<p class="i1">No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes</p>
+<p class="i2">The Blind!&mdash;Why place it in his hand?</p>
+<p class="i1">It lights not him&mdash;it but consumes</p>
+<p class="i2">The City and the Land!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!</p>
+<p class="i2">The kernel bursts its husk&mdash;behold</p>
+<p class="i1">From the dull clay the metal rise,</p>
+<p class="i2">Clear shining, as a star of gold!</p>
+<p class="i3">Neck and lip, but as one beam,</p>
+<p class="i3">It laughs like a sun-beam.</p>
+<p>And even the scutcheon, clear graven, shall tell</p>
+<p>That the art of a master has fashion'd the Bell!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page309" id="page309" title="page309"></a>
+<p class="i1">Come in&mdash;come in</p>
+<p class="i1">My merry men&mdash;we'll form a ring</p>
+<p class="i1">The new-born labour christening;</p>
+<p class="i2">And &quot;CONCORD&quot; we will name her!&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">To union may her heart-felt call</p>
+<p class="i2">In brother-love attune us all!</p>
+<p class="i1">May she the destined glory win</p>
+<p class="i2">For which the master sought to frame her&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Aloft&mdash;(all earth's existence under,)</p>
+<p class="i2">In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar</p>
+<p class="i1">To dwell&mdash;the Neighbour of the Thunder,</p>
+<p class="i2">The Borderer of the Star!</p>
+<p class="i1">Be hers above a voice to raise</p>
+<p class="i2">Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,</p>
+<p class="i1">Who, while they move, their Maker praise,</p>
+<p class="i2">And lead around the wreath&egrave;d year!</p>
+<p class="i1">To solemn and eternal things</p>
+<p class="i2">We dedicate her lips sublime!&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">To fan&mdash;as hourly on she swings</p>
+<p class="i2">The silent plumes of Time!&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">No pulse&mdash;no heart&mdash;no feeling hers!</p>
+<p class="i2">She lends the warning voice to Fate;</p>
+<p class="i1">And still companions, while she stirs,</p>
+<p class="i2">The changes of the Human State!</p>
+<p class="i1">So may she teach us, as her tone</p>
+<p class="i2">But now so mighty, melts away&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">That earth no life which earth has known</p>
+<p class="i2">From the Last Silence can delay!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Slowly now the cords upheave her!</p>
+<p class="i2">From her earth-grave soars the Bell;</p>
+<p class="i1">Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her</p>
+<p class="i2">In the Music-Realm to dwell!</p>
+<p class="i3">Up&mdash;upwards&mdash;yet raise&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i3">She has risen&mdash;she sways.</p>
+<p class="i1">Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,</p>
+<p class="i1">And oh, may thy first sound be hallow'd to&mdash;PEACE!<a name="footnotetag44" id="footnotetag44"></a><a href="#footnote44"><sup>44</sup></a></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>VOTIVE TABLETS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>What the God taught me&mdash;what, through life, my friend</p>
+<p class="i1">And aid hath been,</p>
+<p>With pious hand, and grateful, I suspend</p>
+<p class="i1">The temple walls within.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE GOOD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Foster the Good, and thou shalt tend the Flower</p>
+<p class="i1">Already sown on earth;&mdash;</p>
+<p>Foster the Beautiful, and every hour</p>
+<p class="i1">Thou call'st new flowers to birth!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="page310" id="page310" title="page310"></a>TO &mdash;&mdash;.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Give me that which thou know'st&mdash;I'll receive and attend;&mdash;</p>
+<p>But thou giv'st me <i>thyself</i>&mdash;pri'thee spare me, my friend.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>GENIUS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>That which hath been can INTELLECT declare,</p>
+<p class="i1">What Nature built&mdash;it imitates or gilds&mdash;</p>
+<p>And REASON builds o'er Nature&mdash;but in air&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1"><i>Genius</i> alone in Nature&mdash;Nature builds.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>CORRECTNESS&mdash;(Free translation.)</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>The calm correctness where no fault we see</p>
+<p>Attests Art's loftiest&mdash;or its least degree;</p>
+<p>Alike the smoothness of the surface shows</p>
+<p>The Pool's dull stagnor&mdash;the great Sea's repose!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE IMITATOR.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Good out of good&mdash;<i>that</i> art is known to all&mdash;</p>
+<p>But Genius from the bad the good can call&mdash;</p>
+<p>Thou, mimic, not from leading strings escaped,</p>
+<p>Work'st but the matter that's already shaped!</p>
+<p>The already shaped a nobler hand awaits&mdash;</p>
+<p>All matter asks a spirit that creates.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE MASTER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>The herd of Scribes by what they tell us</p>
+<p>Show all in which their wits excel us;</p>
+<p>But the true Master we behold</p>
+<p>In what his art leaves&mdash;just untold!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>TO THE MYSTIC.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>That is the real mystery which around</p>
+<p class="i1">All life, is found;&mdash;</p>
+<p>Which still before all eyes for aye has been,</p>
+<p class="i1">Nor eye hath seen!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="page311" id="page311" title="page311"></a>ASTRONOMICAL WORKS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>All measureless, all infinite in awe,</p>
+<p class="i1">Heaven to great souls is given&mdash;</p>
+<p>And yet the sprite of littleness can draw</p>
+<p class="i1">Down to its inch&mdash;the Heaven!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE DIVISION OF RANKS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Yes, there's a patent of nobility</p>
+<p class="i1">Above the meanness of our common state;</p>
+<p>With what they <i>do</i> the vulgar natures buy</p>
+<p class="i1">Its titles&mdash;and with what they <i>are</i>, the great!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THEOPHANY.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>When draw the Prosperous near me, I forget</p>
+<p class="i1">The gods of heaven; but where</p>
+<p>Sorrow and suffering in my sight are set,</p>
+<p class="i1">The gods, I feel, are there!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE CHIEF END OF MAN.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>What the chief end of Man?&mdash;Behold yon tree,</p>
+<p class="i1">And let it teach thee, Friend!</p>
+<p><i>Will</i> what that will-less yearns for;&mdash;and for thee</p>
+<p class="i1">Is compass'd Man's chief end!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>ULYSSES.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>To gain his home all oceans he explored&mdash;</p>
+<p>Here Scylla frown'd&mdash;and there Charybdis roar'd;</p>
+<p>Horror on sea&mdash;and horror on the land&mdash;</p>
+<p>In hell's dark boat he sought the spectre land,</p>
+<p>Till borne&mdash;a slumberer&mdash;to his native spot</p>
+<p>He woke&mdash;and sorrowing, knew his country not!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>JOVE TO HERCULES.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,</p>
+<p>But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="page312" id="page312" title="page312"></a>THE SOWER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>See, full of hope, thou trustest to the earth</p>
+<p class="i1">The golden seed, and waitest till the spring</p>
+<p>Summons the buried to a happier birth;</p>
+<p class="i1">But in Time's furrow duly scattering,</p>
+<p>Think'st thou, how deeds by wisdom sown may be,</p>
+<p class="i1">Silently ripen'd for Eternity?</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE MERCHANT.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Where sails the ship?&mdash;It leads the Tyrian forth</p>
+<p>For the rich amber of the liberal North.</p>
+<p>Be kind ye seas&mdash;winds lend your gentlest wing,</p>
+<p>May in each creek, sweet wells restoring spring!&mdash;</p>
+<p>To you, ye gods, belong the Merchant!&mdash;o'er</p>
+<p>The waves, his sails the wide world's goods explore;</p>
+<p>And, all the while, wherever waft the gales,</p>
+<p>The wide world's good sails with him as he sails!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>COLUMBUS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Steer on, bold Sailor&mdash;Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,</p>
+<p>And hopeless at the helm may drop the weak and weary hand,</p>
+<p>YET EVER&mdash;EVER TO THE WEST, for there the coast must lie,</p>
+<p>And dim it dawns and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;</p>
+<p>Yea, trust the guiding God&mdash;and go along the floating grave,</p>
+<p>Though hid till now&mdash;yet now, behold the New World o'er the wave!</p>
+<p>With Genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,</p>
+<p>And ever what the One foretels the Other shall fulfil.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE ANTIQUE TO THE NORTHERN WANDERER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>And o'er the river hast thou past, and o'er the mighty sea,</p>
+<p>And o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me;</p>
+<p>To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows,</p>
+<p>And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes&mdash;</p>
+<p>Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here,</p>
+<p>But art thou nearer now to me&mdash;or I to thee more near?</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>What the Grecian arts created,</p>
+<p>May the victor Gaul, elated,</p>
+<p class="i1">Bear with banners to his strand.<a name="footnotetag45" id="footnotetag45"></a><a href="#footnote45"><sup>45</sup></a></p>
+<p>In museums many a row,</p>
+<p>May the conquering showman show</p>
+<p class="i1">To his startled Fatherland!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page313" id="page313" title="page313"></a>Mute to him, they crowd the halls,</p>
+<p>Ever on their pedestals</p>
+<p class="i1">Lifeless stand they!&mdash;He alone</p>
+<p>Who alone, the Muses seeing,</p>
+<p>Clasps&mdash;can warm them into being;</p>
+<p class="i1">The Muses to the Vandal&mdash;stone!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE POETRY OF LIFE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;Who would himself with shadows entertain,</p>
+<p>Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,</p>
+<p>Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?</p>
+<p>Though with my dream my heaven should be resign'd&mdash;</p>
+<p>Though the free-pinion'd soul that now can dwell</p>
+<p>In the large empire of the Possible,</p>
+<p>This work-day life with iron chains may bind,</p>
+<p>Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,</p>
+<p>And solemn duty to our acts decreed,</p>
+<p>Meets us thus tutor'd in the hour of need,</p>
+<p>With a more sober and submissive mind!</p>
+<p>How front Necessity&mdash;yet bid thy youth</p>
+<p>Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, Truth.&quot;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I;</p>
+<p>As from Experience&mdash;that sure port serene&mdash;</p>
+<p>Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,</p>
+<p>The summer glory withers from the scene,</p>
+<p>Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,</p>
+<p>The godlike images that seem'd so fair!</p>
+<p>Silent the playful Muse&mdash;the rosy Hours</p>
+<p>Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers</p>
+<p>Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair.</p>
+<p>Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre,</p>
+<p>Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;&mdash;</p>
+<p>The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire</p>
+<p>With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life.</p>
+<p>The world seems what it <i>is</i>&mdash;A Grave! and Love</p>
+<p>Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above,</p>
+<p>And <i>sees</i>!&mdash;He sees but images of clay</p>
+<p>Where he dream'd gods; and sighs&mdash;and glides away.</p>
+<p>The youngness of the Beautiful grows old,</p>
+<p>And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold;</p>
+<p>And in the crowd of joys&mdash;upon thy throne</p>
+<p>Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="bw329s3" id="bw329s3"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page314" id="page314" title="page314"></a>
+<h2>CALEB STUKELY.</h2>
+
+<h3>PART XII.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE PARSONAGE.</h3>
+
+<p>It was not without misgiving that
+I knocked modestly at the door of
+Mr Jehu Tomkins. For himself,
+there was no solidity in his moral
+composition, nothing to grapple or
+rely upon. He was a small weak
+man of no character at all, and but
+for his powerful wife and active partner,
+would have become the smallest
+of unknown quantities in the respectable
+parish that contained him. Upon
+his own weak shoulders he could not
+have sustained the burden of an establishment,
+and must inevitably have
+dwindled into the lightest of light
+porters, or the most aged of errand-boys.
+Nothing could have saved him
+from the operation of a law, as powerful
+and certain as that of gravitation,
+in virtue of which the soft and
+empty-headed of this world walk to
+the wall, and resign, without a murmur,
+their places to their betters. As
+for the deaconess, I have said already
+that the fact of her being a lady, and
+the possessor of a heart, constituted the
+only ground of hope that I could have
+in reference to her. This I felt to be
+insecure enough when I held the
+knocker in my hand, and remembered
+all at once the many little tales that I
+had heard, every one of which went
+far to prove that ladies may be ladies
+without the generous weakness of
+their sex,&mdash;and carry hearts about
+with them as easily as they carry bags.</p>
+
+<p>My first application was unsuccessful.
+The deacon was not at home.
+&quot;Mr Tomkins and his lady had gone
+<i>to hear</i> the Reverend Doctor Whitefroth,&quot;&mdash;a
+northern and eccentric
+light, now blazing for a time in the
+metropolis. It is a curious fact, and
+worthy to be recorded, that Mr Tomkins,
+and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist
+whom I had hitherto encountered,
+never professed to visit the
+house of prayer with any other object
+than that of <i>hearing</i>. It was never by
+any accident to worship or to pray.
+What, in truth was the vast but lowly
+looking building, into which hundreds
+crowded with the dapper deacon
+at their head, sabbath after sabbath&mdash;what
+but a temple sacred to
+vanity and excitement, eloquence and
+perspiration! Which one individual,
+taken at random from the concourse,
+was not ready to declare that his business
+there that day was &quot;to hear the
+dear good man,&quot; and nothing else? If
+you could lay bare&mdash;as, thank Heaven,
+you cannot&mdash;your fellow-creature's
+heart, whither would you behold stealing
+away the adoration that, in such
+a place, in such a time, is due to one
+alone&mdash;whither, if not to Mr Clayton?
+But let this pass.</p>
+
+<p>I paid a second visit to my friend,
+and gained admittance. It was about
+half-past eight o'clock in the evening,
+and the shop had been closed some
+twenty minutes before. I was ushered
+into a well-furnished room behind
+the shop, where sat the firm&mdash;Mrs
+Jehu and the junior partner. The
+latter looked into his lady's face, perceived
+a smile upon it, and then&mdash;but
+not till then, he offered me his hand,
+and welcomed me with much apparent
+warmth. This ceremony over, Mr
+Tomkins grew fidgety and uneasy,
+and betrayed a great anxiety to get
+up a conversation which he had not
+heart enough to set a going. Mrs
+Tomkins, a woman of the world,
+evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling,
+and in peace. I perceived immediately
+that I must state at once the
+object of my visit, and I proceeded to
+the task.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs Tomkins,&quot; I commenced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir?&quot; said that lady, and then a
+postman's knock brought us to a stop,
+and Jehu skipped across the room to
+listen at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's him, my dear Jemima,&quot; exclaimed
+the linen-draper, &quot;I know his
+knock,&quot; and then he skipped as quickly
+to his chair again.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the apartment was
+opened by a servant girl, who entered
+the room alone and approached her
+mistress with a card. Mrs Tomkins
+looked at it through her eye-glass,
+said &quot;she was most happy,&quot; and the
+servant then retired. The card was
+placed upon the table near me, and,
+as I believe, for my inspection. I
+took it up, and read the following
+<a class="pagenum" name="page315" id="page315" title="page315"></a>words, &quot;<i>Mr Stanislaus Levisohn</i>.&quot;
+They were engraven in the centre of
+the paper, and were surrounded by a
+circle of rays, which in its turn was
+enveloped in a circle of clouds. In
+the very corner of the card, and in
+very small characters, the words &quot;<i>general
+merchant</i>&quot; were written.</p>
+
+<p>There was a noise of shoe-cleaning
+outside the door for about five minutes,
+then the door was opened again by
+the domestic, and a remarkable gentleman
+walked very slowly in. He
+was a tall individual, with small cunning
+eyes, black eye-brows, and a
+beard. He was rather shabbily attired,
+and not washed with care. He
+had thick boorish hands, and he smelt
+unpleasantly of tobacco smoke; an
+affected grin at variance with every
+feature, was planted on his face, and
+sickened an unprejudiced observer at
+the very first gaze. His mode of uttering
+English betrayed him for a foreigner.
+He was a native of Poland.
+Before uttering a syllable, the interesting
+stranger walked to a corner of
+the room, turned himself to the wall,
+and muttered a few undistinguishable
+words. He then bowed lowly to the
+company, and took a chair, grinning
+all the while.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that a Polish move?&quot; asked
+Mr Tomkins.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It vos de coshtom mit de anshent
+tribes, my tear sare, vor alles tings, to
+recommend de family to de protection
+of de hevins. Vy not now mit all
+goot Christians?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not indeed?&quot; added Mrs
+Tomkins. &quot;May I offer you a glass of
+raisin wine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tank you. For de shtomack's
+sake&mdash;yase.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A glass was poured out. It was
+but decent to offer me another. I paid
+my compliments to the hostess and
+the gentlemen, and was about to drink
+it off, when the enlightened foreigner
+called upon me in a loud voice to desist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shtay, mein young friend&mdash;ve are
+not de heathen and de cannibal. It
+is our privilege to live in de Christian
+society mit de Christian lady. Ve
+most ask blessing&mdash;alvays&mdash;never forget&mdash;you
+excuse&mdash;vait tree minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not for me to protest against
+so pious a movement, albeit it presented
+itself somewhat inopportunely and
+out of place. Mr Levisohn covered
+his face with one hand, and murmured
+a few words. The last only reached
+me. It was &quot;Amen,&quot; and this was
+rather heaved up in a sigh, than articulately
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like the wine?&quot; asked
+Jehu, as if he thought it superfine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yase, I like moch&mdash;especially de
+sherry and de port.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jehu smiled, but made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Tomkins supposed that port
+and sherry were favourite beverages
+in Poland, but, for her part, she had
+found that nothing agreed so well with
+British stomachs as the native wines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! my lady,&quot; said the Pole, &quot;ve
+can give up very moch so long ve got
+British religions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very true, indeed,&quot; answered Mrs
+Tomkins. &quot;Pray, Mr Levisohn,
+what may be your opinion of the lost
+sheep? Do you think they will come
+into the fold during our time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before the gentleman replies, it may
+be proper to state on his behalf, that
+he had never given his questioner any
+reason to suppose that he was better
+informed on such mysterious subjects
+than herself. The history of his introduction
+into the family of the linen-draper
+is very short. He had been
+for some years connected with Mr
+Tomkins in the way of business,
+having supplied that gentleman with
+all the genuine foreign, but certainly
+English, perfumery, that was retailed
+with considerable profit in his over-nice
+and pious establishment. Mrs
+Tomkins, no less zealous in the cause
+of the church than that of her own
+shop, at length, and all on a sudden,
+resolved to set about his conversion,
+and to present him to the chapel as a
+brand plucked with her own hand from
+the burning. As a preliminary step,
+he was invited to supper, and treated
+with peculiar respect. The matter
+was gently touched upon, but discussion
+postponed until another occasion.
+Mr Levisohn being very shrewd, very
+needy, and enjoying no particular
+principles of morality and religion,
+perceived immediately the object of
+his hostess, met her more than half-way
+in her Christian purposes, and
+accepted her numerous invitations to
+tea and supper with the most affectionate
+readiness. Within two months
+he was received into the bosom of the
+church, and became as celebrated for
+the depth and intensity of his belief
+as for the earnestness and promptitude
+with which he attended the meetings
+<a class="pagenum" name="page316" id="page316" title="page316"></a>of the brethren, particularly those in
+which eating and drinking did not
+constitute the least important part of
+the proceedings. Being a foreigner,
+he was listened to with the deepest
+attention, very often indeed to his
+serious annoyance, for his ignorance
+was awful, and his assurance, great as
+it was, not always sufficient to get him
+clear of his difficulties. His foreign
+accent, however, worked wonders for
+him, and whenever too hard pressed,
+afforded him a secure and happy retreat.
+An unmeaning grin, and &quot;<i>me
+not pronounce</i>,&quot; had saved him from
+precipices, down which an Englishman,
+<i>c&aelig;teris paribus</i>, must unquestionably
+have been dashed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Vill dey come?&quot; said Mr Levisohn,
+in answer to the question. &quot;Yase,
+certainly, if dey like, I tink.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, sir, I fear you are a latitudinarian,&quot;
+said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope Hevin, my dear lady, vill
+forgive me for dat, and all my wickedness.
+I am a shinner, I shtink!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the converted gentleman,
+at the same moment that Mrs Jehu
+assured him that it would be a great
+thing if they were all as satisfied of
+their condition as he might be. &quot;Your
+strong convictions of your worthlessness
+is alone a proof,&quot; she added, &quot;of
+your accepted state.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My lady,&quot; continued the humble
+Stanislaus, &quot;I am rotten, I am a tief,
+a blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket,
+a housebreak, a sticker mit de knife.
+I vish somebody would call me names
+all de day long, because I forget sometime
+dat I am de nashty vurm of de
+creation. I tink I hire a boy to call
+me names, and make me not forget.
+Oh, my lady, I alvays remember those
+fine words you sing&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>'If I could read my title clear</p>
+<p class="i1">To manshions in de shkies,</p>
+<p>I say farevell to every fear,</p>
+<p class="i1">And vipe my veeping eyes.'&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;That is so conscientious of you.
+Pray, my dear sir, is there an Establishment
+in Poland? or have you Independent
+churches?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, my dear lady, we have noting
+at all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it possible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yase, it is possible&mdash;it is true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who could have thought it!
+What! nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Noting at all, my lady. Do not
+ask me again, I pray you. It is
+frightful to a goot Christian to talk
+dese tings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is your opinion of the Arminian
+doctrine, Mr Stanislaus?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean de doctrine?&quot; enquired
+Stanislaus, slowly, as though
+he found some difficulty in answering
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, my dear sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tink,&quot; said the gentleman, after
+some delay, &quot;it vould he very goot if
+were not for someting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear me!&quot; cried Mrs Jehu, &quot;that
+is so exactly my opinion!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Den dere is noting more to be
+said about dat,&quot; continued Stanislaus,
+interrupting her; &quot;and I hope you
+vill not ask dese deep questions, my
+dear lady, vich are not at all proper to
+be answered, and vich put me into de
+low spirits. Shall ve sing a hymn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By all means,&quot; exclaimed the hostess,
+who immediately made preparations
+for the ceremony. Hymn-books
+were introduced, and the servant-maid
+ordered up, and then a quartet was
+performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs Tomkins,
+her husband, and Betsy. The
+subject of the song was the courtship of
+Isaac. Two verses only have remained
+in my memory, and the manner
+in which they were given out by
+the fervent Stanislaus will never be
+forgotten.  They ran thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;Ven Abraham's servant to procure</p>
+<p class="i1">A vife for Isaac vent,</p>
+<p>He met Rebekah, tould his vish,</p>
+<p class="i1">Her parents gave conshent.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>'Shtay,' Satan, my old master, cries,</p>
+<p class="i1">'Or force shall thee detain.'</p>
+<p>'Hinder me not, I vill be gone,</p>
+<p class="i1">I vish to break my chain.'&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This being concluded, Mr Tomkins
+asked Mr Levisohn what he had to
+say in the business line, to which Mr
+Levisohn replied, &quot;Someting very
+goot, but should he not vait until after
+soppare?&quot; whereupon Mr Tomkins
+gave his lady a significant leer, and
+the latter retired, evidently to prepare
+the much desired repast. Then did
+little Jehu turn confidentially to Stanislaus,
+and ask him when he meant to
+deliver that ere <i>conac</i> that he had
+promised him so long ago.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ven Providence, my tear dikkon,
+paremits&mdash;I expect a case of goots at
+de cushtom-house every day; but my
+friend vot examins de marchandis,
+and vot saves me de duties ven I
+<a class="pagenum" name="page317" id="page317" title="page317"></a>makes it all right mit him, is vary ill,
+I am sorry for to say, and ve most
+vait, mit Christian patience, my dear
+sare, till he get well. You see
+dat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes; that's clear enough. Well,
+Stanny, I only hope that fellow won't
+die. I don't think you'd find it so easy
+to make it <i>all right</i> with any other
+chap; that's all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope he vill not die. Ve mosht
+pray dat he live, my dear dikkon. I
+tink it vill be vell if der goot Mr Clayton
+pray mit der church for him. You
+shall speak for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what have you done about
+the <i>Eau de Cologne</i>?&quot; continued Jehu
+Tomkins. &quot;Have you nailed the fellow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It vos specially about dis matter
+dat I vish to see you, my dear sare. I
+persvade der man to sell ten cases.
+He be very nearly vot you call in der
+mess. He valk into de Gazette next
+week. He shtarve now. I pity him.
+De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I
+give fifty shilling&mdash;two pound ten.
+He buy meat for de childs, and is
+tankful. I take ten shillings for my
+trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit
+vary little.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any good bills in the market,
+Stanny?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Stanislaus Levisohn winked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho&mdash;you don't say so,&quot; said the
+deacon. &quot;Have you got 'em with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After soppare, my dear sare,&quot;
+answered Stanislaus, who looked at
+me, and winked again significantly at
+Jehu.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Tomkins returned, accompanied
+by the vocal Betsy. The cloth
+was spread, and real silver forks, and
+fine cut tumblers, and blue plates with
+scripture patterns, speedily appeared.
+Then came a dish of fried sausages and
+parsley&mdash;then baked potatoes&mdash;then
+lamb chops. Then we all sat round
+the table, and then, against all order
+and propriety, Mrs Jehu grossly and
+publicly insulted her husband at his
+own board, by calling upon the enlightened
+foreigner to ask a blessing
+upon the meal.</p>
+
+<p>The company sat down; but scarcely
+were we seated before Stanislaus
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tank you, my tear goot Mrs
+Tomkins for dat shop mit der brown,
+ven it comes to my turn to be sarved.
+It look just der ting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Jehu served her guest immediately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I vill take a sossage, tear lady,
+also, if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a baked potato?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a baked potato? Yase.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was served.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I beg your pardon, Christian
+lady, have you got, perhaps, der littel
+pickel-chesnut and der crimson cabbage?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Tomkins, go down-stairs and
+get the pickles,&quot; said the mistress of
+the house, and Tomkins vanished like
+a mouse on tiptoe.</p>
+
+<p>Before he could return, Stanislaus
+had eaten more than half his chop,
+and discovered that, after all, &quot;it was
+<i>not</i> just the ting.&quot; Mrs Jehu entreated
+him to try another. He declined
+at first; but at length suffered
+himself to be persuaded. Four chops
+had graced the dish originally; the
+remaining two were divided equally
+between the lady and myself. I begged
+that my share might be left for
+the worthy host, but receiving a recommendation
+from his wife &quot;not to
+mind <i>him</i>,&quot; I said no more, but kept
+Mr Stanislaus Levisohn in countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope you'll find it to your liking,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; said our hostess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mishter vat?&quot; exclaimed the
+foreigner, looking quickly up. &quot;I
+tink I&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter, my dear sir?&quot;
+enquired the lady of the house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Noting, my tear friend, I tought
+der young gentleman vos a poor unconverted
+sinner dat I met a long time
+ago. Dat is all. Ve talk of someting
+else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Has the reader forgotten the dark-visaged
+individual, who at the examination
+of my lamented father before
+the Commissioners of Bankruptcy
+made his appearance in company
+with Mr Levy and the ready Ikey?
+Him I mean of the vivid imagination,
+who swore to facts which were no
+facts at all, and whom an unpoetic
+jury sentenced to vile imprisonment
+for wilful perjury? <i>There he sat</i>,
+transformed into a Pole, bearded and
+whiskered, and the hair of his head
+close clipped, but in every other regard
+the same as when the constable
+invited him to forsake a too prosaic
+and ungrateful world: and had Mr
+Levisohn been wise and guarded, the
+discovery would never have been
+made by me; for we had met but
+once before, then only for a short half
+hour, and under agitating circumstances.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page318" id="page318" title="page318"></a>But my curiosity and attention
+once roused by his exclamation, it
+was impossible to mistake my man.
+I fixed my eye upon him, and the
+harder he pulled at his chop, and the
+more he attempted to evade my gaze,
+the more satisfied was I that a villain
+and an impostor was seated amongst us.
+Thinking, absurdly enough, to do my
+host and hostess a lasting service, I
+determined without delay to unmask
+the pretended saint, and to secure his
+victims from the designs he purposed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Levisohn,&quot; I said immediately,
+&quot;you have told the truth&mdash;we
+have met before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevare, my tear friend, you mistake;
+nevare in my life, upon my vurd.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs Tomkins,&quot; I continued, rising,
+&quot;I should not be worthy of your
+hospitality if I did not at once make
+known to you the character of that
+man. He is a convicted criminal. I
+have myself known him to be guilty
+of the grossest practices.&quot; Mr Levisohn
+dropped his chop, turned his
+greasy face up, and then looked round
+the room, and endeavoured to appear
+unconcerned, innocent, and amazed
+all at once. At this moment Jehu entered
+the room with the pickles, and
+the face of the deaconess grew fearfully
+stern.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Were you ever in the Court of Bankruptcy,
+Mr Levisohn?&quot; I continued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have never been out of London,
+my good sare. You labour under
+de mistake.&mdash;I excuse you. Ah!&quot;
+he cried our suddenly, as if a new idea
+had struck him very hard; &quot;I see
+now vot it is. I explain. You take
+me for somebody else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not, sir. I accuse you publicly
+of having committed perjury of the
+most shameless kind, and I can prove
+you guilty of the charge. Do you
+know a person of the name of Levy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Stanislaus looked to the ceiling
+after the manner of individuals who
+desire, or who do not desire, as the
+case may be, to call a subject to remembrance.
+&quot;No,&quot; he answered,
+after a long pause; &quot;certainly not.
+I never hear dat name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beware of him, Mrs Tomkins,&quot;
+I continued, &quot;he is an impostor, a
+disgrace to mankind, and to the faith
+which he professes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean by that, you
+impertinent young man?&quot; said Mrs
+Tomkins, her blood rising to her
+face, herself rising from her chair.
+&quot;I should have thought that a man
+who had been so recently expelled
+from his church would have had more
+decency. A pretty person you must
+be, to bring a charge of this kind
+against so good a creature as that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, do not say dat,&quot; interposted
+Stanny; &quot;I am not goot. I am a
+brute beast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Tomkins,&quot; continued the
+lady, &quot;I don't know what object that
+person has in disturbing the peace of
+our family, or why he comes here at
+all to-night. He is a mischief-making,
+hardened young man, or he would
+never have come to what he has.
+Well, I'm sure&mdash;What will Satan put
+into his head next!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I vould vish you be not angry.
+Der young gentleman is, I dare say,
+vary goot at heart. He is labouring
+under de deloosions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Levisohn, pardon me, I am
+not. Proofs exist, and I can bring
+them to convict you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you hear that, Mr Tomkins.
+Were you ever insulted so before? Are
+you master in your own house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What shall I do?&quot; said Jehu,
+trembling with excitement at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do! What! Give him his hat,
+turn him out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my dear goot Christian friends,&quot;
+said Mr Levisohn, imploringly; &quot;de
+booels of der Christian growls ven
+he shees dese sights; vot is de goot
+of to fight? It is shtoopid. Let me
+be der peacemaker. Der yong man
+has been drink, perhaps. I forgive
+him from te bottom of my heart. If
+ve quarrel ve fight. If ve fight ve
+lose every ting.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>'So Samson, ven his hair vos lost,</p>
+<p>Met the Philistines to his cost,</p>
+<p>Shook his vain limbs in shad shurprise,</p>
+<p>Made feeble fight, and lost his eyes.'&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Tomkins,&quot; I exclaimed, &quot;I
+court inquiry, I can obtain proofs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We want none of your proofs,
+you backslider,&quot; cried the deaconess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madam, you&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get out of the house, ambassador
+of Satan! Mr Tomkins, will you tell
+him instantly to go?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go!&quot; squealed Tomkins from the
+door, not advancing an inch.</p>
+
+<p>I seized my hat, and left the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will be sorry for this, sir,&quot;
+said I; &quot;and you, madam&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't talk to me, you bad man.
+If you don't go this minute I'll spring
+the rattle and have up the watchmen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did not attempt to say another
+<a class="pagenum" name="page319" id="page319" title="page319"></a>word. I left the room, and hurried
+from the house. I had hardly shut
+the street door before it was violently
+opened again, and the head of Mr
+Levisohn made itself apparent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go home,&quot; exclaimed that gentleman,
+&quot;and pray to be shaved, you
+shtoopid ass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not many days after the
+enacting of this scene, that I entered
+upon my duties as the instructor of
+the infant children of my friend. It
+was useless to renew my application
+to the deacon, and I abandoned the
+idea. The youngest of my pupils was
+the lisping Billy. It was my honour
+to introduce him at the very porch of
+knowledge&mdash;to place him on the first
+step of learning's ladder&mdash;to make familiar
+to him the simple letters of his
+native tongue, in whose mysterious
+combinations the mighty souls of men
+appear and speak. The lesson of the
+alphabet was the first that I gave,
+and a heavy sadness depressed and
+humbled me when, as the child repeated
+wonderingly after me, letter
+by letter, I could not but feel deeply
+and acutely the miserable blighting
+of my youthful promises. How long
+was it ago&mdash;it seemed but yesterday,
+when the sun used to shine brightly
+into my own dear bed-room, and
+awake me with its first gush of light,
+telling my ready fancy that he came
+to rouse me from inaction, and to encourage
+me to my labours. Oh, happy
+labours! Beloved books! What joy
+I had amongst you! The house was
+silent&mdash;the city's streets tranquil as
+the breath of morning. I heard nothing
+but the glorious deeds ye spoke
+of, and saw only the worthies that
+were but dust, when centuries now
+passed were yet unborn, but whose
+immortal spirits are vouchsafed still
+to elevate man, and cheer him onward.
+How intense and sweet was
+our communion; and as I read and
+read on, how gratefully repose crept
+over me; how difficult it seemed to
+think unkindly of the world, or to believe
+in all the tales of human selfishness
+and cruelty with which the old
+will ever mock the ear and dull the
+heart of the confiding and the young.
+How willing I felt to love, and how
+gay a place was earth, with her constant
+sun, and overflowing lap, and
+her thousand joys, for man! And how
+intense was the fire of <i>hope</i> that burned
+within me&mdash;fed with new fuel every
+passing hour, and how abiding and
+how beautiful <i>the future</i>! THE FUTURE!
+and it was here&mdash;a nothing&mdash;a
+dream&mdash;a melancholy phantasm!</p>
+
+<p>There are seasons of adversity, in
+which the mind, plunged in despondency
+and gloom, is startled and distressed
+by pictures of a happier time,
+that travel far to fool and tantalize
+the suffering heart. I sat with the
+child, and gazing full upon him, beheld
+him not, but&mdash;a vision of my
+father's house. There sits the good
+old man, and at his side&mdash;ah, how seldom
+were they apart!&mdash;my mother.
+And there, too, is the clergyman, my
+first instructor. Every well-remembered
+piece of furniture is there. The
+chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated
+by me for its age, and for our long
+intimacy. I have known it since
+first I knew myself. The antique
+bookcase&mdash;the solid chest of drawers&mdash;the
+solemn sofa, all substantial as
+ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable
+and natural properties of
+the domestic parlour. My mother
+has her eyes upon me, and they are
+full of tears. My father and the minister
+are building up my fortunes,
+are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity
+an edifice formed of glittering
+words, incorporeal as the breath that
+rears it. And the feelings of that hour
+come back upon me. I glow with
+animation, confidence, and love. I
+have the strong delight that beats
+within the bosom of the boy who has
+the parents' trusty smile for ever on
+him. I dream of pouring happiness
+into those fond hearts&mdash;of growing up
+to be their prop and staff in their decline.
+I pierce into the future, and
+behold myself the esteemed and honoured
+amongst men&mdash;the patient,
+well-rewarded scholar&mdash;the cherished
+and the cherisher of the dear authors
+of my life&mdash;all brightness&mdash;all glory&mdash;all
+unsullied joy. The child touches
+my wet cheek, and asks me why I
+weep?&mdash;why?&mdash;why? He knows not
+of the early wreck that has annihilated
+the unhappy teacher's peace.</p>
+
+<p>We were still engaged upon our
+lesson, when John Thompson interrupted
+the proceeding, by entering
+the apartment in great haste, and
+placing in my hands a newspaper.
+&quot;He had been searching,&quot; he said,
+&quot;for one whole fortnight, to find a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page320" id="page320" title="page320"></a>situation that would suit me, and now
+he thought that he had hit upon it.
+There it was, 'a tutorer in a human
+family,' to teach the languages and
+the sciences. Apply from two to four.
+It's just three now. Send the youngster
+to his mother, and see after it,
+my friend. I wouldn't have you lose
+it for the world.&quot; I took the journal
+from his hands, and, as though placed
+there by the hand of the avenger to
+arouse deeper remorse, to draw still
+hotter blood from the lacerated heart,
+the following announcement, and nothing
+else, glared on the paper, and
+took possession of my sight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. After
+a contest more severe than any known
+for years, MR JOHN SMITHSON, <i>of
+Trinity College, Cambridge</i>, has been
+declared THE SENIOR WRANGLER of
+his year. Mr Smithson is, we understand,
+the son of a humble curate
+in Norfolk, whose principal support
+has been derived from the exertions
+of his son during his residence in the
+University. The honour could not
+have been conferred on a more
+deserving child of Alma Mater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A hundred recollections crowded
+on my brain. My heart was torn with
+anguish. The perseverance and the
+filial piety of Smithson, so opposite
+to my unsteadiness and unnatural disloyalty,
+confounded and unmanned
+me. I burst into tears before the faithful
+Thompson, and covered my face
+for very shame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter, lad?&quot; exclaimed
+the good fellow, pale with
+surprise, his eye trembling with honest
+feeling. &quot;Have I hurt you? Drat
+the paper! Don't think, Stukely, I
+wished to get rid of you. Don't think
+so hard of your old friend. I thought
+to help and do you service; I know
+you have the feelings of a gentleman
+about you, and I wouldn't wound 'em,
+God knows, for any thing. There,
+think no more about it. I am so rough
+a hand, I'm not fit to live with Christians.
+I mean no harm, believe me.
+Get rid of you, my boy! I only wish
+you'd say this is your home, and
+never leave me&mdash;that would make me
+happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson,&quot; I answered, through
+my tears, &quot;I am not deserving of
+your friendship. You have not offended
+me. You have never wronged
+me. You are all kindness and truth.
+I have had no real enemy but myself.
+Read that paper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the paragraph, and he
+read it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What of it?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson,&quot; listen to me; &quot;what
+do you say of such a son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can guess his father's feelings,&quot;
+said my friend. &quot;Earth's a heaven,
+Stukely, when father and child live
+together as God appointed them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But when a child breaks a parent's
+heart, Thompson&mdash;what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't talk about it, lad. I have
+got eleven of 'em, and that's a side of
+the picture that I can't look at with
+pleasure. I think the boys are good.
+They have gone on well as yet; but
+who can tell what a few years will
+do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or a few months, Thompson,&quot; I
+answered quickly, &quot;or a few days, or
+hours, when the will is fickle, principles
+unfixed, and the heart treacherous
+and false. That Smithson and I,
+Thompson, were fellow students. We
+left home together&mdash;we took up our
+abode in the University together&mdash;we
+were attached to the same college&mdash;taught
+by the same master&mdash;read from
+the same books. My feelings were
+as warm as his. My resolution to do
+well apparently as firm, my knowledge
+and attainments as extensive. If he
+was encouraged, and protected, and
+urged forward by the fond love of a
+devoted household&mdash;so was I. If parental
+blessings hallowed his entrance
+upon those pursuits which have ended
+so successfully for him&mdash;so did they
+mine. If he had motive for exertion,
+I had not less&mdash;we were equal in the
+race which we began together&mdash;look
+at us now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did it happen, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was honest and faithful to his
+purpose. I was not. He saw one object
+far in the distance before him,
+and looked neither to the right nor
+left, but dug his arduous way towards
+it. He craved not the false excitement
+of temporary applause, nor
+deemed the opinion of weak men essential
+to his design. He had a sacred
+duty to perform, which left him
+not the choice of action, and he performed
+it to the letter. He had a feeling
+conscience, and a reasoning heart,
+and the home of his youth, and the
+sister who had grown up with him,
+the father who had laboured, the mother
+<a class="pagenum" name="page321" id="page321" title="page321"></a>who had striven for him, visited
+him by night and by day&mdash;in his silent
+study, and in his lonely bed, comforting,
+animating, and supporting him
+by their delightful presence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what did you do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just the reverse of this. I had
+neither simplicity of aim, nor stability
+of affection. One slip from the path,
+and I hadn't energy to take the road
+again. One vicious inclination, and
+the virtuous resolves of years melted
+before it. The sneer of a fool could
+frighten me from rectitude&mdash;the smile
+of a girl render me indifferent to the
+pangs that tear a parent's heart.
+Look at us both. Look at him&mdash;the
+man whom I treated with contemptuous
+derision. What a return home
+for him&mdash;his mission accomplished&mdash;HIS
+DUTY DONE! Look at me, the outcast,
+the beggar, the despised&mdash;the
+author of a mother's death, a father's
+bankruptcy and ruin&mdash;with no excuse
+for misconduct, no promise for the
+future, no self-justification, and no
+hope of pardon beyond that afforded
+to the vilest criminal that comes repentant
+to the mercy throne of God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;but, sir&mdash;Stukely&mdash;don't
+take the thing to heart. You are
+young&mdash;look for'rads. Oh, I tell you,
+it's a blessed thing to be sorry for our
+faults, and to feel as if we wished to
+do better for the time to come. I'm
+an older man than you, and I bid you
+take comfort, and trust to God for
+better things, and better things will
+come, too. You are not so badly off
+now as you were this time twelvemonth.
+And you know I'll never
+leave you. Don't despond&mdash;don't give
+away. It's unnatural for a man to
+do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh,
+bless you, this is a life of suffering and
+sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't
+go mad to think of leaving all his
+young 'uns behind him, and every
+thing he loves, if he wasn't taught
+that there's a quieter place above,
+where all shall meet agin? You know
+me, my boy; I can't talk, but I want
+to comfort you and cheer you up&mdash;and
+so, give me your hand, old fellow, and
+say you won't think of all this any more,
+but try and forget it, and see about
+settling comfortably in life. What do
+you say to the advertisement? A tutorer
+in a human family, to teach the languages
+and the sciences. Come now,
+that's right; I'm glad to see you
+laugh. I suppose I don't give the
+right pronunciation to the words.
+Well, never mind; laugh at your old
+friend. He'd rather see you laugh
+at him than teaze your heart about
+your troubles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson would not be satisfied
+until I had read the advertisement,
+and given him my opinion of its merits.
+He would not suffer me to say another
+word about my past misfortunes, but
+insisted on my looking forward cheerfully,
+and like a man. The situation
+appeared to him just the thing for me;
+and after all, if I had wrangled as
+well as that 'ere Smithson&mdash;(though,
+at the same time, <i>wrangling</i> seemed a
+very aggravating word to put into
+young men's mouths at all)&mdash;perhaps
+I shouldn't have been half as
+happy as a quiet comfortable life
+would make me. &quot;I was cut out for
+a tutorer. He was sure of it. So
+he'd thank me to read the paper without
+another syllable.&quot; The advertisement,
+in truth, was promising. &quot;The
+advertiser, in London, desired to engage
+the services of a young gentleman,
+capable of teaching the ancient
+languages, and giving his pupils 'an
+introduction to the sciences.' The
+salary would be liberal, and the occupation
+with a humane family in the
+country, who would receive the tutor
+as one of themselves. References
+would be required and given.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;References would be required and
+given,&quot; I repeated, after having concluded
+the advertisement, and put the
+paper down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, that's the only thing!&quot; said
+Thompson, scratching his honest ear,
+like a man perplexed and driven to a
+corner. &quot;We haven't got no references
+to give. But I'll tell you what we've
+got though. We've got the papers
+of these freehold premises, and we've
+something like two thousand in the
+bank. I'll give 'em them, if you
+turns out a bad 'un. That I'll undertake
+to do, and shan't be frightened
+either. Now, you just go, and
+see if you can get it. Where do you
+apply?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait, Thompson. I must not
+suffer you&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you hear what I said, sir?
+where do you apply?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At X.Y.Z.&quot; said I, &quot;in Swallow
+street, Saint James's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, don't you lose a minute.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page322" id="page322" title="page322"></a>I shouldn't be surprised if the place is
+run down already. London's overstocked
+with tutorers and men of larning.
+You come along o' me, Billy,
+and don't you lose sight of this 'ere
+chance, my boy. If they wants a reference,
+tell 'em I'll be glad to wait
+upon 'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Three days had not elapsed after
+this conversation, before my services
+were accepted by X.Y.Z.&mdash;and I
+had engaged to travel into Devonshire
+to enter at once upon my duties, as
+teacher in the dwelling-house of the
+Reverend Walter Fairman. X.Y.Z.
+was a man of business; and, fortunately
+for me, had known my father well.
+He was satisfied with my connexion,
+and with the unbounded recommendation
+which Thompson gave with me.
+Mr Fairman was incumbent of one of
+the loveliest parishes in England, and
+the guardian and teacher of six boys.
+My salary was fifty pounds per annum,
+with board and lodging. The
+matter was settled in a few hours,
+and before I had time to consider, my
+place was taken in the coach, and a
+letter was dispatched to Mr Fairman,
+announcing my intended departure.
+Nothing could exceed the joy
+of Thompson at my success&mdash;nothing
+could be kinder and more anxious
+than his valuable advice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now,&quot; he said as we walked together
+from the coach-office, &quot;was I
+wrong in telling you that better things
+would turn up? Take care of yourself,
+and the best wrangler of the lot may
+be glad to change places with you. It
+isn't lots of larning, or lots of money,
+or lots of houses and coaches, that
+makes a man happy in this world.
+They never can do it; but they can do
+just the contrarery, and make him
+the miserablest wretch as crawls. <i>A
+contented mind</i> is 'the one thing
+needful.' Take what God gives
+gratefully, and do unto others as you
+would that they should do unto you.
+That's a maxim that my poor father
+was always giving me, and, I wish,
+when I take the young 'uns to church,
+that they could always hear it, for human
+natur needs it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The evening before my setting out
+was spent with Thompson's family. I
+had received a special invitation, and
+Thompson, with the labouring sons,
+were under an engagement to the
+mistress of the house, to leave the
+workshop at least an hour earlier than
+usual. Oh, it was a sight to move
+the heart of one more hardened than
+I can boast to be, to behold the affectionate
+party assembled to bid me
+farewell, and to do honour to our
+leave-taking. A little feast was prepared
+for the occasion, and my many
+friends were dressed, all in their Sunday
+clothes, befittingly. There was
+not one who had not something to
+give me for a token. Mary had worked
+me a purse; and Mary blushed
+whilst her mother betrayed her, and
+gave the little keepsake. Ellen thought
+a pincushion might be useful; and
+the knitter of the large establishment
+provided me with comforters.
+All the little fellows, down
+to Billy himself, had a separate gift,
+which each must offer with a kiss,
+and with a word or two expressive of
+his good wishes. All hoped I would
+come soon again, and Aleck more than
+hinted a request that I would postpone
+my departure to some indefinite
+period which he could not name.
+Poor tremulous heart! how it throbbed
+amongst them all, and how sad it
+felt to part from them! Love bound
+me to the happy room&mdash;the only love
+that connected the poor outcast with
+the wide cold world. This was the
+home of my affections&mdash;could I leave
+it&mdash;could I venture once more upon
+the boisterous waters of life without
+regret and apprehension?</p>
+
+<p>Thompson kindly offered to accompany
+me on the following morning to
+the inn from which I was destined to
+depart, but I would not hear of it.
+He was full of business; had little
+time to spare, and none to throw
+away upon me. I begged him not to
+think of it, and he acquiesced in my
+wishes. We were sitting together,
+and his wife and children had an hour
+or two previously retired to rest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Them's good children, ain't they,
+Stukely?&quot; enquired Thompson, after
+having made a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may well be proud of them,&quot;
+I answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It looked nice of 'em to make you
+a little present of something before
+you went. But it was quite right.
+That's just as it should be. I like
+that sort of thing, especially when a
+man understands the sperrit that a
+thing's given with. Now, some fellows
+would have been offended if any
+<a class="pagenum" name="page323" id="page323" title="page323"></a>thing had been offered 'em. How I
+do hate all that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I assure you, Thompson, I feel
+deeply their kind treatment of their
+friend. I shall never forget it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ain't offended, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, now, I am so happy to hear
+it, you can't think,&quot; continued Thompson,
+fumbling about his breeches
+pocket, and drawing from it at length
+something which he concealed in his
+fist. &quot;There, take that,&quot; he suddenly
+exclaimed; &quot;take it, my old fellow,
+and God bless you. It's no good
+trying to make a fuss about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I held a purse of money in my
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Thompson,&quot; I replied, &quot;I
+cannot accept it. Do not think me
+proud or ungrateful; but I have no
+right to take it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only twenty guineas, man,
+and I can afford it. Now look, Stukely,
+you are going to leave me. If you
+don't take it, you'll make me as
+wretched as the day is long. You
+are my friend, and my friend mustn't
+go amongst strangers without an independent
+spirit. If you have twenty
+guineas in your pocket, you needn't
+be worrying yourself about little things.
+You'll find plenty of ways to make the
+money useful. You shall pay me, if
+you like, when you grow rich, and we
+meets again; but take it now, and make
+John Thompson happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the lap of nature the troubled
+mind gets rest; and the wounds of
+the heart heal rapidly, once delivered
+there, safe from contact with the infectious
+world; and the bosom of the
+nursing mother is not more powerful
+or quick to lull the pain and still the
+sobs of her distressed ones. It is the
+sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to
+arrive at it is to secure shelter and to
+find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed,
+birthright and joy of angels,
+whither do those glimpses hover that
+we catch of thee in this tumultuous
+life, weak, faint, and transient though
+they be, melting the human soul with
+heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if
+not upon the everlasting hills, where
+the brown line divides the sky, or on
+the gentle sea, where sea and sky are
+one&mdash;a liquid cupola&mdash;or in the leafy
+woods and secret vales, where beauty
+lends her thrilling voice to silence?
+How often will the remembrance only
+of one bright spot&mdash;a vision of Paradise
+rising over the dull waste of my
+existence&mdash;send a glow of comfort to
+my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of
+repose which the harsh business of
+life cannot extinguish or disturb!
+And what a fair history comes with
+that shadowy recollection! How much
+of passionate condensed existence is
+involved in it, and how mysteriously,
+yet naturally connected with it, seem
+all the noblest feelings of my imperfect
+nature! The scene of beauty has
+become &quot;a joy for ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I recall a spring day&mdash;a sparkling
+day of the season of youth and promise&mdash;and
+a nook of earth, fit for the
+wild unshackled sun to skip along and
+brighten with his inconstant giddy
+light. Hope is everywhere; murmuring
+in the brooks, and smiling in
+the sky. Upon the bursting trees she
+sits; she nestles in the hedges. She
+fills the throat of mating birds, and
+bears the soaring lark nearer and
+nearer to the gate of Heaven. It is
+the first holiday of the year, and the
+universal heart is glad. Grief and
+apprehension cannot dwell in the human
+breast on such a day; and, for an
+hour, even <i>Self</i> is merged in the general
+joy. I reach my destination;
+and the regrets for the past, and the
+fear for the future, which have accompanied
+me through the long and
+anxious journey, fall from the oppressed
+spirit, and leave it buoyant,
+cheerful, free&mdash;free to delight itself
+in a land of enchantment, and to revel
+again in the unsubstantial glories of
+a youthful dream. I paint the Future
+in the colours that surround me, and
+I confide in her again.</p>
+
+<p>It was noon when we reached the
+headquarters of the straggling parish
+of Deerhurst&mdash;its chief village. We
+had travelled since the golden sunrise
+over noble earth, and amongst
+scenes scarcely less heavenly than the
+blue vault which smiled upon them.
+Now the horizon was bounded by a
+range of lofty hills linked to each
+other by gentle undulations, and bearing
+to their summits innumerable and
+giant trees; these, crowded together,
+and swayed by the brisk wind, presented
+to the eye the figure of a vast
+and supernatural sea, and made the
+intervening vale of loveliness a neglected
+blank. Then we emerged
+suddenly&mdash;yes, instantaneously&mdash;as
+<a class="pagenum" name="page324" id="page324" title="page324"></a>though designing nature, with purpose
+to surprize, had hid behind the jutting
+crag, beneath the rugged steep&mdash;upon
+a world of beauty; garden upon garden,
+sward upon sward, hamlet upon
+hamlet, far as the sight could reach,
+and purple shades of all beyond.
+Then, flashes of the broad ocean, like
+quick transitory bursts of light, started
+at intervals, washing the feet of a
+tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake,
+buried between the hills. Shorter
+and shorter become the intermissions,
+larger and larger grows the watery
+expanse, until, at length, the mighty
+element rolls unobstructed on, and
+earth, decked in her verdant leaves,
+her flowers and gems, is on the shore
+to greet her.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance to the village is by a
+swift, precipitous descent. On either
+side are piled rude stones, placed there
+by a subtle hand, and with a poet's
+aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe
+the traveller with thoughts of other
+times&mdash;of ruined castles, and of old
+terrace walks. Already have the
+stones fulfilled their purpose, and the
+ivy, the brier, and the saxifrage have
+found a home amongst them. At the
+foot of the declivity, standing like a
+watchful mother, is the church&mdash;the
+small, the unpretending, the venerable
+and lovely village church. You do
+not see a house till she is passed. Before
+a house was built about her, she
+was an aged church, and her favoured
+graves were rich in heavenly clay.
+The churchyard gate; and then at
+once, the limited and quiet village,
+nestling in a valley and shut out from
+the world: beautiful and self-sufficient.
+Hill upon hill behind, each greener
+than the last&mdash;hill upon hill before,
+all exclusion, and nothing but her
+own surpassing loveliness to console
+and cheer her solitude. And is it not
+enough? What if she know little of
+the sea beyond its voice, and nothing
+of external life&mdash;her crystal stream,
+her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden
+plots, her variegated flowers and
+massive foliage, her shady dells and
+scented lanes are joys enough for her
+small commonwealth. Thin curling
+smoke that rises like a spirit from
+the hidden bosom of one green hillock,
+proclaims the single house that
+has its seat upon the eminence. It is
+the parsonage&mdash;my future home.</p>
+
+<p>With a trembling heart I left the
+little inn, and took my silent way to
+the incumbent's house. There was
+no eye to follow me, the leafy street
+was tenantless, and seemed made over
+to the restless sun and dissolute winds
+to wanton through it as they pleased.
+As I ascended, the view enlarged&mdash;beauty
+became more beauteous, silence
+more profound. I reached the
+parsonage gate, and my heart yearned
+to tell how much I longed to live and
+die on this sequestered and most peaceful
+spot. The dwelling-house was
+primitive and low; its long and overhanging
+roof was thatched; its windows
+small and many. A myrtle,
+luxuriant as a vine, covered its entire
+front, and concealed the ancient brick
+and wood. A raised bank surrounded
+the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted
+to a lawn fringed with the earliest
+flowers of the year. I rang the
+loud bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl
+gave me admittance to the
+house. In a room of moderate size,
+furnished by a hand as old at least as
+the grandsires of the present occupants,
+and well supplied with books,
+sat the incumbent. He was a man of
+fifty years of age or more, tall and
+gentlemanly in demeanour. His head
+was partly bald, and what remained of
+his hair was grey almost to whiteness.
+He had a noble forehead, a marked
+brow, and a cold grey eye. His
+mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual
+deep reflection, and the expression of
+every other feature tended to seriousness.
+The first impression was unfavourable.
+A youth, who was reading
+with the minister when I entered
+the apartment, was dismissed with a
+simple inclination of the head, and the
+Rev. Walter Fairman then pointed to
+a seat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have had a tedious journey,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; began the incumbent,
+&quot;and you are fatigued, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a glorious spot this is, sir!&quot;
+I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, it is pretty,&quot; answered Mr
+Fairman, very coldly as I thought.
+&quot;Are you hungry, Mr Stukely? We
+dine early; but pray take refreshment
+if you need it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I declined respectfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you bring letters from my
+agent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a parcel in my trunk, sir,
+which will be here immediately.
+What magnificent trees!&quot; I exclaimed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page325" id="page325" title="page325"></a>again, my eyes riveted upon a stately
+cluster, which were about a hundred
+yards distant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you been accustomed to
+tuition?&quot; asked Mr Fairman, taking
+no notice of my remark.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have not, sir, but I am sure
+that I shall be delighted with the
+occupation. I have always thought
+so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must not be too sanguine.
+Nothing requires more delicate handling
+than the mind of youth. In no
+business is experience, great discernment
+and tact, so much needed as in
+that of instruction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir, I am aware of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; answered Mr Fairman
+quietly. &quot;How old are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told my age, and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well,&quot; said the incumbent,
+&quot;I have no doubt we shall do. You
+are a Cambridge man, Mr Graham
+writes me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was only a year, sir, at the university.
+Circumstances prevented a
+longer residence. I believe I mentioned
+the fact to Mr Graham.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes, he told me so. You
+shall see the boys this afternoon. They
+are fine-hearted lads, and much may
+be done with them. There are six.
+Two of them are pretty well advanced.
+They read Euripides and
+Horace. Is Euripides a favourite of
+yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is tender, plaintive, and passionate,&quot;
+I answered; &quot;but perhaps I
+may be pardoned if I venture to prefer
+the vigour and majesty of the sterner
+tragedian.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean you like &AElig;schylus
+better. Do you write poetry, Mr
+Stukely? Not Latin verses, but English
+poetry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I am glad of that. It
+struck me that you did. Will you
+really take no refreshment? Are you
+not fatigued?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the least, sir. This lovely
+prospect, for one who has seen so little
+of nature as I have, is refreshment
+enough for the present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah,&quot; said Mr Fairman, sighing
+faintly, &quot;you will get accustomed to
+it. There is something in the prospect,
+but more in your own mind.
+Some of our poor fellows would be
+easily served and satisfied, if we could
+feed them on the prospect. But if
+you are not tired you shall see more
+of it if you will. I have to go down
+to the village. We have an hour
+till dinner-time. Will you accompany
+me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With pleasure, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well.&quot; Mr Fairman then rang
+the bell, and the servant girl came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where's Miss Ellen, Mary?&quot;
+asked the incumbent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has been in the village since
+breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word
+that she was ill, and Miss took her the
+rice and sago that Dr Mayhew ordered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Warden been this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Foolish fellow. I'll call on him.
+Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman
+comes, give him that bottle of port
+wine; but tell him not to touch a drop
+of it himself. It is for his sick child,
+and it is committing robbery to take
+it. Let him have the blanket also
+that was looked out for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's gone, sir. Miss sent it yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well. There is nothing
+more. Now, Mr Stukely, we will go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have said already that the first
+opinion which I formed of the disposition
+of Mr Fairman was not a flattering
+one. Before he spoke a word,
+I felt disappointed and depressed.
+My impression after our short conversation
+was worse than the first.
+The natural effect of the scene
+in which I suddenly found myself,
+had been to prepare my ever too
+forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm
+and poetic temperament. Mr
+Fairman was many degrees removed
+from warmth. He spoke to me in
+a sharp tone of voice, and sometimes,
+I suspected, with the intention
+of mocking me. His <i>manner</i>, when
+he addressed the servant-girl, was not
+more pleasing. When I followed him
+from the room, I regretted the haste
+with which I had accepted my appointment;
+but a moment afterwards
+I entered into fairyland again, and
+the passing shadow left me grateful
+to Providence for so much real enjoyment.
+We descended the hill,
+and for a time, in silence, Mr Fairman
+was evidently engaged in deep
+thought, and I had no wish to disturb
+him. Every now and then we lighted
+upon a view of especial beauty, and I
+was on the point of expressing my unbounded
+<a class="pagenum" name="page326" id="page326" title="page326"></a>admiration, when one look at
+my cool and matter-of-fact companion
+at once annoyed and stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Mr Fairman at length,
+still musing. &quot;It is very difficult&mdash;very
+difficult to manage the poor. I
+wonder if they are grateful at heart.
+What do you think, Mr Stukely?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have nothing to say of the poor,
+sir, but praise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and
+smiled unpleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the scenery, I suppose. That
+will make you praise every thing for
+the next day or so. It will not do,
+though. We must walk on our feet,
+and be prosaic in this world. The
+poor are not as poets paint them, nor
+is there so much happiness in a hovel
+as they would lead you to expect. The
+poets are like you&mdash;they have nothing
+to say but praise. Ah, me! they draw
+largely on their imaginations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not, sir, in this instance,&quot;
+I answered, somewhat nettled. &quot;My
+most valued friends are in the humblest
+ranks of life. I am proud to say
+so. I am not prepared to add, that
+the most generous of men are the most
+needy, although it has been my lot to
+meet with sympathy and succour at
+the hands of those who were much in
+want of both themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe you, Mr Stukely,&quot; answered
+the incumbent in a more feeling
+tone. &quot;I am not fond of theories;
+yet that's a theory with which I would
+willingly pass through life; but it will
+not answer. It is knocked on the head
+every hour of the day. Perhaps it is
+our own fault. We do not know how
+to reach the hearts, and educate the
+feelings of the ignorant and helpless.
+Just step in here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were standing before a hut at
+the base of the hill. It was a low
+dirty-looking place, all roof, with a
+neglected garden surrounding it. One
+window was in the cob-wall. It had
+been fixed there originally, doubtless
+with the object of affording light to
+the inmates; but light, not being essential
+to the comfort or happiness of the
+present tenants, was in a great measure
+excluded by a number of small
+rags which occupied the place of the
+diamond panes that had departed
+many months before. A child, ill-clad,
+in fragments of clothes, with
+long and dirty hair, unclean face, and
+naked feet, cried at the door, and loud
+talking was heard within. Mr Fairman
+knocked with his knuckle before he
+entered, and a gruff voice desired him to
+&quot;come in.&quot; A stout fellow, with a
+surly countenance and unshaven beard,
+was sitting over an apology for a fire,
+and a female of the same age and condition
+was near him. She bore an
+unhappy infant in her arms, whose
+melancholy peakish face, not twelve-months
+old, looked already conscious
+of prevailing misery. There was no
+flooring to the room, which contained
+no one perfect or complete article of
+furniture, but symptoms of many,
+from the blanketless bed down to the
+solitary coverless saucepan. Need I
+add, that the man who sat there, the
+degraded father of the house, had his
+measure of liquor before him, and
+that the means of purchasing it were
+never wanting, however impudently
+charity might be called upon to supply
+the starving family with bread?</p>
+
+<p>The man did not rise upon our entrance.
+He changed colour very
+slightly, and looked more ignorantly
+surly, or tried to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Jacob Warden,&quot; said the
+incumbent, &quot;you are determined to
+brave it out, I see.&quot; The fellow did
+not answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I told you yesterday that
+your idleness and bad habits were
+bringing you to ruin, you answered&mdash;<i>I
+was a liar</i>. I then said, that when
+you were sorry for having uttered
+that expression, you might come to
+the parsonage and tell me so. You
+have not been yet&mdash;I am grieved to
+say it. What have I ever done to you,
+Jacob Warden, that you should behave
+so wickedly? I do not wish you
+to humble yourself to me, but I should
+have been glad to see you do your
+duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I should
+give you up, and see you no more, for
+I fear you are a hardened man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He hasn't had no work for a
+month,&quot; said the wife, in a tone of upbraiding,
+as if the minister had been
+the wilful cause of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And whose fault is that, Mrs
+Warden? There is work enough for
+sober and honest men in the parish.
+Why was your husband turned away
+from the Squire's?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, all along of them spoons.
+They never could prove it agin him,
+that's one thing&mdash;though they tried it
+hard enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page327" id="page327" title="page327"></a>&quot;Come, come, Mrs Warden, if
+you love that man, take the right
+way to show it. Think of your children.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; if I didn't&mdash;who would, I
+should like to know? The poor are
+trodden under foot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor
+are taken care of, if they are deserving.
+God loves the poor, and commands
+us all to love them. Give me
+your Bible?&quot; The woman hesitated a
+minute, and then answered&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind the Bible, that won't
+get us bread.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me your Bible, Mrs Warden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have'nt got it. What's the
+use of keeping a Bible in the house for
+children as can't read, when they are
+crying for summat to eat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have sold it, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We got a shilling on it&mdash;that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever applied to us for
+food, and has it been denied you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't know. The servant
+always looks grumpy at us when we
+come a-begging, and seems to begrudge
+us every mouthful. It's all very well
+to live on other persons' leavings. I
+dare say you don't give us what you
+could eat yourselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We give the best we can afford,
+Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with
+no such feeling as you suppose. How
+is the child? Is it better?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, no thanks to Doctor Mayhew
+either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he not call, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Call! Yes, but he made me tramp
+to his house for the physic, and when
+he passed the cottage the other day, I
+called after him; but devil a bit would
+he come back. We might have died
+first, of course: he knows, he isn't paid,
+and what does he care?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is very wrong of you to talk so.
+You are well aware that he was hurrying
+to a case of urgency, and could
+not be detained. He visited you upon
+the following day, and told you so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes, the following day!
+What's that to do with it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Woman&quot; exclaimed Mr Fairman,
+solemnly, &quot;my heart bleeds for those
+poor children. What will become of
+them with such an example before
+their eyes? I can say no more to
+you than I have repeated a hundred
+times before. I would make you
+happy in this world if I could; I
+would save you. You forbid me. I
+would be your true friend, and you
+look upon me as an enemy. Heaven,
+I trust, will melt your heart! What
+is that child screaming for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! she hasn't had a blessed
+thing to-day. We had nothing for her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman took some biscuits from
+his pockets, and placed them on the
+table. &quot;Let the girl come in, and
+eat,&quot; said he. &quot;I shall send you some
+meat from the village. Warden, I
+cannot tell you how deeply I feel
+your wickedness. I did expect you to
+come to the parsonage and say you
+were sorry. It would have looked
+well, and I should have liked it. You
+put it out of my power to help you.
+It is most distressing to see you both
+going headlong to destruction. May
+you live to repent! I shall see you
+again this evening, and I will speak
+to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely,
+our time is getting short.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The incumbent spoke rapidly, and
+seemed affected. I looked at him, and
+could hardly believe him to be the
+cold and unimpassioned man that I
+had at first imagined him.</p>
+
+<p>We pursued our way towards the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There, sir,&quot; said the minister in a
+quick tone of voice, &quot;what is the
+beautiful prospect, and what are the
+noble trees, to the heart of that man?
+What have they to do at all with
+man's morality? Had those people
+never seen a shrub or flower, could
+they have been more impenetrable,
+more insolent and suspicious, or
+steeped in vice much deeper? That
+man wants only opportunity, a large
+sphere of action, and the variety of
+crime and motive that are to be found
+amongst congregated masses of mankind,
+to become a monster. His passions
+and his vices are as wilful and
+as strong as those of any man born
+and bred in the sinks of a great city.
+They have fewer outlets, less capability
+of mischief&mdash;and there is the difference.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I ventured no remark, and the incumbent,
+after a short pause, continued
+in a milder strain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I may be, after all, weak and inefficient.
+Doubtless great delicacy and
+caution are required. Heavenly
+truths are not to be administered to
+these as to the refined and willing.
+The land must be ploughed, or it is
+useless to sow the seed. Am I not
+perhaps, an unskilful labourer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page328" id="page328" title="page328"></a>Mr Fairman stopped at the first
+house in the village&mdash;the prettiest of
+the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages
+before alluded to. Here he
+tapped softly, and a gentle foot that
+seemed to know the visitor hastened
+to admit him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Mary,&quot; said the minister,
+glancing round the room&mdash;a clean
+and happy-looking room it was&mdash;&quot;where's
+Michael?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is gone, sir, as you bade him,
+to make it up with Cousin Willett.
+He couldn't rest easy, sir, since you
+told him that it was no use coming to
+church so long as he bore malice. He
+won't be long, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his
+grey eye might be, it did not seem so
+steady now.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary, that is good of him; tell
+him his minister is pleased. How is
+work with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has enough to do, to carry
+him to the month's end, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then at the month's end, Mary,
+let him come to the parsonage. I
+have something for him there. But
+we can wait till then. Have you seen
+the itinerary preacher since?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not his time, sir. He
+didn't promise to come till Monday
+week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do neither you nor Michael speak
+with him, nor listen to his public
+preachings. I mean, regard him not
+as one having authority. I speak solemnly,
+and with a view to your eternal
+peace. Do not forget.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every house was visited, and in all,
+opportunity was found for the exercise
+of the benevolent feelings by
+which the incumbent was manifestly
+actuated. He lost no occasion of affording
+his flock sound instruction and
+good advice. It could not be doubted
+for an instant that their real welfare,
+temporal and everlasting, lay
+deeply in his heart. I was struck by
+one distinguishing feature in his mode
+of dealing with his people; it was so
+opposed to the doctrine and practice
+of Mr Clayton, and of those who were
+connected with him. With the latter,
+a certain degree of physical fervour,
+and a conventional peculiarity
+of expression, were insisted upon and
+accepted as evidences of grace and renewed
+life. With Mr Fairman, neither
+acquired heat, nor the more easily
+acquired jargon of a clique, were
+taken into account. He rather repressed
+than encouraged their existence;
+but he was desirous, and even
+eager, to establish rectitude of conduct
+and purity of feeling in the disciples
+around him: these were to him
+tangible witnesses of the operation of
+that celestial Spirit before whose light
+the mists of simulation and deceit fade
+unresistingly away. I could not help
+remarking, however, that in every
+cottage the same injunction was given
+in respect of the itinerant; the same
+solemnity of manner accompanied the
+command; the same importance was
+attached to its obedience. There
+seemed to me, fresh from the hands
+of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry
+and uncharitableness in all this. I
+did not hint at this effect upon my
+own mind, nor did I inquire into the
+motives of the minister. I was not
+pleased; but I said nothing. As if
+Mr Fairman read my very thoughts,
+he addressed me on the subject almost
+before the door of the last cottage was
+closed upon us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Bigoted</i> and <i>narrow-minded,</i> are
+the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the
+extremely liberal would characterize
+the line of conduct which I am compelled
+by duty to pursue. I cannot
+be frightened by harsh terms. I am
+the pastor of these people, and must
+decide and act for them. I am their
+shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor
+and ignorant, and unripe in judgment,
+and easily deceived by the shows and
+counterfeits of truth as the ignorant
+are, is it for me to hand them over to
+perplexity and risk? They are simple
+believers, and are contented. They
+worship God, and are at peace. They
+know their lot, and do not murmur at
+it. Is it right that they should be
+disturbed with the religious differences
+and theological subtleties which
+have already divided into innumerable
+sects the universal family of Christians
+whom God made one? Is it fair
+or merciful to whisper into their ears
+the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction,
+envy, and complaining, to which the
+uninformed of all classes but too eagerly
+listen? I have ever found the
+religious and the political propagandist
+united in the same individual.
+The man who proposes to the simple
+to improve his creed, is ready
+to point out the way to better his condition.
+He succeeds in rendering
+him unhappy in both, and there he
+leaves him. So would this man, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page329" id="page329" title="page329"></a>I would rather die for my people,
+than tamely give them over to their
+misery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A tall, stout, weather-beaten man,
+in the coarse dress of a fisherman, descending
+the hill, intercepted our way.
+It was the man Cuthbert, already
+mentioned by Mr Fairman. He
+touched his southwester to the incumbent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is the boy, Cuthbert?&quot; asked
+the minister, stopping at the same
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All but well, sir. Doctor Mayhew
+don't mean to come again. It's
+all along of them nourishments that
+Miss Ellen sent us down. The Doctor
+says he must have died without
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Cuthbert, I trust that we
+shall find you grateful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Grateful, sir!&quot; exclaimed the
+man. &quot;If ever I forget what you
+have done for that poor child, I hope
+the breath&mdash;&mdash;&quot; The brawny fisherman
+could say no more. His eyes
+filled suddenly with tears, and he held
+down his head, ashamed of them. He
+had no cause to be so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be honest and industrious, Cuthbert;
+give that boy a good example.
+Teach him to love his God, and his
+neighbour as himself. That will be
+gratitude enough, and more than pay
+Miss Ellen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll try to do it, sir. God bless you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We said little till we reached the
+parsonage again; but before I re-entered
+its gate the Reverend Walter
+Fairman had risen in my esteem, and
+ceased to be considered a cold and
+unfeeling man.</p>
+
+<p>We dined; the party consisting of
+the incumbent, the six students, and
+myself. The daughter, the only
+daughter and child of Mr Fairman,
+who was himself a widower, had not
+returned from the cottage to which
+she had been called in the morning.
+It was necessary that a female should
+be in constant attendance upon the
+aged invalid; a messenger had been
+despatched to the neighbouring village
+for an experienced nurse; and
+until her arrival Miss Fairman would
+permit no one but herself to undertake
+the duties of the sick chamber.
+It was on this account that we were
+deprived of the pleasure of her society,
+for her accustomed seat was at the
+head of her father's table. I was
+pleased with the pupils. They were
+affable and well-bred. They treated
+the incumbent with marked respect,
+and behaved towards their new teacher
+with the generous kindness and freedom
+of true young gentlemen. The
+two eldest boys might be fifteen years
+of age. The remaining four could
+not have reached their thirteenth year.
+In the afternoon I had the scholars to
+myself. The incumbent retired to his
+library, and left us to pass our first
+day in removing the restraint that was
+the natural accompaniment of our different
+positions, and in securing our
+intimacy. I talked of the scenery, and
+found willing listeners. They understood
+me better than their master, for
+they were worshippers themselves.
+They promised to show me lovelier
+spots than any I had met with yet; sacred
+corners, known only to themselves,
+down by the sea, where the arbute
+and laurustinus grew like trees, and
+children of the ocean. Then there were
+villages near, more beautiful even than
+their own; one that lay in the lap of a
+large hill, with the sea creeping round,
+or rolling at its feet like thunder,
+sometimes. What lanes, too, Miss
+Fairman knew of! She would take
+me into places worth the looking at;
+and oh, what drawings she had made
+from them! Their sisters had bought
+drawings, and paid very dearly for
+them too, that were not half so finely
+done! They would ask her to show
+me her portfolio, and she would do it
+directly, for she was the kindest creature
+living. It was not the worst
+trait in the disposition of these boys,
+that, whatever might be the subject of
+conversation, or from whatever point
+we might start in our discourse, they
+found pleasure in making all things
+bear towards the honour and renown
+of their young mistress. The scenery
+was nothing without Miss Fairman
+and her sketches. The house was
+dull without her, and the singing in
+the church, if she were ill and absent,
+was as different as could be. There
+were the sweetest birds that could be,
+heard warbling in the high trees that
+lined the narrow roads; but at Miss
+Fairman's window there was a nightingale
+that beat them all. The day
+wore on, and I did not see the general
+favourite. It was dusk when she
+reached the parsonage, and then she
+retired immediately to rest, tired from
+the labours of the day. The friend
+of the family, Doctor Mayhew, had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page330" id="page330" title="page330"></a>accompanied Miss Fairman home;
+he remained with the incumbent, and
+I continued with my young companions
+until their bedtime. They departed,
+leaving me their books, and
+then I took a survey of the work that
+was before me. My duties were to
+commence on the following day, and
+our first subject was the tragedy of
+<i>Hecuba</i>. How very grateful did I
+feel for the sound instruction which I
+had received in early life from my revered
+pains-taking tutor, for the solid
+groundwork that he had established,
+and for the rational mode of tuition
+which he had from the first adopted.
+From the moment that he undertook
+to cultivate and inform the youthful
+intellect, this became itself an active
+instrument in the attainment of
+knowledge&mdash;not, as is so often the
+case, the mere idle depositary of encumbering
+<i>words</i>. It was little that
+he required to be gained by rote, for
+he regarded all acquisitions as useless
+in which the understanding had not
+the chiefest share. He was pleased
+to communicate facts, and anxious to
+discover, from examination, that the
+principles which they contained had
+been accurately seen and understood.
+Then no labour and perseverance on
+his part were deemed too great for
+his pupil, and the business of his life
+became his first pleasure. In the
+study of Greek, for which at an early
+age I evinced great aptitude, I learnt
+the structure of the language and its
+laws from the keen observations of
+my master, whose rules were drawn
+from the classic work before us&mdash;rather
+than from grammars. To this
+hour I retain the information thus
+obtained, and at no period of my life
+have I ever had greater cause for
+thankfulness, than when, after many
+months of idleness and neglect, with a
+view to purchase bread I opened, not
+without anxiety, my book again, and
+found that time had not impaired
+my knowledge, and that light shone
+brightly on the pages, as it did of old.
+Towards the close of the evening, I
+was invited to the study of Mr Fairman.
+Doctor Mayhew was still with
+him, and I was introduced to the physician
+as the teacher newly arrived
+from London. The doctor was a
+stout good-humoured gentleman of
+the middle height, with a cheerful
+and healthy-looking countenance.
+He was, in truth, a jovial man, as
+well as a great snuff-taker. The incumbent
+offered me a chair, and placed
+a decanter of wine before me. His
+own glass of port was untouched,
+and he looked serious and dejected.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, how does London
+look?&quot; enquired the doctor, &quot;are
+the folks as mad as they used to be?
+What new invention is the rage now?
+What bubble is going to burst? What
+lord committed forgery last? Who
+was the last woman murdered before
+you started?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I confessed my inability to answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, never mind. There isn't
+much lost. I am almost ashamed of
+old England, that's the truth on't. I
+have given over reading the newspapers,
+for they are about as full of
+horrors as Miss What's-her-name's
+tales of the Infernals. What an age
+this is! all crime and fanaticism!
+Everyman and everything is on the
+rush. Come, Fairman, take your wine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman sat gazing on the fire,
+quietly, and took no notice of the request.
+&quot;People's heads,&quot; continued
+the medical gentleman, &quot;seem
+turned topsy-turvy. Dear me, how
+different it was in my time! What
+men are about, I can't think. The
+very last newspaper I read had an
+advertisement that I should as soon
+have expected to see there when my
+father was alive, as a ship sailing
+along this coast keel upwards. You
+saw it, Fairman. It was just under
+the Everlasting Life Pill advertisement;
+and announced that the Reverend
+Mr Somebody would preach
+on the Sunday following, at some conventicle,
+when the public were invited
+to listen to him&mdash;and that the doors
+would be opened half an hour earlier
+than usual to prevent squeezing.
+That's modern religion, and it looks
+as much like ancient play-acting as
+two peas. Where will these marching
+days of improvement bring us to
+at last?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me, Mayhew,&quot; said Mr
+Fairman, &quot;does it not surprise you
+that a girl of her age should be so
+easily fatigued?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear friend, that makes the
+sixth time of asking. Let us hope
+that it will be the last. I don't know
+what you mean by '<i>so easily</i>' fatigued.
+The poor girl has been in the village
+all day, fomenting and poulticing old
+Mrs Barnes, and if it had been any
+girl but herself, she would have been
+tired out long before. Make your
+mind easy. I have sent the naughty
+puss to bed, and she'll be as fresh as a
+rose in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page331" id="page331" title="page331"></a>&quot;She must keep her exertions within
+proper bounds,&quot; continued the incumbent.
+&quot;I am sure she has not
+strength enough to carry out her
+good intentions. I have watched her
+narrowly, and cannot be mistaken.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do wrong, then, Fairman.
+Anxious watching creates fear, without
+the shadow of an excuse for it.
+When we have anything like a bad
+symptom, it is time to get uneasy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but what do you call a bad
+symptom, Doctor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I call your worrying yourself
+into fidgets, and teazing me into
+an ill temper, a shocking symptom of
+bad behaviour. If it continue, you
+must take a doze. Come, my friend,
+let me prescribe that glass of good
+old port. It does credit to the cloth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seriously, Mayhew, have you
+never noticed the short, hacking cough
+that sometimes troubles her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I noticed it last January for
+the space of one week, when there
+was not a person within ten miles of
+you who was not either hacking, as
+you call it, or blowing his nose from
+morning till night. The dear child
+had a cold, and so had you, and I, and
+everybody else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that sudden flush, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you'll be complaining of the
+bloom on the peach next! That's
+health, and nothing else, take my
+word for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am, perhaps, morbidly apprehensive;
+but I cannot forget her poor
+mother. You attended her, Mayhew,
+and you know how suddenly that
+came upon us. Poor Ellen! what
+should I do without her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fairman, join me in wishing success
+to our young friend here. Mr
+Stukely, here's your good health; and
+success and happiness attend you.
+You'll find little society here; but it
+is of the right sort, I can tell you.
+You must make yourself at home.&quot;
+The minister became more cheerful,
+and an hour passed in pleasant conversation.
+At ten o'clock, the horse
+of Doctor Mayhew was brought to the
+gate, and the gentleman departed in
+great good-humour. Almost immediately
+afterwards, the incumbent
+himself conducted me to my sleeping
+apartment, and I was not loth to get
+my rest. I fell asleep with the beautiful
+village floating before my weary
+eyes, and the first day of my residence
+at the parsonage closed peacefully
+upon me.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the breakfast table on the
+succeeding morning that I beheld the
+daughter of the incumbent, the favourite
+and companion of my pupils, and
+mistress of the house&mdash;a maiden in
+her twentieth year. She was simply
+and artlessly attired, gentle and retiring
+in demeanour, and femininely
+sweet rather than beautiful in expression.
+Her figure was slender, her
+voice soft and musical; her hair light
+brown, and worn plain across a forehead
+white as marble. The eye-brows
+which arched the small, rich, hazel
+eyes were delicately drawn, and the
+slightly aquiline nose might have
+formed a study for an artist. With
+the exception, however, of this last-named
+feature, there was little in the
+individual lineaments of the face to
+surprise or rivet the observer. Extreme
+simplicity, and perfect innocence&mdash;these
+were stamped upon the
+countenance, and were its charm. It
+was a strange feeling that possessed
+me when I first gazed upon her through
+the chaste atmosphere that dwelt
+around her. It was degradation deep
+and unaffected&mdash;a sense of shame and
+undeservedness. I remembered with
+self-abhorrence the relation that had
+existed between the unhappy Emma
+and myself, and the enormity and
+disgrace of my offence never looked
+so great as now, and here&mdash;in the
+bright presence of unconscious purity.
+She reassured and welcomed me with
+a natural smile, and pursued her occupation
+with quiet cheerfulness and
+unconstraint. I did not wonder that
+her father loved her, and entertained
+the thought of losing her with fear;
+for, young and gentle as she was, she
+evinced wisdom and age in her deep
+sense of duty, and in the government
+of her happy home. Method and
+order waited on her doings, and sweetness
+and tranquillity&mdash;the ease and
+dignity of a matron elevating and
+upholding the maiden's native modesty.
+And did she not love her sire
+as ardently? Yes, if her virgin soul
+spoke faithfully in every movement of
+her guileless face. Yes, if there be
+truth in tones that strike the heart to
+thrill it&mdash;in thoughts that write their
+meaning in the watchful eye, in words
+that issue straight from the fount of
+love, in acts that do not bear one
+shade of selfish purpose. It was not
+a labour of time to learn that the existence
+of the child, her peace and
+happiness, were merged in those of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page332" id="page332" title="page332"></a>the fond parent. He was every thing
+to her, as she to him. She had no
+brother&mdash;he no wife: these natural
+channels of affection cut away, the
+stream was strong and deep that flowed
+into each other's hearts. My first
+interview with the young lady was
+necessarily limited. I would gladly
+have prolonged it. The morning was
+passed with my pupils, and my mind
+stole often from the work before me
+to dwell upon the face and form of
+her, whom, as a sister, I could have
+doated on and cherished. How happy
+I should have been, I deemed, if I
+had been so blessed. Useless reflection!
+and yet pleased was I to dwell
+upon it, and to welcome its return, as
+often as it recurred. At dinner we
+met again. To be admitted into her
+presence seemed the reward for my
+morning toil&mdash;a privilege rather than
+a right. What labour was too great
+for the advantage of such moments?&mdash;moments
+indeed they were, and
+less&mdash;flashes of time, that were not
+here before they had disappeared.
+We exchanged but few words. I was
+still oppressed with the conviction of
+my own unworthiness, and wondered
+if she could read in my burning face
+the history of shame. How she must
+avoid and despise me, thought I, when
+she has discovered all, and how bold
+and wicked it was to darken the light
+in which she lived with the guilt that
+was a part of me! Not the less did I
+experience this when she spoke to me
+with kindness and unreserve. The
+feeling grew in strength. I was conscious
+of deceit and fraud, and could
+not shake the knowledge off. I was
+taking mean advantage of her confidence,
+assuming a character to which
+I had no claim, and listening to the
+accents of innocence and virtue with
+the equanimity of one good and spotless
+as herself. In the afternoon the
+young students resumed their work.
+When it was over, we strolled amongst
+the hills; and, at the close of a delightful
+walk, found ourselves in the
+enchanting village. Here we encountered
+Miss Fairman and the incumbent,
+and we returned home in company.
+In one short hour we reached
+it. How many hours have passed
+since <i>that</i> was ravished from the hand
+of Time, and registered in the tenacious
+memory! Years have floated
+by, and silently have dropped into the
+boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted;
+and these few minutes&mdash;sacred relics&mdash;live
+and linger in the world, in
+mercy it may be, to lighten up my
+lonely hearth, or save the whitened
+head from drooping. The spirit of
+one golden hour shall hover through
+a life, and shed glory where he falls.
+What are the unfruitful, unremembered
+years that rush along, frightening
+mortality with their fatal speed&mdash;an
+instant in eternity! What are the
+moments loaded with passion, intense,
+and never-dying&mdash;years, ages upon
+earth! Away with the divisions of
+time, whilst one short breath&mdash;the
+smallest particle or measure of duration,
+shall outweigh ages. Breathless
+and silent is the dewy eve. Trailing
+a host of glittering clouds behind him,
+the sun stalks down, and leaves the
+emerald hills in deeper green. The
+lambs are skipping on the path&mdash;the
+shepherd as loth to lead them home
+as they to go. The labourer has done
+his work, and whistles his way back.
+The minister has much of good and
+wise to say to his young family. They
+hear the business of the day; their
+guardian draws the moral, and bids
+them think it over. Upon my arm I
+bear his child, the fairest object of the
+twilight group. She tells me histories
+of this charmed spot, and the good
+old tales that are as old as the gray
+church beneath us: she smiles, and
+speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant
+of the tearful eye and throbbing
+heart beside her, that overflow
+with new-found bliss, and cannot bear
+their weight of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Another day of natural gladness&mdash;and
+then the Sabbath; this not less
+cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding.
+The sun shone fair upon the
+ancient church, and made its venerable
+gray stones sparkle and look young
+again. The dark-green ivy that for
+many a year has clung there, looked
+no longer sad and sombre, but gay
+and lively as the newest of the new-born
+leaves that smiled on every tree.
+The inhabitants of the secluded village
+were already a-foot when we
+proceeded from the parsonage, and
+men and women from adjacent villages
+were on the road to join them.
+The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly,
+and sanctified the vale; for its sound
+strikes deeply ever on the broad ear
+of nature. Willows and yew-trees
+shelter the graves of the departed villagers,
+and the living wend their way
+<a class="pagenum" name="page333" id="page333" title="page333"></a>beneath them, subdued to seriousness,
+it may be, by the breathless voice that
+dwells in every well-remembered
+mound. There is not one who does
+not carry on his brow the thoughts
+that best become it now. All are well
+dressed, all look cleanly and contented.
+The children are with their parents,
+their natural and best instructors.
+Whom should they love so
+well? To whom is honour due if not
+to them? The village owns no school
+to disannul the tie of blood, to warp
+and weaken the affection that holds
+them well together.</p>
+
+<p>All was quietness and decorum in
+the house of prayer. Every earnest
+eye was fixed, not upon Mr Fairman,
+but on the book from which the people
+prayed, in which they found their
+own good thoughts portrayed, their
+pious wishes told, their sorrow and
+repentance in clearest form described.
+Every humble penitent was on his
+knees. With one voice, loud and
+heartfelt, came the responses which
+spoke the people's acquiescence in all
+the pastor urged and prayed on their
+behalf. The worship over, Mr Fairman
+addressed his congregation, selecting
+his subject from the lesson of
+the day, and fitting his words to the
+capacities of those who listened. Let
+me particularly note, that whilst the
+incumbent pointed distinctly to the
+cross as the only ground of a sinner's
+hope, he insisted upon good works as
+the necessary and essential accompaniment
+of his faith. &quot;Do not tell me,
+my dear friends,&quot; he said, at the conclusion
+of his address&mdash;&quot;do not tell
+me that you believe, if your daily life
+is unworthy a believer. I will not
+trust you. What is your belief, if
+your heart is busy in contrivances to
+overreach your neighbour? What is
+it, if your mind is filled with envy,
+malice, hatred, and revenge? What
+if you are given over to disgraceful
+lusts&mdash;to drunkenness and debauchery?
+What if you are ashamed to speak the
+truth, and are willing to become a
+liar? I tell you, and I have warrant
+for what I say, that your conduct one
+towards another must be straightforward,
+honest, generous, kind, and affectionate,
+or you cannot be in a safe
+and happy state. You owe it to yourselves
+to be so; for if you are poor
+and labouring men, you have an immortal
+soul within you, and it is your
+greatest ornament. It is that which
+gives the meanest of us a dignity that
+no earthly honours can supply; a dignity
+that it becomes the first and last
+of us by every means to cherish and
+support. Is it not, my friends, degrading,
+fearful to know that we bear
+about with us the very image of our
+God, and that we are acting worse
+than the very brutes of the field? Do
+yourselves justice. Be pure&mdash;pure in
+mind and body. Be honest, in word
+and deed. Be loving to one another.
+Crush every wish to do evil, or to
+speak harshly; be brothers, and feel
+that you are working out the wishes
+of a benevolent and loving Father,
+who has created you for love, and
+smiles upon you when you do his bidding.&quot;
+There was more to this effect,
+but nothing need be added to explain
+the scope and tendency of his discourse.
+His congregation could not mistake
+his meaning; they could not fail to
+profit by it, if reason was not proof
+against the soundest argument. As
+quietly as, and, if it be possible, more
+seriously than, they entered the church,
+did the small band of worshippers, at
+the close of the service, retire from it.
+Could it be my fancy, or did the wife
+in truth cling closer to her husband&mdash;the
+father clasp his little boy more
+firmly in his hand? Did neighbour
+nod to neighbour more eagerly as they
+parted at the churchyard gate&mdash;did
+every look and movement of the many
+groups bespeak a spirit touched, a
+mind reproved? I may not say so,
+for my own heart was melted by the
+scene, and might mislead my judgment.
+There was a second service in
+the afternoon. This concluded, we
+walked to the sea-beach. In the evening
+Mr Fairman related a connected
+history from the Old Testament,
+whilst the pupils tracked his progress
+on their maps, and the narrative became
+a living thing in their remembrances.
+Serious conversation then
+succeeded; to this a simple prayer,
+and the day closed, sweetly and calmly,
+as a day might close in Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>The events of the following month
+partook of the character of those already
+glanced at. The minister was
+unremitting in his attendance upon
+his parishioners, and no day passed
+during which something had not been
+accomplished for their spiritual improvement
+or worldly comfort. His
+loving daughter was a handmaid at
+his side, ministering with him, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page334" id="page334" title="page334"></a>shedding sunshine where she came.
+The villagers were frugal and industrious;
+and seemed, for the most part,
+sensible of their incumbent's untiring
+efforts. Improvement appeared even
+in the cottage of the desperate Warden.
+Mr Fairman obtained employment for
+him. For a fortnight he had attended
+to it, and no complaint had reached
+the parsonage of misbehaviour. His
+wife had learned to bear her imagined
+wrongs in silence, and could even
+submit to a visit from her best friend
+without insulting him for the condescension.
+My own days passed
+smoothly on. My occupation grew
+every day more pleasing, and the results
+of my endeavours as gratifying
+as I could wish them. My pupils were
+attached to me, and I beheld them improving
+gradually and securely under
+their instruction. Mr Fairman, who,
+for a week together, had witnessed the
+course of my tuition, and watched it
+narrowly, was pleased to express his
+approbation in the warmest terms.
+Much of the coldness with which I
+thought he had at first encountered
+me disappeared, and his manner grew
+daily more friendly and confiding. His
+treatment was most generous. He
+received me into the bosom of his
+family as a son, and strove to render
+his fair habitation my genuine and natural
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Another month passed by, and the
+colour and tone of my existence had
+suffered a momentous change. In the
+acquirement of a fearful joy, I had
+lost all joy. In rendering every moment
+of my life blissful and ecstatic,
+I had robbed myself of all felicity. A
+few weeks before, and my state of
+being had realized a serenity that defied
+all causes of perturbation and disquiet.
+Now it was a sea of agitation
+and disorder; and a breath, a nothing
+had brought the restless waves upon
+the quiet surface. Through the kindness
+of Mr Fairman, my evenings had
+been almost invariably passed in the society
+of himself and his daughter. The
+lads were early risers, and retired, on
+that account, at a very early hour to
+rest. Upon their dismission, I had
+been requested to join the company in
+the drawing-room. This company included
+sometimes Doctor Mayhew,
+the neighbouring squire, or a chance
+visitor, but consisted oftenest only of
+the incumbent and his daughter.
+Aware of the friendly motive which
+suggested the request, I obeyed it with
+alacrity. On these occasions, Miss
+Fairman used her pencil, whilst I read
+aloud; or she would ply her needle,
+and soothe at intervals her father's
+ear with strains of music, which he, for
+many reasons, loved to hear. Once or
+twice the incumbent had been called
+away, and his child and I were left
+together. I had no reason to be silent
+whilst the good minister was present,
+yet I found that I could speak more
+confidently and better when he was
+absent. We conversed with freedom
+and unrestraint. I found the maiden's
+mind well stored&mdash;her voice was not
+more sweet than was her understanding
+clear and cloudless. Books had
+been her joy, which, in the season of
+suffering, had been my consolation.
+They were a common source of pleasure.
+She spoke of them with feeling,
+and I could understand her. I regarded
+her with deep unfeigned respect; but,
+the evening over, I took my leave, as
+I had come&mdash;in peace. Miss Fairman
+left the parsonage to pay a two-days'
+visit at a house in the vicinity. Until
+the evening of the first day I was not
+sensible of her absence. It was then,
+and at the customary hour of our reunion,
+that, for the first time, I experienced,
+with alarm, a sense of loneliness
+and desertion&mdash;that I became tremblingly
+conscious of the secret growth
+of an affection that had waited only
+for the time and circumstance to make
+its presence and its power known and
+dreaded. In the daily enjoyment of
+her society, I had not estimated its
+influence and value. Once denied it,
+and I dared not acknowledge to myself
+how precious it had become, how
+silently and fatally it had wrought
+upon my heart. The impropriety and
+folly of self-indulgence were at once
+apparent&mdash;yes, the vanity and wickedness&mdash;and,
+startled by what looked
+like guilt, I determined manfully to
+rise superior to temptation. I took
+refuge in my books; they lacked their
+usual interest, were ineffectual in reducing
+the ruffled mind to order. I
+rose and paced my room, but I could
+not escape from agitating thought. I
+sought the minister in his study, and
+hoped to bring myself to calm and
+reason by dwelling seriously on the
+business of the day&mdash;with him, the
+father of the lady, and <i>my master</i>. He
+was not there. He had left the parsonage
+with Doctor Mayhew an hour
+<a class="pagenum" name="page335" id="page335" title="page335"></a>before. I walked into the open air
+restless and unhappy, relying on the
+freshness and repose of night to be
+subdued and comforted. It was a
+night to soften anger&mdash;to conquer
+envy&mdash;to destroy revenge&mdash;beautiful
+and bright. The hills were bathed in
+liquid silvery light, and on their heights,
+and in the vale, on all around, lay
+passion slumbering. What could I
+find on such a night, but favour and
+incitement, support and confirmation,
+flattery and delusion? Every object
+ministered to the imagination, and
+love had given that wings. I trembled
+as I pursued my road, and fuel found
+its unobstructed way rapidly to the
+flame within. Self-absorbed, I wandered
+on. I did not choose my path.
+I believed I did not, and I stopped at
+length&mdash;before the house that held
+her. I gazed upon it with reverence
+and love. One room was lighted up.
+Shadows flitted across the curtained
+window, and my heart throbbed sensibly
+when, amongst them, I imagined
+I could trace her form. I was borne
+down by a conviction of wrong and
+culpability, but I could not move, or
+for a moment draw away my look. It
+was a strange assurance that I felt&mdash;but
+I did feel it, strongly and
+emphatically&mdash;that I should see her palpably
+before I left the place. I waited for
+that sight in certain expectation, and
+it came. A light was carried from
+the room. Diminished illumination
+there, and sudden brightness against a
+previously darkened casement, made
+this evident. The light ascended&mdash;another
+casement higher than the last
+was, in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed
+her figure. She approached
+the window, and, for an instant&mdash;oh
+how brief!&mdash;looked into the heavenly
+night. My poor heart sickened with
+delight, and I strained my eyes long
+after all was blank and dark again.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight, and the employments of
+day, if they did not remove, weakened
+the turbulence of the preceding
+night. The more I found my passion
+acquiring mastery, with greater
+vigour I renewed my work, and with
+more determination I pursued the
+objects that were most likely to fight
+and overcome it. I laboured with the
+youths for a longer period. I undertook
+to prepare a composition for the
+following day which I knew must take
+much thought and many hours in
+working out. I armed myself at all
+points&mdash;but the evening came and
+found me once more conscious of
+a void that left me prostrate. Mr
+Fairman was again absent from home.
+I could not rest in it, and I too sallied
+forth, but this time, to the village. I
+would not deliberately offer violence
+to my conscience, and I shrunk from
+a premeditated visit to the distant
+house. My own acquaintances in
+the village were not many, or of long
+standing, but there were some half
+dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent's
+daughter. To one of these
+I bent my steps, with no other purpose
+than that of baffling time that
+hung upon me painfully and heavily
+at home. For a few minutes I spoke
+with the aged female of the house on
+general topics; then a passing observation&mdash;in
+spite of me&mdash;escaped my
+lips in reference to Miss Ellen. The
+villager took up the theme and expatiated
+widely. There was no end to
+what she had to say of good and kind
+for the dear lady. I could have hugged
+her for her praise. Prudence bade
+me forsake the dangerous ground, and
+so I did, to return again with tenfold
+curiosity and zest. I asked a hundred
+questions, each one revealing more
+interest and ardour than the last, and
+involving me in deeper peril. It was
+at length accomplished. My companion
+hesitated suddenly in a discourse,
+then stopped, and looked me in the
+face, smiling cunningly. &quot;I tell you
+what, sir,&quot; she exclaimed at last, and
+loudly, &quot;you are over head and ears
+in love, and that's the truth on't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush, good woman,&quot; I replied,
+blushing to the forehead, and hastening
+to shut an open door. &quot;Don't
+speak so loud. You mistake, it is no
+such thing. I shall be angry if you
+say so&mdash;very angry. What can you
+mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just what I say, sir. Why, do
+you know how old I am? Seventy-three.
+I think I ought to tell, and
+where's the harm of it? Who couldn't
+love the sweetest lady in the parish&mdash;bless
+her young feeling heart!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell you&mdash;you mistake&mdash;you are
+to blame. I command you not to repeat
+this to a living soul. If it should
+come to the incumbent's ears&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust me for that, sir. I'm no
+blab. He shan't be wiser for such as
+me. But do you mean to tell me, sir,
+with that red face of your'n, you
+haven't lost your heart&mdash;leave alone
+<a class="pagenum" name="page336" id="page336" title="page336"></a>your trembling? ah, well, I hopes
+you'll both be happy, anyhow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I endeavoured to remonstrate, but
+the old woman only laughed and shook
+her aged head. I left her, grieved
+and apprehensive. My secret thoughts
+had been discovered. How soon
+might they be carried to the confiding
+minister and his unsuspecting daughter!
+What would they think of me!
+It was a day of anxiety and trouble,
+that on which Miss Fairman returned
+to the parsonage. I received my
+usual invitation; but I was indisposed,
+and did not go. I resolved to see her
+only during meals, and when it was
+impossible to avoid her. I would not
+seek her presence. Foolish effort!
+It had been better to pass hours in
+her sight, for previous separation made
+union more intense, and the passionate
+enjoyment of a fleeting instant
+was hoarded up, and became nourishment
+for the livelong day.</p>
+
+<p>It was a soft rich afternoon in
+June, and chance made me the companion
+of Miss Fairman. We were
+alone: I had encountered her at a distance
+of about a mile from the parsonage,
+on the sea-shore, whither I had
+walked distressed in spirit, and grateful
+for the privilege of listening in gloomy
+quietude to the soothing sounds of
+nature&mdash;medicinal ever. The lady
+was at my side almost before I was
+aware of her approach. My heart
+throbbed whilst she smiled upon me,
+sweetly as she smiled on all. Her
+deep hazel eye was moist. Could it
+be from weeping?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What has happened, Miss Fairman?&quot;
+I asked immediately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do I betray my weakness, then?&quot;
+she answered. &quot;I am sorry for it;
+for dear papa tells all the villagers
+that no wise man weeps&mdash;and no wise
+woman either, I suppose. But I cannot
+help it. We are but a small family
+in the village, and it makes me
+very sad to miss the old faces one after
+another, and to see old friends dropping
+and dropping into the silent
+grave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke the church-bell tolled,
+and she turned pale, and ceased. I
+offered her my arm, and we walked
+on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom do you mourn, Miss
+Fairman?&quot; I asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dear good friend&mdash;my best and
+oldest. When poor mamma was
+dying, she made me over to her care.
+She was her nurse, and was mine for
+years. It is very wrong of me to weep
+for her. She was good and pious,
+and is blest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The church-bell tolled again, and
+my companion shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I cannot listen to that bell,&quot;
+she said. &quot;I wish papa would do
+away with it. What a withering
+sound it has! I heard it first when it
+was tolling for my dear mother. It
+fell upon my heart like iron then, and
+it falls so now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot say that I dislike the
+melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its
+messenger should not be gay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the soul that sees and hears.
+Beauty and music are created quickly
+if the heart be joyful. So my book says,
+and it is true. You have had no cause
+to think that bell a hideous thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet I have suffered youth's severest
+loss. I have lost a mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You speak the truth. Yes, I have
+a kind father left me&mdash;and you&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am an orphan, friendless and
+deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman,
+you may be spared my fate for years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not friendless or deserted either,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; answered the young
+lady kindly; &quot;papa does not deserve,
+I am sure, that you should speak so
+harshly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did
+not mean to say that. He has been
+most generous to me&mdash;kinder than I
+deserve. But I have borne much,
+and still must bear. The fatherless
+and motherless is in the world alone.
+He needs no greater punishment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must not talk so. Papa will,
+I am sure, be a father to you, as he is
+to all who need one. You do not
+know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is
+overflowing with tenderness and charity.
+You cannot judge him by his
+manner. He has had his share of sorrow
+and misfortune; and death has
+been at his door oftener than once.
+Friends have been unfaithful and men
+have been ungrateful; but trial and
+suffering have not hardened him. You
+have seen him amongst the poor, but
+you have not seen him as I have; nor
+have I beheld him as his Maker has,
+in the secret workings of his spirit,
+which is pure and good, believe me.
+He has received injury like a child,
+and dealt mercy and love with the liberality
+of an angel. Trust my father,
+Mr Stukely.&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The maiden spoke quickly and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page337" id="page337" title="page337"></a>passionately, and her neck and face
+crimsoned with animation. I quivered,
+for her tones communicated fire&mdash;but
+my line of conduct was marked,
+and it shone clear in spite of the clouds
+of emotion which strove to envelope
+and conceal it&mdash;as they did too soon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would trust him, Miss Fairman,
+and I do,&quot; I answered with a faltering
+tongue. &quot;I appreciate his character
+and I revere him. I could have made
+my home with him. I prayed that I
+might do so. Heaven seemed to have
+directed my steps to this blissful spot,
+and to have pointed out at length a
+resting place for my tired feet. I have
+been most happy here&mdash;too happy&mdash;I
+have proved ungrateful, and I know
+how rashly I have forfeited this and
+every thing. I cannot live here. This
+is no home for me. I will go into the
+world again&mdash;cast myself upon it&mdash;do
+any thing. I could be a labourer
+on the highways, and be contented
+if I could see that I had done my duty,
+and behaved with honour. Believe
+me, Miss Fairman, I have not deliberately
+indulged&mdash;I have struggled,
+fought, and battled, till my brain has
+tottered. I am wretched and forlorn&mdash;but
+I will leave you&mdash;to-morrow&mdash;would
+that I had never come&mdash;&mdash;.&quot;
+I could say no more. My full heart
+spoke its agony in tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What has occurred? What afflicts
+you? You alarm me, Mr Stukely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had sternly determined to permit
+no one look to give expression to the
+feeling which consumed me, to obstruct
+by force the passage of the remotest
+hint that should struggle to
+betray me; but as the maiden looked
+full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance
+of me, and against all opposition,
+the tell-tale passion rising from
+my soul, and creeping to my eye. It
+would not be held back. In an instant,
+with one treacherous glance, all
+was spoken and revealed.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>By that dejected city, Arno runs,</p>
+<p>Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.</p>
+<p>There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes</p>
+<p>Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.</p>
+<p>And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring</p>
+<p>Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing</p>
+<p>Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,</p>
+<p>And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,</p>
+<p>Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest</p>
+<p>My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:</p>
+<p>For many griefs had wounded it, and more</p>
+<p>Thy little hands could lighten were in store.</p>
+<p>But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow</p>
+<p>Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.</p>
+<p>What then the bliss to see again thy face,</p>
+<p>And all that Rumour has announced of grace!</p>
+<p>I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.</p>
+<p>O! could I sleep to wake again in May.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="bw329s4" id="bw329s4"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page338" id="page338" title="page338"></a>
+<h2>IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</h2>
+
+<h3>SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice of
+antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into their
+studies or their society.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;They should rather those than others. The young <i>must</i> cease
+to be young, and the unlearned <i>may</i> cease to be unlearned. According to the
+letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth against you. In the seclusion
+of a college life, you appear to have studied with much assiduity and advantage,
+and to have pursued no other courses than the paths of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Do you approve of the pursuit?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Who does not?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the game,
+inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough.
+May I ask you another question?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Certainly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
+to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek information
+from you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
+truth and happiness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from civil
+and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful persecute, where the
+rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at seeing it) despise us, rejecting
+our counsel and spurning our consolation, what valuable truth do they
+enable us to discover, or what rational happiness to expect? To say that
+wisdom leads to truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such
+is truth. Nonsense is better than falsehood; and we come to that.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;How?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to happiness&mdash;I
+mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that
+the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we are,
+standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here
+we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not
+suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth&mdash;whether a
+Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me a man who
+has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet, the malversation
+of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has not been stoned, or
+hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to poverty. The chain
+of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily
+in its rusty links. Who then, unless for others, would be a darer of wisdom?
+And yet, how full of it is even the inanimate world? We may gather it out
+of stones and straws. Much lies within the reach of all: little has been
+collected by the wisest of the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power!
+ye carry your own scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet
+ye crouch for more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will
+punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust
+where the Old Serpent went before you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic and
+strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the power
+of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort, independence,
+freedom, to all men capable of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;The idea is, truly, no humble one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The
+power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my
+aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine work of
+creating the capacity.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page339" id="page339" title="page339"></a><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Childish! childish!&mdash;Men have cravings enow already; give
+them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be contented
+in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place us; and let us render
+ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power, without idle aspirations
+after impracticable good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of your
+intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small and how
+vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Is this to me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could
+not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and travels.
+I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;You sought celebrity.&mdash;I blame not that. The thick air of multitudes
+may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of solitudes
+is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping of hands; others
+fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us come to the point. Imperial
+courts! What do they know of letters? What letters do they countenance&mdash;do
+they tolerate?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Plays.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Playthings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Travels.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along which
+their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke of your
+rammers. When will ye lay them by?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;We are not such drudges.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can
+call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich possessions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;None; not the highest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost yet,
+although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow them up.
+But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force. The promise
+of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude. The wise know
+that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that she never can
+bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both; in the dazzle of
+arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never more agitated than in
+the midst of peace.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing that
+could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that lightening
+which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our homes.
+Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and where no perfect
+love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir, at the celebrity and
+the distinctions you have obtained?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them, quite
+satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age&mdash;neither in difficult nor
+in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself the tutor or the
+guardian of mankind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and gratefully.
+You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the travels; but,
+pardon my question, who called you to the courts of princes in strange
+countries?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;They themselves.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;They have no more right to take you away from your country,
+than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to the
+land that bore you, and were not at liberty&mdash;(if right and liberty are one, and
+unless they are, they are good for nothing)&mdash;you were not at liberty, I repeat
+it, to enter into the service of an alien.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
+freedom are these!</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the servants
+<a class="pagenum" name="page340" id="page340" title="page340"></a>of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in his ear that
+he may go away, that he may work in another country, that he may ask to be
+fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and tasks are given for his
+hands to execute. Being a German, you voluntarily placed yourself in a
+position where you might eventually be coerced to act against Germans.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I would not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Perhaps you think so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Sir, I know my duty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the will
+is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you left the
+ranks of your fellow-citizens&mdash;already have you taken the enlisting money and
+marched away.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
+polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak rather
+the language of books than of men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect than
+ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men. I was
+wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the productions
+of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the continuity of
+sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to maintain it, even in
+words, to the end of their lives. You are aware that I am speaking now of
+political ethics. This is the worst I can think of the matter, and bad enough
+is this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our
+circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our patriotism,
+not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical mind should
+consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so minutely into it
+as to see the lines that divide nations and governments; much less should it
+act the part of a busy shrew, and take pleasure in giving loose to the tongue,
+at finding things a little out of place.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is better
+with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this indistinctness in the
+moral and political line begets indifference. He who does not keep his own
+country more closely in view than any other, soon mixes land with sea, and
+sea with air, and loses sight of every thing, at least, for which he was placed
+in contact with his fellow men. Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest:
+Let usages and familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us
+confederate for security and peace with all the people round, particularly
+with people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to
+those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others: but
+to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We irrigate the
+ground in our gardens: the public road may require the water equally: yet
+we give it rather to our borders; and first to those that lie against the house!
+God himself did not fill the world at once with happy creatures: he enlivened
+one small portion of it with them, and began with single affections, as well as
+pure and unmixt. We must have an object and an aim, or our strength, if
+any strength belongs to us, will be useless.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at
+all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old enough to
+have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no means deficient
+in the relations I bear to society.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds
+can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover against
+the rain and the wind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with large
+drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my dear
+young man! and less enthusiastic.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by force.
+Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must love them
+more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all, profess a
+parity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page341" id="page341" title="page341"></a><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and
+kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily
+bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their ears were calked
+and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died sadly!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of
+authority, your voice is gentle&mdash;almost plaintive.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require
+it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each other for
+many years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;What! should I have asked you such a question as the last, after
+long knowing you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>, (<i>aside</i>.)&mdash;This resembles insanity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick apprehensions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I really beg your pardon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness
+could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them grievously;
+a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again and again
+I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten them to pillar
+and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the remains of respect for you, in
+your domestic state, I should never have held with you this conversation.
+Germany is Germany: she ought to have nothing political in common with
+what is not Germany. Her freedom and security now demand that she celebrate
+the communion of the faithful. Our country is the only one in all the
+explored regions on earth that never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia
+boast it falsely; France falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of
+Darius fell and crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and
+Rome was buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not.
+Britain, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the
+most literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those
+laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we surrender
+them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled cities, and
+enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one
+another's sword, and command us to thank God for the victories that enslave
+us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we hold, on
+the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed are those who lie under them!
+blessed are also those who remember what they were, and call upon their
+names in the holiness of love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you. There
+is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great, for
+instance, in our disunion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny princes
+were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns from the
+very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and spoons. A cunning
+traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured them, and slept upon
+their feathers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of our
+country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to us. We
+may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages of every
+capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
+and hirelings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival us
+in poetry, or in any works of imagination.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with England
+and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on our inferiority
+in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than they? Our mothers
+are like their mothers; our children are like their children; our limbs are as
+strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our desire of improvement in the arts
+<a class="pagenum" name="page342" id="page342" title="page342"></a>and sciences is neither less vivid and generous, nor less temperate and well-directed.
+The Greeks were under disadvantages which never bore in any
+degree on us; yet they rose through them vigorously and erectly. They
+were Asiatic in what ought to be the finer part of the affections; their women
+were veiled and secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave,
+never sat by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated
+in the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
+poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the future;
+and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush we not at our
+degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure at finding, in
+the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms ultimately mingled,
+although the character of the governors, and perhaps of the governed, is congenial
+to few. What delight, then, must overflow on Europe, from seeing
+the mother of her noblest nation rear again her venerable head, and bless all
+her children for the first time united!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I am bound to oppose such a project.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Say not so: in God's name, say not so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and rebellion,
+and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if possible.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt.</i>&mdash;Bound! I must then release you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;How should you, young gentleman, release me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again:
+think better: spare me!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I will not betray you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me
+can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has been
+done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper;
+here is your ink.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Do you imagine me an informer?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood, the
+necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good men
+thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the bad. I must
+go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to think of losing you!
+Be my friend!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I would be.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Be a German!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I am.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>, (<i>having gone out</i>.)&mdash;Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is kindly.
+I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of the privilege
+to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I lived of old.
+Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls: I will enter the
+door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people together, and hold
+them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim follows willingly.
+(<i>Enters again</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Turn! die! (<i>strikes</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish
+with one guilty! and writhe longer!</p>
+
+<p>Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left
+me. In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have
+sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals dishonour,
+commiseration covers it.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s5" id="bw329s5"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page343" id="page343" title="page343"></a>
+<h2>THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.</h2>
+
+<h3>A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.</h3>
+
+<p>When the Empecinado, after escaping
+from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined
+his band, and again repaired to the
+favourite skirmishing ground on the
+banks of the Duero, he found the state
+of affairs in Old Castile becoming
+daily less favourable for his operations.
+The French overran the greater
+part of the province, and visited
+with severe punishment any disobedience
+of their orders; so that the
+peasantry no longer dared to assist
+the guerillas as they had previously
+done. Many of the villages on the
+Duero had become <i>afrancesados</i>, not,
+it is true, through love, but through
+dread of the invaders, and in the hope
+of preserving themselves from pillage
+and oppression. However much the
+people in their hearts might wish success
+to men like the Empecinado, the
+guerillas were too few and too feeble
+to afford protection to those who, by
+giving them assistance or information,
+would incur the displeasure of the
+French. The clergy were the only
+class that, almost without an exception,
+remained stanch to the cause
+of Spanish independence, and their
+purses and refectories were ever open
+to those who took up arms in its defence.</p>
+
+<p>Noways deterred by this unfavourable
+aspect of affairs, the Empecinado
+resolved to carry on the war in Old
+Castile, even though unaided and alone.
+He established his bivouac in the pine-woods
+of Coca, and sent out spies towards
+Somosierra and Burgos, to get
+information of some convoy of which
+the capture might yield both honour
+and profit.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the second morning after
+the departure of the spies, and a few
+minutes before daybreak, that the
+little camp was aroused by a shot from
+a sentry, placed on the skirt of the
+wood. In an instant every man was
+on his feet. It was the Empecinado's
+custom, when outlying in this manner,
+to make one-half his band sleep fully
+armed and equipped, with their horses
+saddled and bridled beside them; and
+a fortunate precaution it was in this
+instance. Scarcely had the men time
+to untether and spring upon their
+horses, when the sentry galloped
+headlong into the camp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Los Franceses! Los Franceses</i>!&quot;
+exclaimed he, breathless with speed.</p>
+
+<p>One of the Empecinado's first qualities
+was his presence of mind, which
+never deserted him even in the most
+critical situations. Instantly forming
+up that moiety of his men which was
+already in the saddle, he left a detachment
+in front of those who were hastily
+saddling and arming, and with the remainder
+retired a little to the left of
+the open ground on which the bivouac
+was established. Almost before he
+had completed this arrangement, the
+jingling of arms and clattering of
+horses' feet were heard, and a squadron
+of French cavalry galloped
+down the glade. The Empecinado
+gave the word to charge, and as
+Fuentes at the head of one party advanced
+to meet them, he himself attacked
+them in flank. The French,
+not having anticipated much opposition
+from a foe whom they had expected
+to find sleeping, were somewhat
+surprized at the fierce resistance
+they met. A hard fight took place,
+rendered still more confused by the
+darkness, or rather by a faint grey
+light, which was just beginning to appear,
+and gave a shadowy indistinctness
+to surrounding objects. The
+Spaniards were inferior in number to
+their opponents, and it was beginning
+to go hard with them, when the remainder
+of the guerillas, now armed
+and mounted, came up to their assistance.
+On perceiving this accession
+to their adversaries' force, the French
+thought they had been led into an
+ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable
+order to the edge of the wood, at last
+fairly turned tail and ran for it, leaving
+several killed and wounded on the
+ground, and were pursued for some distance
+by the guerillas, who, however,
+only succeeded in making one prisoner.
+This was a young man in the dress of
+a peasant, who being badly mounted,
+was easily overtaken. On being
+brought before the Empecinado, the
+latter with no small surprize recognized
+<a class="pagenum" name="page344" id="page344" title="page344"></a>a native of Aranda, named Pedro
+Gutierrez, who was one of the
+emissaries he had sent out two days
+previously to get information concerning
+the movements of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>With pale cheek and faltering
+voice, the prisoner answered the Empecinado's
+interrogatories. It appears
+that he had been detected as a spy by
+the French, who had given him his
+choice between a halter and the betrayal
+of his countrymen and employers.
+With the fear of death before
+his eyes, he had consented to turn
+traitor.</p>
+
+<p>The deepest silence prevailed among
+the guerillas during his narrative, and
+remained unbroken for a full minute
+after he had concluded. The Empecinado's
+brow was black as thunder,
+and his features assumed an expression
+which the trembling wretch well
+knew how to interpret.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Que podia hacer, se&ntilde;ores</i>?&quot; said
+the culprit, casting an appealing, imploring
+glance around him. &quot;The
+rope was round my neck; I have an
+aged father and am his only support.
+Life is very sweet. What could I
+do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Die</i>!&quot; replied the Empecinado,
+in his deep stern voice&mdash;&quot;Die like a
+man <i>then</i>, instead of dying like a dog
+<i>now</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned his back upon him, and
+ten minutes later, the body of the unfortunate
+spy was dangling from the
+branches of a neighbouring tree, and
+the guerillas marched off to seek another
+and a safer bivouac.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this incident the
+other spies returned, and after receiving
+their report, and consulting with
+his lieutenant, Mariano Fuentes, the
+Empecinado broke up the little camp,
+and led his band in the direction of
+the <i>camino r&eacute;al</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Along that part of the high-road,
+from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which
+winds through the mountain range of
+Onrubias, an escort of fifty French
+dragoons was marching, about an hour
+before dusk, on an evening of early
+spring. Two carriages, and three or
+four heavily-laden carts, each drawn
+by half-a-dozen mules, composed the
+whole of the convoy; the value of
+which, however, might be deemed
+considerable, judging from the strength
+of the escort, and the precautions observed
+by the officer in command to
+avoid a surprise&mdash;precautions which
+were not of much avail; for, on reaching
+a spot where the road widened
+considerably, and was traversed by a
+broad ravine, the party was suddenly
+charged on either flank by double their
+number of guerillas. The dragoons
+made a gallant resistance, but it was
+a short one, for they had no room or
+time to form in any order, and were
+far overmatched in the hand-to-hand
+contest that ensued. With the very
+first who fled went a gentleman in
+civilian's garb, who sprang out of the
+most elegant of the two carriages, and
+mounting a fine Andalusian horse led
+by a groom, was off like the wind,
+disregarding the shrieks of his travelling
+companion, a female two or three-and-twenty
+years old, of great beauty,
+and very richly attired. The cries
+and alarm of the lady thus deserted
+were redoubled, when an instant later
+a guerilla of fierce aspect presented
+himself at the carriage-door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have no fear, se&ntilde;ora,&quot; said the
+Empecinado, &quot;you are in the hands
+of honourable men, and no harm shall
+be done you.&quot; And having by suchlike
+assurances succeeded in calming
+her terrors, he obtained from her
+some information as to the contents
+of the carts and carriages, as well as
+regarding herself and her late companion.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had abandoned her,
+and consulted his own safety by flying
+with the escort, was her husband,
+Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond
+merchant to the late King
+Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the
+unsettled state of things in Spain, he
+was hastening to take refuge in France,
+with his handsome wife and his great
+wealth&mdash;of the latter of which no inconsiderable
+portion was contained in
+the carriage, in the shape of caskets
+of jewellery, diamonds, and other
+valuables.</p>
+
+<p>Repairing to the neighbouring
+mountains, the guerillas proceeded to
+examine their booty, which the Empecinado
+permitted them to divide
+among themselves, with the exception
+of the carriage and its contents, including
+the lady, which he reserved
+for his own share.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day came letters
+from the French military governor of
+Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur
+Barbot, who had taken refuge in that
+town, and offered a large sum as ransom
+for his wife. To this application
+<a class="pagenum" name="page345" id="page345" title="page345"></a>the Empecinado did not vouchsafe
+any answer, but marched off to his
+native village of Castrillo, taking with
+him jewels, carriage, and lady. The
+latter he established in the house of
+his brother Manuel, recommending
+her to the care of his sister-in-law,
+and commanding that she should be
+treated with all possible respect, and
+her wishes attended to on every point.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado's exultation at
+the success of his enterprize was great,
+but he little foresaw all the danger
+and trouble that his rich capture was
+hereafter to occasion him. He had
+become violently enamoured of his fair
+prisoner, and in order to have leisure
+to pay his court to her, he sent off his
+partida on a distant expedition under
+the command of Fuentes, and himself
+remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost
+to find favour in the eyes of the
+beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then
+in the prime of life, a remarkably
+handsome man, and notwithstanding
+that the French affected to treat him
+as a brigand, his courage and patriotism
+were admitted by the unprejudiced
+among all parties, and his bold
+and successful deeds had already
+procured him a degree of renown that
+was an additional recommendation of
+him to the fair sex. It may not,
+therefore, be deemed very surprising
+that, after the first few days of her
+captivity were passed, and she had
+become a little used to the novelty of
+her position, the lady began to consider
+the Empecinado with some
+degree of favour, and seemed not altogether
+disposed to be inconsolable in
+her widowhood. He on his part spared
+no pains to please her. His very nature
+seemed changed by the violence
+of his new passion; and so great was
+the metamorphosis that his best friends
+scarcely recognized him for the same
+man. He seemed totally to have forgotten
+the career to which he had devoted
+himself, and the hatred and
+war of extermination he had vowed
+against the French. The restless activity
+and spirit of enterprize which
+formed such distinguishing traits in
+his character, were completely lulled
+to sleep by the charms of the fair
+Barbot. Nor was the change in his
+external appearance less striking.
+Aware that the rude manners and
+attire of a guerilla were not likely to
+please the fastidious taste of a town-bred
+dame, he hastened to discard
+them. His rough bushy beard and
+mustaches were carefully trimmed
+and adjusted by the most expert barber
+of the neighbourhood; his
+sheepskin jacket, heavy boots, and jingling
+double-roweled spurs thrown aside,
+and in their place he assumed the national
+garb, so well adapted to show
+off a handsome person, and which,
+although now almost disused throughout
+Spain, far surpasses in elegance the
+prevailing costumes of the nineteenth
+century: a short light jacket of black
+velvet, and waistcoat of the richest
+silk, both profusely decorated with
+gold filigree buttons; purple velvet
+breeches fastened at the knee with
+bunches of ribands; silk stockings,
+and falling boots of chamois leather,
+by the most expert maker in Cordova;
+a crimson silk sash round his waist,
+and round his neck a silk handkerchief,
+of which the ends were drawn
+through a magnificent jewelled ring.
+A green velvet cap, ornamented with
+sables and silver, and an ample cloak
+trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of
+a commandant of French gendarmes,
+completed this picturesque costume.</p>
+
+<p>Thus attired, and mounted on a
+splendid horse, the Empecinado escorted
+the object of his new flame to
+all the f&ecirc;tes and merry-makings of the
+surrounding country. Not a <i>romeria</i>
+in the neighbouring villages, not a
+fair or a bull-fight in all the valley of
+the Duero, but were graced by the
+presence of Martin Diez and his dulcinea,
+whose fine horse and gallant
+equipment, but more especially the
+beauty of the rider, inspired universal
+admiration. As might be expected,
+many of those who had known the
+Empecinado a poor vine-dresser, became
+envious of his good fortune,
+and others who envied him not, were
+indignant at seeing him waste his
+time in such degrading effeminacy,
+instead of following up the career
+which he had so nobly begun. There
+was much murmuring, therefore, to
+which, however, he gave little heed;
+and several weeks had passed in the
+manner above described, when an incident
+occurred to rouse him from the
+sort of lethargy in which he was sunk.</p>
+
+<p>A despatch reached him from the
+Captain-General, Don Gregorio Cuesta,
+requiring his immediate presence
+at Ciudad Rodrigo, there to receive
+directions concerning the execution
+of a service of the greatest importance,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page346" id="page346" title="page346"></a>and which was to be intrusted
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>This order had its origin in circumstances
+of which the Empecinado was
+totally ignorant. The jeweller Barbot,
+finding that neither large offers
+nor threats of punishment had any
+effect upon the Empecinado, who persisted
+in keeping his wife prisoner,
+made interest with the Duke of Infantado,
+then general of one of the
+Spanish armies, and besought him to
+exert his influence in favour of the
+captive lady, and to have her restored
+to her friends. The duke, who was
+a very important personage at the
+court of Charles the Fourth, and the
+favourite of Ferdinand the Seventh
+at the beginning of his reign, entertained
+a particular friendship for Barbot;
+and, if the <i>chronique scandaleuse</i>
+of Madrid might be believed, a still
+more particular one for his wife. He
+immediately wrote to General Cuesta,
+desiring that the lady might be sent
+back to her husband without delay, as
+well as all the jewels and other spoil
+that had been seized by the Empecinado.</p>
+
+<p>With much difficulty did the guerilla
+make up his mind to abandon
+the inglorious position, and to go
+where duty called him. Strongly
+recommending his captive to his brother
+and sister-in-law, he set out for
+Ciudad Rodrigo, escorted by a sergeant
+and ten men of his partida.
+They had not proceeded half a mile
+from Castrillo, when, from behind a
+hedge bordering the road, a shot was
+fired, and the bullet slightly wounded
+the Empecinado's charger. Two of
+the escort pushed their horses through
+the hedge, and immediately returned,
+dragging between them a grey-haired
+old man, seventy years of age, who
+clutched in his wrinkled fingers a
+rusty carbine that had just been discharged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is surely mad!&quot; exclaimed
+the Empecinado, gazing in astonishment
+at the venerable assassin. &quot;<i>Dime,
+viejo</i>; do you know me? And why do
+you seek my life?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Si, si, te conozes</i>. You are the
+Empecinado&mdash;the bloody Empecinado.
+Give me back my Pedro,
+whom you murdered. <i>Ay di me!
+mi Pedrillo, te han matado!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the old man's frame quivered
+with rage, as he glared on the Empecinado
+with an expression of unutterable
+hate.</p>
+
+<p>One of the guerillas stepped forward&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis old Gutierrez, the father of
+Pedro, who was hung in the Pi&ntilde;ares
+de Coca, for betraying us to the
+French.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Throw his carbine into yonder
+pool, and leave the poor wretch,&quot; said
+the Empecinado; &quot;his son deserved
+the death he met.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He missed his aim to-day, but he
+may point truer another time,&quot; said
+one of the men, half drawing a pistol
+from his holster.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Harm him not!&quot; said the Empecinado
+sternly, and the party rode on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Maldito seas</i>!&quot; screamed the old
+man, casting himself in the dust of
+the road, in a paroxysm of impotent
+fury. &quot;<i>Maldito! Maldito! Ay de
+mi! mi Pedrillo!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And his curses and lamentations
+continued till the guerillas were out
+of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at Ciudad Rodrigo, the
+Empecinado went immediately to General
+Cuesta, who, although he did
+not receive him unkindly, could not
+but blame him greatly for the enormous
+crime he had committed in carrying
+off a lady who was distinguished
+by so mighty a personage as the Duke
+of Infantado. He told him it was absolutely
+necessary to devise some plan
+by which the Duke's anger might be
+appeased. Murat also had sent a message
+to the central junta, saying, that
+if satisfaction were not given, he
+would send troops to lay waste the
+whole district of Penafiel, in which
+Castrillo was situated; and it was
+probable, that if he had not done so
+already, it was because a large portion
+of the inhabitants of that district were
+believed to be well affected to the
+French. Without exactly telling him
+what he must do, the old general gave
+him a despatch for the <i>corregidor</i> of
+Penafiel, and desired him to present
+himself before that functionary, and
+concert with him the measures to be
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado took his leave,
+and was quitting the governor's palace
+when he overtook at the door an
+<i>avogado</i>, who was a countryman of
+his, and whom he had left at Castrillo
+when he set out from that place. The
+sight of this man was a ray of light to
+the Empecinado, who immediately suspected
+that his enemies were intriguing
+against him. He proposed to the
+lawyer that they should walk
+<a class="pagenum" name="page347" id="page347" title="page347"></a>to the inn, to which the latter consented.
+They had to traverse a lonely
+place, known by the name of San
+Francisco's Meadow, and on arriving
+there, behind the shelter of some walls,
+the Empecinado seized the advocate
+by the collar, and swore he would
+strangle him if he did not instantly
+confess what business had brought
+him to Ciudad Rodrigo, as well as all
+the plans or plots against the Empecinado
+to which he might be privy.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer, who had known Diez
+from his childhood, and was fully
+aware of his desperate character and
+of his own peril, trembled for his life,
+and besought him earnestly to use no
+violence, for that he was willing to
+tell all he knew. Thereupon the Empecinado
+loosened his grasp, which
+had wellnigh throttled the poor avogado,
+and cocking a pistol, as a sort
+of warning to the other to tell the
+truth, bade him sit down beside him
+and proceed with his narrative.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer informed him that the
+<i>ayuntamiento</i> or corporation of Castrillo,
+and those of all the towns and
+villages of the district, found themselves
+in great trouble on account of
+the convoy he had intercepted, and
+more particularly of the lady whom
+he kept prisoner, and whose friends it
+appeared were persons of much influence
+with both contending parties, for
+that the junta and the French had
+alike demanded her liberty; and while
+the latter were about to send troops
+to put the whole country to fire and
+sword, the former, as well as the Spanish
+generals, had refused to afford
+them any protection against the consequences
+of her detention, and accused
+the ayuntamiento and the priests
+of encouraging the Empecinado to
+hold her in captivity. He himself
+had been sent to Ciudad Rodrigo to
+beg General Cuesta's advice, and the
+general had declared himself unable
+to assist them, but recommended them
+to restore the lady and treasure, if they
+did not wish the French to lay waste
+the country, and take by force the
+bone of contention.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado, suspecting that
+General Cuesta had not used all due
+frankness with him in this matter,
+handed to the lawyer the letter that
+had been given him for the corregidor
+of Penafiel, and compelled him, much
+against his will, to open and read it.
+Its contents coincided with what the
+avogado had told him; the general
+advising the corregidor to use every
+means to compromise the matter, rather
+than wait till the French should
+do themselves justice by the strong
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that, from various motives,
+every body was against him in
+this matter, the Empecinado bethought
+himself how he should get out of the
+scrape.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As an old friend and countryman,
+and more especially as a lawyer,&quot;
+said he to the avogado, &quot;you are the
+most fitting man to give me advice in
+this difficulty. Tell me, then, what I
+ought to do, in order that our native
+town, which is innocent in the matter,
+should suffer no prejudice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You speak now like a sensible
+man,&quot; replied the other, &quot;and as a
+friend will I advise you. Let us immediately
+set off to Penafiel, deliver
+the general's letter to the corregidor,
+and take him with us to Castrillo.
+There, for form's sake, an examination
+of your conduct in the affair can
+take place. You shall give up the
+jewels, the carriage, and the lady, and
+set off immediately to join your partida.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the greater part of that I willingly
+agree,&quot; said the Empecinado.
+&quot;The jewels are buried in the cellar,
+and the carriage is in the stable.
+Take both when you list. But as to
+the lady, before I give her up, I will
+give up my own soul. She is my
+property; I took her in fair fight,
+and at the risk of my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will think better of it before
+we get to Castrillo,&quot; replied the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado shook his head,
+but led the way to the inn, where they
+took horse, and the next day reached
+Penafiel, whence they set out the following
+morning for Castrillo, which is
+a couple of leagues further, accompanied
+by the corregidor, his secretary,
+and two alguazils. The Empecinado
+was induced to leave his escort at
+Penafiel, in order that the sort of <i>pro
+form&acirc;</i> investigation which was to be
+gone through might not appear to have
+taken place under circumstances of
+intimidation. The avogado started a
+couple of hours earlier than the rest
+of the party, to have things in readiness,
+so that the proceedings might be
+got through as rapidly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>It was about eight o'clock on a fine
+summer's morning that the Empecinado
+<a class="pagenum" name="page348" id="page348" title="page348"></a>and his companions reached Castrillo.
+As they entered the town, an
+old mendicant, who was lying curled
+up like a dog in the sunshine under
+the porch of a house, lifted his head
+at the noise of the horses. As his
+eyes rested upon Diez, he made a
+bound forward with an agility extraordinary
+in one of his years, and fell
+almost under the feet of the Empecinado's
+horse, making the startled animal
+spring aside with a violence and
+suddenness sufficient to unhorse many
+a less practised rider than the one who
+bestrode him. The Empecinado lifted
+his whip in anger, but the old man,
+who had risen to his feet, showed no
+sign of fear, and as he stood in the
+middle of the road, and immediately
+in the path of the Empecinado, the
+latter recognized the wild features and
+long grey hair of old Gutierrez.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Maldito seas</i>!&quot; cried the old man,
+extending his arms towards the guerilla.
+&quot;Murderer! the hour of vengeance
+is nigh. I saw it in my dreams.
+My Pedrillo showed me his assassin
+trampled under the feet of horses.
+<i>Asesino! Venga la hora de tu
+muerte!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the old man, who was half
+crazed by his misfortunes, relapsed
+into an incoherent strain of lamentations
+for his son, and curses upon him
+whom he called his murderer.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado, who, on recognizing
+old Gutierrez, had lowered his
+riding-whip, and listened unmoved to
+his curses and predictions, rode forward,
+explaining as he went, to the
+astonished corregidor, the scene that
+had just occurred. A little further on
+he separated from his companions,
+giving them rendezvous at ten o'clock
+at the house of the ayuntamiento.
+Proceeding to his brother's dwelling,
+he paid a visit to Madame Barbot,
+breakfasted with her, and then prepared
+to keep his appointment. He
+placed a brace of pistols and a poniard
+in his belt, and taking a loaded <i>trabuco</i>
+or blunderbuss, in his hand,
+wrapped himself in his cloak so as to
+conceal his weapons, and repaired to
+the town-hall.</p>
+
+<p>He found the tribunal already installed,
+and every thing in readiness.
+Saluting the corregidor, he began pacing
+up and down the room without
+taking off his cloak. The corregidor
+repeatedly urged him to be seated, but
+he refused, and continued his walk,
+replying to the questions that were
+put to him, his answers to which were
+duly written down. About a quarter of
+an hour had passed in this manner, when
+a noise of feet and talking was heard
+in the street, and the Empecinado, as
+he passed one of the windows that
+looked out upon the <i>plaza</i>, saw, with
+no very comfortable feelings, that a
+number of armed peasants were entering
+the town hall. He perceived
+that he was betrayed, but his presence
+of mind stood his friend, and with his
+usual promptitude, he in a moment
+decided how he should act. Without
+allowing it to appear that he had any
+suspicion of what was going on, he
+walked to the door of the audience
+chamber, and before any one could interfere,
+shut and locked it. Then
+stepping up to the corregidor, he
+threw off his cloak, and presented his
+trabuco at the magistrate's head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Se&ntilde;or Corregidor,&quot; said he, &quot;this
+is not our agreement, but a base act
+of treachery. Commend yourself to
+God, for you are about to die.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The corregidor was so dreadfully
+terrified at these words, and at the
+menacing action of the Empecinado,
+that he swooned away, and fell down
+under the table&mdash;the escribano fled
+into an adjoining chamber, and concealed
+himself under a bed&mdash;while the
+alguazils, trembling with fear, threw
+themselves upon their knees, and petitioned
+for mercy. The Empecinado,
+finding himself with so little trouble
+master of the field of battle, took possession
+of the papers that were lying
+upon the table, and, unlocking the
+door, proceeded to the principal staircase,
+which he found occupied by
+inhabitants of the town, armed with
+muskets and fowling-pieces. Placing
+his blunderbuss under his arm, with
+his hand upon the trigger, &quot;Make
+way!&quot; cried he; &quot;the first who
+moves a finger may reckon upon the
+contents of my trabuco.&quot; His menace
+and resolute character produced the
+desired effect; a passage was opened,
+and he left the house in triumph. On
+reaching the street, however, he found
+a great crowd of men, women, and
+even children, assembled, who occupied
+the plaza and all the adjacent
+streets, and received him with loud
+cries of &quot;Death to the Empecinado!
+<i>Muera el ladron y mal Cristiano</i>!&quot;
+The armed men whom he had left in
+the town-house fired several shots at
+<a class="pagenum" name="page349" id="page349" title="page349"></a>him from the windows, but nobody
+dared to lay hands upon him, as he
+marched slowly and steadily through
+the crowd, trabuco in hand, and casting
+glances on either side that made
+those upon whom they fell shrink involuntarily
+backwards.</p>
+
+<p>On the low roof of one of the houses
+of the plaza, that formed the angle
+of the Calle de la Cruz, or street of the
+cross, old Gutierrez had taken his station.
+With the fire of insanity in his
+bloodshot eyes, and a grin of exultation
+upon his wasted features, he witnessed
+the persecution of the Empecinado,
+and while his ears drank in the
+yells and hootings of the multitude,
+he added his shrill cracked voice to
+the uproar. When the shots were
+fired from the town-hall, he bounded
+and capered upon the platform, clapping
+his meagre fingers together in
+ecstasy; but as the Empecinado got
+further from the house, and the firing
+was discontinued, an expression of
+anxiety replaced the look of triumph
+that had lighted up the old maniac's
+face. Diez still moved on unhurt,
+and was now within a few paces of
+the house on which Gutierrez had
+perched himself. The old man's uneasiness
+increased. &quot;Va a escapar!&quot;
+muttered he to himself; &quot;they will
+let him escape. Oh, if I had a gun,
+my Pedrillo would soon be avenged!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado was passing under
+the house. A sudden thought struck
+Gutierrez. Stamping with his foot,
+he broke two or three of the tiles on
+which he was standing, and snatching
+up a large heavy fragment, he leaned
+over the edge of the roof to get a full
+view of the Empecinado, who was at
+that moment leaving the plaza and
+entering the Calle de la Cruz. In
+five seconds more he would be out of
+sight. As it was, it was only by leaning
+very far forward that Gutierrez
+could see him, walking calmly along,
+and keeping at bay the angry but
+cowardly mob that yelped at his heels,
+like a parcel of village curs pursuing
+a bloodhound, whose look alone prevents
+their too near approach.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing his left arm round a
+chimney, the old man swung himself
+forward, and with all the force that
+he possessed, hurled the tile at the
+object of his hate. The missile struck
+the Empecinado upon the temple, and
+he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Viva</i>!&quot; screamed Gutierrez; but
+a cry of agony followed the shout of
+exultation. The chimney by which
+the old man supported himself was
+loose and crumbling, and totally unfit
+to bear his weight as he hung on by
+it, and leaned forward to gloat over
+his vengeance. It tottered for a moment,
+and then fell with a crash into
+the street. The height was not great,
+but the pavement was sharp and uneven;
+the old man pitched upon his
+head, and when lifted up was already
+a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>When the mob saw the Empecinado
+fall, they threw themselves upon him
+with as much ferocity as they had
+previously shown cowardice, and beat
+and ill-treated him in every possible
+manner. Not satisfied with that, they
+bound him hand and foot, and pushed
+him through a cellar window, throwing
+after him stones, and every thing
+they could find lying about the street.
+At last, wearied by their own brutality,
+they left him for dead, and he
+remained in that state till nightfall,
+when the corregidor and the ayuntamiento
+proceeded to inspect his body,
+in order to certify his death, and have
+him buried. When he was brought
+out of the cellar, however, they perceived
+he still breathed, and sent for
+a surgeon, and also for a priest to administer
+the last sacraments. They
+then carried him upon a ladder to the
+<i>posito</i>, or public granary, a strong
+building, where they considered he
+would be in safety, and put him to
+bed, bathed in blood and covered with
+wounds and bruises.</p>
+
+<p>The corregidor, fearing that the
+news of the riot, and of the death of
+the Empecinado, would reach Penafiel,
+and that the escort which had been
+left there, and the many partizans that
+Diez had in that town, would come
+over to Castrillo to avenge his death,
+persuaded one of the cur&eacute;s or parish
+priests of the latter place, to go over to
+Penafiel in all haste, and, counterfeiting
+great alarm, to spread the report
+that the French had entered Castrillo,
+seized the Empecinado, and carried
+him off to Aranda. This was accordingly
+done; and the Empecinado's escort
+being made aware of the vicinity
+of the French and the risk they ran,
+immediately mounted their horses and
+marched to join Mariano Fuentes, accompanied
+by upwards of fifty young
+men, all partizans of the Empecinado,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page350" id="page350" title="page350"></a>and eager to revenge him. This matter
+being arranged, the corregidor had
+the jewels that were buried in the
+cellar of Manuel Diez dug up, and
+having taken possession of them, and
+installed Madame Barbot with all due
+attention in one of the principal houses
+of the town, he forwarded a report to
+General Cuesta of all that had occurred.
+The general immediately sent
+an escort to conduct the lady and the
+treasure to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ordered
+that as soon as the Empecinado
+was in a state to be moved, he should
+also be sent under a strong guard to
+that city.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the Empecinado's vigorous
+constitution triumphed over the
+injuries he had received, and he was
+getting so rapidly better, that for his
+safer custody the corregidor thought
+it necessary to have him heavily ironed.
+Deeming it impossible he should escape,
+and there being no troops in the
+village, no sentry was placed over him,
+so that at night his friends were able
+to hold discourse with him through the
+grating of one of the windows of the
+posito. In this manner he contrived
+to send a message to his brother
+Manuel, who, having also got into
+trouble on account of Madame Barbot's
+detention, had been compelled to
+take refuge in the mountains of Bilbuena,
+three leagues from Castrillo.
+Manuel took advantage of a dark night
+to steal into the town in disguise, and
+to speak with the Empecinado. He
+informed him that the superior of the
+Bernardine Monastery, in the Sierra
+de Balbuena, had been advised that it
+was the intention of the Empecinado's
+enemies to deliver him over to the
+French, in order that they might shoot
+him. The Empecinado replied, that
+he strongly suspected there was some
+such plot in agitation, and desired his
+brother to seek out Mariano Fuentes,
+and order him to march his band into
+the neighbourhood of Castrillo, and
+that on their arrival he would send
+them word what to do.</p>
+
+<p>Eight days elapsed, and the Empecinado
+was now completely cured
+of his wounds, so that he was in much
+apprehension lest he should be sent off
+to Ciudad Rodrio before the arrival
+of Fuentes. On the eighth night,
+however, his brother came to the window,
+and informed him that the partida
+was in the neighbourhood, and
+only waited his orders to march upon
+Castrillo, rescue him, and revenge the
+treatment he had received. This the
+Empecinado strongly enjoined them
+not to do, but desired his brother to
+come to his prison door at two o'clock
+the next morning with a led horse, and
+that he had the means to set himself
+at liberty. Manuel Diez did as he was
+ordered, wondering, however, in what
+manner the Empecinado intended to
+get out of the posito, which was a
+solidly constructed edifice with a massive
+door and grated windows. But
+the next night, when the guerilla heard
+the horses approaching his prison, he
+seized the door by an iron bar that
+traversed it on the inner side, and,
+exerting his prodigious strength, tore
+it off the hinges as though it had been
+of pasteboard. His feet being fastened
+together by a chain, he was compelled
+to sit sideways upon the saddle; but
+so elated was he to find himself once
+more at liberty that he pushed his
+horse into a gallop, and with his fetters
+clanking as he went, dashed
+through the streets of Castrillo, to the
+astonishment and consternation of the
+inhabitants, who knew not what devil's
+dance was going on in their usually
+quiet town.</p>
+
+<p>At Olmos, a village a quarter of
+a league from Castrillo, the fugitives
+halted, and roused a smith, who
+knocked off the Empecinado's irons.
+After a short rest at the house of an
+approved friend they remounted their
+horses, and a little after daybreak
+reached the place where Fuentes had
+taken up his bivouac. The Empecinado
+was received with great rejoicing,
+and immediately resumed the
+command. He passed a review of his
+band, and found it consisted of two
+hundred and twenty men, all well
+mounted and armed.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the alarm of the inhabitants
+of Castrillo when they found the
+prison broken open and the prisoner
+gone; and their terror was increased
+a hundred-fold, when a few hours
+later news was brought that the Empecinado
+was marching towards the
+town at the head of a strong body of
+cavalry. Some concealed themselves
+in cellars and suchlike hiding-places,
+others left the town and fled to the
+neighbouring woods; but the majority,
+despairing of escape by human means
+from the terrible anger of the Empecinado,
+shut themselves up in their
+houses, closed the doors and windows,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page351" id="page351" title="page351"></a>and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance
+from the impending evil. Never
+had there been seen in Castrillo such
+a counting of rosaries and beating of
+breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling
+of aves and paters, as upon that
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>At noon the Empecinado entered
+the town at the head of his band,
+trumpets sounding, and the men firing
+their pistols and carbines into the air,
+in sign of joy at having recovered
+their leader. Forming up the partida
+in the market-place, the Empecinado
+sent for the corregidor and other
+authorities, who presented themselves
+before him pale and trembling, and
+fully believing they had not five minutes
+to live.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fear nothing!&quot; said the Empecinado,
+observing their terror. &quot;It
+is certain I have met foul treatment
+at your hands; and it was the harder
+to bear coming from my own countrymen
+and townsfolk. But you have
+been misled, and will one day repent
+your conduct. I have forgotten your
+ill usage, and only remember the
+poverty of my native town, and the
+misery in which this war has plunged
+many of its inhabitants.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he delivered to the alcalde
+and the parish priests a hundred
+ounces of gold for the relief of the
+poor and support of the hospital, and
+ten more to be spent in a <i>novillada</i>, or
+bull-bait and festival for the whole
+town. Cutting short their thanks
+and excuses, he left Castrillo and
+marched to the village of Sacramenia,
+where he quartered his men, and, accompanied
+by Mariano Fuentes, went
+to pay a visit to a neighbouring monastery.
+The monks received him
+with open arms and a hearty welcome,
+hailing him as the main prop
+of the cause of independence in Old
+Castile. They sat down to dinner in
+the refectory; and the conversation
+turning upon the state of the country,
+the Empecinado expressed his unwillingness
+to carry on the war in that
+province, on account of the little confidence
+he could place in the inhabitants,
+so many of whom had become
+<i>afrancesados</i>; and as a proof of this,
+he related all that had occurred to him
+at Castrillo. Upon hearing this the
+abbot, who was a man distinguished
+for his talents and patriotism, recommended
+Diez to lead his band to New
+Castile, where he would not have to
+encounter the persecutions of those
+who, having known him poor and insignificant,
+envied him his good fortune,
+and sought to throw obstacles in
+his path. He offered to get him letters
+from the general of the order of
+San Bernardo to the superiors of the
+various monasteries, in order that he
+might receive such assistance and
+support as they could give, and he
+might chance to require.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one is a prophet in his own
+country,&quot; said the good father; &quot;Mahomet
+in his native town of Medina
+met with the same ill-treatment that
+you, Martin Diez, have encountered
+in the place of your birth. Abandon,
+then, a province which does not recognize
+your value, and go where your
+reputation has already preceded you,
+to defend the holy cause of Spain and
+of religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Struck by the justice of this reasoning,
+the Empecinado resolved to
+change the scene of his operations,
+and the next morning marched his
+squadron in the direction of New
+Castile.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s6" id="bw329s6"></a>
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="page352" id="page352" title="page352"></a>THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME.</h3>
+
+<p>After Jack and Martin parted company,
+you may remember that Jack,
+who had turned his face northward,
+got into high favour with the landlord
+of the North Farm Estate, who, being
+mightily edified with his discourses
+and sanctimonious demeanour, and
+not aware of his having been mad
+before, or being, perchance, just
+as mad himself&mdash;took him in, made
+much of him, gave him a cottage
+upon his manor to live in, and built
+him a tabernacle in which he might
+hold forth when the spirit moved him.
+In process of time, however, it happened
+that North Farm and the Albion
+Estates came into the possession of one
+proprietor, Esquire Bull, in whose
+house Martin had always been retained
+as domestic chaplain&mdash;at least,
+ever since that desperate scuffle with
+Lord Peter and his crew, when he
+tried to land some Spanish smugglers
+on the coast, for the purpose of carrying
+off Martin, and establishing himself
+in Squire Bull's house in his stead.
+Squire Bull, who was a man of his
+word, and wished to leave all things
+on North Farm as he found them,
+Jack and his tabernacle included, undertook
+at once to pay him a reasonable
+salary, with the free use of his
+house and tabernacle to him and his
+heirs for ever. But knowing that on
+a previous occasion, (which you may
+recollect,<a name="footnotetag46" id="footnotetag46"></a><a href="#footnote46"><sup>46</sup></a>) Jack's melancholy had gone
+so far that he had hanged himself,
+though he was cut down just before
+giving up the ghost, and by dint of
+bloodletting and galvanism, had been
+revived; and also that, notwithstanding
+his periodical fits and hallucinations,
+he could beat even Peter himself,
+who had been his instructor, for
+cunning and casuistry, he took care that,
+before Jack was allowed to take possession
+under his new lease, every thing
+should be made square between them.
+So he had the terms of their indenture
+all written out on parchment, signed,
+sealed, and delivered before witnesses,
+and even got a private Act of Parliament
+carried through, for the purpose
+of making every thing between them
+more secure. And well it was for the
+Squire that he bethought himself of his
+precaution in time, as you will afterwards
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>This union of the two entailed
+properties in the Bull family, brought
+Jack and Martin a good deal more
+into one anothers' company than they
+had formerly been; and 'twas clear,
+that Jack, who had now got somewhat
+ashamed of his threadbare raiment,
+and tired of his spare oatmeal diet,
+was mightily struck with the dignified
+air and comfortable look of Martin,
+and grudged him the frequency with
+which he was invited to Squire Bull's
+table. By degrees, he began to conform
+his own uncouth manner to an
+imitation of his. He wore a better
+coat, which he no longer rubbed
+against the wall to take the gloss from
+off it; he ceased to interlard all his
+ordinary speech with texts of Scripture;
+his snuffle abated audibly; he
+gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody,
+and lost, in a great measure,
+his aversion to Christmas tarts and
+plum-pudding. After a time, he might
+even be seen with a fishing-rod over
+his shoulder; then he contrived sundry
+improvements in gun-locks and double-barrels,
+for which he took out a patent,
+and in fact did not entirely escape the
+suspicion of being a poacher. He
+held assemblies in his house, where at
+times he allowed a little singing; nay,
+on one occasion, a son of his&mdash;for he
+had now a large family&mdash;was found
+accompanying a psalm-tune upon the
+(barrel) organ, and it was rumoured
+about the house, that Jack, though he
+thought it prudent to disclaim this
+overture, had no great objection to
+it. Be that as it may, it is certain,
+that instead of his old peaked hat and
+band, Jack latterly took to wearing
+broad-brimmed beavers, which he was
+seen trying to mould into a spout-like
+shape, much resembling a shovel. And
+so far had the transformation gone, that
+the Vicar of Fudley, meeting him one
+evening walking to an assembly arrayed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page353" id="page353" title="page353"></a>in a court coat, with this extraordinary
+hat upon his head, and a pair
+of silver buckles in his shoes, pulled
+off his hat to him at a little distance,
+mistaking him for a near relation of
+Martin, if not for Martin himself.</p>
+
+<p>There was no great harm you will
+think in all these whims, and for my
+own part, I believe that Jack was never
+so honest a fellow as he was during this
+time, when he was profiting by Martin's
+example. He kept his own place,
+ruling his family in a quiet and orderly
+way, without disturbing the peace of
+his neighbours: and seemed to have
+forgotten his old tricks of setting people
+by the ears, and picking quarrels with
+constables and justices of the peace.
+Howbeit, those who knew him longest
+and best, always said that this was too
+good to last: that with him these intervals
+of sobriety and moderation
+were always the prelude to a violent
+access of his peculiar malady, and
+that by-and-bye he would break out
+again, and that there would be the
+devil to pay, and no pitch hot.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened that Squire Bull had
+a good many small village schools on
+his Estate of North Farm, to which the
+former proprietors had always been in
+the custom of appointing the ushers
+themselves; and much to Jack's annoyance,
+when Squire Bull succeeded, the
+latter had taken care in his bargain with
+him, to keep the right of appointment
+to these in his own hand. But, at the
+same time, he told Jack fairly, that as
+he had no wish to dabble in Latin,
+Greek, or school learning himself, he
+left him at full liberty to say whether
+those whom he appointed were fit for
+the situation or not&mdash;so that if they
+turned out to be ignoramuses, deboshed
+fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack
+had only to say so on good grounds,
+and they were forthwith sent adrift.
+Matters went on for a time very
+smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was
+even said that Jack was inclined to
+carry his complaisance rather far, and
+after a time seldom troubled himself
+much about the usher's qualifications,
+provided his credentials were all right.
+He might ask the young fellow, who
+presented John's commission, perhaps,
+what was the first letter of the
+Greek alphabet? what was Latin for
+beef and greens? or where Moses was
+when the candle was blown out?&mdash;but
+if the candidate answered these questions
+correctly, and if there were no
+scandal or <i>fama clamosa</i> against him,
+as Jack in his peculiar jargon expressed
+it, he generally shook hands with him
+at once, put the key of the schoolhouse
+in his hand, and told him civilly
+to walk up-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was, however, that in
+this respect Jack had little reason to
+complain; for though the Squire, in the
+outset, may not have been very particular
+as to his choice, and it was said
+once or twice gave an ushership to an
+old exciseman, on account of his skill
+in mensuration of fluids, he had latterly
+become very particular, and
+would not hear of settling any body
+as schoolmaster on North Farm,
+who did not come to him with an
+excellent character, certified by two
+or three respectable householders at
+least. But, strangely enough, it was
+observed that just in proportion as the
+Squire became more considerate, Jack
+became more arrogant, pestilent, and
+troublesome. Now-a-days he was always
+discovering some objection to the
+Squire's appointments: one usher, it
+seemed, spoke too low, another too loud,
+one used an ear-trumpet, another a pair
+of grass-green spectacles; one had
+no sufficient gifts for flogging; another
+flogged either too high or too
+low&mdash;(for Jack was like the deserter,
+there was no pleasing him as to the
+mode of conducting the operation;)
+and, finally, another was rejected because
+he was unacquainted with the
+vernacular of Ossian&mdash;to the great
+injury and damage, as was alleged, of
+two Highland chairmen, who at an
+advanced period of life were completing
+their education in the school in
+question. At first Squire Bull, honest
+gentleman, had given in to these
+strange humours on the part of Jack,
+believing that this new-born zeal on
+his part was in the main conscientious,
+though he could not help thinking it
+at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous.
+He had even gone so far,
+occasionally, as to send Jack a list of
+those to whom he proposed giving
+the usherships, accompanied with a
+polite note, in some such terms as
+these, &quot;Squire Bull presents his respects,
+and begs his good friend Jack
+will read over the enclosed list, and
+take the trouble of choosing for himself;&quot;
+a request with which Jack was
+always ready to comply. And, further,
+as Jack had always a great hankering
+after little-goes and penny subscriptions
+<a class="pagenum" name="page354" id="page354" title="page354"></a>of every kind, and was eternally
+trumpeting forth some new nostrum
+or <i>scheme</i> of this kind, as he used to
+call it, the Squire had been prevailed
+upon to purchase from him a good
+many tickets for these schemes from
+time to time, for which he always
+paid in hard cash, though I have never
+heard that any of them turned up
+prizes, except it may have been to
+Jack himself.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, as we have said, grew bolder
+as the Squire became more complying,
+thinking that, in the matter of
+these appointments, as he had once
+got his hand in, it would be his own
+fault if he could not contrive to
+wriggle in his whole body. It so happened,
+too, that just about the very
+time that one of John's usherships became
+vacant, one of those atrabilious
+and hypochondriac fits came over Jack,
+with which, as we have said, he was periodically
+afflicted, and which, though
+they certainly unsettled his brain a
+little, only served, as in the case of
+other lunatics, to render him, during
+the paroxysm, more cunning, inventive,
+and mischievous. After
+moving about in a moping way for
+a day or two&mdash;mumbling in corners,
+and pretending to fall on his knees,
+in his old fashion, in the midst of
+the street, he suddenly got up, flung
+his broad-brimmed beaver into the
+kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt,
+so as to expose his large ears as
+of old, ran home, pulled his rusty
+black doublet out of the chest where it
+had lain for years, squeezing it on as
+he best could&mdash;for he had got somewhat
+corpulent in the mean time&mdash;and
+thus transfigured, he set out to consult
+the village attorney, with whom
+it was observed he remained closeted
+for several hours, turning over Burns'
+Justice, and perusing an office-copy
+of his indenture with the Squire&mdash;a
+planetary conjunction from which
+those who were astrologically given
+boded no good.</p>
+
+<p>What passed between these worthies
+on this occasion&mdash;whether the
+attorney really persuaded Jack that,
+if he set about it, he would undertake
+to find him a flaw in his contract with
+Squire Bull, which would enable him
+to take the matter of the usherships
+into his own hand, and to do as he
+pleased; or whether Jack&mdash;as he
+seemed afterwards to admit in private&mdash;believed
+nothing of what the attorney
+told him, but was resolved to take
+advantage of the Squire's good-nature,
+and to run all risks as to the result, 'tis
+hard to say. Certain it was, however,
+that Jack posted down at once from
+the attorney's chamber to the village
+school, which happened to be then
+vacant, and gathering the elder boys
+about him, he told them he had reason
+to believe the Squire was about to
+send them another usher, very different
+from the last, who was a mortal
+enemy to marbles, pitch-and-toss,
+chuck-farthing, ginger-bread, and
+half holydays; with a corresponding
+liking to long tasks and short commons;
+that the use of the cane would
+be regularly taught, along with that of
+the globes, accompanied with cuts and
+other practical demonstrations; that
+the only chance of escaping this visitation
+was to take a bold line, and
+show face to the usher at once, since
+otherwise the chance was, that at no
+distant period they might be obliged
+to do the very reverse.</p>
+
+<p>Jack further reasoned the matter with
+the boys learnedly, somewhat in this
+fashion&mdash;&quot;That as no one could have
+so strong an interest in the matter, so
+no one could be so good a judge of
+the qualifications of the schoolmaster
+as the schoolboy; that the close and
+intimate relation between these parties
+was of the nature of a mutual contract,
+in the formation of which both had an
+equal right to be consulted; so that,
+without mutual consent, or, as it
+were, a harmonious call by the boys,
+there could be no valid ushership, but
+a mere usurpation of the power of the
+tawse, and unwarrantable administration
+of the birchen twig; that, further,
+this latter power involved a
+fundamental feature, in which they
+could not but feel they had all a deep
+interest&mdash;and which, he might say,
+lay at the bottom of the whole question;
+that he himself perfectly remembered
+that, in former days, the schoolboys
+had always exercised this privilege,
+which he held to be equally
+salutary and constitutional; and that
+he would, at his leisure, show them a
+private memorandum-book of his own,
+in which, though he had hitherto said
+nothing about it, he had found an entry
+to that effect made some thirty years
+before. In short, he told them, if
+they did not wish to be rode over
+rough-shod, they must stand up boldly
+for themselves, and try to get all the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page355" id="page355" title="page355"></a>schools in the neighbourhood to join
+them, if necessary, in a regular barring-out,
+or general procession, in
+which they were to appear with flags
+and banners, bearing such inscriptions
+as the following: &quot;<i>Pro aris et focis</i>&quot;&mdash;&quot;Liberty
+is like the air we breathe,&quot;
+&amp;c. &amp;c., and, lastly, in large gilt
+capitals&mdash;&quot;<i>No usher to be intruded into
+any school contrary to the will of the
+scholars in schoolroom assembled</i>.&quot; And,
+in short, that this process was to be
+repeated until they succeeded in getting
+quit of Squire Bull's usher, and
+getting an usher who would flog them
+with all the forbearance and reserve
+with which Sancho chastised his own
+flesh while engaged in the process of
+disenchanting Dulcinea del Toboso.
+At the same time, with that cunning
+which was natural to him, Jack took
+care to let the scholars know that
+<i>his</i> name was not to be mentioned in
+the transaction; and that, if they
+were asked any questions, they must
+be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for
+that matter, that they objected to
+John's usher from no personal dislike
+to the man himself, and without having
+received fee or reward, in the shape of
+apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar,
+or sweetmeats whatever&mdash;or
+sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or
+other current coin of the realm.</p>
+
+<p>It will be readily imagined that this
+oration of Jack, pronounced as it was
+with some of his old unction, and accompanied
+with that miraculous and
+subtle twist of the tongue which
+we have described in a former chapter,<a name="footnotetag47" id="footnotetag47"></a><a href="#footnote47"><sup>47</sup></a>
+produced exactly the effect upon
+his audience which might be expected.
+The boys were delighted&mdash;tossed up
+their caps&mdash;gave Jack three cheers,
+and told him if he stood by them they
+would stand by him, and that they
+were much mistaken if they did not
+contrive to make the schoolhouse too
+hot for any usher whom Squire Bull
+might think fit to send them.</p>
+
+<p>It happened not long after, as Jack
+had anticipated, that one morning a
+young man called upon with a letter
+from the Squire, intimating that he
+had named him to the vacant ushership;
+and requesting Jack to examine
+into his qualifications as usual. Jack
+begged him to be seated, and (having
+privately sent a message to the schoolboys)
+continued to entertain him with
+enquiries as to John's health and the
+state of the weather, till he heard, by
+the noise in the court, that the boys
+had arrived. In they marched accordingly,
+armed with horn-books,
+primers, slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales,
+and copy-books, taking up their station
+near the writing-desk. The young
+usher-elect, though he thought this a
+whimsical exhibition, supposed that
+the urchins had been brought there
+only to do honour to his examination,
+and accordingly begged Jack, as he
+was in a hurry, to proceed. &quot;Fair and
+softly, young man,&quot; said Jack, in his
+blandest tones; &quot;we must first see what
+these intelligent young gentlemen
+have got to say to that. Tom, my
+fine fellow, here is a gentleman sent
+by Squire Bull to be your usher.
+What do you say to him?&quot; &quot;I don't
+like him,&quot; said Tom. &quot;May I venture
+to ask why?&quot; said the usher,
+putting in a word. &quot;Don't like him,&quot;
+repeated Tom. &quot;Don't like him neither,&quot;
+said Dick. &quot;And no mistake,&quot;
+added Peter, with a grin, which immediately
+circulated round the school.
+&quot;It is quite impossible,&quot; said Jack,
+&quot;under existing circumstances, that the
+matter can proceed any further; it is
+plain the school can never be edified
+by such an usher. But, stop, that
+there may be no misconception on the
+subject. Here you, Smith&mdash;do you
+really mean to say, on soul and conscience,
+you don't think this respectable
+gentleman can do you any good?&quot;
+Of course, Smith stated that his mind
+was quite made up on the subject.
+&quot;Come here, Jenkins,&quot; said Jack,
+beckoning to another boy; &quot;tell the
+truth now&mdash;honour bright, remember.
+Has any body given or promised you
+any apples, parliament, or other
+sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to
+vote against the usher?&quot; Jenkins,
+who had just wiped his lips of the last
+remains of a gingerbread cake, which
+somehow or other had dropped into
+his pocket by accident, protested, on
+his honour, that he was quite above
+such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated
+purely by a conscientious zeal for
+the cause of flogging all over the
+world. &quot;The scruples of these intelligent
+and ingenuous youths,&quot; said
+John, turning to the usher, &quot;must,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page356" id="page356" title="page356"></a>in conscience, receive effect; the law,
+as laid down in my copy of Squire
+Bull's own contract, is this&mdash;'That
+noe ushere be yntruded intoe anie
+schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys
+in schoole-roome assembled.'
+So, with your permission, we will adjourn
+the consideration of the case
+till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas,
+if that be more convenient.&quot; And,
+so saying, he left John's letter lying on
+the table, and shut the schoolroom
+door in the face of the astonished usher.</p>
+
+<p>Squire Bull, as may be imagined,
+was not a little astonished and mortified
+at hearing from the usher, who
+returned looking foolish and chop-fallen,
+of this outbreak on the part of
+Jack, for whom he had really begun
+to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness;
+but knowing of old his fantastical
+and melancholic turn, he attributed
+this sally rather to the state of his
+bowels, which at all times he exceedingly
+neglected, and which, being
+puffed up with flatulency and indigestion
+to an extraordinary degree, not
+unfrequently acted upon his brain&mdash;generating
+therein strange conceits
+and dangerous hallucinations&mdash;than
+to any settled intention on Jack's part
+to pick a quarrel with him or evade
+performance of the conditions of their
+indenture, so long as he was not under
+the influence of hypochondria. And
+having this notion as to Jack's motives,
+and knowing nothing of the
+private confab at the village lawyer's,
+he could not help believing that, by a
+brisk course of purgatives and an antiphlogistic
+treatment&mdash;and without
+resorting to a strait-waistcoat, which
+many who knew Jack's pranks at once
+recommended him to adopt&mdash;he might
+be cured of those acrid and intoxicating
+vapours, which, ascending into
+the brain, led him into such extravagant
+vagaries. &quot;I'faith,&quot; said the
+Squire, &quot;since the poor man has
+taken this mad fancy into his head
+as to the terms of his bargain, the
+best way to restore him to his senses
+is to bring the matter, as he himself
+seemed to desire it, before the Justices
+of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred
+to one but he will have come
+to his senses long before they have
+come to a decision; at all events,
+unless he is madder than I take him
+to be, when he finds how plain the
+terms of the indenture are, he will
+surely submit with a good grace.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So thought the Squire; and, accordingly,
+by his direction, the usher-elect
+brought his case before the Justices at
+their next sittings, who forthwith summoned
+Jack before them to know why
+he refused performance of his contract
+with the Squire. Jack came on the
+day appointed, attended by the attorney&mdash;though
+for that matter he might
+have safely left him behind, being
+fully as much master of all equivocation
+or chicanery as if he had never
+handled anything but quills and quirks
+from his youth upward. This, indeed,
+was probably the effect of his old
+training in Peter's family, for whose
+hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical
+casuistries, notwithstanding his
+dislike to the man himself, he had a
+certain admiration, founded on a secret
+affinity of nature. Indeed it was
+wonderful to observe how, with all
+Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended,
+he took after him in so many
+points&mdash;insomuch that at times, their
+look, voice, manner, and way of thinking,
+were so closely alike, that those
+who knew them best might very well
+have mistaken them for each other.
+The usher having produced the Squire's
+copy of the indenture, pointed out the
+clause by which Jack became bound
+to examine and admit to the schools
+on North Farm any qualified usher
+whom the Squire might send&mdash;as the
+condition on which he was to retain
+his right to the tabernacle and his
+own mansion upon the Farm&mdash;at the
+same time showing Jack's seal and
+signature at the bottom of the deed.
+Jack, being called upon by the justices
+to show cause, pulled out of his
+pocket an old memorandum-book&mdash;very
+greasy, musty, and ill-flavoured&mdash;and
+which, from the quantity of dust
+and cobwebs with which it was overlaid,
+had obviously been lying on the
+shelf for half a century at least. This
+he placed in the hands of his friend
+Snacks the attorney, pointing out to
+him a page or two which he had
+marked with his thumb nail, as appropriate
+to the matter in hand. And
+there, to be sure, was to be found,
+among a quantity of other nostrums,
+recipes, cooking receipts, prescriptions,
+and omnium-gatherums of all
+kinds, an entry to this effect:&mdash;&quot;That
+no ushere be yntruded intoe anie
+schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys
+in schoole-roome assembled.&quot;
+Whereupon the attorney maintained,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page357" id="page357" title="page357"></a>that, as this memorandum-book of
+Jack's was plainly of older date than
+the indenture, and had evidently been
+seen by the Squire at or prior to the
+time of signing, as appeared from some
+of the entries which it contained being
+incorporated in the deed, it must
+be presumed, that its whole contents,
+though not to be found in the
+indenture <i>per expressum</i>, or <i>totidem
+verbis</i>, were yet included therein <i>implicitly</i>,
+or in a latent form, inasmuch
+as they were not <i>per expressum</i> excluded
+therefrom;&mdash;this being, as you
+will recollect, precisely the argument
+which Jack had borrowed from Peter,
+when the latter construed their father's
+will in the question as to the
+lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots;
+and very much of the same
+kind with that celebrated thesis which
+Peter afterwards maintained in the
+matter of the brown loaf. And though
+he was obliged to admit (what indeed
+from the very look of the book he
+could not well dispute) that no such
+rule had ever been known or acted
+upon&mdash;and on the contrary that Jack,
+until this last occasion, had always
+admitted the Squire's ushers without
+objection whatsoever; yet he contended
+vehemently, that now that his
+conscience was awakened on the subject,
+the past must be laid out of view;
+and that the old memorandum-book,
+as part and parcel of the indenture
+itself, must receive effect; and farther,
+that whether he, Jack, was right
+or wrong in this matter, the Justices
+had no right to interfere with them.</p>
+
+<p>But the Justices, on looking into this
+antiquated document, found that, besides
+this notandum, the memorandum-book
+contained a number of other entries
+of a very extraordinary kind&mdash;such,
+for instance, as that Martin was
+no better than he should be, and ought
+to be put down speedily: that Squire
+Bull had no more right to nominate
+ushers than he had to be Khan of Tartary:
+that that right belonged exclusively
+to Jack himself, or to the schoolboys
+under Jack's control and direction:
+that Jack was to have the sole
+right of laying down rules for his own
+government, and of enforcing them
+against himself by the necessary compulsitors,
+if the case should arise; thus,
+that Jack should have full powers to
+censure, fine, punish, flog, flay, banish,
+imprison, or set himself in the stocks
+as often as he should think fit; but
+that whether Jack did right or wrong,
+in any given case, Jack was himself
+to be the sole judge, and neither
+Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of
+the Peace was to have one word to
+say to him or his proceedings in the
+matter: on the contrary, that any
+such interference on their part, was
+to be regarded as a high grievance
+and misdemeanour on their part, for
+which Jack was to be entitled at the
+least to read them a lecture from the
+writing-desk, and shut the schoolroom
+door in their own or their children's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>There were many other whimsical
+and extravagant things contained in
+this private note-book, so much so,
+that it was evident no man in his senses
+could ever have intended to make them
+part of his bargain with Jack. But
+the matter was put beyond a doubt
+by the usher producing the original
+draft of the indenture, on which some
+of these crotchets, including this fancy
+about the right of the schoolboys to
+reject the usher if they did not like
+him, had been <i>interlined</i> in Jack's
+hand: but all of which the Squire, on
+revising the deed, had scored out with
+his own pen, adding in the margin,
+opposite to the very passage, the
+words, in italics&mdash;&quot;<i>See him damned
+first.&mdash;J.B.</i>&quot; And as it could not
+be disputed that Jack and the Squire
+ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting
+all this nonsense&mdash;the Justices had
+no hesitation in holding, that Jack's
+private memorandum-book, even if he
+had always carried it in his breeches
+pocket, and quoted it on all occasions,
+instead of leaving it&mdash;as it was plain
+he had done&mdash;for many a long year, in
+some forgotten corner of his trunk
+or lumber-room, could no more affect
+the construction of the indenture
+between himself and Squire, or
+afford him any defence against performance
+of his part of that indenture, than
+if he had founded on the statutes of
+Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug,
+Fee-Faw-Fum, or any other
+Emperor of China for the time being.
+And so, after hearing very deliberately
+all that the attorney for Jack had to
+say to the contrary, they decided that
+Jack must forthwith proceed to examine
+the usher, and give him possession,
+if qualified, of the schoolhouse
+and other appurtenances; or
+else make up his mind to a thundering
+action of damages if he did not.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page358" id="page358" title="page358"></a>The Justices thought that Jack, on
+hearing the case fairly stated, and
+their opinion given against him, with
+a long string of cases in point, would
+yield, and give the usher possession
+in the usual way; but no: no sooner
+was the sentence written out than Jack
+entered an appeal to the Quarter-sessions.
+There the whole matter was
+heard over again, at great length, before
+a full bench; but after Jack and
+his attorney had spoken till they were
+tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a
+moment's hesitation, confirmed the
+sentence of the Justices, with costs.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, who had blustered exceedingly
+as to his chances of bamboozling
+the Quarter-sessions, and quashing
+the sentence of the Justices, looked
+certainly not a little discomfited at the
+result of his appeal. For some days
+after, he was observed to walk about
+looking gloomy and disheartened, and
+was heard to say to some of his family,
+that he began to think matters had
+really gone too far between him and
+his good friend the Squire, to whom
+he owed his bread; that, on second
+thoughts, he would give up the point
+about intruding ushers on the schools,
+and see whether the Squire might not
+be prevailed on to arrange matters on
+an amicable footing; and that he
+would take an opportunity, the next
+time he had an assembly at his house,
+of consulting his friends on the subject.
+And had Jack stuck to this resolution,
+there is little doubt that, by
+some device or other, he would have
+gained all he wanted; for the Squire,
+being an easy, good-natured man, and
+wishing really to do his duty in the
+matter of the ushership, would probably,
+if Jack had yielded in this instance
+with a good grace, have probably
+allowed him in the end to have
+things very much his own way. But
+to the surprise of everybody, the next
+time Jack had a party of friends with
+him, he rose up, and putting on that
+peculiarly sanctimonious expression
+which his countenance generally assumed
+when he had a mind to confuse
+and mystify his auditors by a string
+of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations,
+made a long, unintelligible, and inconsistent
+harangue, the drift of which
+no one could well understand, except
+that it bore that &quot;both the Justices and
+the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses
+who could not understand
+a word of Jack's contract, and knew
+nothing of black-letter whatever; but
+that, nevertheless, as they had decided
+against him, he, as a loyal subject,
+must and would submit;&mdash;not, however,
+that he had the least idea of taking
+the Squire's usher, or any other usher
+whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the
+schoolboys' wishes; <i>that</i>, he begged to
+say, he would never hear of:&mdash;still he
+would obey the law by laying no claim
+himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering
+with the usher's drawing it; and
+yet that he could not exactly answer for
+others not doing so;&quot;&mdash;Jack knowing
+all the time, that, claim as he might,
+he himself had no more right to the salary
+than to the throne of the Celestial
+Empire; while, on the other hand, by
+locking up the schoolroom, and keeping
+the key in his pocket, he had rendered
+it impossible for the poor wight
+of an usher to recover one penny of it&mdash;the
+legal condition of his doing so being
+his actual possession of the schoolhouse
+itself, of which Jack, by this last man&oelig;uvre,
+had contrived to deprive him.
+But, as if to finish the matter, and to
+prove the knavish spirit in which this
+protestation was made, he instantly
+got a <i>private</i> friend and relative of his
+own, with whom the whole scheme
+had been arranged beforehand, to
+come forward and bring an action on
+the case, in which the latter claimed
+the whole fund which would have belonged
+to the unlucky usher&mdash;in terms,
+as he said, of some old arrangement
+made by the Squire's predecessor as to
+school-salaries during vacancy; to be
+applied, as the writ very coolly stated
+it, &quot;for behoof of Jack's destitute widow,
+in the event of his decease, and
+of his numerous and indigent family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Many of Jack's own family, who
+were present on this occasion, remonstrated
+with him on the subject, foreseeing
+that if he went on as he had
+begun and threatened to proceed, he
+must soon come to a rupture with the
+Squire, which could end in nothing
+else than his being turned out of house
+and hall, and thrown adrift upon the
+wide world, without a penny in his
+pocket. But the majority&mdash;who were
+puffed up with more than Jack's own
+madness and had a notion that by
+sheer boldness and bullying on their
+part, the Squire would, after a time,
+be sure to give way, encouraged Jack
+to go on at all hazards, and not to retract
+a hair's breadth in his demands.
+And Jack, who had now become mischievously
+<a class="pagenum" name="page359" id="page359" title="page359"></a>crazed on the subject, and
+began to be as arrogant and conceited
+of his own power and authority, as
+ever my Lord Peter had been in his
+proudest and most pestilential days,
+was not slow to follow their advice.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas of no consequence that a
+friend of the Squire's, who had known
+Jack long, and had really a great kindness
+towards him, tried to bring about
+an arrangement between him and the
+Squire upon very handsome terms.
+He had a meeting with Jack;&mdash;at
+which he talked the matter over in a
+friendly way&mdash;telling him that though
+the Squire must reserve in his own
+hands the nomination of his own ushers,
+he had always been perfectly willing
+to listen to reason in any objections
+that might be taken to them;
+only some reason he must have, were
+it only that Jack could not abide
+the sight of a red-nosed usher:&mdash;let
+that reason, such as it was, be put on
+paper, and he would consider of it;
+and if, from any peculiar idiosyncracy
+in Jack's temperament and constitution,
+he found that his antipathy to
+red noses was unsuperable, probably
+he would not insist on filling up the
+vacancy with a nose of that colour.
+Jack, who was always more rational
+when alone than when he had got the
+attorney and the more frantic members
+of his family at his elbow, acknowledged,
+as he well might, that all
+this seemed very reasonable; and that
+he really thought that on these terms
+the Squire and he would have little
+difficulty in coming to an agreement.
+So they parted, leaving the Squire's
+friend under the impression that all
+was right, and that he had only to get
+an agreement to that effect drawn out,
+signed and sealed by the parties.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, however, he received
+a letter by the penny-post, written no
+doubt in Jack's hand, but obviously
+dictated by the attorney, in these
+terms:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Honoured Sir&mdash;Lest there should
+be any misconception between us as
+to our yesterday's conversation, I
+have put into writing the substance
+of what was agreed on between us,
+which I understand to be this: that
+there shall be no let or impediment to
+the Squire's full and absolute right of
+naming an usher in all cases of vacancy;
+that I shall have an equally
+full right to object to the said usher
+for any reasons that may be satisfactory
+to myself, and thereupon to exclude
+him from the school; leaving it
+to the Squire, if he pleases, to send
+another, whom I shall have the right
+of handling in the same fashion, with
+this further proviso, that if the Squire
+does not fill up the office to my satisfaction
+within half-a-year, I shall
+be entitled to take the appointment
+into my own hands. I need hardly
+add that no Justices of the Peace are to
+take cognizance of anything done by
+me in the matter, be it good, bad, or
+indifferent. Hoping that this statement
+of our mutual views will be
+found correct and satisfactory&mdash;I remain,
+your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;JACK.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The moment the Squire's friend
+perused this missive, he saw plainly
+that all hope of bringing Jack to his
+senses was at an end; and that under
+the advice of evil counsellors, lunatic
+friends, and lewd fellows of the baser
+sort, Jack would shortly bring himself
+and his family to utter ruin.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as might be expected, Jack's
+disorder, which had hitherto been comparatively
+of the calm and melancholy
+kind, broke out into the most violent and
+phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes
+raved incoherently, for hours together,
+against the Squire; often, in the midst
+of his speeches, he was assailed with
+epileptic fits, during which he displayed
+the strangest contortions and
+most laughable gestures; he threw entirely
+aside the decent coat he had
+worn for some time back, and habitually
+attired himself in the old and
+threadbare raiment, which he had worn
+after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously
+sent to the right-about
+by Lord Peter, and even ran about
+the streets with his band tied round
+his peaked beaver, bearing thereon
+the motto&mdash;&quot;<i>Nemo me impune lacessit</i>.&quot;
+If his madness had only
+led him to make a spectacle and laughing-stock
+of himself, by these wild
+vagaries and mountebank exhibitions,
+all had been well, but this did not satisfy
+Jack; his old disposition for a
+riot had returned, and a riot, right or
+wrong, he was determined to have.
+So he set to work to frighten the
+women of the village with stories, as
+to the monsters whom the Squire would
+send among them as ushers, who
+would do nothing but teach their
+<a class="pagenum" name="page360" id="page360" title="page360"></a>children drinking, chuck-farthing, and
+cock-fighting; to the schoolboys
+themselves, talked of the length,
+breadth, and thickness, of the usher's
+birch, which he assured them was
+dipped in vinegar every evening, in
+order to afford a more agreeable stimulus
+to the part affected; he plied
+them with halfpence and strong beer;
+exhorted them to insurrections and
+barrings-out; taught them how to
+mock at any usher who would not submit
+to be Jack's humble servant; and
+by gibes and scurril ballads, which he
+would publish in the newspapers, try to
+make his life a burden to him. He also
+instructed them how best to stick darts
+into his wig, cover his back with
+spittle, fill his pockets with crackers,
+burn assaf&oelig;tida in the fire, extinguish
+the candles with fulminating
+powder, or blow up the writing-desk
+by a train of combustibles. Above
+all, he counselled the urchins to stand
+firm the next time that John sent an
+usher down to that quarter, and vehemently
+to protest for the doctrine of
+election as to their own usher, and reprobation
+as to the Squire's; assuring
+them, that provided they took his advice,
+and followed the plan which he would
+afterwards impart to them in confidence
+at the proper time, he could almost
+take it upon himself to say, that
+in a short time, no tyrannical usher,
+or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should
+venture to show his face, with or without
+tawse or ferule, within the boundaries
+of North Farm.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before an opportunity
+offered of putting these precious
+schemes in practice; for shortly afterwards,
+the old usher of a school on the
+northermost boundary of the North
+Farm estates having died, the ushership
+became vacant, and John, as usual,
+appointed a successor in his room.
+Being warned this time by what had
+taken place on the last occasion, the
+Squire took care to apply beforehand
+to the Justices of the Peace&mdash;got
+a peremptory <i>mandamus</i> from them,
+directing Jack to proceed forthwith,
+and, after the usual trials, to put the
+usher in possession of the schoolhouse
+by legal form, and without re-regard
+to any protest or interruption
+from any or all of the schoolboys
+put together. So down the usher
+proceeded, accompanied by a posse
+of constables and policemen of various
+divisions, till they arrived at the
+schoolhouse, which lay adjacent to
+the churchyard, and then demanded
+admittance. It happened that in this
+quarter resided some of Jack's family,
+who, as we have already mentioned,
+differed from him entirely, thinking him
+totally wrong in the contest with the
+Squire and being completely satisfied
+that all his glosses upon his contract
+were either miserable quibbles or mere
+hallucinations, and that it was his duty,
+so long as he ate John's bread, and
+slept under John's roof, to perform
+fairly the obligations he had come
+under:&mdash;and so, on reading the Justices'
+warrant, which required them,
+on pain of being set in the stocks, and
+forfeiture of two shillings and sixpence
+of penalty, besides costs, to give immediate
+possession to the Squire's
+usher, they at once resolved to obey,
+called for the key of the schoolhouse,
+and proceeded to the door,
+accompanied by the usher and the authorities,
+for the purpose of complying
+with the warrant and admitting the
+usher as in times past. But on arriving
+there, never was there witnessed
+such a scene of confusion. The
+churchyard was crowded with ragamuffins
+of every kind, from all the neighbouring
+parishes; scarcely was there
+a sot or deboshed fellow within the
+district who had not either come himself
+or found a substitute; gipsies, beggarwomen,
+and thimbleriggers were
+thick as blackberries; while Jack himself&mdash;who,
+upon hearing of what was
+going forward, had come down by the
+night coach with all expedition&mdash;was
+standing on a tombstone near the doorway,
+and holding forth to the whole bevy
+of rascals whom he had assembled about
+him. It was evident from his tones and
+gestures that Jack had been exciting
+the mob in every possible way; but as
+the justices and the constables drew
+near, he changed the form of his
+countenance, pulled a psalm-book out
+of his pocket, and, with much sanctity
+and appearance of calmness, gave out
+the tune; in which the miscellaneous
+assemblage around him joined, with
+similar unction and devotion. When
+the procession reached the door, they
+found the whole inside of the schoolhouse
+already packed with urchins
+and blackguards of all kinds, who,
+having previously gained admission
+by the window, had forcibly barricaded
+the door against the constables,
+being assisted in the defence thereof
+<a class="pagenum" name="page361" id="page361" title="page361"></a>by the mob without, who formed a
+double line, and kept hustling the poor
+usher and the constables from side to
+side, helping themselves to a purse or
+two in passing, and calling out at the
+same time, &quot;take care of pickpockets&quot;&mdash;occasionally
+amusing themselves also
+by playfully smashing the beaver of
+some of the justices of the peace over
+their face, to the tune of &quot;all round
+my hat,&quot; sung in chorus, on the Mainzerian
+system, amidst peals of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Jack was skipping up
+and down upon the tombstone, calling
+out to his myrmidons&mdash;&quot;Good
+friends! Sweet friends! Let me not
+stir your spirits up to mutiny. Though
+that cairn of granite stones lies very
+handy and inviting, I pray you refrain
+from it. Touch it not. I humbly
+entreat my friend with the dirty shirt
+not to break the sconce of the respectable
+gentleman whom I have in
+my eye, with that shillelah of his&mdash;though
+I must admit that he is labouring
+under strong and just provocation.&quot;
+&quot;For mercy's sake, my dear sir!&quot;
+he would exclaim to a third&mdash;&quot;don't
+push my respected friend the justice
+into yonder puddle&mdash;the one which
+lies so convenient on your right hand
+there; though, to be sure, the ground
+<i>is</i> slippery, and the thing <i>might</i> happen,
+in a manner without any one's
+being able to prevent it.&quot; And so
+on he went, taking care to say nothing
+for which the justices could afterwards
+venture to commit him to
+Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring up
+the rabble to the utmost, by nods,
+looks, winks, and covert speeches, intended
+to convey exactly the opposite
+meaning from what the words bore.</p>
+
+<p>At last by main force, and after a
+hard scuffle, the constables contrived
+to force the schoolhouse door open,
+and so to make way for the justices,
+the usher, and those of Jack's family
+who, as we have seen already, had
+made up their minds to give the usher
+possession, to enter. But having entered,
+the confusion and bedevilment
+was ten times worse than even in the
+churchyard itself. The benches were
+lined with a pack of overgrown rascals
+in corduroy vestments, and with
+leather at the knees, from all the
+neighbouring villages; in a gallery
+at one end sat a Scotch bagpiper,
+flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant
+performer on the hurdygurdy,
+accompanied by his monkey&mdash;who in
+the course of his circuit through the
+village, had that morning received a
+special retainer, in the shape of half a
+quartern of gin, for the occasion; while
+in the usher's chair were ensconced
+two urchins of about fourteen years
+of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all
+fours, and drinking purl, with their
+legs diffused in a picturesque attitude
+along the writing-desk. One of the
+justices tried to command silence&mdash;till
+the Squire's commission to the
+usher should be read; but no sooner
+had he opened his mouth than the
+whole multitude burst forth as if the
+confusion of tongues had taken place
+for the first time; twenty spoke together,
+ten whistled, as many more
+sang psalms and obscene songs alternately;
+the bagpiper droned his
+worst; the fiddler uttered notes that
+made the hair of those who heard
+them stand on end; while the hurdygurdy
+man did his utmost to grind
+down both his companions, in which
+task he was ably assisted by the grinning
+and chattering of the honourable
+and four-footed gentleman on his
+left. Meantime stones, tiles, and
+rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments
+of slates, rulers, and desks, were circulating
+through the schoolhouse in
+all directions, in the most agreeable
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>One of the justices tried to speak,
+but even from the first it was all
+dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded
+through two sentences, when
+his oration was extinguished as suddenly
+and by the same means as the
+conflagration of the Royal Palace at
+Lilliput. After many attempts to
+obtain a hearing, it became obvious
+that all chance of doing so in the
+schoolhouse was at an end; and so
+the usher, the justices, and the rest,
+adjourned to the next ale-house, where
+they had the usher's commission
+quietly read over in presence of the
+landlord and the waiter, and handed
+him over the keys of the house before
+the same witnesses; of all which, and
+of their previous deforcement by a
+mob of rapscallions, they took care to
+have an instrument regularly drawn
+out by a notary-public. Thereafter
+they ordered a rump and dozen, being
+confident that as the day was bitterly
+cold, and the snow some feet deep
+upon the ground, the courage of the
+rioters would be cooled before they
+<a class="pagenum" name="page362" id="page362" title="page362"></a>had finished dinner; and so it was,
+for towards evening, the temperature
+having descended considerably beneath
+the freezing point, the mob, who had
+now exhausted their beer and gin, and
+who saw that there was no more fun
+to be expected for the day, began
+to disperse each man to his home, so
+that before nightfall the coast was
+clear; on which the justices, with the
+<i>posse comitatus</i>, escorted the usher to
+the schoolhouse, opened the door,
+put him formally in possession, and,
+wishing him much good of his new
+appointment, departed.</p>
+
+<p>But how did Jack, you will ask, bear
+this rebuff on the part of his own kin?
+Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he
+became furious, and seemed to have
+lost all natural feelings towards his
+own flesh and blood. He summoned
+such of his family as had given admission
+to the usher before him, called a
+sort of court-martial of the rest of his
+relations to enquire into their conduct;
+and, notwithstanding the
+accused protested that they had the highest
+respect and regard for Jack,
+were his humble servants to command
+in all ordinary matters, and only
+acted in this instance in obedience
+to the justices' warrant, (the which, if
+they had disobeyed, they were certain
+to have been at that moment cooling
+their heels in the stocks,) Jack, who
+was probably worked up to a kind of
+frenzy by his more violent of his
+inmates, kicked them out of the room,
+and sent a set of his myrmidons after
+them, with instructions to tear their
+coats off their backs, strip them of
+their wigs and small-clothes, and turn
+them into the street. Against this the
+unlucky wights appealed to the justices
+for protection, who, to be sure,
+sent down some policemen, who beat
+off the mob, and enabled them to make
+their doors fast against Jack and his
+emissaries. But beyond that they
+could give them little assistance; for
+though Jack and his abettors could
+not actually venture upon a trespass
+by forcing their way within doors,
+they contrived to render the very
+existence of all who were not of their
+way of thinking miserable. If it was
+an usher who, in spite of all their
+efforts to exclude him, had fairly got
+admittance into the schoolhouse, they
+set up a sentry-box at his very door,
+in which a rival usher held forth on
+Cocker and the alphabet; they drew
+off a few stray boys from the village
+school, and this detachment, recruited
+and reinforced by all the idlers of
+the neighbourhood, to whom mischief
+was sport, was studiously instructed
+to keep up a perpetual whistling,
+hooting, howling, hissing, and
+imitations of the crowing of a cock, so
+as to render it impossible for the usher
+and boys within the school to hear or
+profit by one word that was said. If
+the scholars within were told to say
+A, the blackguards without were bellowing
+B; or if the usher asked how
+many three times three made, the
+answer from the outside would be
+&quot;ten,&quot; or else that &quot;it depended upon
+circumstances.&quot; Every week some
+ribald and libellous paragraph would
+appear in the county newspaper, headed
+&quot;Advertisement,&quot; in such terms
+as the following:&mdash;&quot;We have just
+learned from the best authority, that
+the usher of a school not a hundred
+miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately
+been detected in various acts of forgery,
+petty larceny, sedition, high
+treason, burglary, &amp;c. &amp;c. If this
+report be not officially contradicted
+by the said usher within a fortnight,
+by advertisement, duly inserted and
+paid for in this newspaper, we shall
+hold the same to be true.&quot; Or
+sometimes more mysteriously thus:&mdash;&quot;Delicacy
+forbids us to allude to
+the shocking reports which are current
+respecting the usher of Mullaglass.
+Christian charity would lead
+us to hope they were unfounded, but
+Christian verity compels us to state
+that we believe every word of them.&quot;
+And though Jack and his editor sometimes
+overshot their mark, and got
+soused in damages at the instance of
+those whom they had libelled, yet
+Jack, who found that it answered his
+ends, persevered, and so kept the
+whole neighbourhood in hot water.</p>
+
+<p>You would not believe me were I
+to tell you of half the tyrannical and
+preposterous pranks which he performed
+about this period; but some of
+them I can't help noticing. He had
+picked up some subscriptions, for
+instance, from charitable folks in the
+neighbourhood, to build a school upon
+a remote corner of North Farm, where
+not a single boy had learned his alphabet
+within the memory of man; and
+what, think ye, does he do with the
+money, but insists on clapping down
+the new school exactly opposite the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page363" id="page363" title="page363"></a>old school in the village, merely to
+spite the poor usher, against whom he
+had taken a dislike&mdash;though there was
+no more need to build a school there
+than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle.
+Again, having ascertained
+that one of his servants had been seen
+shaking hands with some of Jack's
+family with whom he had quarrelled
+as above mentioned, he refused to give
+him a character, though the poor fellow
+was only thinking of taking service
+somewhere in the plantations.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts,
+however, it sometimes happened that
+when an usher was appointed he could
+not get up a sufficient cabal against
+him, and that even the schoolboys,
+knowing something of the man before,
+had no objection to him. In such
+cases Jack resorted to various schemes
+in order to cast the candidate upon his
+examinations. Sometimes he would
+shut him up in a small closet, telling him
+he must answer a hundred and fifty
+questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry,
+within as many minutes, and
+that he would be allowed the assistance
+of Johnson's Dictionary, and the <i>Gradus
+ad Parnassum</i>, for the purpose. At
+other tines he would ask the candidate,
+with a bland smile, what was his
+opinion of things in general, and of
+the dispute between him (Jack) and
+the Squire in particular; and if that
+question was not answered to his satisfaction,
+he remitted him to his studies.
+When no objection could be made to
+the man's parts, Jack would say that
+he had scruples of conscience, because
+he doubted whether his commission
+had been fairly come by, or whether
+he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound
+note to obtain it. At last
+he did not even take the trouble of
+going through this farce, but would
+at once, if he disliked the look of the
+man's face, tell him he was busy at
+the moment;&mdash;that he might lay the
+Squire's letter on the table, and call
+again that day six months for an answer.
+He no longer pretended, in fact, to any
+fairness or justice in his dealings;
+for though those who sided with him
+might be guilty of all the offences in
+the calendar, Jack continued to wink
+so hard, and shut his ears so close, as
+not to see or hear of them; while as
+to the unhappy wights who differed
+from him, he had the eyes of Argus
+and the ear of Dionysius, and the tender
+mercies of a Spanish inquisitor,
+discovering <i>scandalum magnatum</i> and
+high treason in ballads which they had
+written twenty years before, and in
+which Jack, though he received a presentation
+copy at the time, had never
+pretended, up to that moment, to detect
+the least harm.</p>
+
+<p>The last of these freaks which I
+shall here mention took place on this
+wise. Jack had never been accustomed
+to invite any one to his assemblies
+but the ushers who had been appointed
+by the Squire, and it was always
+understood that they alone had a
+vote in all vestry matters. But when
+John quarrelled with his family, as above
+mentioned, and a large part of the
+oldest and most respectable of his relatives
+drew off from him, it occurred
+to Jack that he could bring in a set
+of new auxiliaries, upon whose vote
+he could count in all his family squabbles,
+or his deputes, with Squire Bull;
+and the following was the device he
+fell upon for that end.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there upon North Farm,
+where the village schools were crowded,
+little temporary schoolhouses had
+been run up, where one or two of
+the monitors were accustomed to
+teach such of the children as could
+not be accommodated in the larger
+school. But these assistants had always
+been a little looked down upon,
+and had never been allowed a seat at
+Jack's board. Now, however, he began
+to change his tone towards them,
+and to court and flatter them on all
+occasions. One fine morning he suddenly
+made his appearance on the village
+green, followed by some of his
+hangers on, bearing a theodolite,
+chains, measuring rods, sextants, compasses,
+and other instruments of land-surveying.
+Jack set up his theodolite,
+took his observations, began noting
+measurements, and laying down the
+bases of triangles in all directions, then,
+having summed up his calculations
+with much gravity, gave directions to
+those about him to line off with stakes
+and ropes the space which he pointed
+out to them, and which in fact enclosed
+nearly half the village. In the course
+of these operations, the usher, who had
+witnessed these mathematical proceedings
+of Jack from the window, but could
+not comprehend what the man would
+be at, sallied forth, and accosting
+Jack, asked him what he meant by
+these strange lines of circumvallation.
+&quot;Why,&quot; answered Jack, &quot;I have
+<a class="pagenum" name="page364" id="page364" title="page364"></a>been thinking for some time past of
+relieving you of part of your heavy
+duties, and dividing the parish-school
+between you and your assistant; so in
+future you will confine yourself to the
+space outside the ropes, and leave all
+within the inclosure to him.&quot; It was
+in vain that the usher protested he
+was quite equal to the duty; that the
+boys liked him, and disliked his assistant;
+that if the village was thus
+divided, the assistant would be put
+upon a level with him, and have a
+vote in the vestry, to which he had
+no more right than to a seat in the
+House of Commons. Jack was not
+to be moved from his purpose, but
+gave orders to have a similar apportionment
+made in most of the neighbouring
+villages, and then inviting the
+assistants to a party at his house, he
+had them sworn in as vestrymen,
+telling them, that in future they
+had the same right to a seat at his
+board as the best of John's ushers
+had. Here again, however, he found
+he had run his head against a wall,
+and that he was not the mighty personage
+he took himself for; for, on a
+complaint to the justices of the peace,
+a dozen special constables were sent
+down, who tore up the posts, removed
+the ropes, and demolished all Jack's
+inclosures in a trice.</p>
+
+<p>These frequent defeats rendered
+Jack nearly frantic. He now began
+to quarrel even with his best friends,
+not a few of whom, though they had
+gone with him a certain length, now
+left his house, and told him plainly
+they would never set foot in it again.
+He burst forth into loud invectives
+against Martin, who had always been
+a good friend to his penny subscriptions,
+and more than once had come
+to his assistance when Jack was hard
+pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster,
+between whom and Jack
+there had long been a bloody feud.
+Jack now denounced Martin in set
+terms; accused him of being in the
+pay of Peter, with whom he said he had
+been holding secret conferences of late
+at the Cross-Keys; and of setting the
+Squire's mind against him (Jack)&mdash;whereas
+poor Martin, till provoked by
+Jack's abuse to defend himself, had
+never said an unkind word against
+him. Finding, however, that, with
+all his efforts, he did not make much
+way with the men, Jack directed his
+battery chiefly against the women,
+who were easily caught by his sanctimonious
+air, and knowing nothing
+earthly of the subject, took for gospel
+all that Jack chose to tell them.
+He held love-feasts in his house up
+to a late hour, at which he generally
+harangued on the subject of the persecutions
+which he endured. He vowed
+the justices were all in a conspiracy
+against him; that they were
+constantly intruding into his grounds,
+notwithstanding his warnings that
+spring-guns were set in the premises;
+that on one occasion a tall fellow of a
+sheriff's officer had made his way into his
+house and served him with a writ of <i>fieri
+facias</i> even in the midst of one of his assemblies,
+a disgrace he never could get
+over; that he could not walk ten yards
+in any direction, or saunter for an instant
+at the corner of a street, without
+being ordered by a policeman to move
+on; in short, that he lived in perpetual
+terror and anxiety&mdash;and all this because
+he had done his best to save
+them and their children from the awful
+scourge of deboshed and despotical
+ushers. At the conclusion of these
+meetings he invariably handed round
+his hat, into which the silly women dropped
+a good many shillings, which Jack
+assured them would be applied for the
+public benefit, meaning thereby his
+own private advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, however, with all his craze,
+was too knowing not to see that the
+women, beyond advancing him a few
+shillings at a time, would do little
+for his cause so far as any terms with
+Squire Bull was concerned; so, with
+the view of making a last attack upon
+the Squire, and driving him into terms,
+he began to look about for assistance
+among those with whom he had previously
+been at loggerheads. It cost him
+some qualms before he could so far abase
+his stomach as to do so; but at last he
+ventured to address a long and pitiful
+letter to Hugh, in which he set forth
+all his disputes with John, and dwelt
+much on his scruples of conscience;
+begged him to forget old quarrels, and
+put down his name to a Round Robin,
+which he was about to address to the
+Squire in his own behalf. To this
+epistle Hugh answered as follows:&mdash;&quot;Dearly
+beloved,&mdash;my bowels are
+grieved for your condition, but I see
+only one cure for your scruples of conscience.
+Strip off the Squire's livery,
+and give up your place, as I did, and
+your peace of mind will be restored
+<a class="pagenum" name="page365" id="page365" title="page365"></a>to you. In the mean time, I do not
+see very well why I should help you
+to pocket the Squire's wages, and do
+nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit
+of meekness and forgiveness&mdash;HUGH.&quot;
+After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily
+believe, saw there was little hope of
+assistance from that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>As a last resource, he called a
+general meeting of his friends, at which
+it was resolved to present the proposed
+Round Robin to John, signed
+by as many names as they could muster;
+in which Jack, who seemed to be
+of opinion that the more they asked
+the greater was their chance of getting
+something at least, set forth the articles
+he wanted, and without which,
+he told John, he could no longer remain
+in his house; but that he and
+his relatives and friends would forthwith,
+if this petition was rejected,
+walk out, to the infinite scandal of the
+neighbourhood, leaving the Squire
+without a teacher or a writing-master
+within fifty miles to supply their place.
+They demanded that the Squire should
+give up the nomination of the ushers
+entirely, though in whose favour they
+did not explain; and that Jack was in
+future to be a law unto himself, and
+to be supreme in all matters of education,
+with power to himself to define
+in what such matters consisted. On
+these requests being conceded, they
+stated that they would continue to
+give their countenance to the Squire
+as in times past; otherwise the whole
+party must quit possession incontinently.
+Jack prevailed on a good
+many to sign this document&mdash;though
+some did not like the idea of walking
+out, demurred, and added after the
+word <i>incontinently</i>, &quot;<i>i.e.</i> when
+convenient,&quot;&mdash;and thus signed, they put the
+Round Robin under a twopenny
+cover, and dispatched it to &quot;John
+Bull, Esquire&quot;&mdash;with haste.</p>
+
+<p>If they really thought the Squire
+was to be bullied into these terms by
+this last sally, they found themselves
+consumedly mistaken; for after a time
+down came a long and perfectly civil
+letter from the Squire's secretary, telling
+them their demands were totally
+out of the question, and that the
+Squire would see them at the antipodes
+sooner than comply with them.</p>
+
+<p>Did Jack then, you will ask, walk
+out as he had threatened, when he got
+the Squire's answer? Not he. He
+now gave notice that he intended to
+apply for an Act of Parliament on the
+subject: and that, in the meantime,
+the matter might stand over. Meantime,
+and in case matters should come
+to the worst, he is busily engaged
+begging all over the country, for cash
+to erect a new wooden tenement for
+him, in the event of his having to leave
+his old one of stone and lime. Some
+say even that he has been seen laying
+down several pounds of gunpowder
+in the cellar of his present house, and
+has been heard to boast of his intention
+to blow up his successor when
+he takes possession; but for my
+own part, and seeing how he has
+shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is
+no nearer removing than he was a
+year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially
+to several people, that even
+if his new house were all ready for
+him, he could not, with his asthmatic
+tendency, think of entering it for a
+twelvemonth or so, till the lath and
+plaster should be properly seasoned.
+Of all this, however, we shall hear
+more anon.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s7" id="bw329s7"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page366" id="page366" title="page366"></a>
+<h2>PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY A COCKNEY.</h3>
+
+<p>When any one thinks of French
+literature, there immediately rises before
+him a horrid phantasmagoria of
+repulsive objects&mdash;murders, incests,
+parricides, and every imaginable shape
+of crime that horror e'er conceived or
+fancy feigned. He sees the whole
+efforts of a press, brimful of power
+and talent, directed against every
+thing that has hitherto been thought
+necessary to the safety of society,
+or the happiness of domestic life&mdash;marriage
+deliberately written down,
+and proved to be the cause of all the
+miseries of the social state: and strange
+to say, in the crusade against matrimony,
+the sharpest swords and strongest
+lances are wielded by women.
+Those women are received into society&mdash;men's
+wives and daughters associate
+with them&mdash;and their books are
+noticed in the public journals without
+any allusions to the Association for the
+prevention of vice, but rather with the
+praises which, in other times and
+countries, would have been bestowed
+on works of genius and virtue. The
+taste of the English public has certainly
+deteriorated within the last few
+years; and popularity, the surest index
+of the public's likings, though not
+of the writer's deservings, has attended
+works of which the great staple
+has been crime and blackguardism. A
+certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy
+energy, has enabled the writer
+to throw an interest round pickpockets
+and murderers; and if this interest
+were legitimately produced, by the
+exhibition of human passions modified
+by the circumstances of the actor&mdash;if
+it arose from the development of one
+real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering
+man's heart, we could only wonder
+at the author's choice of such a
+subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge
+that he had widened our
+sphere of knowledge&mdash;and made us
+feel, as we all do, without taking the
+same credit for it to ourselves that
+the old blockhead in France does, that
+being human, we have sympathies with
+all, even the lowest and wickedest of
+our kind. But the interest those works
+excite arises from no such legitimate
+source&mdash;not from the development of
+our common nature, but from the creation
+of a new one&mdash;from startling
+contrasts, not of two characters but of
+one&mdash;tenderness, generosity in one
+page; fierceness and murder in the
+next. But though our English <i>tastes</i>
+are so far deteriorated as to tolerate,
+or even to admire, the records
+of cruelty and sin now proceeding
+every day from the press&mdash;our English
+<i>morals</i> would recoil with horror
+from the deliberate wickedness
+which forms the great attraction of
+the French modern school of romance.
+The very subjects chosen for their
+novels, by the most popular of their
+female writers, shows a state of feeling
+in the authors more dreadful to
+contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones
+descriptions of
+our chroniclers of Newgate. A married
+woman, the heroine&mdash;high in
+rank, splendid in intellect, radiant
+in beauty&mdash;has for the hero a villain
+escaped from the hulks. There is no
+record of his crimes&mdash;we are not called
+upon to follow him in his depredations,
+or see him cut throats in the
+scientific fashion of some of our indigenous
+rascals. He is the philosopher,&mdash;the
+instructor&mdash;the guide. The object
+of <i>his</i> introduction is to show the
+iniquity of human laws&mdash;the object
+of <i>her</i> introduction is to show the absurdity
+of the institution of marriage.
+This would never be tolerated in England.
+Again, a married woman is
+presented to us&mdash;for the sympathy
+which with us attends a young couple
+to the church-door, only begins in
+France after they have left it: as a
+child she has been betrothed to a person
+of her own rank&mdash;at five or six incurable
+idiocy takes possession of her
+proposed husband&mdash;but when she is
+eighteen the marriage takes place&mdash;the
+husband is a mere child still; for
+his intellect has continued stationary
+though his body has reached maturity&mdash;a
+more revolting picture was never
+presented than that of the condition of
+the idiot's wife&mdash;her horror of her husband&mdash;and
+of course her passion for
+another. The most interesting scenes
+between the lovers are constantly interrupted
+by the hideous representative of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page367" id="page367" title="page367"></a>matrimony, the grinning husband, who
+rears his slavering countenance from
+behind the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate
+wife with a sacred awe for
+the holy obligations of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Again, a dandy of fifty is presented
+to us, whose affection for his ward has
+waited, of course, till she is wedded to
+another, to ripen into love. He still
+continues her protector against the
+advances of others; for jealousy is a
+good point of character in every one
+but the husband, and there it is only
+ridiculous. The husband in this case
+is another admirable specimen of the
+results of wedlock for life&mdash;he is a
+chattering, shallow pretender&mdash;a political
+economist, prodigiously dull
+and infinitely conceited&mdash;an exaggerated
+type of the Hume-Bowring statesman&mdash;and,
+as is naturally to be expected,
+our sympathies are awakened
+for the wretched wife, and we rejoice
+to see that her beauty and talents, her
+fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated
+by a dashing young fellow, who
+outwits our original friend the dandy
+of fifty and the philosophical deput&eacute;;
+the whole leaving a pleasing impression
+on the reader's mind from the conviction
+that the heroine is no longer neglected.</p>
+
+<p>From the similarity of these stories&mdash;and
+they are only taken at random
+from a great number&mdash;it will be seen
+that the spirit of almost all of them is
+the same. But when we go lower in
+the scale, and leave the class of philosophic
+novels, we find their tales of
+life and manners still more absurd
+in their total untrueness than the
+others were hateful in their design.
+There is a novel just now appearing
+in one of the most widely-circulated
+of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely
+overdone, that if it had been meant
+for a caricature of the worst parts of
+our own hulk-and-gallows authors, it
+would have been very much admired;
+but meant to be serious, powerful,
+harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is
+a most curious exhibition of a nation's
+taste and a writer's audacity. The
+<i>Mysteries of Paris</i>, by Eugene Sue,
+has been dragging its slow length
+along for a long time, and gives no
+sign of getting nearer its denouement
+than when it began. A sovereign
+prince is the hero&mdash;his own daughter,
+whom he has disowned, the heroine;
+and the tale commences by his fighting
+a man on the street, and taking a
+fancy to his unknown child, who is
+the inhabitant of one of the lowest
+dens in the St Giles' of Paris! The
+other <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i> are convicts,
+receivers of stolen goods, murderers,
+intriguers of all ranks&mdash;the
+aforesaid prince, sometimes in the disguise
+of a workman, sometimes of a
+pickpocket, acting the part of a providence
+among them, rewarding the
+good and punishing the guilty. The
+English personages are the Countess
+Sarah McGregor&mdash;the lawful wife of
+the prince&mdash;her brother Tom, and Sir
+Walter Murph, Esquire. These are all
+jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and
+flurried&mdash;first in flash kens, where the
+language is slang; then in country
+farms, and then in halls and palaces&mdash;and
+so intermixed and confused, that
+the clearest head gets puzzled with
+the entanglements of the story; and
+confusion gets worse confounded as
+the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue
+will manage ever to come to a close is
+an enigma to us; and we shall wait
+with some impatience to see how he
+will distribute his poetic justice, when
+he can't get his puppets to move another
+step. Horror seems the great
+ingredient in the present literary fare
+of France, and in the <i>Myst&egrave;res de
+Paris</i> the most confirmed glutton of
+such delicacies may sup full of them.
+In the midst of such depraved and
+revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of
+satisfaction, though not of the loftiest
+kind, to turn to the coarse fun and
+ludicrous descriptions of Paul de Kock.
+And, after all, our friend Paul has not
+many more sins than coarseness and
+buffoonery to answer for. As to his
+attempting, of set purpose, to corrupt
+people's morals, it never entered into
+his head. He does not know what
+morals are; they never form any part
+of his idea of manners or character.
+If a good man comes in his way, he
+looks at him with a strange kind of
+unacquaintance that almost rises into
+respect; but he is certainly more affectionate,
+and on far better terms,
+with men about town&mdash;amative hairdressers,
+flirting grisettes, and the
+whole genus, male and female, of the
+epiciers. It would no doubt be an
+improvement if the facetious Paul
+could believe in the existence of an
+honest woman; but such women as
+come in his way he describes to the
+life. A ball in a dancing-master's
+private room up six pairs of stairs, a
+pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner
+at a restaurateur's, or a family consultation
+<a class="pagenum" name="page368" id="page368" title="page368"></a>on a proposal of marriage,
+are far more in Paul's way than tales
+of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity.
+One is only sorry, in the midst
+of so much gaiety and good-humour,
+to stumble on some scene or sentiment
+that gives on the inclination to
+throw the book in the fire, or start,
+like C&aelig;sar, on the top of the diligence
+to pull the author's ears. But the
+next page sets all right again; and
+you go on laughing at the disasters of
+my neighbour Raymond, or admiring
+the graces or Chesterfieldian politeness
+of M. Bellequeue. French nature
+seems essentially different from
+all the other natures hitherto known;
+and yet, though so new, there never
+rises any doubt that it is <i>a</i> nature, a
+reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and
+not a sham. The personages presented
+to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely,
+in the strict sense of the word, be
+called human beings; but they are
+French beings of real flesh and blood,
+speaking and thinking French in the
+most decided possible manner, and at
+intervals possessed of feelings which
+make us inclined to include them in
+the great genus <i>homo</i>, though with
+so many inseparable accidents, that it
+is impossible for a moment to shut
+one's eyes to the species to which
+they belong. But such as they are in
+their shops, and back-parlours, and
+ball-rooms, and <i>f&ecirc;tes champ&ecirc;tres</i>, there
+they are in Paul de Kock&mdash;nothing
+extenuated, little set down in malice&mdash;vain,
+empty, frivolous, good-tempered,
+gallant, lively, and absurd. Let us
+go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate
+the anniversary of the marriage
+of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the
+day of St Eustache.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At a little distance from the ball,
+towards the middle of the wood, a numerous
+party is seated on the grass, or
+rather on the sand; napkins are spread
+on the ground, and covered with plates
+and cold meat and fruits. The bottles
+are placed in the cool shade, the glasses
+are filled and emptied rapidly; good appetites
+and open air make every thing
+appear excellent. They make plates
+out of paper, and toss pieces of pat&eacute;
+and sausage to each other. They eat,
+they drink, they sing, they laugh and
+play tricks. It seems a struggle who
+shall be funniest. It is well known
+that all things are allowable in the
+country; and the cits now assembled
+in the wood of Romainville seem fully
+persuaded of the fact. A jolly old
+governor of about fifty tries to carve
+a turkey, and can't succeed. A little
+woman, very red, very fat, and very
+round, hastens to seize a limb of the
+bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly
+old governor at the other&mdash;the leg separates
+at last, and the lady goes
+sprawling on the grass, while the
+gentleman topples over in the opposite
+direction with the remainder of the
+animal in his hand. The shouts of
+laughter redouble, and M. Moutonnet&mdash;such
+is the name of the jolly old
+governor&mdash;resumes his place, declaring
+that he will never try to carve
+any thing again. 'I knew you would
+never be able to manage it,' said a
+large woman bluntly, in a tone that
+agreed exactly with her starched and
+crabbed features. She was sitting
+opposite the stout gentleman, and had
+seen with indignation the alacrity with
+which the little lady had flown to M.
+Moutonnet's assistance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'In the twenty years we have been
+married,' she continued, 'have you
+ever carved any thing at home, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'No, my dear, that's very true;'
+replied the stout gentleman in a submissive
+voice, and trying to smile his
+better half into good-humour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'You don't know how to help a
+dish of spinach, and yet you attempt
+a dish like that!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'My dear&mdash;in the country, you
+know&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'In the country, sir, as in the town,
+people shouldn't try things they can't
+perform.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'You know, Madame Moutonnet,
+that generally I never attempt any
+thing&mdash;but to day'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'To day you should have done
+as you do on other days,' retorted the
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Ah, but, my love, you forget that
+this is Saint Eustache&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!'
+is repeated in chorus by the whole
+company, and the glasses are filled
+and jingled as before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'To the health of Eustache; Eustache
+for ever!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,'
+replied M. Moutonnet graciously smiling&mdash;'and
+yours, my angel.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses
+himself. She tried to assume
+an amiable look, and condescends to
+approach her glass to that of M. Eustache
+Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet
+is a rich laceman of the Rue
+St Martin; a man highly respected
+<a class="pagenum" name="page369" id="page369" title="page369"></a>in trade; no bill of his was ever protested,
+nor any engagement failed in.
+For the thirty years he has kept shop
+he has been steadily at work from
+eight in the morning till eight at night.
+His department is to take care of the
+day-book and ledger; Madame Moutonnet
+manages the correspondence
+and makes the bargains. The business
+of the shop and the accounts are
+confided to an old clerk and Mademoiselle
+Eugenie Moutonnet, with
+whom we shall presently become better
+acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps
+already have perceived, is not
+commander-in-chief at hone. His
+wife directs, rules, and governs all
+things. When she is in good-humour&mdash;a
+somewhat extraordinary occurrence&mdash;she
+allows her husband to go
+and take his little cup of coffee, provided
+he goes for that purpose to
+the coffee-house at the corner of
+the Rue Mauconseil&mdash;for it is famous
+for its liberal allowance of sugar, and
+M. Moutonnet always brings home
+three lumps of it to his wife. On
+Sundays they dine a little earlier, to
+have time for a promenade to the
+Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions
+into the country are very
+rare, and only on extraordinary occasions,
+such as the f&ecirc;te-day of M. and
+Madame Moutonnet. That regular
+life does not hinder the stout lace-merchant
+from being the happiest of
+men&mdash;so true is it that what is one
+man's poison is another man's meat.
+M. Moutonnet was born with simple
+tastes&mdash;she required to be led and
+managed like a child. Don't shrug
+your shoulders at this avowal, ye
+spirited gentlemen, so proud of your
+rights, so puffed up with your merits.
+You! who think yourselves always
+masters of your actions, you yield to
+your passions every day! they lead
+you, and sometimes lead you very ill.
+Well, M. Moutonnet has no fear of
+that&mdash;he has no passions&mdash;he knows
+nothing but his trade, and obedience
+to his spouse. He finds that a man
+can be very happy, though he does
+not know how to carve a turkey, and
+lets himself be governed by his wife.
+Madame Moutonnet is long past forty,
+but it is a settled affair that she is
+never to be more than thirty-six. She
+never was handsome, but she is large
+and tall, and her husband is persuaded
+she is superb. She is not a coquette,
+but she thinks herself superior
+to every body else in talents and beauty.
+She never cared a rush about her husband,
+but if he was untrue to her she
+would tear his eyes out. Madame
+Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively
+jealous of her rights. A daughter is
+the sole issue of the marriage of M.
+Eustache Moutonnet and Mademoiselle
+Barbe Desormeaux. She is now
+eighteen years old, and at eighteen
+the young ladies in Paris are generally
+pretty far advanced. But Eugenie
+has been educated severely&mdash;and although
+possessed of a good deal of
+spirit, is timid, docile, submissive,
+and never ventures on a single observation
+in presence of her parents.
+She has cleverness, grace, and sensibility,
+but she is ignorant of the advantages
+she has received from nature&mdash;her
+sentiments are as yet concentrated
+at the bottom of her heart.
+She is not coquettish&mdash;or rather she
+scarcely ventures to give way to the
+inclination so natural to women, which
+leads them to please and to be pretty.
+But Eugenie has no need of those
+little arts, so indispensable to others,
+or to have recourse to her mirror every
+hour. She is well made, and she is
+beautiful; her eyes are soft and expressive,
+her voice is tender and agreeable,
+her brow is shadowed by dark
+locks of hair, her mouth furnished with
+fine white teeth. In short, she has
+that nameless something about her,
+which charms at first sight, which is
+not always possessed by greater beauties
+and more regular features. We
+now know all the Moutonnet family;
+and since we have gone so far, let us
+make acquaintance with the rest of
+the party who have come to the wood
+of Romainville to celebrate the Saint
+Eustache.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The little woman who rushed so
+vigorously to the assistance of M.
+Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman
+of the name of Bernard, who
+is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M.
+Bernard plays the amiable and the
+fool at the same time. He laughs and
+quizzes, makes jokes, and even puns;
+he is the wit of the party. His wife has
+been rather good-looking, and wishes
+to be so still. She squeezes in her
+waist till she can hardly breathe, and
+takes an hour to fit her shoes on&mdash;for
+she is determined to have a small foot.
+Her face is a little too red; but her
+eyes are very lively, and she is constantly
+<a class="pagenum" name="page370" id="page370" title="page370"></a>trying to give them as mischievous
+an expression as she can.
+Madame Bernard has a great girl of
+fifteen, whom she dresses as if she
+were five, and treats occasionally to
+a new doll, by way of keeping her a
+child. By the side of Madame Bernard
+is seated a young man of eighteen,
+who is almost as timid as Eugenie,
+and blushes when he is spoken
+to, though he has stood behind a counter
+for six months. He is the son of
+a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife
+has undertaken to patronize him, and
+introduce him to good society.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A person of about forty years of
+age, with one of those silly countenances
+which there is no mistaking at
+the first glance, is seated beside Eugenie.
+M. Dupont&mdash;such is his name&mdash;is
+a rich grocer of the Rue aux
+Ours. He wears powder and a queue,
+because he fancies they are becoming,
+and his hairdresser has told him
+that they are very aristocratic. His
+coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured
+waistcoat, give him still more
+the appearance of a simpleton, and
+agree admirably with the astonished
+expression of his gooseberry eyes. He
+dangles two watch-chains, that hang
+down his nankeen trowsers, with great
+satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration
+at the wisdom of his own
+remarks. He thinks himself captivating
+and full of wit. He has the
+presumption of ignorance, propped up
+by money. Finally, he is a bachelor,
+which gives him great consideration
+in all the families where there are
+marriageable daughters. M. and
+Madame Gerard, perfumers in the
+Rue St Martin, are also of the party.
+The perfumer enacts the gallant gay
+Lothario, and in his own district has
+the reputation of a prodigious rake,
+though he is ugly, and ill-made, and
+squints. But he fancies he overcomes
+all these drawbacks by covering himself
+with odours and perfumes&mdash;accordingly,
+you smell him half an hour
+before he comes in sight. His wife
+is young and pretty. She married
+him at fifteen, and has a boy of nine,
+who looks more like her brother than
+her son. The little Gerard hollos
+and jumps about, breaks the glasses
+and bottles, and makes as much noise
+as all the rest of the company put together.
+'He's a little lion,' exclaims
+M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I
+was. You never could hear yourselves
+speak wherever I was, at his age.
+People were delighted with me. My
+son is my perfect image.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of
+forty-five, who takes every opportunity
+of declaring that she never intends
+to marry, and sighs every tine
+M. Dupont looks at her, is next to
+M. Moutonnet. The old clerk of the
+laceman&mdash;M. Bidois&mdash;who waits for
+Madame Moutonnet's permission before
+he opens his mouth, and fills his
+glass every time she is not looking&mdash;is
+placed at the side of Mademoiselle
+Cecile Gerard; who, though she swears
+every minute that she never will
+marry, and that she hates the men,
+is very ill pleased to have old M.
+Bidois for her neighbour, and hints
+pretty audibly that Madame Bernard
+monopolizes all the young beaux. A
+young man of about twenty, tall,
+well-made, with handsome features,
+whose intelligent expression announces
+that he is intended for higher
+things than perpetually to be measuring
+yards of calico, is seated at the
+right hand of Eugenie. That young
+man, whose name is Adolphe, is assistant
+in a fashionable warehouse
+where Madame Moutonnet deals; and
+as he always gives good measure, she
+has asked him to the f&ecirc;te of St Eustache.
+And now we are acquainted
+with all the party who are celebrating
+the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We are not going to follow Paul de
+Kock in the adventures of all the party
+so carefully described to us. Our
+object in translating the foregoing
+passage, was to enable our readers to
+see the manner of people who indulge
+in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville,
+desiring them to compare M.
+Moutonnet and <i>his</i> friends, with any
+laceman and <i>his</i> friends he may choose
+to fix upon in London. A laceman
+as well to do in the world as M. Moutonnet,
+a grocer as rich as M. Dupont,
+and even a perfumer as fashionable
+as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait
+dinner at Blackwall, or make up
+a party to the races at Epsom&mdash;and
+as to admitting such a humble servitor
+as M. Bidois to their society, or even
+the unfriended young mercer's assistant,
+M. Adolphe, they would as soon
+think of inviting one of the new police.
+Five miles from town our three friends
+would pass themselves off for lords,
+and blow-up the waiter for not making
+haste with their brandy and water, in
+<a class="pagenum" name="page371" id="page371" title="page371"></a>the most aristocratic manner imaginable.
+In France, or at least in Paul
+de Kock, there seems no straining after
+appearances. The laceman continues
+a laceman when he is miles
+away from the little back shop; and
+even the laceman's lady has no desire
+to be mistaken for the wife of a squire.
+Madame Moutonnet seems totally unconscious
+of the existence of any lady
+whatever, superior to herself in rank
+or station. The Red Book is to her
+a sealed volume. Her envies, hatreds,
+friendships, rivalries, and ambitions,
+are all limited to her own circle. The
+wife of a rich laceman, on the other
+hand, in England, most religiously
+despises the wives of almost all other
+tradesmen; she scarcely knows in
+what street the shop is situated, but
+from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead,
+looks down with supreme disdain
+on the toiling creatures who
+stand all day behind a counter. The
+husband, in the same way, manages
+to cast off every reminiscence of the
+shop, in the course of his three miles
+in the omnibus, and at six or seven
+o'clock you might fancy they were a
+duke and duchess, sitting in a gaudily
+furnished drawing-room, listening to
+two elegant young ladies torturing a
+piano, and another still more elegant
+young lady severely flogging a harp.
+The effect of this, so far as our English
+Paul de Kocks are concerned, is,
+that their linen-drapers, and lacemen,
+and rich perfumers, are represented
+assuming a character that does not
+belong to them, and aping people
+whom they falsely suppose to be their
+betters; whereas the genuine Paul
+paints the Parisian tradesmen without
+any affectation at all. Ours are made
+laughable by the common farcical attributes
+of all pretensions, great or
+small; while real unsophisticated
+shopkeeping (French) nature is the
+staple of Paul's character-sketches,
+and they are more valuable, and in
+the end more interesting, accordingly.
+Who cares for the exaggerated efforts
+of a Manchester warehouseman to be
+polished and gentlemanly? It is only
+acting after all, and gives us no insight
+into his real character, or the character
+of his class, any more than Mr
+Coates' anxiety to be Romeo enlightened
+us as to his disposition in other
+respects. The Manchester warehouseman,
+though he fails in his attempt
+at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable
+and pains-taking individual,
+and, with the single exception of that
+foible, offers nothing to the most careful
+observer to distinguish him from
+the stupid and respectable in any part
+of the world. And in this respect,
+any one starting as the chronicler of
+citizen life among us, would labour
+under a great disadvantage. Whether
+our people are phlegmatic, or stupid,
+or sensible&mdash;all three of which epithets
+are generally applicable to the same
+individual&mdash;or that they have no opportunities
+of showing their peculiarities
+from the domestic habits of the
+animal&mdash;it is certain that, however
+better they may be qualified for the
+business of life than their neighbours,
+they are far less fitted for the pages
+of a book. And the proof of it is this,
+that wherever any of our novelists has
+introduced a tradesman, he has either
+been an invention altogether, or a caricature.
+Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie
+never lived in the Saut Market in
+half such true flesh and blood as he
+does in <i>Rob Roy</i>. At all events, the
+inimitable Bailie is known to the universe
+at large by the additions made
+to his real character by the prodigal
+hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous
+contrasts in which he is placed
+with the caterans and reivers of the
+hills. In the city of Glasgow he was
+looked upon, and justly, as an honour
+to the gude town&mdash;consulted on all
+difficult matters, and famous for his
+knowledge of the world and his natural
+sagacity. Would this have been
+a fit subject for description? or is it
+just to think of the respectable Bailie
+in the ridiculous point of view in
+which he is presented to us in the
+Highlands? How would Sir Peter
+Laurie look if he had been taken long
+ago by Algerine pirates, and torn,
+with all his civic honours thick upon
+him, from the magisterial chair, and
+made hairdresser to the ladies of the
+harem&mdash;threatened with the bastinado
+for awkwardness in combing, as
+he now commits other unfortunate
+fellows to the treadmill for crimes
+scarcely more enormous? Paul de
+Kock derives none of his interest
+from odd juxtapositions. He knows
+nothing about caves and prisons and
+brigands&mdash;but he knows every corner
+of coffee-houses, and beer-shops, and
+ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms
+give him the command of another set
+of characters, totally unknown to the
+English world of fiction, because non-existent
+in England. With us, no
+<a class="pagenum" name="page372" id="page372" title="page372"></a>shop-boy or apprentice would take
+his sweetheart to a public hop at any
+of the licenced music-houses. No
+decent girl would go there, nor even
+any girl that wished to keep up the
+appearance of decency. No flirtations,
+to end in matrimony, take their
+rise between an embryo boot-maker
+and a barber's daughter, in the course
+of the <i>chaine Anglaise</i> beneath the
+trees of the Green Park, or even at
+the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have
+flinty hearts, and the above-mentioned
+barber would probably increase
+the beauty of his daughter's &quot;bonny
+black eye,&quot; by giving her another, if
+she talked of going to a ball, whether
+in a room or the open air. The Puritans
+have left their mark. Dancing
+is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual
+M.C. But let us follow the barber,
+or rather hairdresser&mdash;for the
+mere gleaner of beards is not intended
+by the name&mdash;into his own amusements.
+In Paul de Kock he goes to a
+coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
+and pockets the entire sugar; or
+to a ball, where he performs all the offices
+of a court chamberlain, and captivates
+all hearts by his graceful deportment.
+His wife, perhaps, goes
+with him, and flirts in a very business-like
+manner with a tobacconist;
+and his daughter is whirled about in
+a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the
+young confectioner, with as much
+elegance and decorum as if they were
+a young marquis and his bride in the
+dancing hall at Devonshire House.
+Our English friend goes to enjoy a
+pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a
+cigar, and gin and water, at the neighbouring
+inn. Or when he determines
+on having a night of real rational enjoyment,
+he goes to some tavern
+where singing is the order of the
+evening. A stout man in the chair
+knocks on the table, and being the
+landlord, makes disinterested enquiries
+if every gentleman has a bumper.
+He then calls on himself for a song,
+and states that he is to be accompanied
+on the piano by a distinguished
+performer; whereupon, a tall young
+man of a moribund expression of
+countenance, and with his hair closely
+pomatumed over his head, rises, and,
+after a low bow, seats himself at the
+instrument. The stout man sings,
+the young man plays, and thunders
+of applause, and various fresh orders
+for kidneys and strong ale, and welch
+rabbits and cold-without, reward
+their exertions. Drinking goes on
+for some time, and waiters keep flying
+about with dishes of all kinds, and the
+hairdresser becomes communicative
+to his next neighbour, a butcher from
+Whitechapel, and they exchange their
+sentiments about kidneys and music
+in general, and the kidneys and music
+now offered to them in particular. In
+a few minutes, a gentleman with a
+strange obliquity in his vision, seated
+in the middle of the coffee-room, takes
+off his hat, and after a thump on the
+table from the landlord's hammer,
+commences a song so intensely comic,
+that when it is over, the orders for
+supper and drink are almost unanimous.
+The house is now full, the
+theatres have discharged their hungry
+audiences, and a distinguished
+guinea-a-week performer seats himself
+in the very next box to the hairdresser.
+That worthy gentleman by
+this time is stuffed so full of kidneys,
+and has drank so many glasses of
+brandy and water, that he can scarcely
+understand the explanations of the
+Whitechapel butcher, who has a great
+turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat
+the dramatic performer to a tumbler
+of gin-twist. Another knock on the
+table produces a momentary silence,
+and a little man starts off with an extempore
+song, where the conviviality
+of the landlord, and the goodness of
+his suppers, are duly chronicled. The
+hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
+admiration, and even attempts to join
+in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go.
+He goes, and narrowly escapes making
+the acquaintance of Mr Jardine,
+from his extraordinary propensity to
+brush all the lamp-posts he encounters
+with the shoulder of his coat; and gets
+home, to the great comfort of his wife
+and daughter, who have gone cozily
+off to sleep, in the assurance that their
+distinguished relative is safely locked
+up in the police-office. The Frenchman,
+on the other hand, never gets
+into mischief from an overdose of <i>eau
+sucr&eacute;e</i>, though sometimes he certainly
+becomes very rombustious from a glass
+or two of <i>vin ordinaire</i>; and nothing
+astonishes us so much as the small
+quantities of small drink which have
+an effect on the brains of the steadiest
+of the French population. They get
+not altogether drunk, but decidedly
+very talkative, and often quarrelsome,
+on a miserable modicum of their indigenous
+small beer, to a degree which
+would not be excusable if it were
+<a class="pagenum" name="page373" id="page373" title="page373"></a>brandy. We constantly find whole
+parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious
+state of excitement after two
+rounds of a bottle&mdash;jostling the peasants,
+and talking more egregious
+nonsense than before. And when they
+quarrel, what a Babel of words, and
+what a quakerism of hands! Instead
+of a round or two between the parties,
+as it would be in our own pugnacious
+disagreements, they merely, when it
+comes to the worst, push each other
+from side to side, and shout lustily for
+the police; and squalling women, and
+chattering men, and ignorant country
+people, and elegant mercers' apprentices,
+and gay-mannered grocers, hustle,
+and scream, and swear, and lecture,
+and threaten, and bluster&mdash;but not a
+single blow! The guardian of the
+public peace appears, and the combatants
+evanish into thin air; and in a
+few minutes after this dreadful <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i>,
+the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and
+all goes &quot;gaily as a marriage-bell.&quot; We
+don't say, at the present moment, that
+one of these methods of conducting a
+quarrel is better than the other, (though
+we confess we are rather partial to a
+hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on the
+claret-cork)&mdash;all we mean to advance
+is, that with the materials to work
+upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful
+describer of real scenes, has a manifest
+advantage over the describer of English
+incidents of a parallel kind.</p>
+
+<p>The affectations of a French cit,
+when that nondescript animal condescends
+to be affected, are more varied
+and interesting than those of their
+brethren here. He has a taste for the
+fine arts&mdash;he talks about the opera&mdash;likes
+to know artists and authors&mdash;and,
+though living up five or six pairs of
+stairs in a narrow lane, gives <i>soir&eacute;es</i>
+and <i>conversazion&eacute;s</i>. More ludicrous all
+this, and decidedly less disgusting,
+than the assumptions of our man-milliners
+and fishmongers. There is
+short sketch by Paul de Kock, called
+a <i>Soir&eacute;e Bourgeoise</i>, which we translate
+entire, as an illustration of this
+curious phase of French character;
+and we shall take an early opportunity
+of bringing before our readers
+the essays of the daily feuilletonists of
+the Parisian press, which give a clearer
+insight into the peculiarities of French
+domestic literature than can be acquired
+in any other quarter.</p>
+
+<h3>A CIT'S SOIREE.</h3>
+
+<p>Lights were observed some time
+ago, in the four windows of an apartment
+on the second floor of a house in
+the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite
+so brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers,
+but still it announced something.
+These four windows, with lights glancing
+in them all, had an air of rejoicing,
+and the industrious inhabitants of
+the Rue Grenetat, who don't generally
+go to much expense for illumination,
+even in their shops, looked at the four
+windows which eclipsed the street
+lamps in their brilliancy, and said,
+&quot;There's certainly something very
+extraordinary going on this evening
+at M. Lupot's!&quot; M. Lupot is an
+honest tradesman, who has retired
+from business some time. After having
+sold stationary for thirty years,
+without ever borrowing of a neighbour,
+or failing in a payment, M.
+Lupot, having scraped together an
+income of three hundred and twenty
+pounds, disposed of his stock in trade,
+and closed his ledger, to devote himself
+entirely to the pleasures of domestic
+life with his excellent spouse,
+Madam Felicit&eacute; Lupot&mdash;a woman of
+an amazingly apathetic turn of mind,
+who did admirably well in the shop
+as long as she had only to give change
+for half-crowns, but whose abilities
+extended no further. But this had not
+prevented her from making a very
+good wife to her husband, (which
+proves that much talent is not required
+for that purpose,) and presenting
+him with a daughter and a son.</p>
+
+<p>The daughter was the eldest, and
+had attained her seventeenth year;
+and M. Lupot, who spared nothing
+on her education, did not despair of
+finding a husband for her with a soul
+above sticks of sealing-wax and wafers&mdash;more
+especially as it was evident
+she had no turn for trade, and believed
+she had a decided genius for the
+fine arts&mdash;for she had painted her father
+as a shepherd with his crook,
+when she was only twelve, and had
+learned a year after to play &quot;Je suis
+Lindore&quot; by ear on the piano. M.
+Lupot was proud of his daughter,
+who was thus a painter and a musician;
+who was a foot taller than her
+papa; who held herself as upright as
+a Prussian grenadier; who made a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page374" id="page374" title="page374"></a>curtsy like Taglioni, who had a Roman
+nose three times the size of
+other people's, a mouth to match, and
+eyes so arch and playful, that it was
+difficult to discover them. The boy
+was only seven; he was allowed to do
+whatever he chose&mdash;he was so very
+young; and Monsieur Ascanius
+availed himself of the permission, and
+was in mischief from morning to
+night. His father was too fond of
+him to scold him, and his mother
+wouldn't take the trouble to get into
+a passion.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, one morning M. Lupot
+soliloquized&mdash;&quot;I have a good fortune,
+a charming family, and a wife who has
+never been in a rage; but all this does
+not lead to a man's being invited,
+courted, and made much of in the
+world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove
+and red sealing-wax, I have seen
+nobody but a few friends&mdash;retired
+tradesmen like myself&mdash;who drop in
+to take a hand at <i>vingt-et-un</i>, or loto;
+but I wish more than that&mdash;my daughter
+must not live in so narrow a circle;
+my daughter has a decided turn for the
+arts; I ought to have artists to my
+house. I will give soir&eacute;es, tea-parties&mdash;yes,
+with punch at parting, if it be
+necessary. We shall play <i>bouillote</i>
+and <i>&eacute;carte</i>, for my daughter can't endure
+loto. Indeed, I wish to set people
+talking about my re-unions, and to
+find a husband for Celanire worthy of
+her.&quot; M. Lupot was seated near his
+wife, who was seated on an elastic
+sofa, and was caressing a cat on her
+knee. He said to her&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Felicit&eacute;, I intend to give
+soir&eacute;es&mdash;to receive lots of company.
+We live in too confined a sphere for
+our daughter, who was born for the
+arts&mdash;and for Ascanius, who, it strikes
+me, will make some noise in the
+world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lupot continued to caress
+the cat, and replied, &quot;Well, what have
+I to do with that? Do I hinder you
+from receiving company? If it doesn't
+cause me any trouble&mdash;for I must tell
+you first of all, you musn't count on me
+to help you&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will have nothing at all to
+do, my dear Felicit&eacute;, but the honours
+of the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must be getting up every minute&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do it so gracefully,&quot; replied
+the husband&mdash;&quot;I will give all the orders,
+and Celanire will second me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle was enchanted with
+the intention of her sire, and threw her
+arms round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes! papa,&quot; she said, &quot;invite
+as many as you can, I will learn to
+play some country-dances that we
+may have a ball, and finish my head
+of Belisarius&mdash;you must get it framed
+for the occasion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the little Ascanius whooped
+and hollo'd in the middle of the room.
+&quot;I shall have tea and punch and
+cakes. I'll eat every thing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After this conversation M. Lupot
+had set to work. He went to his
+friends and his friends' friends&mdash;to
+people he hardly knew, and invited
+them to his party, begging them to
+bring any body with them they liked.
+M. Lupot had formerly sold rose-coloured
+paper to a musician, and drawing
+pencils to an artist. He went to
+his ancient customers, and pressed them
+to come and to bring their professional
+friends with them. In short, M.
+Lupot was so prodigiously active that
+in four days he had run through nearly
+the whole of Paris, caught an immense
+cold, and spent seven shillings
+in cab hire. Giving an entertainment
+has its woes as well as its pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>The grand day, or rather the
+grand evening, at last arrived. All
+the lamps were lighted, and they had
+even borrowed some from their neighbours;
+for Celanire had discovered
+that their own three lamps did not
+give light enough both for the public-room
+and the supper-room&mdash;(which
+on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.)
+It was the first time that
+M. Lupot had borrowed any thing&mdash;but
+also it was the first time that M.
+Lupot gave a soir&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>From the dawn of day M. Lupot
+was busy in preparation: He had
+ordered in cakes and refreshments;
+bought sundry packs of cards, brushed
+the tables, and tucked up the curtains.
+Madame Lupot had sat all the time
+quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from
+time to time, &quot;I'm afraid 'twill be a
+troublesome business all this receiving
+company.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Celanire had finished her Belisarius,
+who was an exact likeness of
+Blue Beard, and whom they had honoured
+with a Gothic frame, and
+placed in a conspicuous part of the
+room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed
+with amazing care. She had a
+new gown, her hair plaited <i>&agrave; la Clotilde</i>.
+All this must make a great
+<a class="pagenum" name="page375" id="page375" title="page375"></a>sensation. Ascanius was rigged out
+in his best; but this did not hinder
+him from kicking up a dust in the
+room, from getting up on the furniture,
+handling the cards, and taking
+them to make houses; from opening
+the cupboards, and laying his fingers
+on the cakes.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes M. Lupot's patience
+gave way, and he cried, &quot;Madame, I
+beg you'll make your son be quiet.&quot;
+But Madame Lupot answered without
+turning her head, &quot;Make him quiet
+yourself, M. Lupot&mdash;You know very
+well it's <i>your</i> business to manage him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was now eight o'clock, and nobody
+was yet arrived. Mademoiselle
+looked at her father, who looked at
+his wife, who looked at her cat. The
+father of the family muttered every
+now and then&mdash;&quot;Are we to have our
+grand soir&eacute;e all to ourselves?&quot; And
+he cast doleful looks on his lamps, his
+tables, and all his splendid preparations.
+Mademoiselle Celanire sighed
+and looked at her dress, and then
+looked in the mirror. Madame Lupot
+was as unmoved as ever, and said,
+&quot;Is this what we've turned every
+thing topsy-turvy for?&quot; As for little
+Ascanius, he jumped about the room,
+and shouted, &quot;If nobody comes, what
+lots of cakes we shall have!&quot; At last
+the bell rang. It is a family from the
+Rue St Denis, retired perfumers, who
+have only retained so much of their
+ancient profession, that they cover
+themselves all over with odours.
+When they enter the room, you feel
+as if a hundred scent-bottles were
+opened at once. There is such a smell
+of jasmine and vanille, that you have
+good luck if you get off without a
+headache. Other people drop in. M.
+Lupot does not know half his guests,
+for many of them are brought by
+others, and even these he scarcely
+knows the names of. But he is enchanted
+with every thing. A young
+fashionable is presented to him by
+some unknown third party, who says,
+&quot;This is one of our first pianists, who
+is good enough to give up a great concert
+this evening to come here.&quot; The
+next is a famous singer, a lion in musical
+parties, who is taken out every
+where, and who will give one of his
+latest compositions, though unfortunately
+labouring under a cold. This
+man won the first prize at the Conservatory,
+an unfledged Boildieu, who
+will be a great composer of operas&mdash;when
+he can get librettos to his music,
+and music to his librettos. The next
+is a painter. He has shown at the
+exhibition&mdash;he has had wonderful success.
+To be sure nobody bought his
+pictures, because he didn't wish to
+sell them to people that couldn't appreciate
+them. In short, M. Lupot
+sees nobody in his rooms that is not
+first-rate in some way or other. He
+is delighted with the thought&mdash;ravished,
+transported. He can't find words
+enough to express his satisfaction at
+having such geniuses in his house. For
+their sakes he neglects his old friends&mdash;he
+scarcely speaks to them. It seems
+the new-comers, people he has never
+seen before, are the only people worthy
+of his attentions. Madame Lupot is
+tired of getting up, curtsying, and
+sitting down again. But her daughter
+is radiant with joy; her husband goes
+from room to room, rubbing his hands,
+as if he had bought all Paris, and got
+it a bargain. And little Ascanius
+never comes out of the bed-room
+without his mouth full. But it is not
+enough to invite a large party; you
+must know how to amuse them; it is
+a thing which very few people have
+the art of, even those most accustomed
+to have soir&eacute;es. In some you
+get tired, and you are in great ceremony;
+you must restrict yourself to
+a conversation that is neither open,
+nor friendly, nor amusing. In others,
+you are pestered to death by the amphitryon,
+who is perhaps endowed
+with the bump of music, and won't
+leave the piano for fear some one else
+should take his place. There are
+others fond of cards, who only ask
+their friends that they may make up
+a table. Such individuals care for
+nothing but the game, and don't
+trouble themselves whether the rest
+of their guests are amused or not.
+Ah! there are few homes that know
+how to receive their company, or
+make every body pleased. It requires
+a tact, a cleverness, an absence of
+self, which must surely be very unusual
+since we see so few specimens
+of them in the soir&eacute;es we attend.</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot went to and fro&mdash;from
+the reception-room to the bed-chamber,
+and back again&mdash;he smiled, he
+bowed, and rubbed his hands. But
+the new-comers, who had not come to
+his house to see him smile and rub his
+hands, began to say, in very audible
+whispers, &quot;Ah, well, do people pass
+the whole night here looking at each
+other? Very delightful&mdash;very!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page376" id="page376" title="page376"></a>M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation
+with a big man in spectacles,
+with a neckcloth of great dimensions,
+and who makes extraordinary faces as
+he looks round on the company. M.
+Lupot has been told, that the gentleman
+with the large neckcloth is a literary
+man, and that he will probably be
+good enough to read or recite some
+lines of his own composition. The
+ancient stationer coughs three times
+before venturing to address so distinguished
+a character, but says at last&mdash;&quot;Enchanted
+to see at my house a
+gentleman so&mdash;an author of such&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you're the host here, are you?&mdash;the
+master of the house?&quot;&mdash;said
+the man in the neckcloth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I flatter myself I am&mdash;with my
+wife, of course&mdash;the lady on the sofa&mdash;you
+see her? My daughter, sir&mdash;she's
+the tall young lady, so upright in
+her figure. She designs, and has an
+excellent touch on the piano. I have
+a son also&mdash;a little fiend&mdash;it was he
+who crept this minute between my legs&mdash;he's
+an extraordinary clev&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is one thing, sir,&quot; replied
+the big man, &quot;that I can't comprehend&mdash;a
+thing that amazes me&mdash;and
+that is, that people who live in the
+Rue Grenetat should give parties.
+It is a miserable street&mdash;a horrid street&mdash;covered
+eternally with mud&mdash;choked
+up with cars&mdash;a wretched part of the
+town, dirty, noisy, pestilential&mdash;bah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet, sir, for thirty years I have
+lived here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh Lord, sir, I should have died
+thirty times over! When people live
+in the Rue Grenetat they should give
+up society, for you'll grant it is a regular
+trap to seduce people into such
+an abominable street. I&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing
+his hands. He moves off from
+the big man in the spectacles, whose
+conversation had by no means amused
+him, and he goes up to a group of
+young people who seem examining the
+Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're admiring my daughter's
+drawing,&quot; said M. Lupot to himself;
+&quot;I must try to overhear what these
+artists are saying.&quot; The young people
+certainly made sundry remarks
+on the performance, plentifully intermixed
+with sneers of a very unmistakable
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you make out what the head
+is meant for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not I. I confess I never saw any
+thing so ridiculous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's Belisarius, my dear fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Impossible!&mdash;it's the portrait of
+some grocer, some relation, probably, of
+the family&mdash;look at the nose&mdash;the
+mouth&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is intolerable folly to put a frame
+to such a daub.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They must be immensely silly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, it isn't half so good as the
+head of the Wandering Jew at the top
+of a penny ballad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot has heard enough. He
+slips off from the group without a
+word, and glides noiselessly to the piano.
+The young performer who had
+sacrificed a great concert to come to
+his soir&eacute;e, had sat down to the instrument
+and run his fingers over the
+notes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a spinnet!&quot; he cried&mdash;&quot;what
+a wretched kettle! How can you expect
+a man to perform on such a miserable
+instrument? The thing is absurd&mdash;hear
+this A&mdash;hear this G&mdash;it's like a hurdygurdy&mdash;not
+one note of it in tune!&quot; But
+the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding,
+and played incessantly,
+thumping the keys with such tremendous
+force, that every minute a chord
+snapped; when such a thing happened&mdash;he
+burst into a laugh, and said,
+&quot;Good! there's another gone&mdash;there
+will soon be none left.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot flushed up to the ears.
+He felt very much inclined to say to
+the celebrated performer, &quot;Sir, I
+didn't ask you here to break all the
+chords of my piano. Let the instrument
+alone if you don't like it, but
+don't hinder other people from playing
+on it for our amusement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the good M. Lupot did not venture
+on so bold a speech, which would
+have been a very sensible speech nevertheless;
+and he stood quietly while
+his chords were getting smashed,
+though it was by no means a pleasant
+thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to
+her father. She is distressed at the
+way her piano is treated; she has no
+opportunity of playing her air; but
+she hopes to make up for it by singing
+a romance, which one of their old
+neighbours is going to accompany on
+the guitar.</p>
+
+<p>It is not without some difficulty that
+M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's
+song. At sight of the old neighbour
+and his guitar a smothered laugh
+is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable
+that the gentleman is not unlike
+a respectable Troubadour with a barrel
+<a class="pagenum" name="page377" id="page377" title="page377"></a>organ, and that his guitar is like an
+ancient harp. There is great curiosity
+to hear the old gentleman touch his
+instrument. He begins by beating
+time with his feet and his head, which
+latter movement gives him very much
+the appearance of a mandarin that you
+sometimes see on a mantelpiece. Nevertheless
+Mademoiselle Lupot essays
+her ballad; but she can never manage
+to overtake her accompanier, who, instead
+of following the singer, seems
+determined to make no alteration in
+the movement of his head and feet.
+The ballad is a failure&mdash;Celanire is confused,
+she has mistaken her notes&mdash;she
+loses her recollection; and, instead of
+hearing his daughter's praises, M. Lupot
+overhears the young people whispering&mdash;&quot;It
+wouldn't do in a beer-shop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must order in the tea,&quot; thought
+the ex-stationer&mdash;&quot;it will perhaps put
+them into good-humour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And M. Lupot rushes off to give
+instructions to the maid; and that old
+individual, who has never seen such a
+company before, does not know how to
+get on, and breaks cups and saucers
+without mercy, in the effort to make
+haste.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nannette, have you got ready the
+other things you were to bring in with
+the tea?&mdash;the muffins&mdash;the cakes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir&quot;&mdash;replied Nannette&mdash;&quot;all
+is ready&mdash;every thing will be in in a moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But there is another thing I told
+you, Nannette&mdash;the sandwiches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The witches, sir?&mdash;the sand?&quot;&mdash;enquired
+the puzzled Nannette.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is an English dish&mdash;I explained
+it to you before&mdash;slices of bread and
+butter, with ham between.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh la, sir!&quot; exclaimed the maid&mdash;&quot;I
+have forgotten that rago&ucirc;t&mdash;oh dear!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;make haste, Nannette; get
+ready some immediately, while my
+daughter hands round the tea and
+muffins&mdash;you can bring them in on a
+tray.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old domestic hurries into the
+kitchen grumbling at the English dainty,
+and cuts some slices of bread and
+covers them with butter; but as she
+had never thought of the ham, she cogitates
+a long time how she can supply
+the want of it&mdash;at last, on looking
+round, she discovers a piece of beef
+that had been left at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardieu,&quot; she says, &quot;I'll cut some
+lumps of this and put them on the
+bread. With plenty of salt they'll
+pass very well for ham&mdash;they'll drive
+me wild with their English dishes&mdash;they
+will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The maid speedily does as she says,
+and then hurries into the room with a
+tray covered with her extempore ham
+sandwiches.</p>
+
+<p>Every body takes one,&mdash;for they
+have grown quite fashionable along
+with tea. But immediately there is an
+universal murmur in the assembly.
+The ladies throw their slices into the
+fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on the
+furniture, and they cry&mdash;&quot;why the
+devil do people give us things like these?&mdash;they're
+detestable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's my opinion, God forgive me!
+the man means to feed us with scraps
+from the pig-trough,&quot; says another.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a regular do, this soir&eacute;e,&quot; says
+a third.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The tea is disgustingly smoked,&quot;
+says a fourth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all the little cakes look as if
+they had been fingered before,&quot; says
+the fifth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Decidedly they wish to poison us,&quot;
+says the big man in the neckcloth,
+looking very morose.</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot is in despair. He goes
+in search of Nannette, who has hidden
+herself in the kitchen; and he busies
+himself in gathering up the fragments
+of the bread and butter from the floor
+and the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lupot says nothing; but
+she is in very bad humour, for she has
+put on a new cap, which she felt sure
+would be greatly admired; and a lady
+has come to her and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, madame, what a shocking
+head-dress!&mdash;your cap is very old-fashioned&mdash;those
+shapes are quite gone
+out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet, madame,&quot; replies Madame
+Lupot, &quot;I bought it, not two
+days ago, in the Rue St Martin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, madame&mdash;Is that the street
+you go to for the fashions? Go to
+Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous
+Gaillon&mdash;you'll get delicious caps
+there&mdash;new fashions and every thing
+so tasteful: for Heaven's sake, madame,
+never put on that cap again. You
+look, at least, a hundred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's worth one's while, truly,&quot;
+thought Madame Lupot, &quot;to tire one's
+self to death receiving people, to be
+treated to such pretty compliments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page378" id="page378" title="page378"></a>Her husband, in the meanwhile,
+continued his labours in pursuit of the
+rejected sandwiches.</p>
+
+<p>The big man in spectacles, who
+wondered that people could live in the
+Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless,
+of coming there for nothing. He
+has seated himself in an arm-chair in
+the middle of the room, and informs
+the company that he is going to repeat
+a few lines of his own to them.&mdash;The
+society seems by no means enchanted
+with the announcement, but forms itself
+in a circle, to listen to the poet.
+He coughs and spits, wipes his mouth,
+tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has
+the lamps raised, the doors shut, asks
+a tumbler of sugar and water, and
+passes his hand through his hair.
+After continuing these operations for
+some minutes, the literary man at last
+begins. He spouts his verses in a
+voice enough to break the glasses; before
+he has spoken a minute, he has
+presented a tremendous picture of
+crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds, sufficient
+to appal the stoutest hearts, when
+suddenly a great crash from the inner
+room attracts universal attention. It
+is the young Ascanius, who was trying
+to get a muffin on the top of a pile of
+dishes, and has upset the table, with
+muffin, and dishes, and all on his own
+head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain
+the cause of the dreadful cries of his
+son; the company follow him, not a
+little rejoiced to find an excuse for
+hearing no more of the poem; and the
+poet, deprived in this way of an audience,
+gets up in a furious passion,
+takes his hat, and rushes from the
+room, exclaiming&mdash;&quot;It serves me
+right. How could I have been fool
+enough to recite good verses in the
+Rue Grenetat!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ascanius is brought in and roars
+lustily, for two of the dishes have been
+broken on his nose; and as there is
+no chance now, either of poetry or
+music, the party have recourse to
+cards&mdash;for it is impossible to sit all night
+and do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>They make up a table at <i>bouillote</i>,
+and another at <i>ecart&eacute;</i>. M. Lupot
+takes his place at the latter. He is
+forced to cover all the bets when his
+side refuses; and M. Lupot, who
+never played higher than shilling
+stakes in his life, is horrified when they
+tell him&mdash;&quot;You must lay down fifteen
+francs to equal our stakes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifteen francs!&quot; says M. Lupot,
+&quot;what is the meaning of all this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It means, that you must make up
+the stakes of your side, to what we
+have put down on this. The master
+of the house is always expected to
+make up the difference.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays
+down his fifteen francs and loses them;
+next game the deficiency is twenty.
+In short, in less than half an hour, the
+ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His
+eyes start out of his head&mdash;he scarcely
+knows where he is; and to complete
+his misery, the opposite party, in lifting
+up the money they have won, upset
+one of the lamps he had borrowed
+from his neighbours, and smashed it
+into fifty pieces.</p>
+
+<p>At last the hour of separation comes.
+The good citizen has been anxious for
+it for a long time. All his gay company
+depart, without even wishing
+good-night to the host who has exerted
+himself so much for their entertainment.
+The family of the Lupots are
+left alone; Madame, overcome with
+fatigue, and vexed because her cap had
+been found fault with; Celanire, with
+tears in her eyes, because her music
+and Belisarius had been laughed at;
+and Ascanius sick and ill, because he
+has nearly burst himself with cakes and
+muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the
+unhappiest of all, thinking of his ninety
+francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette
+gathered up the crumbs of the
+sandwiches, and muttered&mdash;&quot;Do they
+think people make English dishes to
+have them thrown into the corners of
+the room?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's done,&quot; said M. Lupot; &quot;I
+shall give no more soir&eacute;es. I begin to
+think I was foolish in wishing to leave
+my own sphere. When people of the
+same class lark and joke each other,
+it's all very well; but when you meddle
+with your superiors, and they are
+uncivil, it hurts your feelings. Their
+mockery is an insult, and you don't
+get over it soon. My dear Celanire,
+I shall decidedly try to marry you to a
+stationer.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s8" id="bw329s8"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page379" id="page379" title="page379"></a>
+<h2>THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.</h3>
+
+<h3>OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.</h3>
+
+<p>The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in
+our last for the admiration and instruction
+of remote ages. When the nineteenth
+century shall be long out of date,
+and centuries in general out of their
+<i>teens</i>, posterity will revert to our delineation
+of the heavy swell with pleasure
+undiminished, through the long
+succession of ages yet to come; the
+macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be
+forgotten, or remembered only in our
+graphic portraiture of the heavy swell.
+But the heavy swell is, after all, a
+harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting
+sin, his <i>monomania</i>, is vanity tinctured
+with pride: his weak point can
+hardly be called a crime, since it affects
+and injures nobody but himself, if, indeed,
+it can be said to injure him who
+glories in his vocation&mdash;who is the
+echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.</p>
+
+<p>The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary,
+are positively noxious to society,
+as well particular as general. There
+is a twofold or threefold iniquity in
+their goings-on; they sin against society,
+their families, and themselves;
+the whole business of their lives is a
+perversion of the text of Scripture,
+which commandeth us, &quot;in whatever
+station we are, therewith to be content.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gentility-monger is a family
+man, having a house somewhere in
+Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is
+sometimes a man of independent fortune&mdash;how
+acquired, nobody knows;
+that is his secret, his mystery. He will
+let no one suppose that he has ever
+been in trade; because, when a man
+intends gentility-mongering, it must
+never be known that he has formerly
+carried on the tailoring, or the shipping,
+or the cheese-mongering, or the
+fish-mongering, or any other mongering
+than the gentility-mongering. His
+house is very stylishly furnished; that
+is to say, as unlike the house of a man
+of fashion as possible&mdash;the latter having
+only things the best of their kind, and
+for use; the former displaying every
+variety of extravagant gimcrackery,
+to impress you with a profound idea of
+combined wealth and taste, but which,
+to an educated eye and mind only, conveys
+a lively idea of ostentation. When
+you call upon a gentility-monger, a
+broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike
+footman, in Aurora plushes,
+ushers you to a drawing-room, where,
+on tables round, and square, and hexagonal,
+are set forth jars, porcelain,
+china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed
+parrots under bell-glasses; corals, minerals,
+and an infinity of trumpery,
+among which albums, great, small, and
+intermediate, must by no means be
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The room is papered with some
+<i>splendacious</i> pattern in blue and gold;
+a chandelier of imposing gingerbread
+depends from the richly ornamented
+ceiling; every variety of ottoman,
+lounger, settee, is scattered about, so
+that to get a chair involves the right-of-search
+question; the bell-pulls are
+painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels
+carpet of flaming colours, curtains with
+massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous
+frames; prints, after Ross, of
+her Majesty and Prince Albert, of
+course; and mezzotints of the Duke of
+Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for
+whom the gentility-monger has a profound
+respect, and of whom he talks
+with a familiarity showing that it is
+not <i>his</i> fault, at least, if these exalted
+personages do not admit him to the
+honour of their acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, you see the drawing-room is
+not intended for sitting down in, and
+when the lady appears, you are inclined
+to believe she never sits down; at least
+the full-blown swell of that satin skirt
+seems never destined to the compression
+of a chair. The conversation is
+as usual&mdash;&quot;Have you read the morning
+paper?&quot;&mdash;meaning the Court Circular
+and fashionable intelligence; &quot;do you
+know whether the Queen is at Windsor
+or Claremont, and how long her Majesty
+intends to remain; whether town is
+fuller than it was, or not so full; when
+the next Almacks' ball takes place;
+whether you were at the last drawing-room,
+and which of the fair <i>debutantes</i>
+you most admire; whether Tamburini
+is to be denied us next year?&quot; with many
+<a class="pagenum" name="page380" id="page380" title="page380"></a>lamentations touching the possible defection,
+as if the migrations of an
+opera thrush were of the least consequence
+to any rational creature&mdash;of
+course you don't say so, but lament
+Tamburini as if he were your father;
+&quot;whether it is true that we are to have
+the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito,
+this season; and what a heaven of delight
+we shall experience from the united
+action of these twenty supernatural
+pettitoes.&quot; You needn't express yourself
+after this fashion, else you will
+shock miss, who lounges near you in
+an agony of affected rapture: you must
+sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your
+cane, and say &quot;divine&mdash;yes&mdash;hope it
+may be so&mdash;exquisite&mdash;<i>exquisite</i>.&quot; This
+naturally leads you to the last new
+songs, condescendingly exhibited to you
+by miss, if you are <i>somebody</i>, (if <i>nobody</i>,
+miss does not appear;) you are
+informed that &quot;<i>My heart is like a
+pickled salmon</i>&quot; is dedicated to the
+Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon
+you are favoured with sundry passages
+(out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages,
+&amp;c., of that illustrious family;
+you are asked whether Bishop is the
+composer of &quot;<i>I saw her in a twinkling</i>,&quot;
+and whether the <i>minor</i> is not fine?
+Miss tells you she has transposed it
+from G to C, as suiting her voice better&mdash;whereupon
+mamma acquaints you,
+that a hundred and twenty guineas for
+a harp is moderate, she thinks; you
+think so too, taking that opportunity
+to admire the harp, saying that you
+saw one exactly like it at Lord (any
+Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in
+St James's Square. This produces an
+invitation to dinner; and with many
+lamentations on English weather, and
+an eulogium on the climate of Florence,
+you pay your parting compliments,
+and take your leave.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner you meet a claret-faced
+Irish absentee, whose good society is a
+good dinner, and who is too happy to
+be asked any where that a good dinner
+is to be had; a young silky clergyman,
+in black curled whiskers, and a
+white <i>choker</i>; one of the meaner fry
+of M.P.'s; a person who <i>calls himself</i> a
+foreign count; a claimant of a dormant
+peerage; a baronet of some sort, not
+above the professional; sundry propriety-faced
+people in yellow waistcoats,
+who say little, and whose social
+position you cannot well make out;
+half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age,
+dressed in grand style, with turbans of
+imposing <i>tournure</i>; and a young, diffident,
+equivocal-looking gent who sits
+at the bottom of the table, and whom
+you instinctively make out to be a
+family doctor, tutor, or nephew, with
+expectations. No young ladies, unless
+the young ladies of the family, appear
+at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers;
+because the motive of the
+entertainment is pride, not pleasure;
+and therefore prigs and frumps are in
+keeping, and young women with brains,
+or power of conversation, would only
+distract attention from the grand business
+of life, that is to say, dinner; besides,
+a seat at table here is an object,
+where the expense is great, and nobody
+is asked for his or her own sake, but
+for an object either of ostentation, interest,
+or vanity. Hospitality never
+enters into the composition of a gentility-monger:
+he gives a dinner, wine,
+and a shake of the hand, but does not
+know what the word <i>welcome</i> means:
+he says, now and then, to his wife
+&quot;My dear, I think we must give a
+dinner;&quot; a dinner is accordingly determined
+on, cards issued three weeks
+in advance, that you may be premeditatedly
+dull; the dinner is gorgeous to
+repletion, that conversation may be
+kept as stagnant as possible. Of those
+happy surprize invitations&mdash;those unexpected
+extemporaneous dinners, that
+as they come without thinking or
+expectation, so go off with <i>eclat</i>, and
+leave behind the memory of a cheerful
+evening&mdash;he has no idea; a man of
+fashion, whose place is fixed, and who
+has only himself to please, will ask
+you to a slice of crimped cod and a
+hash of mutton, without ceremony;
+and when he puts a cool bottle on the
+table, after a dinner that he and his
+friend have really enjoyed, will never
+so much as apologize with, &quot;my dear
+sir, I fear you have had a wretched
+dinner,&quot; or &quot;I wish I had known: I
+should have had something better.&quot;
+This affected depreciation of his hospitality
+he leaves to the gentility-monger,
+who will insist on cramming you with
+fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are like
+to burst; and then, by way of apology,
+get his guests to pay the reckoning in
+plethoric laudation of his mountains
+of victual.</p>
+
+<p>If you wait in the drawing-room,
+kicking your heels for an hour after
+the appointed time, although you arrived
+to a <i>minute</i>, as every Christian
+does, you may be sure that somebody
+<a class="pagenum" name="page381" id="page381" title="page381"></a>who patronizes the gentility-monger,
+probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky,
+is expected, and has not come. It is
+vain for you to attempt to talk to your
+host, hostess, or miss, who are absorbed,
+body and soul, in expectation of Honourable
+Sniftky; the propriety-faced
+people in the yellow waistcoats attitudinize
+in groups about the room,
+putting one pump out, drawing the
+other in, inserting the thumb gracefully
+in the arm-hole of the yellow
+waistcoats, and talking <i>icicles</i>; the
+young fellows play with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley
+in a button-hole&mdash;admire
+a flowing portrait of miss, asking one
+another if it is not very like&mdash;or hang
+over the back of a chair of one of the
+turbaned ladies, who gives good evening
+parties; the host receives a great many
+compliments upon one thing and
+another, from some of the professed
+diners-out, who take every opportunity
+of paying for their dinner beforehand;
+every body freezes with the chilling
+sensation of dinner deferred, and
+&quot;curses, not loud but deep,&quot; are imprecated
+on the Honourable Sniftky.
+At last, a prolonged <i>rat-tat-tat</i> announces
+the arrival of the noble beast,
+the lion of the evening; the Honourable
+Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in
+the Foreign Office, is announced by
+the footman out of livery, (for the day,)
+and announces himself a minute after:
+he comes in a long-tailed coat and
+boots, to show his contempt for his
+entertainers, and mouths a sort of apology
+for keeping his betters waiting,
+which is received by the gentility-monger,
+his lady, and miss, with nods,
+and becks, and wreathed smiles of unqualified
+admiration and respect.</p>
+
+<p>As the order of precedence at the
+house of a gentility-monger is not
+strictly understood, the host desires
+Honourable Sniftky to take down miss;
+and calling out the names of the other
+guests, like muster-master of the
+guards, pairs them, and sends them
+down to the dining-room, where you
+find the nephew, or family doctor, (or
+whatever he is,) who has inspected the
+arrangement of the table, already in
+waiting.</p>
+
+<p>You take your place, not without
+that excess of ceremony that distinguishes
+the table of a gentility-monger;
+the Honourable Sniftky, <i>ex-officio</i>,
+takes his place between mamma
+and miss, glancing vacancy round the
+table, lest any body should think himself
+especially honoured by a fixed
+stare; covers are removed by the mob
+of occasional waiters in attendance,
+and white soup and brown soup, thick
+and heavy as judges of assize, go circuit.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes hobnobbing, with an
+interlocutory dissertation upon a <i>plateau,
+candelabrum</i>, or some other superfluous
+machine, in the centre of the
+table. One of the professed diners-out,
+discovers for the twentieth time an
+inscription in dead silver on the pedestal,
+and enquires with well-affected
+ignorance whether that is a <i>present</i>;
+the gentility-monger asks the diner-out
+to wine, as he deserves, then enters
+into a long apologetical self-laudation
+of his exertions in behalf of the CANNIBAL
+ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION,
+AND BRITISH SUBJECT TRANSPORTATION
+SOCIETY, (some emigration
+crimping scheme, in short,) in which
+his humble efforts to diffuse civilization
+and promote Christianity, however unworthy,
+(&quot;No, no!&quot; from the diner-out,)
+gained the esteem of his fellow-labourers,
+and the approbation of his
+own con&mdash;&mdash;&quot;Shall I send you some
+fish, sir?&quot; says the man at the foot of
+the table, addressing himself to the
+Honourable Sniftky, and cutting short
+the oration.</p>
+
+<p>A monstrous salmon and a huge
+turbot are now dispensed to the hungry
+multitude; the gentility-monger
+has no idea that the biggest turbot is
+not the best; he knows it is the <i>dearest</i>,
+and that is enough for him; he
+would have his dishes like his cashbook,
+to show at a glance how much
+he has at his banker's. When the
+flesh of the guests has been sufficiently
+fishified, there is an <i>interregnum</i>, filled
+up with another circuit of wine, until
+the arrival of the <i>pi&egrave;ces de resistance</i>,
+the imitations of made dishes, and
+the usual <i>etceteras</i>. The conversation,
+meanwhile, is carried on in a <i>staccato</i>
+style; a touch here, a hit there, a miss
+almost every where; the Honourable
+Sniftky turning the head of mamma
+with affected compliments, and hobnobbing
+to himself without intermission.
+After a sufficiently tedious interval,
+the long succession of wasteful
+extravagance is cleared away with the
+upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a
+look from our hostess, rise with dignity
+and decorously retire, miss modestly
+bringing up the rear&mdash;the man at the
+foot of the table with the handle of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page382" id="page382" title="page382"></a>door in one hand, and a napkin in the
+other, bowing them out.</p>
+
+<p>Now the host sings out to the Honourable
+Sniftky to draw his chair
+closer and be jovial, as if people, after
+an oppressively expensive dinner, can
+be jovial <i>to order</i>. The wine goes
+round, and laudations go with it; the
+professed diners-out enquire the
+vintage; the Honourable Mr Sniftky intrenches
+himself behind a rampart of
+fruit dishes, speaking only when he is
+spoken to, and glancing inquisitively
+at the several speakers, as much as to
+say, &quot;What a fellow you are, to talk;&quot;
+the host essays a <i>bon-mot</i>, or tells a
+story bordering on the <i>ideal</i>, which he
+thinks is fashionable, and shows that
+he knows life; the Honourable Sniftky
+drinks claret from a beer-glass, and
+after the third bottle affects to discover
+his mistake, wondering what he
+could be thinking of; this produces
+much laughter from all save the professed
+diners-out, who dare not take
+such a liberty, and is <i>the</i> jest of the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>When the drinkers, drinkables, and
+talk are quite exhausted, the noise of a
+piano recalls to our bewildered
+recollections the ladies, and we drink their
+healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending
+that it is foreign-post night at
+the Foreign Office, walks off without
+even a bow to the assembled diners, the
+gentility-monger following him submissively
+to the door; then returning,
+tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone,
+he's such a good-natured fellow, while
+the gentleman so characterized gets
+into his cab, drives to his club, and
+excites the commiseration of every
+body there, by relating how he was
+bored with an old <i>ruffian</i>, who insisted
+upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner
+in Bryanston Square; at which there
+are many &quot;Oh's!&quot; and &quot;Ah's!&quot; and
+&quot;what could you expect?&mdash;Bryanston
+Square!&mdash;served you right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, the guests, relieved
+of the presence of the Honourable
+Sniftky, are rather more at their ease;
+a baronet (who was lord mayor, or
+something of that sort) waxes jocular,
+and gives decided indications of
+something like &quot;how came you so;&quot;
+the man at the foot of the table contradicts
+one of the diners-out, and is
+contradicted in turn by the baronet;
+the foreign count is in deep conversation
+with a hard-featured man, supposed
+to be a stockjobber; the clergyman
+extols the labours of the host in
+the matter of the Cannibal Islands'
+Aborigines Protection Society, in which
+his reverence takes an interest; the
+claimant of the dormant peerage retails
+his pedigree, pulling to pieces the
+attorney-general, who has expressed
+an opinion hostile to his pretensions.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, the piano is joined
+by a harp, in musical solicitation of
+the company to join the ladies in the
+drawing-room; they do so, looking
+flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs,
+sip tea, the younger beaux turning
+over, with miss, Books of Beauty
+and Keepsakes: at eleven, coaches and
+cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing
+with a melancholy countenance
+your sense of the delightfulness
+of the evening, get to your chambers,
+and forget, over a broiled bone and a
+bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal,
+prosy, thankless, stone-faced,
+yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing,
+unintellectual, selfish, stupid set you
+have been condemned to pass an afternoon,
+assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition
+of vulgar wealth, where gulosity
+has been unrelieved by one single
+sally of wit, humour, good-nature,
+humanity, or charity; where you come
+without a welcome, and leave without
+a friend.</p>
+
+<p>The whole art of the gentility-mongers
+of all sorts in London, and
+<i>&agrave; fortiori</i> of their wives and families, is
+to lay a tax upon social intercourse
+as nearly as possible amounting to a
+prohibition; their dinners are criminally
+wasteful, and sinfully extravagant
+to this end; to this end they
+insist on making <i>price</i> the test of what
+they are pleased to consider <i>select society</i>
+in their own sets, and they consequently
+cannot have a dance without
+guinea tickets nor a <i>pic-nic</i> without
+dozens of champagne. This shows
+their native ignorance and vulgarity
+more than enough; genteel people go
+upon a plan directly contrary, not
+merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying
+themselves without extravagance
+or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers
+would do well to imitate
+people of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The exertions a gentility-monger
+will make, to rub his skirts against
+people above him; the humiliations,
+mortifications, snubbing, he will submit
+to, are almost incredible. One
+would hardly believe that a retired
+tradesman, of immense wealth, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page383" id="page383" title="page383"></a>enjoying all the respect that immense
+wealth will secure, should actually
+offer large sums of money to a lady of
+fashion, as an inducement to procure
+for him cards of invitation to her <i>set</i>,
+which he stated was the great object
+of his existence. Instead of being indignant
+at his presumption, the lady
+in question, pitying the poor man's
+folly, attempted to reason with him,
+assuring him with great truth that
+whatever might be his wealth, his
+power or desire of pleasing, he would
+be rendered unhappy and ridiculous,
+by the mere dint of pretension to a
+circle to which he had no legitimate
+claim, and advising him, as a friend,
+to attempt some more laudable and
+satisfactory ambition.</p>
+
+<p>All this good advice was, however,
+thrown away; our gentility-monger
+persevered, contriving somehow to
+gain a passport to some of the <i>outer</i>
+circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed,
+laughed at, and honoured with
+the <i>soubriquet</i> (he was a pianoforte
+maker) of the <i>Semi-Grand</i>!</p>
+
+<p>We know another instance, where
+two young men, engaged in trade in
+the city, took a splendid mansion at
+the West End, furnished it sumptuously,
+got some desperate knight or
+baronet's widow to give parties at
+their house, inviting whomsoever she
+thought proper, at their joint expense.
+It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows
+succeeded in getting into good
+society, not indeed in the <i>Court Circular</i>,
+but in the&mdash;<i>Gazette</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is another class of gentility-mongers
+more to be pitied than the
+last; those, namely, who are endeavouring
+to &quot;make a connexion,&quot; as the
+phrase is, by which they may gain advancement
+in their professions, and are
+continually on the look-out for introductions
+to persons of quality, their
+hangers-on and dependents. There is
+too much of this sort of thing among
+medical men in London, the family
+nature of whose profession renders
+connexion, private partiality, and personal
+favour, more essential to them
+than to others. The lawyer, for example,
+need not be a gentility-monger;
+he has only to get round attorneys, for
+the opportunity to show what he can
+do, when he has done this, in which a
+little toadying, &quot;<i>on the sly</i>,&quot; is necessary&mdash;all
+the rest is easy. The court
+and the public are his judges; his
+powers are at once appreciable, his
+talent can be calculated, like the money
+in his pocket; he can now go on
+straight forward, without valuing the
+individual preference or aversion of
+any body.</p>
+
+<p>But a profession where men make
+way through the whisperings of women,
+and an inexhaustible variety of
+<i>sotto voce</i> contrivances, must needs
+have a tendency to create a subserviency
+of spirit and of manner, which
+naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering:
+where realities, such as
+medical experience, reading, and skill,
+are remotely, or not at all, appreciable,
+we must take up with appearances;
+and of all appearances, the appearance
+of proximity to people of fashion is the
+most taking and seductive to people
+<i>not</i> of fashion. It is for this reason that
+a rising physician, if he happen to have
+a lord upon his sick or visiting list,
+never has done telling his plebeian patients
+the particulars of his noble case,
+which they swallow like almond milk,
+finding it an excellent <i>placebo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As it is the interest of a gentility-monger,
+and his constant practice, to
+be attended by a fashionable physician,
+in order that he may be enabled continually
+to talk of what Sir Henry
+thinks of this, and how Sir Henry objects
+to that, and the opinion of Sir
+Henry upon t'other, so it is the business
+of the struggling doctor to be
+a gentility-monger, with the better
+chance of becoming one day or other
+a fashionable physician. Acting on
+this principle, the poor man must necessarily
+have a house in a professional
+neighbourhood, which usually abuts
+upon a neighbourhood fashionable or
+exclusive; he must hire a carriage by
+the month, and be for ever stepping in
+and out of it, at his own door, keeping
+it purposely bespattered with mud to
+show the extent of his visiting acquaintance;
+he must give dinners to people
+&quot;who <i>may</i> be useful,&quot; and be continually
+on the look-out for those lucky
+accidents which have made the fortunes,
+and, as a matter of course, the
+<i>merit</i>, of so many professional men.</p>
+
+<p>He becomes a Fellow of the Royal
+Society, which gives him the chance
+of conversing with a lord, and the right
+of entering a lord's (the president's)
+house, which is turned into sandwich-shop
+four times a-year for his
+reception; this, being the nearest approach
+<a class="pagenum" name="page384" id="page384" title="page384"></a>he makes to acquaintance with
+great personages, he values with the importance
+it deserves.</p>
+
+<p>His servants, with famine legibly
+written on their bones, are assiduous
+and civil; his wife, though half-starved,
+is very genteel, and at her dinner parties
+burns candle-ends from the palace.<a name="footnotetag48" id="footnotetag48"></a><a href="#footnote48"><sup>48</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>If you pay her a morning visit, you
+will have some such conversation as
+follows.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pray, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, is there any news
+to-day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Great distress, I understand,
+throughout the country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed&mdash;the old story, shocking&mdash;very.&mdash;Pray,
+have you heard the delightful
+news? The Princess-Royal
+has actually cut a tooth!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I assure you; and the sweet
+little royal love of a martyr has borne
+it like a hero.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Positively?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Positively, I assure you; Doctor
+Tryiton has just returned from a consultation
+with his friend Sir Henry,
+upon a particularly difficult case&mdash;Lord
+Scruffskin&mdash;case of elephantiasis
+I think they call it, and tells me that
+Sir Henry has arrives express from
+Windsor with the news.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, there will
+be a general illumination?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really, madam, I cannot say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>There ought to be</i>, [with emphasis.]
+You must know, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, Dr
+Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter
+a beautifully bound copy of his
+work on ulcerated sore throat; he says
+there is a great analogy between ulcers
+of the throat and den&mdash;den&mdash;den&mdash;something,
+I don't know what&mdash;teething,
+in short. If nothing comes of it,
+Dr Tryiton, thank Heaven, can do without
+it; but you know, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, it may,
+on a future occasion, be <i>useful to our
+family</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If there is, in the great world of
+London, one thing more spirit-sinking
+than another, it is to see men condemned,
+by the necessities of an overcrowded
+profession, to sink to the
+meannesses of pretension for a desperate
+accident by which they may insure
+success. When one has had an
+opportunity of being behind the scenes,
+and knowing what petty shifts, what
+poor expedients of living, what anxiety of
+mind, are at the bottom of all this
+empty show, one will not longer marvel
+that many born for better things should
+sink under the difficulties of their position,
+or that the newspapers so continually
+set forth the miserably unprovided
+for condition in which they so
+often are compelled to leave their families.
+To dissipate the melancholy
+that always oppresses us when constrained
+to behold the ridiculous antics
+of the gentility-mongers, which we
+chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation&mdash;let
+us contrast the hospitality
+of those who, with wiser ambition,
+keep themselves, as the saying
+is, &quot;<i>to themselves</i>;&quot; and, as a bright
+example, let us recollect our old friend
+Joe Stimpson.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller
+in Bermondsey, the architect of
+his own fortune, which he has raised
+to the respectable elevation of somewhere
+about a quarter of a million
+sterling. He is now in his seventy-second
+year, has a handsome house,
+without and pretension, overlooking
+his tanyard. He has a joke upon
+prospects, calling you to look from the
+drawing-room window at his tanpits,
+asking you if you ever saw any thing
+like that at the west end of the town;
+replying in the negative, Joe, chuckling,
+observes that it is the finest prospect <i>he</i>
+ever saw in his life, and although he
+has been admiring it for half a century,
+he has not done admiring it yet.
+Joe's capacity for the humorous may
+be judged of by this specimen; but in
+attention to business few can surpass
+him, while his hospitality can command
+a wit whenever he chooses to angle for
+one with a good dinner. He has a
+wife, a venerable old smiling lady in
+black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes;
+three daughters, unmarried; and a
+couple of sons, brought up, after the
+London fashion, to inherit their father's
+business, or, we might rather say,
+<i>estate</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain
+<a class="pagenum" name="page385" id="page385" title="page385"></a>unmarried, we cannot say, nor
+would it be decorous to enquire; but
+hearing them drop a hint now and then
+about visits, &quot;a considerable time ago,&quot;
+to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we are
+led, however reluctantly in the case of
+ladies <i>now</i> evangelical, to conclude,
+their attention has formerly been directed
+to gentility-mongering at these
+places of fashionable resort; the tanyard
+acting as a repellent to husbands
+of a social position superior to their
+own, and their great fortunes operating
+in deterring worthy persons of their
+own station from addressing them; or
+being the means of inducing them to
+be too prompt with refusals, these
+amiable middle-aged young ladies are
+now &quot;on hands,&quot; paying the penalty
+of one of the many curses that pride
+of wealth brings in its train. At present,
+however, their &quot;affections are set
+on things above;&quot; and, without meaning
+any thing disrespectful to my
+friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet,
+and Susan Stimpson are certainly the
+three least agreeable members of the
+family. The sons are, like all other
+sons in the houses of their fathers,
+steady, business-like, unhappy, and
+dull; they look like fledged birds in
+the nest of the old ones, out of place;
+neither servants nor masters, their
+social position is somewhat equivocal,
+and having lived all their lives in the
+house of their father, seeing as he sees,
+thinking as he thinks, they can hardly
+be expected to appear more than a
+brace of immature Joe Stimpsons.
+They are not, it is true, tainted with
+much of the world's wickedness, neither
+have they its self-sustaining trials,
+its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles,
+or that experience which is gathered
+only by men who quit, when
+they can quit it, the petticoat string,
+and the paternal despotism of even a
+happy home. As for the old couple,
+time, although silvering the temples
+and furrowing the front, is hardly seen
+to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder
+of either, much less to put his
+finger on eyes, ears, or lips&mdash;the two
+first being yet as &quot;wide awake,&quot; and
+the last as open to a joke, or any other
+good thing, as ever they were; in sooth,
+it is no unpleasing sight to see this
+jolly old couple with nearly three half
+centuries to answer for, their affection
+unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and
+temper undisturbed by the near approach,
+beyond hope of respite, of that
+stealthy foe whose assured advent
+strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson,
+if he thinks of death at all, thinks of
+him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked
+down stairs by the family physician;
+the Bible of the old lady is seldom far
+from her hand, and its consolations
+are cheering, calming, and assuring.
+The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing
+in common with man or wife,
+unless when Joe, exasperated with his
+evangelical daughters' continual absence
+at the class-meetings, and love-feasts,
+and prayer-meetings, somewhat
+indignantly complains, that &quot;so long as
+they can get to heaven, they don't care
+who goes to &mdash;&mdash;,&quot; a place that Virgil
+and Tasso have taken much pains in
+describing, but which the old gentleman
+sufficiently indicates by one emphatic
+monosyllable.</p>
+
+<p>Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates
+cant and humbug, and has no prejudices&mdash;hating
+the French he will not acknowledge
+is a prejudice, but considers
+the bounden duty of an Englishman;
+and, though fierce enough upon other
+subjects of taxation, thinks no price
+too high for drubbing them. He was
+once prevailed upon to attempt a journey
+to Paris; but having got to Calais,
+insisted upon returning by the next
+packet, swearing it was a shabby concern,
+and he had seen enough of it.</p>
+
+<p>He takes in the <i>Gentleman's Magazine,</i>
+because his father did it before
+him&mdash;but he never reads it; he takes
+pride in a corpulent dog, which is ever
+at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache,
+and swears at any body who
+calls it <i>tic-douloureux.</i></p>
+
+<p>When you go to dine with him, you
+are met at the door by a rosy-checked
+lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles
+a hearty welcome, and assures you,
+though an utter stranger, of the character
+of the house and its owner. You
+are conducted to the drawing-room,
+a plain, substantial, <i>honest</i>-looking
+apartment; there you find the old
+couple, and are received with a warmth
+that gives assurance of the nearest approach
+to what is understood by <i>home</i>.
+The sons, released from business, arrive,
+shake you heartily by the hand,
+and are really glad to see you; of the
+daughters we say nothing, as there is
+nothing in <i>them</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The other guests of the day come
+dropping in&mdash;all straightforward, business-like,
+free, frank-hearted fellows&mdash;aristocrats
+of wealth, the best, because
+<a class="pagenum" name="page386" id="page386" title="page386"></a>the <i>unpretending</i>, of their class; they
+come, too, <i>before</i> their time, for they
+know their man, and that Joe Stimpson
+keeps nobody waiting for nobody.
+When the clock&mdash;for here is no <i>gong</i>&mdash;strikes
+five, you descend to dinner;
+plain, plentiful, good, and well dressed;
+no tedious course, with long intervals
+between; no oppressive <i>set-out</i> of superfluous
+plate, and what, perhaps, is
+not the least agreeable accessory, no
+piebald footmen hanging over your
+chair, whisking away your plate before
+you have done with it, and watching
+every bit you put into your mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Your cherry-cheeked friend and another,
+both in the family from childhood,
+(another good sign of the house,)
+and looking as if they really were glad&mdash;and
+so they are&mdash;to have an opportunity
+of obliging you, do the servitorial offices
+of the table; you are sure of a glass
+of old sherry, and you may call for
+strong beer, or old port, with your
+cheese&mdash;or, if a Scotchman, for a dram&mdash;without
+any other remark than an invitation
+to &quot;try it again, and make
+yourself comfortable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, you are invited, as a
+young man, to smoke a cigar with the
+&quot;boys,&quot; as Joe persists in calling
+them. You ascend to a bed-room, and
+are requested to keep your head out o'
+window while smoking, lest the &quot;Governor&quot;
+should snuff the fumes when
+he comes up stairs to bed: while you
+are &quot;craning&quot; your neck, the cherry-cheeked
+lass enters with brandy and
+water, and you are as merry and easy
+as possible. The rest of the evening
+passes away in the same unrestrained
+interchange of friendly courtesy; nor
+are you permitted to take your leave
+without a promise to dine on the next
+Sunday or holiday&mdash;Mrs Stimpson
+rating you for not coming last Easter
+Sunday, and declaring she cannot think
+&quot;why young men should mope by
+themselves, when she is always happy
+to see them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Honour to Joe Stimpson and his
+missus! They have the true <i>ring</i> of
+the ancient coin of hospitality; none
+of your hollow-sounding <i>raps</i>: they
+know they have what I want, <i>a home</i>,
+and they will not allow me, at their
+board, to know that I want one: they
+compassionate a lonely, isolated man,
+and are ready to share with him the
+hearty cheer and unaffected friendliness
+of their English fireside: they
+know that they can get nothing by
+me, nor do they ever dream of an
+acknowledgment for their kindness;
+but I owe them for many a social day
+redeemed from cheerless solitude;
+many an hour of strenuous labour do
+I owe to the relaxation of the old wainscotted
+dining-room at Bermondsey.</p>
+
+<p>Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all
+who are satisfied with their station,
+happy in their home, have no repinings
+after empty sounds of rank and shows
+of life; and who extend the hand of
+friendly fellowship to the homeless,
+<i>because they have no home</i>!</p>
+
+<h3>THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.</h3>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;There is a quantity of talent latent among men, ever rising to the level of the great occasions
+that call it forth.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This illustration, borrowed by Sir
+James Mackintosh from chemical science,
+and so happily applied, may serve
+to indicate the undoubted truth, that
+talent is a <i>growth</i> as much as a <i>gift</i>;
+that circumstances call out and develop
+its latent powers; that as soil,
+flung upon the surface from the uttermost
+penetrable depths of earth, will
+be found to contain long-dormant
+germs of vegetable life, so the mind of
+man, acted upon by circumstances,
+will ever be found equal to a certain
+sum of production&mdash;the amount of
+which will be chiefly determined by
+the force and direction of the external
+influence which first set it in motion.</p>
+
+<p>The more we reflect upon this important
+subject, we shall find the more,
+that external circumstances have an
+influence upon intellect, increasing in
+an accumulating ratio; that the political
+institutions of various countries
+have their fluctuating and contradictory
+influences; that example controls
+in a great degree intellectual production,
+causing after-growths, as it were,
+of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds,
+and giving a character and
+individuality to habits of thought and
+modes of expression; in brief, that
+great occasions will have great instruments,
+and there never was yet a noted
+time that had not noted men. Dull,
+jog-trot, money-making, commercial
+times will make, if they do not find,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page387" id="page387" title="page387"></a>dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial
+men: in times when ostentation
+and expense are the measures of respect,
+when men live rather for the
+world's opinion than their own, poverty
+becomes not only the evil but
+the shame, not only the curse but the
+disgrace, and will be shunned by every
+man as a pestilence; every one will
+fling away immortality, to avoid it;
+will sink, as far as he can, his art in
+his trade; and <i>he</i> will be the greatest
+genius who can turn most money.</p>
+
+<p>It may be urged that true genius
+has the power not only to <i>take</i> opportunities,
+but to make them: true, it
+may make such opportunities as the
+time in which it lives affords; but
+these opportunities will be great or
+small, noble or ignoble, as the time is
+eventful or otherwise. All depends
+upon the time, and you might as well
+have expected a Low Dutch epic poet
+in the time of the great herring fishery,
+as a Napoleon, a Demosthenes, a Cicero
+in this, by some called the nineteenth,
+but which we take leave to designate
+the &quot;<i>dot-and-carry-one</i>&quot; century. If
+a Napoleon were to arise at any corner
+of any London street, not five seconds
+would elapse until he would be
+&quot;<i>hooked</i>&quot; off to the station-house by
+Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D
+division, with an exulting mob of men
+and boys hooting at his heels: if
+Demosthenes or Cicero, disguised as
+Chartist orators, mounting a tub at
+Deptford, were to Philippicize, or
+entertain this motley auditory with
+speeches against Catiline or Verres,
+straightway the Superintendent of
+the X division, with a <i>posse</i> of constables
+at his heels, dismounts the
+patriot orator from his tub, and hands
+him over to a plain-spoken business-like
+justice of the peace, who regards
+an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
+point of view with any
+other vagabond.</p>
+
+<p>What is become of the eloquence of
+the bar? Why is it that flowery
+orators find no grist coming to their
+mills? How came it that, at Westminster
+Hall, Charles Philips missed
+his market? What is the reason, that
+if you step into the Queen's Bench, or
+Common Pleas, or Exchequer, you
+will hear no such thing as a speech&mdash;behold
+no such animal as an orator&mdash;only
+a shrewd, plain, hard-working,
+steady man, called an attorney-general,
+or a sergeant, or a leading counsel,
+quietly talking over a matter of law
+with the judge, or a matter of fact
+with the jury, like men of business as
+they are, and shunning, as they would
+a rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments,
+figures, flowers, and the obsolete embroidery
+of rhetoric?</p>
+
+<p>The days of romantic eloquence are
+fled&mdash;the great constitutional questions
+that called forth &quot;thoughts that
+breathe, and words that burn,&quot; from
+men like Erskine, are <i>determined</i>.
+Would you have men oratorical over
+a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about
+an action of trespass on the case, or a
+rule to compute?</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, when Follett practised
+before committees of the House of
+Commons, and, by chance, any question
+involving points of interest and
+difficulty in Parliamentary law and
+practice came before the Court, there
+was something worth hearing: the
+<i>opportunity</i> drew out the <i>man</i>, and the
+<i>orator</i> stepped before the <i>advocate</i>.
+Even now, sometimes, it is quite refreshing
+to get a topic in these Courts
+worthy of Austin, and Austin working
+at it. But no man need go to look for
+orators in our ordinary courts of law;
+judgment, patience, reading, and that
+rare compound of qualities known and
+appreciated by the name of <i>tact</i>, tell
+with judges, and influence juries; the
+days of <i>palaver</i> are gone, and the talking
+heroes extinguished for ever.</p>
+
+<p>All this is well known in London;
+but the three or four millions (it may
+be <i>five</i>) of great men, philosophers,
+poets, orators, patriots, and the like, in
+the rural districts, require to be informed
+of this our declension from the
+heroics, in order to appreciate, or at
+least to understand, the modesty, sobriety,
+business-like character, and division
+of labour, in the vast amount of
+talent abounding in every department
+of life in London.</p>
+
+<p>London overflows with talent. You
+may compare it, for the purpose of
+illustration, to one of George Robins'
+patent filters, into which pours turbid
+torrents of Thames water, its sediment,
+mud, dirt, weeds, and rottenness;
+straining through the various <i>strata</i>,
+its grosser particles are arrested in
+their course, and nothing that is not
+pure, transparent, and limpid is transmitted.
+In the great filter of London
+life, conceit, pretension, small provincial
+abilities, <i>pseudo</i>-talent, <i>soi-disant</i>
+intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung
+<a class="pagenum" name="page388" id="page388" title="page388"></a>out again. True genius is tested by
+judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty,
+privation; and, passing through
+many ordeals, persevering, makes its
+way through all; and at length, in the
+fulness of time, flows forth, in acknowledged
+purity and refinement, upon the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>There is a perpetual onward, upward
+tendency in the talent, both high and
+low, mechanical and intellectual, that
+abounds in London:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Emulation hath a thousand sons,&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>who are ever and always following fast
+upon your heels. There is no time to
+dawdle or linger on the road, no
+&quot;stop and go on again:&quot; if you but
+step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your
+place is occupied&mdash;you are edged off,
+pushed out of the main current, and
+condemned to circle slowly in the lazy
+eddy of some complimenting clique.
+Thousands are to be found, anxious
+and able to take your place; while
+hardly one misses you, or turns his
+head to look after you should you lose
+your own: you <i>live</i> but while you
+<i>labour</i>, and are no longer remembered
+than while you are reluctant to repose.</p>
+
+<p>Talent of all kinds brings forth
+perfect fruits, only when concentrated
+upon one object: no matter how versatile
+men may be, mankind has a wise
+and salutary prejudice against diffused
+talent; for although <i>knowledge</i> diffused
+immortalizes itself, diffused <i>talent</i> is
+but a shallow pool, glittering in the
+noonday sun, and soon evaporated;
+<i>concentrated</i>, it is a well, from whose
+depths perpetually may we draw the
+limpid waters. Therefore is the talent
+of London concentrated, and the division
+of labour minute. When we talk
+of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters,
+in a provincial place, we recognize at
+once a man who embraces all that his
+opportunities present him with, in
+whatever department of his profession.
+The lawyer is, at one and the same
+time, advocate, chamber counsel, conveyancer,
+pleader; the doctor an accoucheur,
+apothecary, physician, surgeon,
+dentist, or at least, in a greater
+or less degree, unites in his own person,
+these&mdash;in London, distinct and separate&mdash;professions,
+according as his
+sphere of action is narrow or extended;
+the country journalist is sometimes proprietor,
+editor, sub-editor, traveller, and
+canvasser, or two or more of these
+heterogeneous and incompatible avocations.
+The result is, an obvious,
+appreciable, and long-established superiority
+in that product which is the
+result of minutely divided labour.</p>
+
+<p>The manufacture of a London watch
+or piano will employ, each, at least
+twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers,
+importers, and venders of the
+raw material used in these articles;
+every one of these tradesmen shall be
+nay, <i>must</i> be, the best of their class, or
+at least the best that can be obtained;
+and for this purpose, the inducements
+of high wages are held out to workmen
+generally, and their competition
+for employment enables the manufacturer
+to secure the most skilful. It
+is just the same with a broken-down
+constitution, or a lawsuit: the former
+shall be placed under the care of a
+lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor,
+a dropsy-doctor, or whatever
+other doctor is supposed best able to
+understand the case; each of these
+doctors shall have read lectures and
+published books, and made himself
+known for his study and exclusive attention
+to one of the &quot;thousand ills
+that flesh is heir to:&quot; the latter shall
+go through the hands of dozens of
+men skilful in that branch of the law
+connected with the particular injury.
+So it is with every thing else of production,
+mechanical or intellectual, or
+both, that London affords: the extent
+of the market permits the minute division
+of labour, and the minute division
+of labour reacts upon the market,
+raising the price of its produce, and
+branding it with the signs of a legitimate
+superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the superior intelligence of
+working men, of all classes, high and
+low, in the World of London; hence
+that striving after excellence, that
+never-ceasing tendency to advance in
+whatever they are engaged in, that so
+distinguishes the people of this wonderful
+place; hence the improvements
+of to-day superseded by the improvements
+of to-morrow; hence speculation,
+enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants
+of less extended spheres of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>Competition, emulation, and high
+wages give us an aristocracy of talent,
+genius, skill, <i>tact</i>, or whatever you like
+to call it; but you are by no means to
+understand that any of these aristocracies,
+or better classes, stand prominently
+before their fellows <i>socially</i>, or,
+that one is run after in preference to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page389" id="page389" title="page389"></a>another; nobody runs after anybody
+in the World of London.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect, no capital, no country
+on the face of the earth, resembles us;
+every where else you will find a leading
+class, giving a tone to society, and
+moulding it in some one or other direction;
+a predominating <i>set</i>, the pride of
+those who are <i>in</i>, the envy of those who
+are <i>below</i> it. There is nothing of this
+kind in London; here every man has
+his own set, and every man his proper
+pride. In every set, social or professional,
+there are great names, successful
+men, prominent; but the set is
+nothing the greater for them: no man
+sheds any lustre upon his fellows, nor
+is a briefless barrister a whit more
+thought of because he and Lyndhurst
+are of the same profession.</p>
+
+<p>Take a look at other places: in
+money-getting places, you find society
+following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy
+of 'Change: every man knows
+the worth of every other man, that is
+to say, <i>what</i> he is worth.</p>
+
+<p>A good man, elsewhere a relative
+term, is <i>there</i> a man good for <i>so</i> much;
+hats are elevated and bodies depressed
+upon a scale of ten thousand pounds
+to an inch; &quot;I hope you are well,&quot;
+from one of the aristocracy of these
+places is always translated to mean,
+&quot;I hope you are solvent,&quot; and &quot;how
+d'ye do?&quot; from another, is equivalent
+to &quot;doing a bill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Go abroad, to Rome for example&mdash;You
+are smothered beneath the petticoats
+of an ecclesiastical aristocracy.
+Go to the northern courts of Europe&mdash;You
+are ill-received, or perhaps not received
+at all, save in military uniform;
+the aristocracy of the epaulet meets
+you at every turn, and if you are not
+at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing.
+Make your way into Germany&mdash;What
+do you find there? an aristocracy
+of functionaries, mobs of nobodies
+living upon everybodies; from
+Herr Von, Aulic councillor, and Frau
+Von, Aulic councilloress, down to
+Herr Von, crossing-sweeper, and Frau
+Von, crossing-sweeperess&mdash;for the women
+there must be <i>better</i>-half even in
+their titles&mdash;you find society led, or,
+to speak more correctly, society <i>consisting</i>
+of functionaries, and they, every
+office son of them, and their wives&mdash;nay,
+their very curs&mdash;alike insolent and
+dependent. &quot;Tray, Blanche, and
+Sweetheart, see they bark at <i>me</i>!&quot;
+There, to get into society, you must
+first get into a place: you must contrive
+to be the <i>servant</i> of the public
+before you are permitted to be the
+<i>master</i>: you must be paid by, before
+you are in a condition to despise, the
+<i>canaille</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Passing Holland and Belgium as
+more akin to the genius of the English
+people, as respects the supremacy of
+honest industry, its independent exercise,
+and the comparative insignificance
+of aristocracies, conventionally
+so called, we come to FRANCE: there
+we find a provincial and a Parisian
+aristocracy&mdash;the former a servile mob
+of placemen, one in fifty, at least, of
+the whole population; and the latter&mdash;oh!
+my poor head, what a <i>clanjaffrey</i>
+of <i>journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes</i>,
+dramatists, novelists, <i>vaudivellistes</i>,
+poets, literary ladies, lovers of literary
+ladies, <i>hommes de lettres, claqueurs,
+litt&eacute;rateurs, g&eacute;rants, censeurs, rapporteurs</i>,
+and <i>le diable boiteux</i> verily
+knows what else!</p>
+
+<p>These people, with whom, or at least
+with a great majority of whom, common
+sense, sobriety of thought, consistency
+of purpose, steady determination
+in action, and sound reasoning,
+are so sadly eclipsed by their vivacity,
+<i>empressement</i>, prejudice, and party zeal,
+form a prominent, indeed, <i>the</i> prominent
+aristocracy of the <i>salons</i>: and
+only conceive what must be the state
+of things in France, when we know
+that Paris acts upon the provinces, and
+that Paris is acted upon by this foolscap
+aristocracy, without station, or,
+what is perhaps worse, enjoying station
+without property; abounding in
+maddening and exciting influences,
+but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed,
+<i>ungenius-like</i> qualities of patience,
+prudence, charity, forbearance,
+and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn
+nation, more than any other in
+Europe, stands in need.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the name of goodness, is
+the heart of the philanthropist to be
+gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled
+over the earth? When are paltry
+family intrigues to cease, causing the
+blood of innocent thousands to be shed?
+When will the aristocracy of genius in
+France give over jingling, like castanets,
+their trashy rhymes &quot;<i>gloire</i>&quot; and
+&quot;<i>victoire</i>,&quot; and apply themselves to objects
+worthy of creatures endowed with
+the faculty of reason? Or, if they must
+<a class="pagenum" name="page390" id="page390" title="page390"></a>have fighting, if it is their nature, if
+the prime instinct with them is the
+thirst of human blood, how cowardly,
+how paltry, is it to hound on their
+fellow-countrymen to war with England,
+to war with Spain, to war with
+every body, while snug in their offices,
+doing their little best to bleed nations
+with their pen!</p>
+
+<p>Why does not the foolscap aristocracy
+rush forth, inkhorn in hand,
+and restore the glories (as they call
+them) of the Empire, nor pause till they
+mend their pens victorious upon the
+brink of the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>To resume: the aristocracies of our
+provincial capitals are those of literature
+in the one, and lickspittling in
+the other: mercantile towns have their
+aristocracies of money, or muckworm
+aristocracies: Rome has an ecclesiastical&mdash;Prussia,
+Russia, military aristocracies:
+Germany, an aristocracy of
+functionaries: France has two, or even
+three, great aristocracies&mdash;the military,
+place-hunting, and foolscap.</p>
+
+<p>Now, then, attend to what we are
+going to say: London is cursed with
+no predominating, no overwhelming,
+no <i>characteristic</i> aristocracy. There is
+no <i>set</i> or <i>clique</i> of any sort or description
+of men that you can point to, and
+say, that's the London set. We turn
+round and desire to be informed what set
+do you mean: every <i>salon</i> has its set, and
+every pot-house its set also; and the
+frequenters of each set are neither envious
+of the position of the other, nor
+dissatisfied with their own: the pretenders
+to fashion, or hangers-on upon
+the outskirts of high life, are alone the
+servile set, or spaniel set, who want
+the proper self-respecting pride which
+every distinct aristocracy maintains in
+the World of London.</p>
+
+<p>We are a great firmament, a moonless
+azure, glowing with stars of all
+magnitudes, and myriads of <i>nebul&aelig;</i> of
+no magnitudes at all: we move harmoniously
+in our several orbits, minding
+our own business, satisfied with
+our position, thinking, it may be, with
+harmless vanity, that we bestow more
+light upon earth than any ten, and that
+the eyes of all terrestrial stargazers
+are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders,
+and quacks, are our meteors, our <i>auror&aelig;</i>,
+our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
+athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling
+into irretrievable darkness: our
+tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter,
+invisible to the naked eye: our clear
+frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling
+is prosperity, and we, too
+have our clouds that hide us from the
+eyes of men. The noonday of our own
+bustling time beholds us dimly; but
+posterity regards us as it were from the
+bottom of a well. Time, that exact
+observer, applies his micrometer to
+every one of us, determining our rank
+among celestial bodies without appeal
+and from time to time enrolling in his
+<i>ephemeris</i> such new luminaries as may
+be vouchsafed to the long succession
+of ages.</p>
+
+<p>If there is one thing that endears
+London to men of superior order&mdash;to
+true aristocrats, no matter of what species,
+it is that universal equality of
+outward condition, that republicanism
+of everyday life, which pervades the
+vast multitudes who hum, and who
+drone, who gather honey, and who,
+without gathering, consume the products
+of this gigantic hive. Here you
+can never be extinguished or put out
+by any overwhelming interest.</p>
+
+<p>Neither are we in London pushed
+to the wall by the two or three hundred
+great men of every little place.
+We are not invited to a main of small
+talk with the cock of his own dung-hill;
+we are never told, as a great
+favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead,
+the phrenologist, is to be there, and
+that we can have our &quot;bumps&quot; felt for
+nothing; or that the Chevalier Doembrownski
+(a London pickpocket in disguise)
+is expected to recite a Polish
+ode, accompanying himself on the
+Jew's harp; we are not bored with the
+misconduct of the librarian, who <i>never</i>
+has the first volume of the last new
+novel, or invited to determine whether
+Louisa Fitzsmythe or Angelina Stubbsville
+deserves to be considered the heroine;
+we are not required to be in
+raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or
+Clara Novello are expected, or to break
+our hearts with disappointment because
+they didn't come: the arrival,
+performances, and departure, of Ducrow's
+horses, or Wombwell's wild
+beasts, affect us with no extraordinary
+emotion; even Assizes time concerns
+most of us nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace
+in London is the aristocracy
+of wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a
+provincial town, keeps her carriage,
+and is at once the envy and the scandal
+<a class="pagenum" name="page391" id="page391" title="page391"></a>of all the Ladies who have to proceed
+upon their ten toes, we wot not
+the existence. Mr Bill Wright, the
+banker, the respected, respectable, influential,
+twenty per cent Wright, in
+London is merely a licensed dealer in
+money; he visits at Camberwell Hill,
+or Hampstead Heath, or wherever
+other tradesmen of his class delight to
+dwell; his wife and daughters patronize
+the Polish balls, and Mr Bill
+Wright, jun., sports a stall at the
+(English) opera; we are not overdone
+by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs
+Bill Wright, or the Misses Bill Wright,
+nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright
+the younger: in a word, we don't care
+a crossed cheque for the whole Bill
+Wrightish connexion.</p>
+
+<p>What are carriages, or carriage-keeping
+people in London? It is not
+here, as in the provinces, by their carriages
+shall you know them; on the
+contrary, the carriage of a duchess is
+only distinguishable from that of a
+<i>parvenu</i>, by the superior expensiveness
+and vulgarity of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth
+with us, defeats the end it aims at.
+That expense which is lavished to impress
+us with awe and admiration,
+serves only as a provocative to laughter,
+and inducement to contempt;
+where great wealth and good taste go
+together, we at once recognize the harmonious
+adaptation of means and ends;
+where they do not, all extrinsic and
+adventitious expenditure availeth its
+disbursers nothing.</p>
+
+<p>What animal on earth was ever so
+inhumanly preposterous as a lord
+mayor's footman, and yet it takes
+sixty guineas, at the least, to make that
+poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?</p>
+
+<p>No, sir; in London we see into, and
+see through, all sorts of pretension:
+the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever
+kind of quackery and imposture.
+When I say <i>we</i>, I speak of the vast
+multitudes forming the educated, discriminating,
+and thinking classes of
+London life. We pass on to <i>what</i> a
+man <i>is</i>, over <i>who</i> he is, and what he
+<i>has</i>; and, with one of the most accurate
+observers of human character and
+nature to whom a man of the world
+ever sat for his portrait&mdash;the inimitable
+La Bruyere&mdash;when offended with
+the hollow extravagance of vulgar
+riches, we exclaim&mdash;&quot;<i>Tu te trompes,
+Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant,
+ce grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent,
+et ces six b&ecirc;tes qui te trainent, tu
+penses qu'on t'en estime d'avantage: ou
+ecarte tout cet attirail qui t'est &eacute;tranger,
+pour p&eacute;n&eacute;trer jusq'a toi qui n'es qu'un
+fat</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In London, every man is responsible
+for himself, and his position is the
+consequence of his conduct. If a great
+author, for example, or artist, or politician,
+should choose to outrage the
+established rules of society in any essential
+particular, he is neglected and
+even shunned in his private, though
+he may be admired and lauded in his
+public capacity. Society marks the
+line between the <i>public</i> and the <i>social</i>
+man; and this line no eminence, not
+even that of premier minister of England,
+will enable a public man to confound.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever you are invited in London
+to be introduced to a great man,
+by any of his parasites or hangers-on,
+you may be assured that your great
+man is no such thing; you may make
+up your mind to be presented to some
+quack, some hollow-skulled fellow,
+who makes up by little arts, small tactics,
+and every variety of puff, for the
+want of that inherent excellence which
+will enable him to stand alone. These
+gentlemen form the Cockney school
+proper of art, literature, the drama,
+every thing; and they go about seeking
+praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects,
+with their mouths wide open;
+they pursue their prey in troops, like
+Jackals, and like them, utter at all
+times a melancholy, complaining howl;
+they imagine that the world is in a
+conspiracy not to admire them, and
+they would bring an action against the
+world if they could. But as that is
+impossible, they are content to rail
+against the world in good set terms;
+they are always puffing in the papers,
+but in a side-winded way, yet you can
+trace them always at work, through the
+daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in
+desperate exertion to attract public
+attention. They have at their head one
+sublime genius, whom they swear by,
+and they admire him the more, the
+more incomprehensible and oracular
+he appears to the rest of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>These are the men who cultivate extensive
+tracts of forehead, and are
+deeply versed in the effective display
+of depending ringlets and ornamental
+whiskers; they dress in black, with
+white <i>chokers</i>, and you will be sure to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page392" id="page392" title="page392"></a>find a lot of them at evening parties
+of the middling sort of doctors, or the
+better class of boarding-houses.</p>
+
+<p>This class numbers not merely literary
+men, but actors, artists, adventuring
+politicians, small scientifics, and
+a thousand others, who have not energy
+or endurance to work their way in
+solitary labour, or who feel that they
+do not possess the power to go alone.</p>
+
+<p>Public men in London appear naked
+at the bar of public opinion; laced
+coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail
+nothing, because these things are common,
+and have the common fate of
+common things, to be cheaply estimated.
+The eye is satiated with them,
+they come like shadows, so depart;
+but they do not feed the eye of the
+mind; the understanding is not the
+better for such gingerbread; we are
+compelled to look out for some more
+substantial nutriment, and we try the
+inward man, and test his capacity.
+Instead of measuring his bumps, like a
+landsurveyor, we dissect his brain,
+like an anatomist; we estimate him,
+whether he be high or low, in whatever
+department of life, not by what
+he says he can do, or means to do, but
+by what he <i>has</i> done. By this test is
+every man of talent tried in London;
+this is his grand, his formal difficulty,
+to get the opportunity of showing what
+he can do, of being put into circulation,
+of having the chance of being
+tested, like a shilling, by the <i>ring</i> of
+the customer and the <i>bite</i> of the critic;
+for the opportunity, the chance to
+edge in, the chink to <i>wedge</i> in, the
+<i>purchase</i> whereon to work the length
+of his lever, he must be ever on the
+watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement,
+the April shower of
+praise, he must await the long winter
+of &quot;hope deferred&quot; passing away. Patience,
+the <i>courage</i> of the man of talent,
+he must exert for many a dreary
+and unrewarded day; he must see the
+quack and the pretender lead an undiscerning
+public by the nose, and say
+nothing; nor must he exult when the
+too-long enduring public at length
+kicks the pretender and the quack
+into deserved oblivion. From many a
+door that will hereafter gladly open for
+him, he must be content to be presently
+turned away. Many a scanty
+meal, many a lonely and unfriended
+evening, in this vast wilderness, must
+he pass in trying on his armour, and
+preparing himself for the fight that he
+still believes <i>will</i> come, and in which
+his spirit, strong within him, tells him
+he must conquer. While the night
+yet shrouds him he must labour, and
+with patient, and happily for him, if,
+with religious hope, he watch the first
+faint glimmerings of the dawning day;
+for his day, if he is worthy to behold
+it, will come, and he will yet be recompensed
+&quot;by that time and chance
+which happeneth to all.&quot; And if his
+heart fails him, and his coward spirit
+turns to flee, often as he sits, tearful,
+in the solitude of his chamber, will the
+remembrance of the early struggles of
+the immortals shame that coward spirit.
+The shade of the sturdy Johnson,
+hungering, dinnerless, will mutely reproach
+him for sinking thus beneath
+the ills that the &quot;scholar's life assail.&quot;
+The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith,
+pursued to the gates of a prison
+by a mercenary wretch who fattened
+upon the produce of that lovely mind,
+smiling upon him, will bid him be of
+good cheer. A thousand names, that
+fondly live in the remembrance of our
+hearts, will he conjure up, and all will
+tell the same story of early want, and
+long neglect, and lonely friendlessness.
+Then will reproach himself, saying,
+&quot;What am I, that I should quail before
+the misery that broke not minds
+like these? What am I, that I should
+be exempt from the earthly fate of the
+immortals?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nor marvel, then, that men who
+have passed the fiery ordeal, whose
+power has been tried and not found
+wanting, whose nights of probation,
+difficulty, and despair are past, and
+with whom it is now noon, should
+come forth, with deportment modest
+and subdued, exempt from the insolent
+assumption of vulgar minds, and their
+yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships:
+that such men as Campbell
+and Rogers, and a thousand others in
+every department of life and letters,
+should partake of that quietude of
+manner, that modesty of deportment,
+that compassion for the unfortunate of
+their class, that unselfish admiration
+for men who, successful, have deserved
+success, that abomination of cliques,
+coteries, and <i>conversazion&eacute;s</i>, and all
+the littleness of inferior fry: that such
+men should have parasites, and followers,
+and hangers-on; or that, since men
+like themselves are few and far between,
+they should live for and with
+such men alone.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page393" id="page393" title="page393"></a>But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou
+shame, thou sin, with what tides of
+<i>pseudo</i> talent hast thou not filled this
+ambitious town? Ass, dolt, miscalculator,
+quack, pretender, how many
+hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious
+fools? Serpent, tempter, evil
+one, how many hast thou seduced
+from the plough tail, the carpenter's
+bench, the schoolmaster's desk, the
+rural scene, to plunge them into misery
+and contempt in this, the abiding-place
+of their betters, thou unhanged
+cheat? Hence the querulous piping
+against the world and the times, and
+the neglect of genius, and appeals to
+posterity, and damnation of managers,
+publishers, and the public; hence
+cliques, and <i>claqueurs</i>, and coteries, and
+the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of
+letters; hence bickerings, quarellings,
+backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity
+of contempt; hence the impossibility
+of literary union, and the absolute
+necessity imposed upon the great
+names of our time of shunning, like a
+pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck
+individuals who would tear the coats
+off their backs in desperate adherence
+to the skirts. Thou, too, O Vanity!
+art responsible for greater evils:&mdash;Time
+misspent, industry misdirected,
+labour unrequited, because uselessly or
+imprudently applied: poverty and isolation,
+families left unprovided for,
+pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses,
+subscriptions!</p>
+
+<p>True talent, on the contrary, in
+London, meets its reward, if it lives to
+be rewarded; but it has, of its own
+right, no <i>social</i> pre-eminence, nor is
+it set above or below any of the other
+aristocracies, in what we may take the
+liberty of calling its private life. In
+this, as in all other our aristocracies,
+men are regarded not as of their set,
+but as of themselves: they are <i>individually</i>
+admired, not worshipped as a
+congregation: their social influence is
+not aggregated, though their public
+influence may be. When a man, of
+whatever class, leaves his closet, he is
+expected to meet society upon equal
+terms: the scholar, the man of rank,
+the politician, the <i>millionaire</i>, must
+merge in the gentleman: if he chooses
+to individualize his aristocracy in his
+own person, he must do so at home,
+for it will not be understood or submitted
+to any where else.</p>
+
+<p>The rewards of intellectual labour
+applied to purposes of remote, or not
+immediately appreciable usefulness, as
+in social literature, and the loftier
+branches of the fine arts, are, with us,
+so few, as hardly to be worth mentioning,
+and pity 'tis that it should be so.
+The law, the church, the army, and
+the faculty of physic, have not only
+their fair and legitimate remuneration
+for independent labour, but they have
+their several prizes, to which all who
+excel, may confidently look forward
+when the time of weariness and exhaustion
+shall come; when the pressure of
+years shall slacken exertion, and diminished
+vigour crave some haven of repose,
+or, at the least, some mitigated
+toil, with greater security of income:
+some place of honour with repose&mdash;the
+ambition of declining years. The
+influence of the great prize of the law,
+the church, and other professions in
+this country, has often been insisted
+upon with great reason: it has been
+said, and truly said, that not only do
+these prizes reward merit already
+passed through its probationary stages,
+but serve as inducements to all who
+are pursuing the same career. It is not
+so much the example of the prize-holder,
+as the <i>prize</i>, that stimulates
+men onward and upward: without the
+hope of reaching one of those comfortable
+stations, hope would be extinguished,
+talent lie fallow, energy be
+limited to the mere attainment of subsistence;
+great things would not be
+done, or attempted, and we would
+behold only a dreary level of indiscriminate
+mediocrity. If this be true of
+professions, in which, after a season
+of severe study, a term of probation,
+the knowledge acquired in early life
+sustains the professor, with added experience
+of every day, throughout the
+rest of his career, with how much more
+force will it apply to professions or
+pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually
+on the rack to produce novelties,
+and in which it is considered
+derogatory to a man to reproduce his
+own ideas, copy his own pictures, or
+multiply, after the same model, a variety
+of characters and figures!</p>
+
+<p>A few years of hard reading, constant
+attention in the chambers of the
+conveyancer, the equity craftsman,
+the pleader, and a few years more of
+that disinterested observance of the
+practice of the courts, which is
+liberally afforded to every young barrister,
+and indeed which many enjoy throughout
+life, and he is competent, with
+<a class="pagenum" name="page394" id="page394" title="page394"></a>moderate talent, to protect the interests
+of his client, and with moderate mental
+labour to make a respectable figure in
+his profession. In like manner, four
+or five years sedulous attendance on
+lectures, dissections, and practice of
+the hospitals, enables your physician
+to see how little remedial power exists
+in his boasted art; knowing this, he
+feels pulses, and orders a recognized
+routine of draughts and pills with the
+formality which makes the great secret
+of his profession. When the patient
+dies, nature, of course, bears the
+blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered
+with, recovers his patient,
+the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward
+his success is determined by
+other than medical sciences: a pillbox
+and pair, a good house in some
+recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a
+bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking,
+shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling
+weak-minded men and women,
+and, if possible, a religious connexion.</p>
+
+<p>For the clergyman, it is only necessary
+that he should be orthodox,
+humble, and pious; that he should on
+no occasion, right or wrong, set himself
+in opposition to his ecclesiastical
+superiors; that he should preach unpretending
+sermons; that he should
+never make jokes, nor understand the
+jokes of another: this is all that he
+wants to get on respectably. If he is
+ambitious, and wishes one of the great
+prizes, he must have been a free-thinking
+reviewer, have written pamphlets,
+or made a fuss about the Greek
+particle, or, what will avail him more
+than all, have been tutor to a minister
+of state.</p>
+
+<p>Thus you perceive, for men whose
+education is <i>intellectual</i>, but whose
+practice is more or less <i>mechanical</i>,
+you have many great, intermediate,
+and little prizes in the lottery of life;
+but where, on the contrary, are the
+prizes for the historian, transmitting
+to posterity the events, and men, and
+times long since past; where the prize
+of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic,
+the epic, or the lyric poet, the essayist,
+and all whose works are likely
+to become the classics of future times;
+where the prize of the public journalist,
+who points the direction of public
+opinion, and, himself without place,
+station, or even name, teaches Governments
+their duty, and prevents Ministers
+of State becoming, by hardihood
+or ignorance, intolerable evils; where
+the prize of the great artist, who has
+not employed himself making faces for
+hire, but who has worked in loneliness
+and isolation, living, like Barry, upon
+raw apples and cold water, that he
+might bequeath to his country some
+memorial worthy the age in which he
+lived, and the art <i>for</i> which he lived?
+For these men, and such as these, are
+no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful
+country sets apart for them no
+places where they can retire in the
+full enjoyment of their fame; condemned
+to labour for their bread, not
+in a dull mechanical routine of professional,
+official, or business-like
+duties, but in the most severe, most
+wearing of all labour, <i>the labour of
+the brain</i>, they end where they begun.
+With struggling they begin life, with
+struggling they make their way in life,
+with struggling they end life; poverty
+drives away friends, and reputation
+multiplies enemies. The man whose
+thoughts will become the thoughts
+of our children, whose minds will be
+reflected in the mirror of <i>his</i> mind,
+who will store in their memories his
+household words, and carry his lessons
+in their hearts, dies not unwillingly,
+for he has nothing in life to look forward
+to; closes with indifference his
+eyes on a prospect where no gleam of
+hope sheds its sunlight on the broken
+spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble
+friends to a lowly sepulchre, and
+the newspapers of some days after
+give us the following paragraph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We regret to be obliged to state
+that Dr &mdash;&mdash;, or &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, Esq. (as
+the case may be) died, on Saturday
+last at his lodgings two pair back
+in Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his
+cottage (a miserable cabin where he
+retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames.
+It is our melancholy duty
+to inform our readers that this highly
+gifted and amiable man, who for so
+many years delighted and improved the
+town, and who was a most strenuous
+supporter of the (Radical or Conservative)
+cause, (<i>it is necessary to set
+forth this miserable statement to awaken
+the gratitude of faction towards the family
+of the dead</i>,) has left a rising family
+totally unprovided for. We are satisfied
+that it is only necessary to allude to
+this distressing circumstance, in order
+to enlist the sympathies, &amp;c. &amp;c., (in
+short, <i>to get up a subscription</i>).&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We confess we are at a loss to understand
+why the above advertisement
+<a class="pagenum" name="page395" id="page395" title="page395"></a>should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted
+with only the interpolation of
+name and date, when any man dies who
+has devoted himself to pursuits of a
+purely intellectual character. Nor are
+we unable to discover in the melancholy,
+and, as it would seem, unavoidable
+fates of such men, substantial
+grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy
+of talent to the pursuit of professional
+distinction, accompanied by
+profit, of which our literature, art, and
+science are now suffering, and will
+continue to suffer, the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>In a highly artificial state of society,
+where a command, not merely of the
+essentials, but of some of the superfluities
+of life are requisite as passports
+to society, no man will willingly devote
+himself to pursuits which will
+render him an outlaw, and his family
+dependent on the tardy gratitude of
+an indifferent world. The stimulus of
+fame will be inadequate to maintain
+the energies even of <i>great</i> minds, in a
+contest of which the victories are
+wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any
+man willingly consume the morning
+of his days in amassing intellectual
+treasures for posterity, when his
+contemporaries behold him dimming
+with unavailing tears his twilight
+of existence, and dying with the worse
+than deadly pang, the consciousness
+that those who are nearest and dearest
+to his heart must eat the bread of
+charity. Nor is it quite clear to our
+apprehension, that the prevalent system
+of providing for merely intellectual
+men, by a State annuity or pension,
+is the best that can be devised:
+it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy
+of talent should be exposed to the
+taunt of receiving the means of their
+subsistence from this or that minister,
+upon suppositions of this or that
+ministerial assistance which, whether
+true or false, cannot fail to derogate
+from that independent dignity of mind
+which is never extinguished in the
+breast of the true aristocrat of talent,
+save by unavailing struggles, long-continued,
+with the unkindness of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>We wish the aristocracy of power to
+think over this, and so very heartily
+bid them farewell.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s9" id="bw329s9"></a><h2>THE LOST LAMB.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY DELTA.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>A shepherd laid upon his bed,</p>
+<p>With many a sigh, his aching head,</p>
+<p>For him&mdash;his favourite boy&mdash;on whom</p>
+<p>Had fallen death, a sudden doom.</p>
+<p>&quot;But yesterday,&quot; with sobs he cried,</p>
+<p>&quot;Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,</p>
+<p>Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,</p>
+<p>Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!</p>
+<p>It cannot be that thou art gone;</p>
+<p>It cannot be, that now, alone,</p>
+<p>A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,</p>
+<p>Whilst thou within its bosom lie?</p>
+<p>Methinks I see thee smiling there,</p>
+<p>With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,</p>
+<p>As thou were wont, when fondling me,</p>
+<p>To clasp my neck from off my knee!</p>
+<p>Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,</p>
+<p>My boy, or else my heart will break!&quot;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>Each adding to that father's woes,</p>
+<p>A thousand bygone scenes arose;</p>
+<p>At home&mdash;a field&mdash;each with its joy,</p>
+<p>Each with its smile&mdash;and all his boy!</p>
+<p>Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,</p>
+<p>With darkness and with doubt opprest;</p>
+<p>Now sank despondent, while amain</p>
+<p>Unnerving tears fell down like rain:</p>
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page396" id="page396" title="page396"></a>Air&mdash;air&mdash;he breathed, yet wanted breath&mdash;</p>
+<p>It was not life&mdash;it was not death&mdash;</p>
+<p>But the drear agony between,</p>
+<p>Where all is heard, and felt, and seen&mdash;</p>
+<p>The wheels of action set ajar;</p>
+<p>The body with the soul at war.</p>
+<p>'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find</p>
+<p>A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;</p>
+<p>Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went&mdash;</p>
+<p>The noon from midnight's azure tent</p>
+<p>Shone down, and, with serenest light,</p>
+<p>Flooded the windless plains of night;</p>
+<p>The lake in its clear mirror show'd</p>
+<p>Each little star that twinkling glow'd;</p>
+<p>Aspens, that quiver with a breath,</p>
+<p>Were stirless in that hush of death;</p>
+<p>The birds were nestled in their bowers;</p>
+<p>The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;</p>
+<p>Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven</p>
+<p>A while its sinless calm had given</p>
+<p>To lower regions, lest despair</p>
+<p>Should make abode for ever there;</p>
+<p>So tranquil&mdash;so serene&mdash;so bright&mdash;</p>
+<p>Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,</p>
+<p>His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;</p>
+<p>And, placid, in that calm profound,</p>
+<p>His silent flocks lay slumbering round:</p>
+<p>With flowing mantle, by his side,</p>
+<p>Sudden, a stranger he espied,</p>
+<p>Bland was his visage, and his voice</p>
+<p>Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.&mdash;</p>
+<p>&quot;Why is thy mourning thus?&quot; he said,</p>
+<p>&quot;Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?</p>
+<p>Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so</p>
+<p>Abroad despairing thou dost go?</p>
+<p>As if the God who gave thee breath,</p>
+<p>Held not the keys of life and death!</p>
+<p>When from the flocks that feed about,</p>
+<p>A single lamb thou choosest out,</p>
+<p>Is it not that which seemeth best</p>
+<p>That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?</p>
+<p>Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,</p>
+<p>With his choice little ones below</p>
+<p>Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks</p>
+<p>Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,</p>
+<p>Early, ere sin hath render'd dim</p>
+<p>The image of the seraphim!&quot;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;</p>
+<p>Again within his bosom burn'd</p>
+<p>The light of faith; and, from that day,</p>
+<p>He trode serene life's onward way.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="bw329s10" id="bw329s10"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page397" id="page397" title="page397"></a>
+<h2>COMTE.</h2>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p><i>Cours de Philosophie Positive</i>, par M. Auguste Comte.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to find in some extreme,
+uncompromising, eccentric
+work, written for the complete renovation
+of man, a new establishment of
+truth, little else, after all its tempest
+of thought has swept over the mind,
+than another confirmation of old, and
+long-settled, and temperate views.
+Our sober philosophy, like some familiar
+landscape seen after a thunder
+storm, comes out but the more distinct,
+the brighter, and the more tranquil,
+for the bursting cloud and the
+windy tumult that had passed over its
+surface. Some such experience have
+we just had. Our Conservative principles,
+our calm and patient manner
+of viewing things, have rarely received
+a stronger corroboration than from
+the perusal or the extraordinary work
+of M. Comte&mdash;a work written, assuredly,
+for no such comfortable purpose,
+but for the express object (so far as
+we can at present state it to our readers)
+of re-organizing political society,
+by means of an intellectual reformation
+amongst political thinkers.</p>
+
+<p>We would not be thought to throw
+an idle sneer at those generous hopes
+of the future destiny of society which
+have animated some of the noblest
+and most vigorous minds. It is no
+part of a Conservative philosophy to
+doubt on the broad question of the
+further and continuous improvement
+of mankind. Nor will the perusal of
+M. Comte's work induce, or permit,
+such a doubt. But while he leaves
+with his reader a strong impression
+of the unceasing development of social
+man, he leaves a still stronger impression
+of the futile or mischievous efforts
+of those&mdash;himself amongst the
+number&mdash;who are thrusting themselves
+forward as the peculiar and exclusive
+advocates of progress and improvement.
+He exhibits himself in
+the attitude of an innovator, as powerless
+in effect as he is daring to design;
+whilst, at the same time, he
+deals a <i>crashing</i> blow (as upon rival
+machinators) on that malignant party
+in European politics, whether it call
+itself liberal or of the movement,
+whose most distinct aim seems to be
+to unloose men from the bonds of
+civil government. We, too, believe in
+the silent, irresistible progress of human
+society, but we believe also that
+he is best working for posterity, as
+well as for the welfare of his contemporaries,
+who promotes order and
+tranquil effort in his own generation,
+by means of those elements of order
+which his own generation supplies.</p>
+
+<p>That which distinguishes M. Comte's
+work from all other courses of philosophy,
+or treatises upon science, is the
+attempt to reduce to the <i>scientific method</i>
+of cogitation the affairs of human
+society&mdash;morality, politics; in short, all
+those general topics which occupy our
+solitary and perplexed meditation, or
+sustain the incessant strife of controversy.
+These are to constitute a new
+science, to be called <i>Social Physics</i>, or
+<i>Sociology</i>. To apply the Baconian,
+or, as it is here called, the positive
+method, to man in all phases of his
+existence&mdash;to introduce the same fixed,
+indissoluble, imperturbable order in
+our ideas of morals, politics, and history,
+that we attain to astronomy and
+mechanics, is the bold object of his
+labours. He does not here set forth
+a model of human society based on
+scientific conclusions; something of
+this kind is promised us in a future
+work; in the present undertaking he
+is especially anxious to compel us to
+think on all such topics in the scientific
+method, <i>and in no other</i>. For be
+it known, that science is not only weak
+in herself, and has been hitherto incompetent
+to the task of unravelling
+the complicate proceedings of humanity,
+but she has also a great rival in
+the form of theologic method, wherein
+the mind seeks a solution for its
+difficulties in a power above nature.
+The human being has contracted an
+inveterate habit of viewing itself as
+standing in a peculiar relation to a
+supreme Architect and Governor of
+the world&mdash;a habit which in many
+ways, direct and indirect, interferes, it
+seems, with the application of the positive
+method. This habit is to be
+corrected; such supreme Architect
+and Governor is to be dismissed from
+<a class="pagenum" name="page398" id="page398" title="page398"></a>the imagination of men; science is to
+supply the sole mode of thought, and
+humanity to be its only object.</p>
+
+<p>We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary
+book, and this is an epithet
+which our readers are already
+fully prepared to apply. But the book,
+in our judgment, is extraordinary in
+more senses than one. It is as remarkable
+for the great mental energy
+it displays, for its originality and occasional
+profundity of thought, as it
+is for the astounding conclusions to
+which it would conduct us, for its
+bold paradoxes, and for what we can
+designate no otherwise than its egregious
+errors. As a discipline of the
+mind, so far as a full appreciation is
+concerned of the scientific method, it
+cannot be read without signal advantage.
+The book is altogether an anomaly;
+exhibiting the strangest mixture
+that ever mortal work betrayed
+of manifold blunder and great intellectual
+power. The man thinks at
+times with the strength of a giant.
+Neither does he fail, as we have already
+gathered, in the rebellious and
+destructive propensities for which
+giants have been of old renowned.
+Fable tells us how they could have
+no gods to reign over them, and how
+they threatened to drive Jupiter himself
+from the skies. Our intellectual
+representative of the race nourishes
+designs of equal temerity. Like his
+earth-born predecessors, his rage, we
+may be sure, will be equally vain.
+No thunder will be heard, neither will
+the hills move to overwhelm him; but
+in due course of time he will lie down,
+and be covered up with his own earth,
+and the heavens will be as bright and
+stable as before, and still the abode of
+the same unassailable Power.</p>
+
+<p>For the <i>style</i> of M. Comte's work,
+it is not commendable. The philosophical
+writers of his country are in
+general so distinguished for excellence
+in this particular, their exposition of
+thought is so remarkably felicitous,
+that a failure in a Frenchman in the
+mere art of writing, appears almost as
+great an anomaly as any of the others
+which characterize this production.
+During the earlier volumes, which are
+occupied with a review of the recognized
+branches of science, the vices of
+style are kept within bounds, but
+after he has entered on what is the
+great subject of all his lucubrations,
+his social physics, they grow distressingly
+conspicuous. The work extends
+to six volumes, some of them of unusually
+large capacity; and by the time
+we arrive at the last and the most bulky,
+the style, for its languor, its repetitions,
+its prolixity, has become intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>Of a work of this description, distinguished
+by such bold features, remarkable
+for originality and subtlety,
+as well as for surprising hardihood
+and eccentricity of thought, and bearing
+on its surface a manner of exposition
+by no means attractive, we imagine
+that our readers will not be
+indisposed to receive some notice.
+Its errors&mdash;supposing we are capable
+of coping with them&mdash;are worthy of
+refutation. Moreover, as we have
+hinted, the impression it conveys is,
+in relation to politics, eminently Conservative;
+for, besides that he has
+exposed, with peculiar vigour, the
+utter inadequacy of the movement, or
+liberal party, to preside over the organization
+of society, there is nothing
+more calculated to render us content
+with an <i>empirical</i> condition of tolerable
+well-being, than the exhibition
+(and such, we think, is here presented
+to us) of a strong mind palpably at
+fault in its attempt to substitute, out
+of its own theory of man, a better
+foundation for the social structure than
+is afforded by the existing unphilosophical
+medley of human thought.
+Upon that portion of the <i>Cours de
+Philosophie Positive</i> which treats of
+the sciences usually so called, we do
+not intend to enter, nor do the general
+remarks we make apply to it. Our
+limited object is to place our reader at
+the point of view which M. Comte
+takes in his new science of Sociology;
+and to do this with any justice to him
+or to ourselves, in the space we can
+allot to the subject, will be a task of
+sufficient difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>And first, as to the title of the work,
+<i>Philosophie Positive</i>, which has, perhaps,
+all this while been perplexing
+the reader. The reasons which induced
+M. Comte to adopt it, shall be
+given in his own words; they could
+not have been appreciated until some
+general notion had been given of the
+object he had in view.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;There is doubtless,&quot; he says, in his
+<i>Avertissement</i>, &quot;a close resemblance between
+my <i>Philosophie Positive</i>, and what
+the English, especially since the days of
+Newton, understand by <i>Natural Philosophy</i>.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page399" id="page399" title="page399"></a>But I would not adopt this last
+expression, any more than that of <i>Philosophy
+of the Sciences</i>, which would have
+perhaps been still more precise, because
+neither of these has yet been extended to
+all orders of phenomena, whilst <i>Philosophie
+Positive</i>, in which I comprehend the
+study of the social phenomena, as well as
+all others, designs a uniform manner of
+reasoning applicable to all subjects on which
+the human mind can be exerted. Besides
+which, the expression <i>Natural Philosophy</i>
+is employed in England to denote the
+aggregate of the several sciences of observation,
+considered even in their most
+minute details; whereas, by the title of
+<i>Philosophie Positive</i>, I intimate, with
+regard to the several positive sciences, a
+study of them only in their generalities,
+conceiving them as submitted to a uniform
+method, and forming the different parts of
+a general plan of research. The term
+which I have been led to construct is,
+therefore, at once more extended and more
+restricted than other denominations, which
+are so far similar that they have reference
+to the same fundamental class of ideas.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This very announcement of M.
+Comte's intention to comprehend in
+his course of natural philosophy the
+study of the several phenomena, compels
+us to enquire how far these are
+fit subjects for the strict application
+of the scientific method. We waive
+the metaphysical question of the free
+agency of man, and the theological
+question of the occasional interference
+of the Divine Power; and presuming
+these to be decided in a manner favourable
+to the project of our Sociologist,
+we still ask if it be possible to make
+of the affairs of society&mdash;legislation
+and politics, for instance&mdash;a department
+of science?</p>
+
+<p>The mere multiplicity and complication
+of facts in this department of
+enquiry, have been generally regarded
+as rendering such an attempt hopeless.
+In any social problem of importance,
+we invariably feel that to embrace the
+whole of the circumstances, with all
+their results and dependencies, is really
+out of our power, and we are forced
+to content ourselves with a judgment
+formed on what appear to us the principal
+facts. Thus arise those limited
+truths, admitting of exceptions, of
+qualification, of partial application, on
+which we are fain to rely in the conduct
+of human affairs. In framing his
+measures, how often is the statesman,
+or the jurist, made aware of the utter
+impossibility of guarding them against
+every species of objection, or of so
+constructing them that they shall present
+an equal front on every side!
+How still more keenly is the speculative
+politician made to feel, when giving
+in his adherence to some great
+line of policy, that he cannot gather
+in under his conclusions <i>all</i> the political
+truths he is master of! He reluctantly
+resigns to his opponent the possession,
+or at least the usufruct, of a
+certain class of truths which he is
+obliged to postpone to others of more
+extensive or more urgent application.</p>
+
+<p>But this multiplicity and complication
+of facts may merely render the
+task of the Sociologist extremely difficult,
+not impossible; and the half
+truths, and the perplexity of thought
+above alluded to, may only prove that
+his scientific task has not yet been
+accomplished. Nothing is here presented
+in the nature of the subject to
+exclude the strict application of <i>the
+method</i>. There is, however, one essential,
+distinctive attribute of human society
+which constitutes a difference in
+the nature of the subject, so as to
+render impossible the same scientific
+survey and appreciation of the social
+phenomena of the world that we may
+expect to obtain of the physical. This
+is the gradual and incessant <i>developement</i>
+which humanity has displayed,
+and is still displaying. Who can tell
+us that that <i>experience</i> on which a
+fixed and positive theory of social man
+is to be formed, is all before us?
+From age to age that experience is
+enlarging.</p>
+
+<p>In all recognized branches of science
+nature remains the same, and continually
+repeats herself; she admits of no
+novelty; and what appears new to us,
+from our late discovery of it, is as old
+as the most palpable sequence of
+facts that, generation after generation,
+catches the eye of childhood.
+The new discovery may disturb our
+theories, it disturbs not the condition
+of things. All is still the same as it
+ever was. What we possessed of real
+knowledge is real knowledge still. We
+sit down before a maze of things bewildering
+enough; but the vast mechanism,
+notwithstanding all its labyrinthian
+movements, is constant to
+itself, and presents always the same
+problem to the observer. But in this
+department of humanity, in this sphere
+of social existence, the case is otherwise.
+The human being, with hand,
+with intellect, is incessantly at work&mdash;has
+a progressive movement&mdash;<i>grows</i>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page400" id="page400" title="page400"></a>from age to age. He discovers, he
+invents, he speculates; his own inventions
+react upon the inventor; his own
+thoughts, creeds, speculations, become
+agents in the scene. Here <i>new facts</i>
+are actually from time to time starting
+into existence; new elements are introduced
+into society, which science
+could not have foreseen; for if they
+could have been foreseen, they would
+already have been there. A new
+creed, even a new machine, may confound
+the wisest of speculations. Man
+is, in relation to the science that would
+survey society, a <i>creator</i>. In short,
+that stability in the order of events,
+that invariable recurrence of the same
+linked series, on which science depends
+for its very existence, here, in
+some measure, fails us. In such degree,
+therefore, as humanity can be
+described as progressive, or developing
+itself, in such degree is it an untractable
+subject for the scientific method.
+We have but one world, but
+one humanity before us, but one specimen
+of this self developing creature,
+and that perhaps but half grown, but
+half developed. How can we know
+whereabouts <i>we are</i> in our course, and
+what is coming next? We want the
+history of some extinguished world in
+which a humanity has run its full
+career; we need to extend our observation
+to other planets peopled with
+similar but variously developed inhabitants,
+in order scientifically to understand
+such a race as ours.</p>
+
+<p>What, for example, could be more
+safely stated as an eternal law of society
+than that of property?&mdash;a law
+which so justly governs all our political
+reasonings, and determines the
+character of our political measures
+the most prospective&mdash;a law which
+M. Comte has not failed himself to
+designate as fundamental. And yet,
+by what right of demonstration can we
+pronounce this law to be inherent in
+humanity, so that it shall accompany
+the race during every stage of its
+progress? That industry should be
+rewarded by a personal, exclusive
+property in the fruits of industry, is
+the principle consecrated by our law
+of property, and to which the spontaneous
+passions of mankind have in
+all regions of the earth conducted.
+Standing where we do, and looking
+out as far as our intellectual vision
+can extend, we pronounce it to be the
+basis of society; but if we added
+that, as long as the world lasts, it
+must continue to be the basis of society,
+that there are no elements in man to
+furnish forth, if circumstances favoured
+their development, a quite different
+principle for the social organization,
+we feel that we should be overstepping
+the modest bounds of truth, and
+stating our proposition in terms far
+wider and more absolute than we
+were warranted. Experiments have
+been made, and a tendency has repeatedly
+been manifested, to frame
+an association of men in which the
+industry of the individual should have
+its immediate reward and motive in
+the participated prosperity of the general
+body&mdash;where the good of the
+whole should be felt as the interest
+of each. <i>How</i> such a principle is to
+be established, we confess ourselves
+utterly at a loss to divine; but that
+no future events unforeseen by us,
+no unexpected modification of the
+circumstances affecting human character,
+shall ever develop and establish
+such a principle&mdash;this is what
+no scientific mind would venture to
+assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate
+to our sphere of activity,
+nor need it, nor <i>can</i> it, pass beyond
+that sphere. We know that the law
+of property now forms the basis of
+society; we know that an attempt to
+abrogate it would be the signal for
+war and anarchy, and we know this
+also, that <i>at no time</i> can its opposite
+principle be established by force, because
+its establishment will require a
+wondrous harmony in the social
+body; and a civil war, let the victory
+fall where it may, must leave mankind
+full of dissension, rancour, and
+revenge. Our convictions, therefore,
+for all practical purposes, can receive
+no confirmation. If the far future is
+to be regulated by different principles,
+of what avail the knowledge of
+them, or how can they be intelligible
+to us, to whom are denied the circumstances
+necessary for their establishment,
+and for the demonstration of
+their reasonableness?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The great Aristotle himself,&quot;
+says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility
+of any man elevating himself
+above the circumstances of his
+age&mdash;&quot;The great Aristotle himself,
+the profoundest thinker of ancient
+times, (<i>la plus forte t&ecirc;te de toute l'antiquit&eacute;</i>,)
+could not conceive of a state
+of society not based on slavery, the
+irrevocable abolition of which commenced
+a few generations afterwards.&quot;&mdash;Vol.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page401" id="page401" title="page401"></a>iv. p.38. In the sociology
+of Aristotle, slavery would have
+been a fundamental law.</p>
+
+<p>There is another consideration, not
+unworthy of being mentioned, which
+bears upon this matter. In one portion
+of M. Comte's work, (we cannot
+now lay our hand upon the passage,)
+the question comes before him of the
+comparative <i>happiness</i> of the savage
+and the civilized man. He will not
+entertain it, refuses utterly to take
+cognizance of the question, and contents
+himself with asserting the fuller
+<i>development</i> of his nature displayed
+by the civilized man. M. Comte
+felt that science had no scale for this
+thing happiness. It was not ponderable,
+nor measurable, nor was there
+an uniformity of testimony to be collected
+thereon. How many of our
+debates and controversies terminate
+in a question of this kind&mdash;of the
+comparative happiness of two several
+conditions? Such questions are, for
+the most part, practically decided by
+those who have to <i>feel</i>; but to estimate
+happiness by and for the feelings
+of others, would be the task of
+science. Some future Royal Society
+must be called upon to establish a
+<i>standard measure</i> for human felicity.</p>
+
+<p>We are speaking, it will be remembered,
+of the production of a science.
+A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly
+available in the examination
+of social questions, and may be
+of eminent utility to the moralist, the
+jurist, and the politician&mdash;though it
+is worthy of observation that even the
+habit of scientific thought, if not in
+some measure tempered to the occasion,
+may display itself very inconveniently
+and prejudicially in the determination
+of such questions. Our
+author, for instance, after satisfying
+himself that marriage is a fundamental
+law of society, is incapable of
+tolerating any infraction whatever of
+this law in the shape of a divorce.
+He would give to it the rigidity of
+a law of mechanics; he finds there
+should be cohesion here, and he will
+not listen to a single case of separation:
+forgetful that a law of society
+may even be the more stable for admitting
+exceptions which secure for it
+the affection of those by whom it is
+to be reverenced and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>With relation to the <i>past</i>, and in
+one point of view&mdash;namely, so far as
+regards the development of man in
+his speculative career&mdash;our Sociologist
+has endeavoured to supply a law
+which shall meet the peculiar exigencies
+of his case, and enable him to
+take a scientific survey of the history
+of a changeful and progressive being.
+At the threshold of his work we encounter
+the announcement of a <i>new
+law</i>, which has regulated the development
+of the human mind from its
+rudest state of intellectual existence.
+As this law lies at the basis of M.
+Comte's system&mdash;as it is perpetually
+referred to throughout his work&mdash;as
+it is by this law he proceeds to view
+history in a scientific manner&mdash;as,
+moreover, it is by aid of this law that
+he undertakes to explain the <i>provisional
+existence</i> of all theology, explaining
+it in the past, and removing it
+from the future&mdash;it becomes necessary
+to enter into some examination of its
+claims, and we must request our readers'
+attention to the following statement
+of it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;In studying the entire development
+of the human intelligence in its different
+spheres of activity, from its first efforts
+the most simple up to our own days, I
+believe I have discovered a great fundamental
+law, to which it is subjected by an
+invariable necessity, and which seems to
+me capable of being firmly established,
+whether on those proofs which are furnished
+by a knowledge of our organization,
+or on those historical verifications which
+result from an attentive examination of
+the past. The law consists in this&mdash;that
+each of our principal conceptions, each
+branch of our knowledge, passes successively
+through three different states of theory:
+the <i>theologic</i>, or fictitious; the <i>metaphysic</i>,
+or abstract; the scientific, or <i>positive</i>. In
+other terms, the human mind, by its nature,
+employs successively, in each of its researches,
+three methods of philosophizing,
+the character of which is essentially different,
+and even radically opposed; at first
+the theologic method, then the metaphysical,
+and last the positive method. Hence
+three distinct philosophies, or general
+systems of conceptions on the aggregate of
+phenomena, which mutually exclude each
+other; the first is the necessary starting-point
+of the human intelligence; the third
+is its fixed and definite state; the second
+is destined to serve the purpose only of
+transition.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the <i>theologic</i> state, the human mind,
+directing its researches to the intimate
+nature of things, the first causes and the
+final causes of all those effects which arrest
+its attention, in a word, towards an absolute
+knowledge of things, represents to itself
+<a class="pagenum" name="page402" id="page402" title="page402"></a>the phenomena as produced by the direct
+and continuous action of supernatural
+agents, more or less numerous, whose
+arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent
+anomalies of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the <i>metaphysic</i> state, which is, in
+its essence, a modification of the former,
+the supernatural agents are displaced by
+abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
+abstractions) inherent in things, and
+conceived as capable of engendering by
+themselves all the observed phenomena&mdash;whose
+explanation, thenceforth, consists in
+assigning to each its corresponding entity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At last, in the <i>positive</i> state the human
+mind, recognizing the impossibility of
+obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
+search after the origin and destination of
+the universe, and the knowledge of the
+intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
+itself exclusively to the discovery, by the
+combined efforts of ratiocination and observation,
+of their effective laws; that is to
+say, their invariable relations of succession
+and of similitude. The explanation of
+things, reduced now to its real terms, becomes
+nothing more than the connexion
+established between the various individual
+phenomena and certain general facts, the
+number of which the progress of science
+tends continually to diminish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>theologic</i> system has reached the
+highest state of perfection of which it is
+susceptible, when it has substituted the
+providential action of one only being for
+the capricious agency of the numerous
+independent divinities who had previously
+been imagined. In like manner, the last
+term of the <i>metaphysic</i> system consists in
+conceiving, instead of the different special
+entities, one great general entity, <i>nature</i>,
+considered as the only source of all phenomena.
+The perfection of the <i>positive</i>
+system, towards which it unceasingly tends,
+though it is not probable it can ever attain
+to it, would be the ability to represent all
+observable phenomena as particular cases
+of some one general fact; such, for instance,
+as that of gravitation.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I.
+p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<p>After some very just, and indeed
+admirable, observations on the necessity,
+or extreme utility, of a theologic
+hypothesis at an early period of mental
+development, in order to promote
+any systematic thought whatever, he
+proceeds thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;It is easily conceivable that our understanding,
+compelled to proceed by degrees
+almost imperceptible, could not pass
+abruptly, and without an intermediate
+stage, from the <i>theologic</i> to the <i>positive</i>
+philosophy. Theology and physics are so
+profoundly incompatible, their conceptions
+have a character so radically opposed, that
+before renouncing the one to employ exclusively
+the other, the mind must make
+use of intermediate conceptions of a bastard
+character, fit, for that very reason, gradually
+to operate the transition. Such is
+the natural destination of metaphysical
+conceptions; they have no other real utility.
+By substituting, in the study of phenomena,
+for supernatural directive agency
+an inseparable entity residing in things,
+(although this be conceived at first merely
+as an emanation from the former,) man
+habituates himself, by degrees, to consider
+only the facts themselves, the notion of
+these metaphysical agents being gradually
+subtilized, till they are no longer in the
+eyes of men of intelligence any thing but
+the names of abstractions. It is impossible
+to conceive by what other process our
+understanding could pass from considerations
+purely supernatural, to considerations
+purely natural, from the theologic to the
+positive <i>r&eacute;gime</i>.&quot;&mdash;P. 13.</p></div>
+
+<p>We need hardly say that we enter
+our protest against the supposition
+that theology is not the <i>last</i>, as well
+as the <i>first</i>, of our forms of thought&mdash;against
+the assertion that is here, and
+throughout the work, made or implied,
+that the scientific method, rigidly applied
+in its appropriate field of enquiry,
+would be found incompatible
+with the great argument of an intelligent
+Cause, and would throw the
+whole subject of theology out of the
+range of human knowledge. It would
+be superfluous for us to re-state that
+argument; and our readers would probably
+be more displeased to have presented
+before them a hostile view of
+this subject, though for the purpose
+only of controversy, than they would
+be edified by a repetition of those reasonings
+which have long since brought
+conviction to their minds. We will
+content ourselves, therefore, with this
+protest, and with adding&mdash;as a fact of
+experience, which, in estimating a law
+of development, may with peculiar
+propriety be insisted on&mdash;that hitherto
+no such incompatibility has made
+itself evident. Hitherto science, or
+the method of thinking, which its
+cultivation requires and induces, has
+not shown itself hostile to the first
+great article of religion&mdash;that on
+which revelation proceeds to erect all
+the remaining articles of our faith.
+If it is a fact that, in rude times, men
+began their speculative career by assigning
+individual phenomena to the
+immediate causation of supernatural
+powers, it is equally a fact that they
+<a class="pagenum" name="page403" id="page403" title="page403"></a>have hitherto, in the most enlightened
+times, terminated their inductive labours
+by assigning that <i>unity</i> and
+<i>correlation</i> which science points out
+in the universe of things to an ordaining
+intelligence. We repeat, as a
+matter of experience, it is as rare in
+this age to find a reflective man who
+does not read <i>thought</i> in this unity
+and correlation of material phenomena,
+as it would have been, in some
+rube superstitious period, to discover
+an individual who refused to see, in
+any one of the specialities around him,
+the direct interference of a spirit or
+demon. In our own country, men of
+science are rather to blame for a too
+detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner
+of treating this great argument,
+than for any disposition to desert it.</p>
+
+<p>Contenting ourselves with this protest,
+we proceed to the consideration
+of the <i>new law</i>. That there is, in the
+statement here made of the course
+pursued in the development of speculative
+thought, a measure of truth;
+and that, in several subjects, the course
+here indicated may be traced, will
+probably, by every one who reads the
+foregoing extracts, be at once admitted.
+But assuredly very few will read
+it without a feeling of surprise at finding
+what (under certain limitations)
+they would have welcomed in the form
+of a general observation, proclaimed
+to them as a <i>law</i>&mdash;a scientific law&mdash;which
+from its nature admits of no
+exception; at finding it stated that
+every branch of human knowledge
+must of necessity pass through these
+three theoretic stages. In the case of
+some branches of knowledge, it is impossible
+to point out what can be understood
+as its several theologic and
+metaphysic stages; and even in cases
+where M. Comte has himself applied
+these terms, it is extremely difficult to
+assign to them a meaning in accordance
+with that which they bear in this
+statement of his law; as, for instance,
+in his application of them to his own
+science of social physics. But we
+need not pause on this. What a palpable
+fallacy it is to suppose, because
+M. Comte find the positive and theologic
+methods incompatible, that, historically
+speaking, and in the minds of
+men, which certainly admit of stranger
+commixtures than this, they should
+&quot;mutually exclude each other&quot;&mdash;that,
+in short, men have not been all along,
+in various degrees and proportions,
+both <i>theologic</i> and <i>positive</i>.</p>
+
+<p>What is it, we ask, that M. Comte
+means by the <i>succession</i> of these several
+stages or modes of thinking? Does
+he mean that what is here called the
+positive method of thought is not
+equally <i>spontaneous</i> to the human mind
+as the theological, but depends on it
+for its development? Hardly so.
+The predominance of the positive method,
+or its complete formation, may
+be postponed; but it clearly has an
+origin and an existence independent
+of the theological. No barbarian ever
+deified, or supernaturalized, every
+process around him; there must always
+have been a portion of his experience
+entertained merely <i>as experience</i>.
+The very necessity man has
+to labour for his subsistence, brings him
+into a practical acquaintance with the
+material world, which induces observation,
+and conducts towards a natural
+philosophy. If he is a theologian the
+first moment he gives himself up to
+meditation, he is on the road to the
+Baconian method the very day he begins
+to labour. The rudest workman
+uses the lever; the mathematician
+follows and calculates the law which
+determines the power it bestows;
+here we have industry and then science,
+but what room for the intervention of
+theology?</p>
+
+<p>Or does M. Comte mean this only&mdash;which
+we presume to be the case&mdash;that
+these methods of thought are, in
+succession, predominant and brought
+to maturity? If so, what necessity
+for this <i>metaphysic</i> apparatus for the
+sole purpose of <i>transition</i>? If each
+of these great modes, the positive and
+theological, has its independent source,
+and is equally spontaneous&mdash;if they
+have, in fact, been all along contemporary,
+though in different stages of
+development, the function attributed
+to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous;
+there can be no place for it;
+there is no transition for it to operate.
+And what can be said of <i>a law
+of succession</i> in which there is no relation
+of cause and effect, or of invariable
+sequence, between the phenomena?</p>
+
+<p>Either way the position of M.
+Comte is untenable. If he intends
+that his two great modes of thought,
+the theologic and the positive, (between
+which the metaphysic performs
+the function of transition,) are
+<i>not</i> equally spontaneous, but that the
+one must in the order of nature precede
+the other; then, besides that this
+is an unfounded supposition, it would
+<a class="pagenum" name="page404" id="page404" title="page404"></a>follow&mdash;since the mind, or <i>organization</i>,
+of man remains from age to age
+the same in its fundamental powers&mdash;that,
+at this very time, no man could
+be inducted into the positive state of
+any branch of knowledge, without
+first going through its theologic and
+metaphysic. Truth must be expounded
+through a course of errors. Science
+must be eternally postponed, in every
+system of education, to theology, and
+a theology of the rudest description&mdash;a
+result certainly not contemplated by
+M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he
+intends that they <i>are</i> equally spontaneous
+in their character, equally native
+to the mind, then, we repeat,
+what becomes of the elaborate and
+&quot;indispensable&quot; part ascribed to the
+<i>metaphysic</i> of effectuating a transition
+between them? And how can we
+describe that as a scientific <i>law</i> in
+which there is confessedly no immediate
+relation of cause and effect, or
+sequency, established? The statement,
+if true, manifestly requires to
+be resolved into the law, or laws, capable
+of explaining it.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps our readers have all this
+while suspected that we are acting in
+a somewhat captious manner towards
+M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded
+that this author could not have
+here required their assent, strictly
+speaking, to a <i>law</i>, but that he used
+the term vaguely, as many writers
+have done&mdash;meaning nothing more
+by it than a course of events which
+has frequently been observed to take
+place; and under this impression they
+may be more disposed to receive the
+measure of truth contained in it than
+to cavil at the form of the statement.
+But indeed M. Comte uses the language
+of science in no such vague
+manner; he requires the same assent
+to this law that we give to any one
+of the recognized laws of science&mdash;to
+that of gravitation for instance,
+to which he himself likens it, pronouncing
+it, in a subsequent part of
+his work, to have been as incontrovertibly
+established. Upon this law,
+think what we may of it, M. Comte
+leans throughout all his progress; he
+could not possibly dispense with it;
+on its stability depends his whole social
+science; by it, as we have already
+intimated, he becomes master of the
+past and of the future; and an appreciation
+of its necessity to him, at once
+places us at that point of view from
+which M. Comte contemplates our
+mundane affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It is his object to put the scientific
+method in complete possession of the
+whole range of human thought, especially
+of the department, hitherto unreduced
+to subjection, of social phenomena.
+Now there is a great rival in
+the field&mdash;theology&mdash;which, besides
+imparting its own supernatural tenets,
+influences our modes of thinking on
+almost all social questions. Theology
+cannot itself be converted into a branch
+of science; all those tenets by which it
+sways the hopes and fears of men are
+confessedly above the sphere of science:
+if science, therefore, is to rule absolutely,
+it must remove theology. But
+it can only remove by explaining; by
+showing how it came there, and how,
+in good time, it is destined to depart.
+If the scientific method is entirely to
+predominate, it must explain religion,
+as it must explain every thing that
+exists, or has existed; and it must also
+reveal the law of its departure&mdash;otherwise
+it cannot remain sole mistress of
+the speculative mind. Such is the
+office which the law of development
+we have just considered is intended to
+fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing
+its purpose we must now leave
+our readers to decide.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus, as he presumes, cleared
+the ground for the absolute and exclusive
+dominion of the positive method,
+M. Comte proceeds to erect the <i>hierarchy</i>,
+as he very descriptively calls it,
+of the several sciences. His classification
+of these is based on the simplest
+and most intelligible principle.
+We think that we rather add to, than
+diminish from, the merits of this classification,
+when we say, that it is such
+as seems spontaneously to arise to any
+reflective mind engaged in a review of
+human knowledge. Commencing with
+the most simple, general, and independent
+laws, it proceeds to those
+which are more complicated, which
+presume the existence of other laws;
+in such manner that at every stage of
+our scientific progress we are supporting
+ourselves on the knowledge acquired
+in the one preceding.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;The positive philosophy,&quot; he tells us,
+&quot;falls naturally into five divisions, or five
+fundamental sciences, whose order of succession
+is determined by the necessary or
+invariable subordination (estimated according
+to no hypothetical opinions) of their several
+phenomena; these are, astronomy,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page405" id="page405" title="page405"></a>mechanics, (<i>la physique</i>,) chemistry, physiology,
+and lastly, social physics. The first
+regards the phenomena the most general,
+the most abstract, the most remote from
+humanity; they influence all others, without
+being influenced by them. The phenomena
+considered by the last are, on the
+contrary, the most complicated, the most
+concrete, the most directly interesting to
+man; they depend more or less on all the
+preceding phenomena, without exercising
+on them any influence. Between these
+two extremes, the degrees of speciality,
+of complication and personality, of phenomena,
+gradually increase, as well as their
+successive dependence.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I. p. 96.</p></div>
+
+<p>The principle of classification is excellent,
+but is there no rank dropt out
+of this <i>hierarchy</i>? The metaphysicians,
+or psychologists, who are wont
+to consider themselves as standing at
+the very summit&mdash;where are they?
+They are dismissed from their labours&mdash;their
+place is occupied by others&mdash;and
+what was considered as having
+substance and reality in their proceedings,
+is transferred to the head of
+physiology. The phrenologist is admitted
+into the hierarchy of science as
+an honest, though hitherto an unpractised,
+and not very successful labourer;
+the metaphysician, with his class of
+internal observations, is entirely scouted.
+M. Comte considers the <i>mind</i> as
+one of those abstract entities which it
+is the first business of the positive
+philosophy to discard. He speaks of
+man, of his organization, of his thought,
+but not, scientifically, of his <i>mind</i>.
+This entity, this occult cause, belongs
+to the <i>metaphysic</i> stage of theorizing.
+&quot;There is no place,&quot; he cries, &quot;for this
+illusory psychology, the last transformation
+of theology!&quot;&mdash;though, by the
+way, so far as a belief in this abstract
+entity of mind is concerned, the <i>metaphysic</i>
+condition of our knowledge appears
+to be quite as old, quite as
+primitive, as any conception whatever of
+theology. Now, whether M. Comte
+be right in this preference of the
+phrenologist, we will not stay to discuss&mdash;it
+were too wide a question;
+but thus much we can briefly and indisputably
+show, that he utterly misconceives,
+as well as underrates, the
+<i>kind of research</i> to which psychologists
+are addicted. As M. Comte's style
+is here unusually vivacious, we will
+quote the whole passage. Are we
+uncharitable in supposing that the
+prospect of demolishing, at one fell
+swoop, the brilliant reputations of a
+whole class of Parisian <i>savans</i>, added
+something to the piquancy of the
+style?</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Such has gradually become, since the
+time of Bacon, the preponderance of the
+positive philosophy; it has at present assumed
+indirectly so great an ascendant
+over those minds even which have been
+most estranged from it, that metaphysicians
+devoted to the study of our intelligence,
+can no longer hope to delay the
+fall of their pretended science, but by presenting
+their doctrines as founded also
+upon the observation of facts. For this
+purpose they have, in these later times,
+attempted to distinguish, by a very singular
+subtilty, two sorts of observations of
+equal importance, the one external, the
+other internal; the last of which is exclusively
+destined for the study of intellectual
+phenomena. This is not the place to
+enter into the special discussion of this
+sophism. I will limit myself to indicate
+the principal consideration, which clearly
+proves that this pretended direct contemplation
+of the mind by itself, is a pure
+illusion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a long while ago men imagined
+they had explained vision by saying that
+the luminous action of bodies produces on
+the retina pictures representative of
+external forms and colours. To this the
+physiologists [query, the <i>physiologists</i>]
+have objected, with reason, that if it was
+<i>as images</i> that the luminous impressions
+acted, there needed another eye within
+the eye to behold them. Does not a
+similar objection hold good still more
+strikingly in the present case?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is clear, in fact, from an invincible
+necessity, that the human mind can observe
+directly all phenomena except its
+own. For by whom can the observation
+be made? It is conceivable that,
+relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe
+himself in regard to the passions
+which animate him, from this anatomical
+reason, that the organs which are the seat
+of them are distinct from those destined
+to the function of observation. Though
+each man has had occasion to make on
+himself such observations, yet they can
+never have any great scientific importance;
+and the best means of knowing the passions
+will be always to observe them without;
+[<i>indeed</i>!] for every state of passion
+very energetic&mdash;that is to say, precisely
+those which it would be most essential to
+examine, are necessarily incompatible with
+the state of observation. But as to observing
+in the same manner intellectual
+phenomena, while they are proceeding, it
+is manifestly impossible. The thinking
+individual cannot separate himself in two
+parts, of which the one shall reason, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page406" id="page406" title="page406"></a>the other observe it reasoning. The organ
+observed and the organ observing being
+in this case identical, how can observation
+be carried on?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This pretended psychological method
+is thus radically absurd. And only consider
+to what procedures profoundly contradictory
+it immediately conducts! On
+the other hand, they recommend you to
+isolate yourself as much as possible from
+all external sensation; and, above all,
+they interdict you every intellectual exercise;
+for if you were merely occupied in
+making the most simple calculation, what
+would become of your <i>internal</i> observation?
+On the other hand, after having
+thus, by dint of many precautions, attained
+to a perfect state of intellectual slumber,
+you are to occupy yourself in contemplating
+the operations passing in your mind&mdash;while
+there is no longer any thing passing
+there. Our descendants will one day see
+these ludicrous pretensions transferred to
+the stage.&quot;&mdash;P. 34.</p></div>
+
+<p>They seem transferred to the stage
+already&mdash;so completely burlesqued is
+the whole process on which the psychologist
+bases his results. He does not
+pretend to observe the mind itself; but
+he says, you can remember previous
+states of consciousness, whether of
+passion or of intellectual effort, and
+pay renewed attention to them. And
+assuredly there is no difficulty in understanding
+this. When, indeed, M.
+Cousin, after being much perplexed
+with the problem which Kant had
+thrown out to him, of objective and
+subjective truth, comes back to the
+public and tells them, in a second edition
+of his work, that he has succeeded
+in discovering, in the inmost recesses
+of the mind, and at a depth of the
+consciousness to which neither he
+nor any other had before been able to
+penetrate, this very sense of the absolute
+in truth of which he was in
+search&mdash;something very like the account
+which M. Conte gives, may be
+applicable. But when M. Cousin, or
+other psychologists, in the ordinary
+course of their investigations, observe
+mental phenomena, they simply pay
+attention to what memory brings them
+of past experiences; observations
+which are not only a legitimate source
+of knowledge, but which are continually
+made, with more or less accuracy,
+by every human being. If they are
+impossible according to the doctrines
+of phrenology, let phrenology look to
+this, and rectify her blunder in the
+best way, as speedily as she can. M.
+Comte may think fit to depreciate the
+labours of the metaphysician; but it
+is not to the experimental philosopher
+alone that he is indebted for that positive
+method which he expounds
+with so exclusive an enthusiasm. M.
+Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts
+the fundamental principles of Gall's
+system, but repudiates, as consummately
+absurd, the list of organs, and
+the minute divisions of the skull,
+which at present obtain amongst
+phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist,
+so far and no further, but from
+certain information gathered from his
+consciousness, or his memory, which
+convicted phrenology of error? And
+how can he, or any other, rectify this
+erroneous division of the cranium, and
+establish a more reasonable one, unless
+by a course of craniological observations
+directed and confirmed by
+those internal observations which he
+is pleased here to deride?</p>
+
+<p>His hierarchy being erected, he
+next enters on a review of the several
+received sciences, marking throughout
+the successful, or erroneous, application
+of the positive method. This
+occupies three volumes. It is a portion
+of the work which we are restricted
+from entering on; nor shall we
+deviate from the line we have prescribed
+to ourselves. But before
+opening the fourth volume, in which
+he treats of social physics, it will not
+be beside our object to take a glance at
+the <i>method</i> itself, as applied in the
+usual field of scientific investigation,
+to nature, as it is called&mdash;to inorganic
+matter, to vegetable and animal life.</p>
+
+<p>We are not here determining the
+merits of M. Comte in his exposition
+of the scientific method; we take it
+as we find it; and, in unsophisticated
+mood, we glance at the nature of this
+mental discipline&mdash;to make room for
+which, it will be remembered, so wide
+a territory is to be laid waste.</p>
+
+<p>Facts, or phenomena, classed according
+to their similitude or the law
+of their succession&mdash;such is the material
+of science. All enquiry into
+causes, into substance, into being,
+pronounced impertinent and nugatory;
+the very language in which
+such enquiries are couched not allowed,
+perhaps, to have a meaning&mdash;such
+is the supreme dictate of the method,
+and all men yield to it at least a nominal
+submission. Very different is
+the aspect which science presents to
+us in these severe generalities, than
+<a class="pagenum" name="page407" id="page407" title="page407"></a>when she lectures fluently before gorgeous
+orreries; or is heard from behind
+a glittering apparatus, electrical
+or chemical; or is seen, gay and sportive
+as a child, at her endless game of
+unwearying experiment. Here she is
+the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The
+museful, meditative spirit passes from
+one object of its wonder to another, and
+finds, at every pause it makes, that
+science is as strenuous in forbidding
+as in satisfying enquiry. The planet
+rolls through space&mdash;ask not how!&mdash;the
+mathematician will tell you at
+what rate it flies&mdash;let his figures suffice.
+A thousand subtle combinations
+are taking place around you, producing
+the most marvellous transformations&mdash;the
+chemist has a table of substances,
+and a table of proportions&mdash;names
+and figures both&mdash;<i>why</i> these
+transmutations take place, is a question
+you should be ashamed to ask.
+Plants spring up from the earth, and
+<i>grow</i>, and blossom at your feet, and
+you look on with delight, and an unsubduable
+wonder, and in a heedless
+moment you ask what is <i>life?</i> Science
+will generalize the fact to you&mdash;give
+you its formula for the expression of
+<i>growth, decomposition, and recomposition</i>,
+under circumstances not as yet
+very accurately collected. Still you
+stand gazing at the plant which a short
+while since stole through a crevice of
+the earth, and taking to itself, with
+such subtle power of choice, from the
+soil or the air, the matter that it needed,
+fashioned it to the green leaf and
+the hanging blossom. In vain! Your
+scientific monitor calls you from futile
+reveries, and repeats his formula of
+decomposition and recomposition. As
+<i>attraction</i> in the planet is known only
+as a movement admitting of a stated
+numerical expression, so <i>life</i> in the
+plant is to be known only as decomposition
+and recomposition taking
+place under certain circumstances.
+Think of it as such&mdash;no more. But,
+O learned philosopher! you exclaim,
+you shall tell me that you know not
+what manner of thing life is, and I
+will believe you; and if you add that
+I shall never discover it, I will believe
+you; but you cannot prevent me
+from knowing that it is something I
+do not know. Permit me, for I cannot
+help it, still to wonder what life
+is. Upon the dial of a watch the
+hands are moving, and a child asks
+why? Child! I respond, that the
+hands <i>do</i> move is an ultimate fact&mdash;so,
+represent it to yourself&mdash;and here,
+moreover, is the law of their movement&mdash;the
+longer index revolves twelve
+times while the shorter revolves once.
+This is knowledge, and will be of use
+to you&mdash;more you cannot understand.
+And the child is silent, but still it
+keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows
+there is something that it does not
+know.</p>
+
+<p>But while you are looking, in spite
+of your scientific monitor, at this
+beautiful creature that grows fixed
+and rooted in the earth&mdash;what is this
+that glides forth from beneath its
+leaves, with self-determined motion,
+not to be expressed by a numerical
+law, pausing, progressing, seeking,
+this way and that, its pasture?&mdash;what
+have we here? <i>Irritability and a tissue.</i>
+Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the
+philosopher has touched it, coiling and
+writhing itself&mdash;what is this? <i>Sensation
+and a nerve.</i> Does the nerve <i>feel</i>?
+you inconsiderately ask, or is there
+some sentient being, other than the
+nerve, in which sensation resides? A
+smile of derision plays on the lip of the
+philosopher. <i>There is sensation</i>&mdash;you
+cannot express the fact in simpler or
+more general terms. Turn your enquiries,
+or your microscope, on the
+organization with which it is, in order
+of time, connected. Ask not me, in
+phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible
+mysteries of ontology. And
+you, O philosopher! who think and
+reason thus, is not the thought within
+thee, in every way, a most perplexing
+matter? Not more perplexing, he replies,
+than the pain of yonder worm,
+which seems now to have subsided,
+since it glides on with apparent pleasure
+over the surface of the earth.
+Does the organization of the man, or
+something else within him, <i>think</i>?&mdash;does
+the organization of that worm, or
+something else within it, <i>feel</i>?&mdash;they
+are virtually the same questions, and
+equally idle. Phenomena are the sole
+subjects of science. Like attraction
+in the planet, like life in the vegetable,
+like sensation in the animal, so thought
+in man is an ultimate fact, which we
+can merely recognize, and place in its
+order in the universe. Come with me
+to the dissecting-room, and examine
+that cerebral apparatus with which it
+is, or <i>was</i>, connected.</p>
+
+<p>All this &quot;craves wary walking.&quot;
+It is a trying course, this <i>method</i>, for
+the uninitiated. How it strains the
+mind by the very limitations it imposes
+<a class="pagenum" name="page408" id="page408" title="page408"></a>on its outlook! How mysterious is this
+very sharp, and well-defined separation
+from all mystery! How giddy is
+this path that leads always so close
+over the unknowable! Giddy as that
+bridge of steel, framed like a scimitar,
+and as fine, which the faithful Moslem,
+by the aid of his Prophet, will
+pass with triumph on his way to Paradise.
+But of our bridge, it cannot be
+said that it has one foot on earth and
+one in heaven. Apparently, it has no
+foundation whatever; it rises from
+cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans
+an inpenetrable abyss. A mist, which
+no wind disperses, involves both extremities
+of our intellectual career,
+and we are seen to pass like shadows
+across the fantastic, inexplicable interval.</p>
+
+<p>We now open the fourth volume,
+which is emblazoned with the title of
+<i>Physique Social</i>. And here we will
+at once extract a passage, which, if
+our own remarks have been hitherto
+of an unattractive character, shall reward
+the reader for his patience. It
+is taken from that portion of the work&mdash;perhaps
+the most lucid and powerful
+of the whole&mdash;where, in order to
+demonstrate the necessity of his new
+science of Sociology, M. Comte enters
+into a review of the two great political
+parties which, with more or less
+distinctness, divide every nation of
+Europe; his intention being to show
+that both of them are equally incompetent
+to the task of organizing society.
+We shall render our quotation as brief
+as the purpose of exposition will allow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;It is impossible to deny that the political
+world is intellectually in a deplorable
+condition. All our ideas of <i>order</i> are
+hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient
+system of religious and military power,
+regarded especially in its constitution,
+catholic and feudal; a doctrine which,
+from the philosophic point of view of this
+treatise, represents incontestably the <i>theologic</i>
+state of the social science. All our
+ideas of <i>progress</i> continue to be
+exclusively deduced from a philosophy purely
+negative, which, issuing from Protestantism,
+has taken in the last age its final form
+and complete development; the doctrines
+of which constitute, in reality, the <i>metaphysic</i>
+state of politics. Different classes
+of society adopt the one or the other of
+these, just as they are disposed to feel
+chiefly the want of conservation or that of
+amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these
+antagonist doctrines present themselves in
+all their plenitude, and with their primitive
+homogeneity; they are found less and
+less in this form, except in minds purely
+speculative. But the monstrous medley
+which men attempt in our days of their
+incompatible principles, cannot evidently
+be endowed with any virtue foreign to the
+elements which compose it, and tends
+only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;However pernicious may be at present
+the theologic doctrine, no true philosophy
+can forget that the formation and
+first development of modern societies were
+accomplished under its benevolent tutelage;
+which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate
+in the historical portion of this
+work. But it is not the less incontestably
+true that, for about three centuries, its
+influence has been, amongst the nations
+most advanced, essentially retrograde, notwithstanding
+the partial services it has
+throughout that period rendered. It
+would be superfluous to enter here into a
+special discussion of this doctrine, in order
+to show its extreme insufficiency at the
+present day. The deplorable absence of
+all sound views of social organization can
+alone account for the absurd project of
+giving, in these times, for the support of
+social order, a political system which has
+already been found unable to sustain itself
+before the spontaneous progress of intelligence
+and of society. The historical analysis
+which we shall subsequently institute
+of the successive changes which have gradually
+brought about the entire dissolution
+of the catholic and feudal system, will
+demonstrate, better than any direct argument,
+its radical and irrevocable decay.
+The theologic school has generally no other
+method of explaining this decomposition
+of the old system than by causes merely
+accidental or personal, out of all reasonable
+proportion with the magnitude of the
+results; or else, when hard driven, it has
+recourse to its ordinary artifice, and attempts
+to explain all by an appeal to the
+will of Providence, to whom is ascribed
+the intention of raising a time of trial for
+the social order, of which the commencement,
+the duration, and the character, are
+all left equally obscure.&quot;...&mdash;P.14</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a point of view strictly logical, the
+social problem might be stated thus:&mdash;construct
+a doctrine that shall be so
+rationally conceived that it shall be found,
+as it develops itself, to be still always consistent
+with its own principles. Neither
+of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition,
+even by the rudest approximation.
+Both display numerous and direct contradictions,
+and on important points. By
+this alone their utter insufficiency is clearly
+exhibited. The doctrine which shall fulfil
+this condition, will, from this test, be recognized
+as the one capable of reorganizing
+<a class="pagenum" name="page409" id="page409" title="page409"></a>society; for it is an <i>intellectual reorganization</i>
+that is first wanted&mdash;a re-establishment
+of a real and durable harmony
+amongst our social ideas, disturbed and
+shaken to the very foundation. Should
+this regeneration be accomplished in one
+intelligence only, (and such must necessarily
+be its manner of commencement,)
+its extension would be certain; for the
+number of intelligences to be convinced
+can have no influence except as a question
+of time. I shall not fail to point out,
+when the proper opportunity arrives, the
+eminent superiority, in this respect, of the
+positive philosophy, which, once extended
+to social phenomena, will necessarily combine
+the ideas of men in a strict and
+complete manner, which in no other way can
+be attained.&quot;&mdash;P. 20.</p></div>
+
+<p>M. Comte then mentions some of
+the inconsistencies of the theologic
+school.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Analyze, for example, the vain attempts,
+so frequently renewed during two
+centuries by so many distinguished minds,
+to subordinate, according to the theologic
+formula, reason to faith; it is easy to
+recognize the radical contradiction this
+attempt involves, which establishes reason
+herself as supreme judge of this very
+submission, the extent and the permanence
+of which is to depend upon her variable
+and not very rigid decisions. The most
+eminent thinker of the present catholic
+school, the illustrious <i>De Maistre</i>,
+himself affords a proof, as convincing as
+involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction
+in his philosophy, when, renouncing
+all theologic weapons, he labours in his
+principal work to re-establish the Papal
+supremacy on purely historical and political
+reasonings, instead of limiting himself
+to command it by right divine&mdash;the
+only mode in true harmony with such
+a doctrine, and which a mind, at another
+epoch, would not certainly have hesitated
+to adopt.&quot;&mdash;P. 25.</p></div>
+
+<p>After some further observations on
+the theologic or retrograde school, he
+turns to the <i>metaphysic</i>, sometimes
+called the anarchical, sometimes <i>doctrine
+critique</i>, for M. Comte is rich in
+names.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;In submitting, in their turn, the <i>metaphysic</i>
+doctrine to a like appreciation, it
+must never be overlooked that, though
+exclusively critical, and therefore purely
+revolutionary, it has not the less merited,
+for a long time, the title of progressive,
+as having in fact presided over the principal
+political improvements accomplished
+in the course of the three last centuries,
+and which have necessarily been of a
+<i>negative</i> description. If, when conceived
+in an absolute sense, its dogmas manifest,
+in fact, a character directly anarchical,
+when viewed in an historical position, and
+in their antagonism to the ancient system,
+they constitute a provisional state, necessary
+to the introduction of a new political
+organization.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By a necessity as evident as it is
+deplorable, a necessity inherent in our
+feeble nature, the transition from one
+social system to another can never be
+direct and continuous; it supposes always,
+during some generations at least, a sort of
+interregnum, more or less anarchical,
+whose character and duration depend on
+the importance and extent of the renovation
+to be effected. (While the old system
+remains standing, though undermined, the
+public reason cannot become familiarized
+with a class of ideas entirely opposed to it.)
+In this necessity we see the legitimate
+source of the present <i>doctrine critique</i>&mdash;a
+source which at once explains the indispensable
+services it has hitherto rendered,
+and also the essential obstacles it now
+opposes to the final reorganization of
+modern societies....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Under whatever aspect we regard it,
+the general spirit of the metaphysic revolutionary
+system consists in erecting into
+a normal and permanent state a necessarily
+exceptional and transitory condition. By
+a direct and total subversion of political
+notions, the most fundamental, it represents
+government as being, by its nature, the
+necessary enemy of society, against which
+it sedulously places itself in a constant
+state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is
+disposed incessantly to restrain more and
+more its sphere of activity, in order to
+prevent its encroachments, and tends
+finally to leave it no other than the simple
+functions of general police, without any
+essential participation in the supreme direction
+of the action of the collective
+body or of its social development.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Approaching to a more detailed examination
+of this doctrine, it is evident that
+the absolute right of free examination
+(which, connected as it is with the liberty
+of the press and the freedom of education,
+is manifestly its principal and fundamental
+dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the
+consecration, under the vicious abstract
+form common to all metaphysic conceptions,
+of that transitional state of unlimited
+liberty in which the human mind has been
+spontaneously placed, in consequence of
+the irrevocable decay of the theologic
+philosophy, and which must naturally remain
+till the establishment in the social domain
+of the positive method.<a name="footnotetag49" id="footnotetag49"></a><a href="#footnote49"><sup>49</sup></a> ... However
+salutary and indispensable in its historical
+<a class="pagenum" name="page410" id="page410" title="page410"></a>position, this principle opposes a grave
+obstacle to the reorganization of society,
+by being erected into an absolute and permanent
+dogma. To examine always without
+deciding ever, would be deemed great
+folly in any individual. How can the dogmatic
+consecration of a like disposition
+amongst all individuals, constitute the definitive
+perfection of the social order, in
+regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so
+peculiarly important, and so difficult, to
+establish? Is it not evident, on the contrary,
+that such a disposition is, from its
+nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as,
+if it could be indefinitely prolonged, it
+must hinder every true mental organization?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No association whatever, though destined
+for a special and temporary purpose,
+and though limited to a small number
+of individuals, can subsist without a
+certain degree of reciprocal confidence,
+both intellectual and moral, between its
+members, each one of whom finds a continual
+necessity for a crowd of notions, to
+the formation of which he must remain a
+stranger, and which he cannot admit but
+on the faith of others. By what monstrous
+exception can this elementary condition
+of all society be banished from that
+total association of mankind, where the
+point of view which the individual takes,
+is most widely separated from that point
+of view which the collective interest requires,
+and where each member is the least
+capable, whether by nature or position, to
+form a just appreciation of these general
+rules, indispensable to the good direction
+of his personal activity. Whatever intellectual
+development we may suppose possible,
+in the mass of men it is evident,
+that social order will remain always necessarily
+incompatible with the permanent
+liberty left to each, to throw back every
+day into endless discussion the first principles
+even of society....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The dogma of <i>equality</i> is the most
+essential and the most influential after
+that which I have just examined, and is,
+besides, in necessary relation to the principle
+of the unrestricted liberty of judgment;
+for this last indirectly leads to the
+conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental
+character&mdash;an equality of intelligence.
+In its bearing on the ancient
+system, it has happily promoted the development
+of modern civilization, by presiding
+over the final dissolution of the old
+social classification. But this function
+constitutes the sole progressive destination
+of this energetic dogma, which tends in its
+turn to prevent every just reorganization,
+since its destructive activity is blindly directed
+against the basis of every new
+classification. For, whatever that basis
+may be, it cannot be reconciled with a
+pretended equality, which, to all intelligent
+men, can now only signify the triumph
+of the inequalities developed by
+modern civilization, over those which had
+predominated in the infancy of society....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same philosophical appreciation
+is applicable with equal ease to the dogma
+of the <i>sovereignty of the people</i>. Whilst
+estimating, as is fit, the indispensable
+transitional office of this revolutionary
+dogma, no true philosopher can now misunderstand
+the fatal anarchical tendency
+of this metaphysical conception, since in
+its absolute application it opposes itself to
+all regular institution, condemning indefinitely
+all superiors to an arbitrary dependence
+on the multitude of their inferiors,
+by a sort of transference to the people of
+the much-reprobated right of kings.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As our author had shown how the
+<i>theologic</i> philosophy was inconsistent
+often with itself, so, in criticising the
+<i>metaphysics</i>, he exposes here also
+certain self-contradictions. He reproaches
+it with having, in its contests
+with the old system, endeavoured,
+at each stage, to uphold and adopt
+some of the elementary principles of
+that very system it was engaged in
+destroying.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Thus,&quot; he says, &quot;there arose a Christianity
+more and more simplified, and reduced
+at length to a vague and powerless
+theism, which, by a strange medley of
+terms, the metaphysicians distinguished by
+the title of <i>natural religion</i>, as if all religion
+was not inevitably <i>supernatural</i>.
+In pretending to direct the social reorganization
+after this vain conception, the
+metaphysic school, notwithstanding its
+destination purely revolutionary, has always
+implicitly adhered, and does so, especially
+and distinctly, at the present day, to
+the most fundamental principle of the ancient
+political doctrine&mdash;that which represents
+the social order as necessarily reposing
+on a theological basis. This is now
+the most evident, and the most pernicious
+inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine.
+Armed with this concession, the school of
+Bossuet and De Maistre will always maintain
+an incontestable logical superiority over
+<a class="pagenum" name="page411" id="page411" title="page411"></a>the irrational detractors of Catholicism,
+who, while they proclaim the want of a
+religious organization, reject, nevertheless,
+the elements indispensable to its realization.
+By such a concession the revolutionary
+school concur in effect, at the present
+day, with the retrograde, in preventing
+a right organization of modern societies,
+whose intellectual condition more and
+more interdicts a system of politics founded
+on theology.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Our readers will doubtless agree
+with us, that this review of political
+parties (though seen through an extract
+which we have been compelled
+to abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible
+in quoting from an author)
+displays a singular originality and
+power of thought; although each one
+of them will certainly have his own
+class of objections and exceptions to
+make. We said that the impression
+created by the work was decidedly
+<i>conservative</i>, and this quotation has
+already borne us out. For without
+implying that we could conscientiously
+make use of every argument here put
+into our hands, we may be allowed to
+say, as the lawyers do in Westminster
+Hail, <i>if this be so</i>, then it follows that
+we of the retrograde, or as we may
+fairly style ourselves in England&mdash;seeing
+this country has not progressed
+so rapidly as France&mdash;we of the stationary
+party are fully justified in
+maintaining our position, unsatisfactory
+though it may be, till some better
+and more definite system has been
+revealed to us, than any which has
+yet made its advent in the political
+world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic,
+or liberal school have no proper
+office but that of destruction&mdash;if
+its nature be essentially transitional&mdash;can
+we be called upon to forego this
+position, to quit our present anchorage,
+until we know whereto we are to
+be transferred? Shall we relinquish
+the traditions of our monarchy, and
+the discipline of our church, before
+we hear what we are to receive in exchange?
+M. Comte would not advise
+so irrational a proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>But M. Comte has himself a <i>constructive</i>
+doctrine; M. Comte will
+give us in exchange&mdash;what? The
+Scientific Method!</p>
+
+<p>We have just seen something of
+this scientific method. M. Comte
+himself is well aware that it is a style
+of thought by no means adapted to the
+multitude. Therefore there will arise
+with the scientific method an altogether
+new class, an intellectual aristocracy,
+(not the present race of <i>savans</i>
+or their successors, whom he is
+particularly anxious to exclude from
+all such advancement,) who will expound
+to the people the truths to
+which that method shall give birth.
+This class will take under its control
+all that relates to education. It will
+be the seat of the moral power, not of
+the administrative. This, together
+with some arguments to establish
+what few are disposed to question, the
+fundamental character of the laws of
+property and of marriage, is all that
+we are here presented with towards
+the definite re-organization of society.</p>
+
+<p>We shall not go back to the question,
+already touched upon, and which
+lies at the basis of all this&mdash;how far it
+is possible to construct a science of
+Sociology. There is only one way in
+which the question can be resolved in
+the affirmative&mdash;namely, by constructing
+the science.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we may observe, that
+the general consent of a cultivated
+order of minds to a certain class of
+truths, is not sufficient for the purposes
+of government. We take, says
+M. Comte, our chemistry from the
+chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer;
+if these were fixed principles,
+we should take our politics
+with the same ease from the graduated
+politician. But it is worth while to
+consider what it is we do when we
+take our chemistry from the chemist,
+and our astronomy from the astronomer.
+We assume, on the authority
+of our teacher, certain facts which it
+is not in our power to verify; but his
+reasonings upon these facts we must
+be able to comprehend. We follow
+him as he explains the facts by which
+knowledge has been obtained, and
+yield to his statement a rational conviction.
+Unless we do this, we cannot
+be said to have any knowledge
+whatever of the subject&mdash;any chemistry
+or astronomy at all. Now, presuming
+there were a science of politics,
+as fixed and perfect as that of
+astronomy, the people must, at all
+events, be capable of understanding
+its exposition, or they could not possibly
+be governed by it. We need
+hardly say that those ideas, feelings,
+and sentiments, which can be made
+general, are those only on which government
+can rest.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the preceding extract,
+our author exposes the futility
+<a class="pagenum" name="page412" id="page412" title="page412"></a>of that attempt which certain churchmen
+are making, as well on this side
+of the Channel as the other, to reason
+men back into a submission of their
+reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology
+should be above the apprehension
+of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems
+occasionally to presume it would be,)
+he would impose on his intellectual
+priesthood a task of the very same
+kind, and even still more hopeless.
+A multitude once taught to argue and
+decide on politics, must be reasoned
+back into a submission of their reason
+to political teachers&mdash;teachers who
+have no sacred writings, and no traditions
+from which to argue a delegated
+authority, but whose authority
+must be founded on the very reasonableness
+of the entire system of their
+doctrine. But this is a difficulty we
+are certainly premature in discussing,
+as the true Catholic church in politics
+has still itself to be formed.</p>
+
+<p>We are afraid, notwithstanding all
+his protestations, M. Comte will be
+simply classed amongst the <i>Destructives</i>,
+so little applicable to the generality
+of minds is that mode of thought,
+to establish which (and it is for this
+we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely,
+for so great sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>The fifth volume&mdash;the most remarkable,
+we think, of the whole&mdash;contains
+that historical survey which has been
+more than once alluded to in the foregoing
+extracts. This volume alone
+would make the fortune of any expert
+Parisian scribe who knew how to select
+from its rich store of original materials,
+who had skill to arrange and expound,
+and, above all, had the dexterity to
+adopt somewhat more ingeniously than
+M. Comte has done, his abstract statements
+to our reminiscences of historical
+facts. Full of his own generalities,
+he is apt to forget the concrete matter
+of the annalist. Indeed, it is a
+peculiarity running through the volume,
+that generalizations, in themselves
+of a valuable character, are
+shown to disadvantage by an unskilful
+alliance with history.</p>
+
+<p>We will make one quotation from
+this portion of the work, and then we
+must leave M. Comte. In reviewing
+the theological progress of mankind,
+he signalizes three epochs, that of
+Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of
+Monotheism. Our extract shall relate
+to the first of these, to that primitive
+state of religion, or idolatry, in which
+<i>things themselves</i> were worshipped;
+the human being transferring to them
+immediately a life, or power, somewhat
+analogous to its own.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Exclusively habituated, for so long a
+time, to a theology eminently metaphysic,
+we must feel at present greatly embarrassed
+in our attempt to comprehend this
+gross primitive mode of thought. It is
+thus that fetishism has often been confounded
+with polytheism, when to the
+latter has been applied the common expression
+of idolatry, which strictly relates
+to the former only; since the priests of
+Jupiter or Minerva would, no doubt, have
+as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of
+worshipping images, as do the Catholic
+doctors of the present day a like unjust
+accusation of the Protestants. But though
+we are happily sufficiently remote from
+fetishism to find a difficulty in conceiving
+it, yet each one of us has but to retrace
+his own mental history, to detect the
+essential characters of this initial state.
+Nay, even eminent thinkers of the present
+day, when they allow themselves to be
+involuntarily ensnared (under the influence,
+but partially rectified, of a vicious
+education) to attempt to penetrate the
+mystery of the essential production of any
+phenomenon whose laws are not familiar
+to them, they are in a condition personally
+to exemplify this invariable instinctive
+tendency to trace the generation of unknown
+effects to a cause analogous to life,
+which is no other, strictly speaking, than
+the principle of fetishism....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated,
+has always necessarily for its
+base pure fetishism, which deifies instantly
+each body and each phenomenon capable
+of exciting the feeble thought of infant
+humanity. Whatever essential transformations
+this primitive philosophy may afterwards
+undergo, a judicious sociological
+analysis will always expose to view this
+primordial base, never entirely concealed,
+even in a religious state the most remote
+from the original point of departure. Not
+only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy
+has presented, at the time of its greatest
+splendour, the established and prolonged
+coexistence, in the several castes of the
+hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs,
+since the inferior ranks still remained in
+simple fetishism, whilst the higher orders
+were in possession of a very remarkable
+polytheism, and the most exalted of its
+members had probably raised themselves
+to some form of monotheism; but we can
+at all times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in
+the theologic spirit traces of this original
+fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst
+subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical
+forms. What, in reality, is that celebrated
+conception of a soul of the world amongst
+the ancients, or that analogy, more modern,
+drawn between the earth and an
+<a class="pagenum" name="page413" id="page413" title="page413"></a>immense living animal, and other similar
+fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the
+pomp of philosophical language? And, in
+our own days even, what is this cloudy
+pantheism which so many metaphysicians,
+especially in Germany, make great boast
+of, but generalized and systematized fetishism
+enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze
+the vulgar.&quot;&mdash;Vol. V. p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<p>He then remarks on the perfect
+adaptation of this primitive theology
+to the initial torpor of the human
+understanding, which it spares even
+the labour of creating and sustaining
+the facile fictions of polytheism. The
+mind yields passively to that natural
+tendency which leads us to transfer to
+objects without us, that sentiment of
+existence which we feel within, and
+which, appearing at first sufficiently to
+explain our own personal phenomena,
+serves directly as an uniform base, an
+absolute unquestioned interpretation,
+of all external phenomena. He dwells
+with quite a touching satisfaction on
+this child-like and contented condition
+of the rude intellect.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;All observable bodies,&quot; he says
+&quot;being thus immediately personified and
+endowed with passions suited to the energy
+of the observed phenomena, the external
+world presents itself spontaneously to the
+spectator in a perfect harmony, such as
+never again has been produced, and which
+must have excited in him a peculiar sentiment
+of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us
+in the present day to be characterized,
+even when we refer back with a meditation
+the most intense on this cradle of
+humanity.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Do not even these few fragments
+bear out our remarks, both of praise
+and censure? We see here traces of
+a deep penetration into the nature of
+man, coupled with a singular negligence
+of the historical picture. The
+principle here laid down as that of
+fetishism, is important in many respects;
+it is strikingly developed, and
+admits of wide application; but (presuming
+we are at liberty to seek in
+the rudest periods for the origin of
+religion) we do not find any such
+systematic procedure amongst rude
+thinkers&mdash;we do not find any condition
+of mankind which displays that
+complete ascendancy of the principle
+here described. Our author would
+lead us to suppose, that the deification
+of objects was uniformly a species of
+explanation of natural phenomena.
+The accounts we have of fetishism,
+as observed in barbarous countries,
+prove to us that this animation of
+stocks and stones has frequently no
+connexion whatever with a desire to
+explain <i>their</i> phenomena, but has resulted
+from a fancied relation between
+those objects and the human being.
+The <i>charm</i> or the <i>amulet</i>&mdash;some object
+whose presence has been observed to
+cure diseases, or bring good-luck&mdash;grows
+up into a god; a strong desire
+at once leading the man to pray to his
+amulet, and also to attribute to it the
+power of granting his prayer.<a name="footnotetag50" id="footnotetag50"></a><a href="#footnote50"><sup>50</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>We carry on our quotation one step
+further, for the sake of illustrating the
+impracticable <i>unmanageable</i> nature of
+our author's generalizations when historically
+applied. Having advanced
+to this stage in the development of
+theologic thought, he finds it extremely
+difficult to extricate the human mind
+from that state in which he has, with
+such scientific precision, fixed it.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Speculatively regarded, this great
+transformation of the religious spirit
+<a class="pagenum" name="page414" id="page414" title="page414"></a>(from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps
+the most fundamental that it has ever undergone,
+though we are at present so far
+separated from it as not to perceive its
+extent and difficulty. The human mind,
+it seems to me, passed over a less interval
+in its transit from polytheism to monotheism,
+the more recent and better understood
+accomplishment of which has naturally
+taught us to exaggerate its importance&mdash;an
+importance extremely great only in
+a certain social point of view, which I
+shall explain in its place. When we reflect
+that fetishism supposes matter to be
+eminently active, to the point of being
+truly alive, while polytheism necessarily
+compels it to an inertia almost absolute,
+submitted passively to the arbitrary will
+of the divine agent; it would seem at first
+impossible to comprehend the real mode
+of transition from one religious <i>r&eacute;gime</i>
+to the other.&quot;&mdash;P. 97.</p></div>
+
+<p>The transition, it seems, was effected
+by an early effort of generalization;
+for as men recognized the similitude
+of certain objects, and classified them
+into one species, so they approximated
+the corresponding Fetishes, and reduced
+them at length to a principal
+Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena,
+who thus, liberated from
+matter, and having of necessity an independent
+being of its own, became a god.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;For the gods differ essentially from
+pure fetishes, by a character more general
+and more abstract, pertaining to their
+indeterminate residence. They, each of
+them, administer a special order of phenomena,
+and have a department more or
+less extensive; while the humble fetish
+governs one object only, from which it is
+inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
+resemblance of certain phenomena was
+observed, it was necessary to classify the
+corresponding fetishes, and to reduce
+them to a chief, who, from this time, was
+elevated to the rank of a god&mdash;that is to
+say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
+whose residence is not rigorously fixed.
+There could not exist, properly speaking,
+a fetish common to several bodies; this
+would be a contradiction, every fetish
+being necessarily endowed with a material
+individuality. When, for example,
+the similar vegetation of the several trees
+in a forest of oaks, led men to represent,
+in their theological conceptions, what was
+<i>common</i> in these objects, this abstract being
+could no longer be the fetish of a tree, but
+became the god of the forest.&quot;&mdash;P. 101.</p></div>
+
+<p>This apparatus of transition is ingenious
+enough, but surely it is utterly
+uncalled for. The same uncultured
+imagination that could animate a tree,
+could people the air with gods. Whenever
+the cause of any natural event is
+<i>invisible</i>, the imagination cannot rest
+in Fetishism; it must create some
+being to produce it. If thunder is to
+be theologically explained&mdash;and there
+is no event in nature more likely to
+suggest such explanation&mdash;the imagination
+cannot animate the thunder;
+it must create some being that thunders.
+No one, the discipline of whose
+mind had not been solely and purely
+<i>scientific</i>, would have created for itself
+this difficulty, or solved it in such
+a manner.<a name="footnotetag51" id="footnotetag51"></a><a href="#footnote51"><sup>51</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329-footnotes" id="bw329-footnotes"></a><h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a> <b>Footnote 1</b>: <a href="#footnotetag1">(return)</a>
+<p>There is, strictly speaking, no middle class in Russia; the &quot;bourgeoisie,&quot; or
+merchants, it is true, may seem to form an exception to this remark, but into their
+circles the traveller would find it, from many reasons, difficult, and even impossible, to
+enter.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> <b>Footnote 2</b>: <a href="#footnotetag2">(return)</a>
+<p>In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be required of us. Though we
+might fill many pages with instances of the two great sins of the translator, commission
+and omission, the <i>poco piu</i> and <i>poco meno</i>, we will content ourselves with taking, <i>ad
+aperturam libri</i>, an example. At page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring's Russian
+Anthology, will be found a short lyric piece of Dm&iacute;trieff, entitled &quot;To Chloe.&quot; It
+consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of these five stanzas, three have
+a totally different meaning in the English from their signification in the Russian, and of
+the remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look for in vain in the
+original. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the verses in question present nothing
+in style, subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty to a translator.
+Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece in question was taken at random,)
+it will not be necessary to dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through
+Bowring's versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of the Russian metres&mdash;sins
+against <i>costume</i>, as, for example, the making a hussar (a <i>Russian</i> hussar) swear
+by his <i>beard</i>, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a> <b>Footnote 3</b>: <a href="#footnotetag3">(return)</a>
+<p>Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this important personage, his real
+name was Constantine.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a> <b>Footnote 4</b>: <a href="#footnotetag4">(return)</a>
+<p>For instance, the <i>j</i>, (pronounced as the French <i>j</i>), <i>ts, sh, shtsh, tch, ui, y&auml;</i>. As
+the characters representing these sounds are not to be found in the &quot;case&quot; of an
+English compositor, we cannot enter into their Oriental origin.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a> <b>Footnote 5</b>: <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a>
+<p>Not to speak of the capitals, the &gamma;, &delta;, &zeta;, &kappa;, &lambda;, &mu;, &omicron;, &pi;, &rho;, &sigmaf;, &phi;, &chi;, &theta;, have undergone
+hardly the most trifling change in form; &psi;, &xi;, &omega;, though they do not occur in the Russian,
+are found in the Slavonic alphabet. The Russian pronunciation of their letter B, which
+agrees with that of the modern Greeks, is V, there being another character for the
+<i>sound</i> B.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a> <b>Footnote 6</b>: <a href="#footnotetag6">(return)</a>
+<p>The crown was not worn by the ancient Russian sovereigns, or &quot;Grand Princes,&quot;
+as they were called; the insignia of these potentates was a close skull-cap, called in
+Russian sh&aacute;pka, bonnet; many of which are preserved in the regalia of Moscow.
+This bonnet is generally surrounded by the most precious furs, and gorgeously decorated
+with gems.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a> <b>Footnote 7</b>: <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a>
+<p>For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels, &amp;c. Two of the last-mentioned
+species of works are very curious from their antiquity. The Pilgrimage to
+Jerusalem of Daniel, prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century;
+and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nik&iacute;tin, merchant of Tver, made
+about 1470.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a> <b>Footnote 8</b>: <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a>
+<p>The only traces left on the <i>language</i> by the Tartar domination are a few words,
+chiefly expressing articles of dress.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a> <b>Footnote 9</b>: <a href="#footnotetag9">(return)</a>
+<p>The non-Russian reader must be cautioned not to confuse Iv&aacute;n III. (surnamed
+Vel&iacute;kiy, or the Great) with Ivan IV., the Cruel, the latter of whom is to foreigners
+the most prominent figure in the Russian history. Iv&aacute;n III. mounted the throne in
+1462, and his terrible namesake in 1534; the reign of Vass&iacute;liy Iv&aacute;novitch intervening
+between these two memorable epochs.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a> <b>Footnote 10</b>: <a href="#footnotetag10">(return)</a>
+<p>The translator recently met in society a Russian officer, who had served with
+distinction in the country which forms the scene of &quot;Ammal&aacute;t Bek.&quot; This gentleman
+had intimately known Marl&iacute;nski, and bore witness to the perfect accuracy of his
+delineations, as well of the external features of nature as of the characters of his
+<i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>. The officer alluded to had served some time in the very regiment
+commanded by the unfortunate Verkh&oacute;ffsky. Our fair readers may be interested to
+learn, that Seltanetta still lives, and yet bears traces of her former beauty. She married
+the Shamkh&aacute;l, and now resides in feudal magnificence at Tarki, where she exercises
+great sway, which she employs in favour of the Russian interest, to which she
+is devoted.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a> <b>Footnote 11</b>: <a href="#footnotetag11">(return)</a>
+<p>Djoum&aacute; answers to our Sabbath. The days of the Mahomedan week are as follows:
+Shambi, Saturday; Ikhshamb&aacute;, Sunday; Doushamb&aacute;, Monday; Seshamb&aacute;,
+Tuesday; Tchershamb&aacute;, Wednesday; Pkhanshamb&aacute;, Thursday; Djoum&aacute;, Friday.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a> <b>Footnote 12</b>: <a href="#footnotetag12">(return)</a>
+<p>S&aacute;kla, a Circassian hut.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a> <b>Footnote 13</b>: <a href="#footnotetag13">(return)</a>
+<p>A species of garment, resembling a frock-coat with an upright collar, reaching to
+the knees, fixed in front by hooks and eyes, worn by both sexes.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a> <b>Footnote 14</b>: <a href="#footnotetag14">(return)</a>
+<p>The trowsers of the <i>women</i>: those worn by the men, though alike in form, are
+called shalw&aacute;rs. It is an offence to tell a man that he wears the toum&aacute;n; being equivalent
+to a charge of effeminacy; and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a> <b>Footnote 15</b>: <a href="#footnotetag15">(return)</a>
+<p>It is the ordinary manner of the Asiatics to sit in this manner in public, or in the
+presence of a superior.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a> <b>Footnote 16</b>: <a href="#footnotetag16">(return)</a>
+<p>A kind of rude cart with two wheels.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a> <b>Footnote 17</b>: <a href="#footnotetag17">(return)</a>
+<p>The first Shamkh&aacute;ls were the kinsmen and representatives of the Khalifs of Damascus:
+the last Shamkh&aacute;l died on his return from Russia, and with him finished this
+useless rank. His son, Suleiman Pacha, possessed his property as a private individual.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a> <b>Footnote 18</b>: <a href="#footnotetag18">(return)</a>
+<p>The attendants of a Tartar noble, equivalent to the &quot;henchman&quot; of the ancient
+Highlanders. The no&uacute;ker waits behind his lord at table, cuts up and presents the
+food.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a> <b>Footnote 19</b>: <a href="#footnotetag19">(return)</a>
+<p>3500 English feet&mdash;three quarters of a mile.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a> <b>Footnote 20</b>: <a href="#footnotetag20">(return)</a>
+<p>Foster-brother; from the word &quot;emdjek&quot;&mdash;suckling. Among the tribes of the
+Caucasus, this relationship is held more sacred than that of nature. Every man would
+willingly die for his emdjek.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a> <b>Footnote 21</b>: <a href="#footnotetag21">(return)</a>
+<p>This is a celebrated race of Persian horses, called Teke.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a> <b>Footnote 22</b>: <a href="#footnotetag22">(return)</a>
+<p>The being obliged to transport provisions.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a> <b>Footnote 23</b>: <a href="#footnotetag23">(return)</a>
+<p>The chief of a village.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a> <b>Footnote 24</b>: <a href="#footnotetag24">(return)</a>
+<p>The subordinates of the atarost.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a> <b>Footnote 25</b>: <a href="#footnotetag25">(return)</a>
+<p>Go to the devil.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a> <b>Footnote 26</b>: <a href="#footnotetag26">(return)</a>
+<p>The Asiatics mark their horses by burning them on their haunch with a hot iron.
+This peculiar mark, the <span lang="EL" title="stigma">&sigma;&tau;&iota;&gamma;&mu;&alpha;</span> or <span lang="EL" title="kotpa">&kappa;&omicron;&tau;&pi;&alpha;</span> of the Greeks is called &quot;t&aacute;vro.&quot;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a> <b>Footnote 27</b>: <a href="#footnotetag27">(return)</a>
+<p>The brother of Hassan Khan Djemont&aacute;i, who became Khan of Av&aacute;r by marrying
+the Khan's widow and heiress.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a> <b>Footnote 28</b>: <a href="#footnotetag28">(return)</a>
+<p>The Russian detachment, consisting on this occasion of 3000 men, was surrounded
+by 60,000. These were, Ouizmi Karakaid&aacute;khsky, the Av&aacute;retzes, Akoush&iacute;netzes,
+the Boulin&eacute;tzes of the Koi-So&uacute;, and others. The Russians fought their way
+out by night, but with considerable loss.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a> <b>Footnote 29</b>: <a href="#footnotetag29">(return)</a>
+<p>The whip of a Kazak.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a> <b>Footnote 30</b>: <a href="#footnotetag30">(return)</a>
+<p>A superintendent.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a> <b>Footnote 31</b>: <a href="#footnotetag31">(return)</a>
+<p>The house, in Tartar, is &quot;ev;&quot; &quot;outakh,&quot; mansion; and &quot;sar&aacute;i,&quot; edifice in
+general; &quot;haram-khan&eacute;h,&quot; the women's apartments. For palace they employ the
+word &quot;igar&aacute;t.&quot; The Russians confound all these meanings in the word &quot;s&aacute;kla,&quot;
+which, in the Circassian language, is house.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a> <b>Footnote 32</b>: <a href="#footnotetag32">(return)</a>
+<p>The father of Ammal&aacute;t was the eldest of the family, and consequently the true
+heir to the Shamkhal&aacute;t. But the Russians, having conquered Daghest&aacute;n, not trusting
+to the good intentions of this chief, gave the power to the younger brother.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a> <b>Footnote 33</b>: <a href="#footnotetag33">(return)</a>
+<p>A <i>jeu-de-mots</i> which the Asiatics admire much; &quot;kizil-gulli&aacute;r&quot; means simply
+roses, but the Khan alludes to &quot;kiz&iacute;l,&quot; ducats.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a> <b>Footnote 34</b>: <a href="#footnotetag34">(return)</a>
+<p>The Tartars, like the North American Indians, always, if possible, shelter themselves
+behind rocks and enclosures, &amp;c., when engaged in battle.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a> <b>Footnote 35</b>: <a href="#footnotetag35">(return)</a>
+<p>The commander-in-chief.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a> <b>Footnote 36</b>: <a href="#footnotetag36">(return)</a>
+<p>A kind of dried bread.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a> <b>Footnote 37</b>: <a href="#footnotetag37">(return)</a>
+<p>The mountaineers are bad Mussulmans, the Sooni sect is predominant; but the
+Daghest&aacute;netzes are in general Shageeds, as the Persians. The sects hate each other
+with all their heart.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a> <b>Footnote 38</b>: <a href="#footnotetag38">(return)</a>
+<p>The Circassian sabre.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a> <b>Footnote 39</b>: <a href="#footnotetag39">(return)</a>
+<p>A rough cloak, used as a protection in bad weather.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a> <b>Footnote 40</b>: <a href="#footnotetag40">(return)</a>
+<p>Friend, comrade.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a> <b>Footnote 41</b>: <a href="#footnotetag41">(return)</a>
+<p>Tchin&aacute;r, the palmated-leaved plane.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote42" name="footnote42"></a> <b>Footnote 42</b>: <a href="#footnotetag42">(return)</a>
+<p>Having no lead, the Av&aacute;retzes use balls of copper, as they possess small mines of
+that metal.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote43" name="footnote43"></a> <b>Footnote 43</b>: <a href="#footnotetag43">(return)</a>
+<p>The translation adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote44" name="footnote44"></a> <b>Footnote 44</b>: <a href="#footnotetag44">(return)</a>
+<p>Written in the time of French war.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote45" name="footnote45"></a> <b>Footnote 45</b>: <a href="#footnotetag45">(return)</a>
+<p>To the shore of the Seine.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote46" name="footnote46"></a> <b>Footnote 46</b>: <a href="#footnotetag46">(return)</a>
+<p>John Bull, Part IV. ch. ii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote47" name="footnote47"></a> <b>Footnote 47</b>: <a href="#footnotetag47">(return)</a>
+<p>Tale of a Tub. Sect. xi.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote48" name="footnote48"></a> <b>Footnote 48</b>: <a href="#footnotetag48">(return)</a>
+<p>In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St. James's Street, may be seen
+stumps, or, as the Scotch call them, <i>doups</i> of wax-lights, with the announcement
+&quot;Candle-ends from Buckingham Palace.&quot; These are eagerly bought up by the gentility-mongers,
+who burn, or it may be, in the excess of their loyalty, <i>eat</i> them!</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote49" name="footnote49"></a> <b>Footnote 49</b>: <a href="#footnotetag49">(return)</a>
+<p>&quot;There is,&quot; says M. Comte here in a note, which consists of an extract from a
+previous work&mdash;&quot;there is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry,
+even in physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit to the principles
+established in these sciences by competent men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is
+because the ancient principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed, there
+are, properly speaking, in this interval no established principles.&quot;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote50" name="footnote50"></a> <b>Footnote 50</b>: <a href="#footnotetag50">(return)</a>
+<p>Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism in Africa. It is the
+best which just now falls under our hand, and perhaps a longer search would not find
+a better. Those only who never read <i>The Doctor</i>, will be surprised to find it quoted
+on a grave occasion:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+&quot;The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt
+application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, <i>feiti&ccedil;o</i>; the vernacular name
+is <i>Bossum</i>, or <i>Bossifoe</i>. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village,
+every family, and every individual. A great hill, a rock any way remarkable
+for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish. The king's is
+usually the largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one, take the first
+thing they happen to see, however worthless&mdash;a stick, a stone, the bone of a beast,
+bird, or fish, unless the worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
+and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The ceremony of consecration
+he performs himself, assembling his family, washing the new object of his devotion,
+and sprinkling them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
+in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and with as much reason.
+Barbot says that some of the Europeans on that coast not only encouraged their slaves
+in this superstition, but believed in it, and practised it themselves.&quot;&mdash;Vol. V. p. 136.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote51" name="footnote51"></a> <b>Footnote 51</b>: <a href="#footnotetag51">(return)</a>
+<p>At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is taken, the <i>Doctor</i> tells a
+story which, if faith could be put in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves,
+(and such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,) might
+deserve a place in the history of superstition.
+</p><p>
+&quot;One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a reputation which will be as lasting
+as it is great, was, when a boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful schoolmaster;
+and in the state of mind which that constant fear produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his
+fetish, and used every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged.&quot;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12761 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5648eb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12761 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12761)
diff --git a/old/12761-8.txt b/old/12761-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ba525
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12761-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10248 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.
+       March, 1843, Vol. LIII.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12761]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page images provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
+
+NO. CCCXXIX.   MARCH, 1843.   VOL. LIII.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    AMMAL�T BEK. A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARL�NSKI
+    POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.--NO. VI.
+    CALEB STUKELY. PART XII.
+    IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. SANDT AND KOTZEBUE
+    THE JEWELLER'S WIFE. A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO
+    THE TALE OF A TUB:
+        AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER--HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME
+    PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS, BY A COCKNEY
+    THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.
+    THE LOST LAMB. BY DELTA
+    COMTE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+AMMAL�T BEK.
+
+A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARL�NSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A. OF
+CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL
+LYCEUM OF TSARSKO� SELO.
+
+
+THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental
+neighbours with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of
+no very recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem
+to possess us:
+
+    "----tenet insanabile multos
+    _Terrarum_ [Greek: kakoithes], et �gro in corde senescit:"
+
+when the press groans with "Tours," "Trips," "Hand-books," "Journeys,"
+"Visits."
+
+In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England
+knows very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social
+condition, manners, and literature of one of the most powerful among her
+continental sisters.
+
+The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in
+the reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that
+epoch, so auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by
+Chancellor in 1554, has never since been relaxed: the two nations have
+advanced, each at its own pace, and by its own paths, towards the
+sublime goal of improvement and civilization--have stood shoulder to
+shoulder in the battle for the weal and liberty of mankind.
+
+It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and
+Elizabeth is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter
+and of Catharine. The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be
+found in any indifference or want of curiosity on the part of English
+travellers. There is no lack of pilgrims annually leaving the bank of
+Thames,
+
+    "With cockle hat and staff,
+      With gourd and sandal shoon;"
+
+armed duly with note-book and "patent Mordan," directing their wandering
+steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a
+very short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince
+a foreigner how defective, and often how false, is the information given
+by travellers respecting the social and national character of the
+Russians. These abundant and singular misrepresentations are not, of
+course, voluntary; and it may not be useless to point out their
+principal sources.
+
+The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the
+language, and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten
+track--from St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny
+N�vgorod, without any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may
+enjoy, during a visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which
+the higher classes are so justly celebrated; but his association with
+the nobility will be found an absolute obstacle to the making even a
+trifling progress in the Russian language; which, though now regaining a
+degree of attention from the elevated classes,[1] too long denied to it
+by those with whom their native tongue _was_ an unfashionable one--he
+would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very frequent
+opportunities of hearing.
+
+     [1] There is, strictly speaking, no middle class in Russia; the
+     "bourgeoisie," or merchants, it is true, may seem to form an
+     exception to this remark, but into their circles the traveller
+     would find it, from many reasons, difficult, and even
+     impossible, to enter.
+
+But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a
+determination to study the noble and interesting language of the
+country, an intention of remaining here long enough to learn it, he was
+often discouraged by the belief, that the literature was too poor to
+repay his time and labour. Besides, the Russian language has so little
+relation to the other European tongues--it stands so much alone, and
+throws so little direct light upon any of them, that another obstacle
+was thrown into his way.
+
+The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all
+derived, more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the
+whole south and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon
+the other cognate dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental
+tongues facilitates, nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand
+others, which are less languages of distinct type than dialects of the
+same speech, offshoots from the same stock.
+
+Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in
+every disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German
+periodicals with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched
+rags of translation which are all that has been hitherto done towards
+the reproduction, in our own language, of the literature of Russia.
+These versions were made by persons utterly unacquainted with the
+country, the manners, and the people, or made after the Russian had been
+distilled through the alembic of a previous French or German
+translation.
+
+Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation
+sooner than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than
+honourable to the literary enterprise of England, that the present is
+the first attempt to introduce to the British public any work of Russian
+Prose Fiction whatever, with any thing like a reasonable selection of
+subject and character, at least _directly_ from the original language.
+
+The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of
+"Russian Anthology," and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would
+appear at first sight an exception to that indifference to the
+productions of Russian genius of which we have accused the English
+public; and the popularity of that collection would be an additional
+encouragement to the hope, that our charge may be, if not ill-founded,
+at least exaggerated.
+
+We are willing to believe, that the degree--if we are rightly informed,
+no slight one--of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in
+England, was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme
+incompetency with which the translations they contained were executed.
+
+It is always painful to find fault--more painful to criticise with
+severity--the work of a person whose motive was the same as that which
+actuates the present publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness[2]
+exhibited in the versions in question tends to give a false and
+disparaging idea of the value and the tone of Russian poetry, we may be
+excused for our apparent uncourteousness in thus pointing out their
+defects.
+
+     [2] In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be
+     required of us. Though we might fill many pages with instances
+     of the two great sins of the translator, commission and
+     omission, the _poco piu_ and _poco meno_, we will content
+     ourselves with taking, _ad aperturam libri_, an example. At
+     page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring's Russian Anthology, will
+     be found a short lyric piece of Dm�trieff, entitled "To Chloe."
+     It consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of
+     these five stanzas, three have a totally different meaning in
+     the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the
+     remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look
+     for in vain in the original. This carelessness is the less
+     excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style,
+     subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty
+     to a translator. Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece
+     in question was taken at random,) it will not be necessary to
+     dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through
+     Bowring's versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of
+     the Russian metres--sins against _costume_, as, for example,
+     the making a hussar (a _Russian_ hussar) swear by his _beard_,
+     &c. &c. &c.
+
+It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a
+brief sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin,
+growth, and fortunes of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In
+doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as
+possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters
+in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow
+and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas,
+suddenly into light.
+
+In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the
+department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety,
+though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more
+fully the intellectual annals of Russia.
+
+In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril[3] and
+Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious
+boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisl�ff, Sviatop�lk, and K�tsel, then
+chiefs of the Moravians.
+
+     [3] Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this
+     important personage, his real name was Constantine.
+
+The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek
+alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain
+sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,[4] to add a number of
+other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So
+closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the
+Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any
+necessity.
+
+     [4] For instance, the _j_, (pronounced as the French _j_), _ts,
+     sh, shtsh, tch, ui, y�_. As the characters representing these
+     sounds are not to be found in the "case" of an English
+     compositor, we cannot enter into their Oriental origin.
+
+These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the
+Russian) varied surprisingly little in their form,[5] and perhaps
+without any change whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern
+alphabet of the Russian language; an examination of which would go far,
+in our opinion, to settle the long agitated question respecting the
+ancient pronunciation of the classic languages, particularly as Cyril
+and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a language totally foreign
+from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.
+
+     [5] Not to speak of the capitals, the [Greek: gamma, delta,
+     zeta, kappa, lambda, mu, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, phi, chi,
+     theta], have undergone hardly the most trifling change in form;
+     [Greek: psi, xi, omega], though they do not occur in the
+     Russian, are found in the Slavonic alphabet. The Russian
+     pronunciation of their letter B, which agrees with that of the
+     modern Greeks, is V, there being another character for the
+     _sound_ B.
+
+In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the
+first monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril
+immediately after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken
+at Thessalonika was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely
+Greek words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of
+the version being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the
+Scriptures were not translated into any specific spoken dialect at all;
+but that a kind of _mezzo-termine_ was selected--or rather formed--for
+the purpose. What we have advanced derives a still stronger degree of
+probability from the circumstance, that the Slavonic Bible follows the
+Greek _construction_. This Bible, with slight changes and corrections
+produced by three or four revisions made at different periods, is that
+still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language of
+the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the Bible
+forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper
+classes--who are instructed in this _dead_ language, precisely as an
+Italian must study Latin in order to read the Bible.
+
+Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history,
+towers, like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid,
+one colossal figure--that of Vlad�mir Sviatosl�vitch; the first to
+surmount the bloody splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet[6] with the
+mildly-radiant Cross of Christ.
+
+     [6] The crown was not worn by the ancient Russian sovereigns,
+     or "Grand Princes," as they were called; the insignia of these
+     potentates was a close skull-cap, called in Russian sh�pka,
+     bonnet; many of which are preserved in the regalia of Moscow.
+     This bonnet is generally surrounded by the most precious furs,
+     and gorgeously decorated with gems.
+
+From the conversion to Christianity of Vlad�mir and his
+subjects--passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar
+hordes, which lasted for about 250 years--we may consider two languages,
+essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of
+the 17th century--the one the written or learned, the other the spoken
+language.
+
+The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were
+translated: and this remained the learned or official language for a
+long period. In this--or in an imitation of this, effected with various
+degrees of success--were compiled the different collections of Monkish
+annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select
+their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of
+facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were
+composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above
+classes[7] were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of
+the Church and of learning.
+
+     [7] For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels,
+     &c. Two of the last-mentioned species of works are very curious
+     from their antiquity. The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem of Daniel,
+     prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century;
+     and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nik�tin,
+     merchant of Tver, made about 1470.
+
+The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much
+allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which
+overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a
+half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented
+themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised
+probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language;
+and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect
+upon the Russian tongue.[8]
+
+     [8] The only traces left on the _language_ by the Tartar
+     domination are a few words, chiefly expressing articles of
+     dress.
+
+It is to the reign of Alex�i Mikh�ilovitch, who united Little Russia to
+Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the
+country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little
+Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit
+of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.
+
+The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future
+fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would
+possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia
+such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more
+extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain
+disturbing--if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure
+impeding--forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable
+dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and
+admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to
+rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also
+destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was
+national--that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse
+the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter
+perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other
+languages, than the production of originality in his own.
+
+This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems
+to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number
+of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter's time
+
+     "A Babylonish dialect;"
+
+the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with
+an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every
+tongue; terms which might have been--have, indeed, since
+been--translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the
+literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish
+our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of
+translations, but very few original productions.
+
+From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note:
+we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or
+vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have
+proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting,
+cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.
+
+At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it
+will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages--the Slavonic, to
+which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little
+Russia.
+
+The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from
+which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably
+raise a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing
+this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon
+the circumstance, that the literature is--as we have stated--divisible
+into two distinct and widely differing regions. It will be sufficiently
+accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a
+century back from the present time; and to consider Lomon�soff as its
+founder. Mikh�il Vass�lievitch Lomon�soff, born in 1711, is the author
+who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the
+North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in
+almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of
+science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles
+he had fixed as a grammarian.
+
+He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in
+conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumar�koff and Kher�skoff, he
+laid the foundations of the Russian literature.
+
+Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the
+reverence due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's
+letters, it will be sufficient to remark, that Soumar�koff was the first
+to introduce tragedy and opera, and Kher�skoff, the author of two epic
+poems which we omit to particularize, as not coming within our present
+scope, wrote a work entitled "Cadmus and Harmonia," which may be
+considered as the first romance. It is a narrative and metaphysical
+work, which we should class as a "prose poem;" the style being
+considerably elevated above the tone of the "Musa pedestris."
+
+The name of Em�n comes next in historical, though not literary,
+importance: though the greater part of his productions consists of
+translations, particularly of those shorter pieces of prose fiction
+called by the Italians "novelle," he was the author of a few original
+pieces, now but little read; his style bears the marks, like that of
+Kher�skoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want of finish.
+
+The reputation of Karamz�n is too widely spread throughout Europe to
+render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by
+him to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he
+commenced a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first
+chapters.
+
+Nar�jniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia--or rather of
+the South or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of
+vivacity, but as they are deformed by defects both in style and taste,
+his reputation has become almost extinct. We cannot quit this division
+of our subject, which refers to romantic fiction anterior to the
+appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning the names
+of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished as having
+produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical
+event--Polev�i and Best�njeff--the latter of whom wrote, under the name
+of Marl�nski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high
+and deserved reputation.
+
+It is with Zag�skin that we may regard the regular historical
+novel--viewing that species of composition as exemplified in the works
+of Scott--as having commenced.
+
+With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is
+so extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory
+allusion to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing
+which, we shall attend more exclusively to those productions of which
+the subject or treatment is purely national.
+
+One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zag�skin,
+whose historical romance "Yo�riy Milosl�ffskiy," met with great and
+permanent success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most
+interesting crisis in the Russian history, when the valour of M�nin
+enabled his countrymen to shake off the hated yoke of Poland. His other
+work, "Roslavle�ff," is less interesting: the period is 1812. We may
+also mention his "Iskons�tel"--"the Tempter"--a fantastic story, in
+which an imaginary being is represented as mingling with and influencing
+the affairs of real life.
+
+Of Boulg�rin, we may mention, besides his "Ivan Vu�jgin," a romance in
+the manner of "Gil Blas," the scenery and characters of which are
+entirely Russian, two historical novels of considerable importance. "The
+False Dim�tri," and "Mazeppa,"--the hero of the latter being _a real
+person_, and not, as most readers are aware, a fictitious character
+invented by Byron.
+
+Next comes the name of Laj�tchnikoff, whose "Last Page" possesses a
+reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The
+action passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great,
+and Catharine plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Gl�ck,
+becoming empress at the conclusion. The "House of Ice," by the same
+writer, is perhaps more generally known than the preceding work. The
+last-named romance depicts with great spirit the struggle between the
+Russian and foreign parties in the reign of Anna Iv�novna. But perhaps
+the most remarkable work of Laj�tchnikoff is the romance entitled
+"Bassourm�n," the scene of which is laid under Iv�n III., surnamed the
+Great.[9] Another Polev�i (Nikol�i) produced a work of great
+merit:--"The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord," a very faithful picture of
+the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the
+circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe
+to Polev�i a wild story entitled "Abbaddon." Veltman produced, under the
+title of "Kostsh�i the Deathless," a historical study of the manners of
+the twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust
+to omit the name of a lady, the Countess Sh�shkin, who produced the
+historical novel "Mikh�il Vass�lievitch Sk�pin-Sh�isky," which obtained
+great popularity.
+
+     [9] The non-Russian reader must be cautioned not to confuse
+     Iv�n III. (surnamed Vel�kiy, or the Great) with Ivan IV., the
+     Cruel, the latter of whom is to foreigners the most prominent
+     figure in the Russian history. Iv�n III. mounted the throne in
+     1462, and his terrible namesake in 1534; the reign of Vass�liy
+     Iv�novitch intervening between these two memorable epochs.
+
+The picturesque career of Lomon�soff gave materials for a romantic
+biography of that poet, the work of Xenoph�nt Polev�i, resembling, in
+its mixture of truth and fiction, the "Wahrheit und Dichtung" of Goethe.
+
+Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those
+exhibiting scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been
+neglected. Kal�shnikoff wrote "The Merchant J�loboff's Daughter," and
+the "Kamtchad�lka," both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia;
+the former painting various parts of that wild and interesting country,
+the latter confined more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtch�tka.
+Besides G�gol, whose easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many
+humorous sketches of provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitch�ff,
+whose "Kh�lmsky Family" possesses much interest; but the delineations of
+G�gol depend so much for their effect upon delicate shades of manner,
+&c., that it is not probable they can ever be effectively reproduced in
+another language.
+
+Mentioning Per�ffsky, whose "Monast�rka" gives a picture of Russian
+interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation.
+His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of
+a very curious race--the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tch�rnaia
+J�nstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society,
+which was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.
+
+The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British
+readers to a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most
+unaccountably neglected by the English public, the present would not be
+a fit occasion to enter with any minuteness into the history of Russian
+letters, or to give, in fact, more than a passing allusion to its chief
+features; the translator hopes that he will be excused for the
+meagreness of the present notice.
+
+He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any
+increasing desire on the part of his countrymen to become more
+accurately acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is
+convinced, of a very high degree of respect and admiration. How could
+that acquaintance be so delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the
+interchange of literature? The great works of English genius are read,
+studied, and admired, throughout the vast empire of Russia; the language
+of England is rapidly and steadily extending, and justice, no less than
+policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions respecting the social
+and domestic character, no less than the history, of Russia, should be
+dispelled by truth.
+
+The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to
+specify one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the
+present romance, as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in
+England the literature of Russia.
+
+It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the
+facts and characters are all strictly true;[10] besides this, the author
+passed many years in the Caucasus, and made full use of the
+opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming familiar with the language,
+manners, and scenery of a region on which the attention of the English
+public has long been turned with peculiar interest.
+
+     [10] The translator recently met in society a Russian officer,
+     who had served with distinction in the country which forms the
+     scene of "Ammal�t Bek." This gentleman had intimately known
+     Marl�nski, and bore witness to the perfect accuracy of his
+     delineations, as well of the external features of nature as of
+     the characters of his _dramatis person�_. The officer alluded
+     to had served some time in the very regiment commanded by the
+     unfortunate Verkh�ffsky. Our fair readers may be interested to
+     learn, that Seltanetta still lives, and yet bears traces of her
+     former beauty. She married the Shamkh�l, and now resides in
+     feudal magnificence at Tarki, where she exercises great sway,
+     which she employs in favour of the Russian interest, to which
+     she is devoted.
+
+The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it
+is hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public
+always "_novitatis avida_," and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with
+the "Bismillahs" and "Mashallahs" of the ordinary oriental novels, may
+find some piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life--that of the
+Caucasian Tartars.
+
+The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for
+which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon
+the method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian
+orthography, as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as
+_zh_, &c. &c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the
+correct pronunciation. Throughout these pages the vowels _a, e, i, o,
+y_, are supposed to be pronounced as in French, the diphthong _ou_ as in
+the word _you_, the _j_ always with the French sound.
+
+With respect to the combinations of consonants employed, _kh_ has the
+gutteral sound of the _ch_ in the Scottish word _loch_, and _gh_ is like
+a rather rough or coarse aspirate.
+
+The simple _g_ is invariably to be uttered hard, as in _gun_ or _gall_.
+
+To avoid the possibility of errors, the combination _tch_, though not a
+very soft one to the eye, represents a Russian sound for which there is
+no character in English. It is, of course, uttered as in the word
+_watch_.
+
+As a great deal of the apparent discord of Russian words, as pronounced
+by foreigners, arises from ignorance of the place of the accent, we have
+added a sign over every polysyllable word, indicating the part on which
+the stress is to be laid.
+
+The few preceding rules will, the translator hopes, enable his
+countrymen to _attack_ the pronunciation of the Russian names without
+the ancient dread inspired by terrific and complicated clusters of
+consonants; and will perhaps prove to them that the language is both an
+easy and a melodious one.
+
+     _St Petersburg, November_ 10, 1842.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+    "Be slow to offend--swift to revenge!"
+      _Inscription on a dagger of Daghest�n._
+
+It was Djoum�.[11] Not far from Bouin�ki, a considerable village of
+Northern Daghest�n, the young Tartars were assembled for their national
+exercise called "djig�tering;" that is, the horse-race accompanied by
+various trials of boldness and strength. Bouin�ki is situated upon two
+ledges of the precipitous rocks of the mountain: on the left of the road
+leading from Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above the town, the crest
+of Caucasus, feathered with wood; on the right, the shore, sinking
+imperceptibly, spreads itself out into meadows, on which the Caspian Sea
+pours its eternal murmur, like the voice of human multitudes.
+
+     [11] Djoum� answers to our Sabbath. The days of the Mahomedan
+     week are as follows: Shambi, Saturday; Ikhshamb�, Sunday;
+     Doushamb�, Monday; Seshamb�, Tuesday; Tchershamb�, Wednesday;
+     Pkhanshamb�, Thursday; Djoum�, Friday.
+
+A vernal day was fading into evening, and all the inhabitants, attracted
+rather by the coolness of the breeze than by any feeling of curiosity,
+had quitted their s�klas,[12] and assembled in crowds on both sides of
+the road. The women, without veils, and with coloured kerchiefs rolled
+like turbans round their heads, clad in the long chemise,[13] confined
+by the short arkhalo�kh, and wide toum�ns,[14] sat in rows, while
+strings of children sported before them. The men, assembled in little
+groups, stood, or rested on their knees;[15] others, in twos or threes,
+walked slowly round, smoking tobacco in little wooden pipes: a cheerful
+buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded the clattering of hoofs, and the
+cry "katch, katch!" (make way!) from the horsemen preparing for the
+race.
+
+     [12] S�kla, a Circassian hut.
+
+     [13] A species of garment, resembling a frock-coat with an
+     upright collar, reaching to the knees, fixed in front by hooks
+     and eyes, worn by both sexes.
+
+     [14] The trowsers of the _women_: those worn by the men, though
+     alike in form, are called shalw�rs. It is an offence to tell a
+     man that he wears the toum�n; being equivalent to a charge of
+     effeminacy; and _vice vers�_.
+
+     [15] It is the ordinary manner of the Asiatics to sit in this
+     manner in public, or in the presence of a superior.
+
+Nature, in Daghest�n, is most lovely in the month of May. Millions of
+roses poured their blushes over the crags; their odour was streaming in
+the air; the nightingale was not silent in the green twilight of the
+wood, almond-trees, all silvered with their flowers, arose like the
+cupolas of a pagoda, and resembled, with their lofty branches twined
+with leaves, the minarets of some Mussulman mosque. Broad-breasted oaks,
+like sturdy old warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and
+chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked
+like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the
+summer heats. Sportive flocks of sheep--their fleeces speckled with
+rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for
+hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and
+there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating
+on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills--such is the frame
+that encloses the picture of every Mussulman village. On this Djoum�,
+the neighbourhood of Bouin�ki was more than usually animated. The sun
+poured his floods of gold on the dark walls of the flat-roofed s�klas,
+clothing them with fantastic shadows, and adding beauty to their forms.
+In the distance, crawling along the mountain, the creaking arbas[16]
+flitted among the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past them,
+before them, flew a horseman, raising the dust along the road ... the
+mountain crest and the boundless sea gave grandeur to this picture, and
+all nature breathed a glow of life.
+
+     [16] A kind of rude cart with two wheels.
+
+"He comes, he comes!" was murmured through the crowd; all was in motion.
+The horsemen, who till now had been chattering with their acquaintance
+on foot, or disorderedly riding about the meadow, now leaped upon their
+steeds, and dashed forward to meet the cavalcade which was descending to
+the plain: it was Ammal�t Bek, the nephew of the Shamkh�l[17] of Tarki,
+with his suite. He was habited in a black Persian cloak, edged with
+gold-lace, the hanging sleeves thrown back over his shoulders. A Turkish
+shawl was wound round his arkhalo�kh, which was made of flowered silk.
+Red shalw�rs were lost in his yellow high-heeled riding-boots. His gun,
+dagger, and pistol, glittered with gold and silver arabesque work. The
+hilt of his sabre was enriched with gems. The Prince of Tarki was a
+tall, well-made youth, of frank countenance; black curls streamed behind
+his ears from under his cap--a slight mustache shaded his upper lip--his
+eyes glittered with a proud courtesy. He rode a bright bay steed, which
+fretted under his hand like a whirlwind. Contrary to custom, the horse's
+caparison was not the round Persian housing, embroidered all over with
+silk, but the light Circassian saddle, ornamented with silver on a black
+ground; and the stirrups were of the black steel of Kharam�n, inlaid
+with gold. Twenty no�kers[18] on spirited horses, and dressed in cloaks
+glittering with lace, their caps cocked jauntily, and leaning affectedly
+on one side, pranced and sidled after him. The people respectfully stood
+up before their Bek, and bowed, pressing their right hand upon their
+right knee. A murmur of whispered approbation followed the young chief
+as he passed among the women. Arrived at the southern extremity of the
+ground, Ammal�t stopped. The chief people, the old men leaning upon
+their sticks, and the elders of Bouin�ki, stood round in a circle to
+catch a kind word from the Bek; but Ammal�t did not pay them any
+particular attention, and with cold politeness replied in monosyllables
+to the flatteries and obeisances of his inferiors. He waved his hand;
+this was the signal to commence the race.
+
+     [17] The first Shamkh�ls were the kinsmen and representatives
+     of the Khalifs of Damascus: the last Shamkh�l died on his
+     return from Russia, and with him finished this useless rank.
+     His son, Suleiman Pacha, possessed his property as a private
+     individual.
+
+     [18] The attendants of a Tartar noble, equivalent to the
+     "henchman" of the ancient Highlanders. The no�ker waits behind
+     his lord at table, cuts up and presents the food.
+
+Twenty of the most fiery horsemen dashed forward, without the slightest
+order or regularity, galloping onward and back again, placing themselves
+in all kinds of attitudes, and alternately passing each other. At one
+moment they jostled one another from the course, and at the same time
+held in their horses, then again they let them go at full gallop over
+the plain. After this, they each took slender sticks, called djigid�s,
+and darted them as they rode, either in the charge or the pursuit, and
+again seizing them as they flew, or picking them up from the earth.
+Several tumbled from their saddles under the strong blows; and then
+resounded the loud laugh of the spectators, while loud applauses greeted
+the conqueror; sometimes the horses stumbled, and the riders were thrown
+over their heads, hurled off by a double force from the shortness of
+their stirrups. Then commenced the shooting. Ammal�t Bek had remained a
+little apart, looking on with apparent pleasure. His no�kers, one after
+the other, had joined the crowd of djig�terers, so that, at last, only
+two were left by his side. For some time he was immovable, and followed
+with an indifferent gaze the imitation of an Asiatic combat; but by
+degrees his interest grew stronger. At first he watched the cavaliers
+with great attention, then he began to encourage them by his voice and
+gestures, he rose higher in his stirrups, and at last the warrior-blood
+boiled in his veins, when his favourite no�ker could not hit a cap which
+he had thrown down before him. He snatched his gun from his attendants,
+and dashed forward like an arrow, winding among the sporters. "Make
+way--make way!" was heard around, and all, dispersing like a rain-cloud
+on either side, gave place to Ammal�t Bek.
+
+At the distance of a verst[19] stood ten poles with caps hanging on
+them. Ammal�t rode straight up to them, waved his gun round his head,
+and turned close round the pole; as he turned he stood up in his
+stirrups, turned back--bang!--the cap tumbled to the ground; without
+checking his speed he reloaded, the reins hanging on his horse's
+neck--knocked off another, then a third--and so on the whole ten. A
+murmur of applause arose on all sides; but Ammal�t, without stopping,
+threw his gun into the hands of one of his no�kers, pulled out a pistol
+from his belt, and with the ball struck the shoe from the hind foot of
+his horse; the shoe flew off, and fell far behind him; he then again
+took his gun from his no�ker, and ordered him to gallop on before him.
+Quicker than thought both darted forward. When half-way round the
+course, the no�ker drew from his pocket a rouble, and threw it up in the
+air. Ammal�t raised himself in the saddle, without waiting till it fell;
+but at the very instant his horse stumbled with all his four legs
+together, and striking the dust with his nostrils, rolled prostrate. All
+uttered a cry of terror; but the dexterous horseman, standing up in the
+stirrups, without losing his seat, or even leaning forward, as if he had
+been aware that he was going to fall, fired rapidly, and hitting the
+rouble with his ball, hurled it far among the people. The crowd shouted
+with delight--"Igeed, igeed! (bravo!) Alla valla-ha!" But Ammal�t Bek,
+modestly retiring, dismounted from his steed, and throwing the reins to
+his djillad�r, (groom,) ordered him immediately to have the horse shod.
+The race and the shooting was continued.
+
+     [19] 3500 English feet--three quarters of a mile.
+
+At this moment there rode up to Ammal�t his emdj�k,[20] Saphir-Ali, the
+son of one of the poor beks of Bouin�ki, a young man of an agreeable
+exterior, and simple, cheerful character. He had grown up with Ammal�t,
+and therefore treated him with great familiarity. He leaped from his
+horse, and nodding his head, exclaimed--"No�ker M�met Raso�l has knocked
+up the old cropped[21] stallion, in trying to leap him over a ditch
+seven paces wide." "And did he leap it?" cried Ammal�t impatiently.
+"Bring him instantly to me!" He went to meet the horse--and without
+putting his foot in the stirrup, leaped into the saddle, and galloped to
+the bed of a mountain-torrent. As he galloped, he pressed the horse with
+his knee, but the wearied animal, not trusting to his strength, bolted
+aside on the very brink, and Ammal�t was obliged to make another turn.
+The second time, the steed, stimulated by the whip, reared up on his
+hind-legs in order to leap the ditch, but he hesitated, grew restive,
+and resisted with his fore-feet. Ammal�t grew angry. In vain did
+Saphir-Ali entreat him not to force the horse, which had lost in many a
+combat and journey the elasticity of his limbs. Ammal�t would not listen
+to any thing; but urging him with a cry, and striking him with his drawn
+sabre for the third time, he galloped him at the ravine; and when, for
+the third time, the old horse stopped short in his stride, not daring to
+leap, he struck him so violently on the head with the hilt of his sabre,
+that he fell lifeless on the earth.
+
+     [20] Foster-brother; from the word "emdjek"--suckling. Among
+     the tribes of the Caucasus, this relationship is held more
+     sacred than that of nature. Every man would willingly die for
+     his emdjek.
+
+     [21] This is a celebrated race of Persian horses, called Teke.
+
+"This is the reward of faithful service!" said Saphir-Ali,
+compassionately, as he gazed on the lifeless steed.
+
+"This is the reward of disobedience!" replied Ammal�t, with flashing
+eyes.
+
+Seeing the anger of the Bek, all were silent. The horsemen, however,
+continued their djig�tering.
+
+And suddenly was heard the thunder of Russian drums, and the bayonets of
+Russian soldiers glittered as they wound over the hill. It was a company
+of the Kour�nsky regiment of infantry, sent from a detachment which had
+been dispatched to Ako�sh, then in a state of revolt, under Sheikh Ali
+Khan, the banished chief of Derbend. This company had been protecting a
+convoy of supplies from Derbend, whither it was returning by the
+mountain road. The commander of the company, Captain -----, and one
+officer with him, rode in front. Before they had reached the
+race-course, the retreat was beaten, and the company halted, throwing
+aside their havresacks and piling their muskets, but without lighting a
+fire.
+
+The arrival of a Russian detachment could have been no novelty to the
+inhabitants of Daghest�n in the year 1819; and even yet, it must be
+confessed, it is an event that gives them no pleasure. Superstition made
+them look on the Russians as eternal enemies--enemies, however, vigorous
+and able; and they determined, therefore, not to injure them but in
+secret, by concealing their hatred under a mask of amity. A buzz spread
+among the people on the appearance of the Russians: the women returned
+by winding paths to the village, not forgetting, however, to gaze
+secretly at the strangers. The men, on the contrary, threw fierce
+glances at them over their shoulders, and began to assemble in groups,
+discussing how they might best get rid of them, and relieve themselves
+from the podv�d[22], and so on. A multitude of loungers and boys,
+however, surrounded the Russians as they reposed upon the grass. Some of
+the Kekkho�ds (starosts[23]) and Tehao�shes (desi�tniks[24]) appointed
+by the Russian Government, hastily advancing to the Captain, pulled off
+their caps, after the usual salutation, "Khot ghialdi!" (welcome!) and
+"Yakshimo�sen, tazamo�sen, sen-ne-ma-mo�sen," (I greet you,) arrived at
+the inevitable question at a meeting of Asiatics, "What news?"--"Na
+khaber?"
+
+     [22] The being obliged to transport provisions.
+
+     [23] The chief of a village.
+
+     [24] The subordinates of the atarost.
+
+"The only news with me is, that my horse has cast a shoe, and the poor
+devil is dead lame," answered the Captain in pretty good Tartar: "and
+here is, just _�propos_, a blacksmith!" he continued, turning to a
+broad-shouldered Tartar, who was filing the fresh-shod hoof of Ammal�t's
+horse. "Koun�k! (my friend,)--shoe my horse--the shoes are ready--'tis
+but the clink of a hammer, and 'tis done in a moment!"
+
+The blacksmith turned sulkily towards the Captain a face tanned by his
+forge and by the sun, looked from the corners of his eyes at his
+questioner, stroked the thick mustache which overshadowed a beard long
+unrazored, and which might for its bristles have done honour to any
+boar; flattened his ar�kshin (bonnet) on his head, and coolly continued
+putting away his tools in their bag.
+
+"Do you understand me, son of a wolf race?" said the Captain.
+
+"I understand you well," answered the blacksmith,--"you want your horse
+shod."
+
+"And I should advise you to shoe him," replied the Captain, observing on
+the part of the Tartar a desire to jest.
+
+"To-day is a holiday: I will not work."
+
+"I will pay you what you like for your work; but I tell you that,
+whether you like it or not, you must do what I want."
+
+"The will of Allah is above ours; and he does not permit us to work on
+Djoum�. We sin enough for gain on common days, so on a holiday I do not
+wish to buy coals with silver."[25]
+
+     [25] Go to the devil.
+
+"But were you not at work just now, obstinate blockhead? Is not one
+horse the same as another? Besides, mine is a real Mussulman--look at
+the mark[26]--the blood of Karab�kh."
+
+     [26] The Asiatics mark their horses by burning them on their
+     haunch with a hot iron. This peculiar mark, the [Greek: stigma]
+     or [Greek: kotpa] of the Greeks is called "t�vro."
+
+"All horses are alike; but not so those who ride them: Ammal�t Bek is my
+aga (lord.)"
+
+"That is, if you had taken it into your head to refuse him, he would
+have had your ears cropped; but you will not work for me, in the hope
+that I would not dare to do the same. Very well, my friend! I certainly
+will not crop your ears, but be assured that I will warm that orthodox
+back of yours with two hundred pretty stinging nogaikas (lashes with a
+whip) if you won't leave off your nonsense--do you hear?"
+
+"I hear--and I answer as I did before: I will not shoe the horse--for I
+am a good Mussulman."
+
+"And I will make you shoe him, because I am a good soldier. As you have
+worked at the will of your Bek, you shall work for the need of a Russian
+officer--without this I cannot proceed. Corporals, forward!"
+
+In the mean time a circle of gazers had been extending round the
+obstinate blacksmith, like a ring made in the water by casting a stone
+into it. Some in the crowd were disputing the best places, hardly
+knowing what they were running to see; and at last more cries were
+heard: "It is not fair--it cannot be: to-day is a holiday: to-day it is
+a sin to work!" Some of the boldest, trusting to their numbers, pulled
+their caps over their eyes, and felt at the hilts of their daggers,
+pressing close up to the Captain, and crying "Don't shoe him, Al�kper!
+Do nothing for him: here's news, my masters! What new prophets for us
+are these unwashed Russians?" The Captain was a brave man, and thoroughly
+understood the Asiatics. "Away, ye rascals!" he cried in a rage, laying
+his hand on the butt of his pistol. "Be silent, or the first that dares
+to let an insult pass his teeth, shall have them closed with a leaden
+seal!"
+
+This threat, enforced by the bayonets of some of the soldiers, succeeded
+immediately: they who were timid took to their heels--the bolder held
+their tongues. Even the orthodox blacksmith, seeing that the affair was
+becoming serious, looked round on all sides, and muttered "Nedjelaim?"
+(What can I do?) tucked up his sleeves, pulled out from his bag the
+hammer and pincers, and began to shoe the Russian's horse, grumbling
+between his teeth, "_Vala billa beetmi eddeem_, (I will not do it, by
+God!)" It must be remarked that all this took place out of Ammal�t's
+presence. He had hardly looked at the Russians, when, in order to avoid
+a disagreeable rencontre, he mounted the horse which had just been shod,
+and galloped off to Bouin�ki, where his house was situated.
+
+While this was taking place at one end of the exercising ground, a
+horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers. He was of
+middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of
+linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike
+equipment, and followed by five no�kers. By their dusty dress, and the
+foam which covered their horses, it might be seen that they had ridden
+far and fast. The first horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers,
+advanced slowly along the piles of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids
+of fire-arms. The no�kers, following the steps of their master, far from
+turning aside, coolly rode over the scattered weapons. The sentry, who
+had challenged them while they were yet at some distance, and warned
+them not to approach, seized the bit of the steed bestridden by the
+mail-coated horseman, while the rest of the soldiers, enraged at such an
+insult from a Mussulman, assailed the party with abuse. "Hold hard! Who
+are you?" was the challenge and question of the sentinel. "Thou must be
+a raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan Akhmet Khan of Av�r,"[27]
+coolly answered the man in mail, shaking off the hand of the sentry from
+his reins. "I think last year I left the Russians a keepsake at B�shli.
+Translate that for him," he said to one of his no�kers. The Av�retz
+repeated his words in pretty intelligible Russian.
+
+     [27] The brother of Hassan Khan Djemont�i, who became Khan of
+     Av�r by marrying the Khan's widow and heiress.
+
+"'Tis Akhmet Khan! Akhmet Khan!" shouted the soldiers. "Seize him! hold
+him fast! down with him! pay him for the affair of B�shli[28]--the
+villains cut our wounded to pieces."
+
+     [28] The Russian detachment, consisting on this occasion of
+     3000 men, was surrounded by 60,000. These were, Ouizmi
+     Karakaid�khsky, the Av�retzes, Akoush�netzes, the Boulin�tzes
+     of the Koi-So�, and others. The Russians fought their way out
+     by night, but with considerable loss.
+
+"Away, brute!" cried Sultan Akhmet Khan to the soldier who had again
+seized the bridle of his horse--"I am a Russian general."
+
+"A Russian traitor!" roared a multitude of voices; "bring him to the
+Captain: drag him to Derbend, to Colonel Verkh�ffsky."
+
+"'Tis only to hell I would go with such guides!" said Akhmet, with a
+contemptuous smile, and making his horse rear, he turned him to the
+right and left; then, with a blow of the nogaik,[29] he made him leap
+into the air, and disappeared. The no�kers kept their eye on the
+movements of their chief, and uttering their warcry, followed his steps,
+and overthrowing several of the soldiers, cleared a way for themselves
+into the road. After galloping off to a distance of scarce a hundred
+paces, the Khan rode away at a slow walk, with an expression of the
+greatest _sang-froid_, not deigning to look back, and coolly playing
+with his bridle. The crowd of Tartars assembled round the blacksmith
+attracted his attention. "What are you quarrelling about, friends?"
+asked Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining in his horse.
+
+     [29] The whip of a Kazak.
+
+In sign of respect and reverence, they all applied their hands to their
+foreheads when they saw the Khan. The timid or peaceably disposed among
+them, dreading the consequences, either from the Russians or the Khan,
+to which this rencontre might expose them, exhibited much discomfiture
+at the question; but the idle, the ruffian, and the desperate--for all
+beheld with hatred the Russian domination--crowded turbulently round him
+with delight. They hurriedly told him what was the matter.
+
+"And you stand, like buffaloes, stupidly looking on, while they force
+your brother to work like a brute under the yoke!" exclaimed the Khan,
+gloomily, to the bystanders; "while they laugh in your face at your
+customs, and trample your faith under their feet! and ye whine like old
+women, instead of revenging yourselves like men! Cowards! cowards!"
+
+"What can we do?" cried a multitude of voices together; "the Russians
+have cannon--they have bayonets!"
+
+"And ye, have ye not guns? have ye not daggers? It is not the Russians
+that are brave, but ye that are cowards! Shame of Mussulmans! The sword
+of Daghest�n trembles before the Russian whip. Ye are afraid of the roll
+of the cannon; but ye fear not the reproach of cowardice. The ferm�n of
+a Russian pr�stav[30] is holier to you than a chapter of the Koran.
+Siberia frightens you more than hell. Did your forefathers act, did your
+forefathers think thus? They counted not their enemies, they calculated
+not. Outnumbered or not, they met them, bravely fought them, and
+gloriously died! And what fear ye? Have the Russians ribs of iron? Have
+their cannon no breach? Is it not by the tail that you seize the
+scorpion?" This address stirred the crowd. The Tartar vanity was touched
+to the quick. "What do we care for them? Why do we let them lord it over
+us here?" was heard around. "Let us liberate the blacksmith from his
+work--let us liberate him!" they roared, as they narrowed their circle
+round the Russian soldiers, amidst whom Al�kper was shoeing the
+captain's horse. The confusion increased. Satisfied with the tumult he
+had created, Sultan Akhmet Khan, not wishing to mix himself up in an
+insignificant brawl, rode out of the crowd, leaving two no�kers to keep
+alive the violent spirit among the Tartars, while, accompanied by the
+remainder, he rode rapidly to the ootakh[31] of Ammal�t.
+
+     [30] A superintendent.
+
+     [31] The house, in Tartar, is "ev;" "outakh," mansion; and
+     "sar�i," edifice in general; "haram-khan�h," the women's
+     apartments. For palace they employ the word "igar�t." The
+     Russians confound all these meanings in the word "s�kla,"
+     which, in the Circassian language, is house.
+
+"Mayest thou be victorious," said Sultan Akhmet Khan to Ammal�t Bek, who
+received him at the threshold. This ordinary salutation, in the
+Circassian language, was pronounced with so marked an emphasis, that
+Ammal�t as he kissed him, asked, "Is that a jest or a prophecy, my fair
+guest?"
+
+"That depends on thee," replied the Sultan. "It is upon the right heir
+of the Shamkhal�t[32] that it depends to draw the sword from the
+scabbard."
+
+     [32] The father of Ammal�t was the eldest of the family, and
+     consequently the true heir to the Shamkhal�t. But the Russians,
+     having conquered Daghest�n, not trusting to the good intentions
+     of this chief, gave the power to the younger brother.
+
+"To sheath it no more, Khan? An unenviable destiny. Methinks it is
+better to reign in Bouin�ki, than for an empty title to be obliged to
+hide in the mountains like a jackal."
+
+"To bound from the mountains like a lion, Ammal�t; and to repose, after
+your glorious toils, in the palace of your ancestors."
+
+"To repose? Is it not better not to be awakened at all?
+
+"Would you behold but in a dream what you ought to possess in reality?
+The Russians are giving you the poppy, and will lull you with tales,
+while another plucks the golden flowers of the garden."[33]
+
+     [33] A _jeu-de-mots_ which the Asiatics admire much;
+     "kizil-gulli�r" means simply roses, but the Khan alludes to
+     "kiz�l," ducats.
+
+"What can I do with my force?"
+
+"Force--that is in thy soul, Ammal�t!... Despise dangers and they bend
+before you.... Dost thou hear that?" added Sultan Akhmet Khan, as the
+sound of firing reached them from the town. "It is the voice of
+victory!"
+
+Saphir-Ali rushed into the chamber with an agitated face.
+
+"Bouin�ki is in revolt," he hurriedly began; "a crowd of rioters has
+overpowered the detachment, and they have begun to fire from the
+rocks."[34]
+
+     [34] The Tartars, like the North American Indians, always, if
+     possible, shelter themselves behind rocks and enclosures, &c.,
+     when engaged in battle.
+
+"Rascals!" cried Ammal�t, as he threw his gun over his shoulder. "How
+dared they to rise without me! Run, Saphir-Ali, threaten them with my
+name; kill the first who disobeys."
+
+"I have done all I could to restrain them," said Saphir-Ali, "but none
+would listen to me, for the no�kers of Sultan Akhmet Khan were urging
+them on, saying that he had ordered them to slay the Russians."
+
+"Indeed! did my no�kers say that?" asked the Khan.
+
+"They did not say so much, but they set the example," said Saphir-Ali.
+
+"In that case they have done well," replied Sultan Akhmet Khan: "this is
+brave!"
+
+"What hast thou done, Khan!" cried Ammal�t, angrily.
+
+"What you might have done long ago!"
+
+"How can I justify myself to the Russians?"
+
+"With lead and steel.... The firing is begun.... Fate works for you ...
+the sword is drawn ... let us go seek the Russians!"
+
+"They are here!" cried the Captain, who, followed by two men, had broken
+through the disorderly ranks of the Tartars, and dashed into the house
+of their chief. Confounded by the unexpected outbreak in which he was
+certain to be considered a party, Ammal�t saluted his enraged
+guest--"Come in peace!" he said to him in Tartar.
+
+"I care not whether I come in peace or no," answered the Captain, "but I
+find no peaceful reception in Bouin�ki. Thy Tartars, Ammal�t, have dared
+to fire upon a soldier of mine, of yours, a subject of our Tsar."
+
+"In very deed, 'twas absurd to fire on a Russian," said the Khan,
+contemptuously stretching himself on the cushions of the divan, "when
+they might have cut his throat."
+
+"Here is the cause of all the mischief, Ammal�t!" said the Captain,
+angrily, pointing to the Khan; "but for this insolent rebel not a
+trigger would have been pulled in Bouin�ki! But you have done well,
+Ammal�t Bek, to invite Russians as friends, and to receive their foe as
+a guest, to shelter him as a comrade, to honour him as a friend! Ammal�t
+Bek, this man is named in the order of the commander-in-chief; give him
+up."
+
+"Captain," answered Ammal�t, "with us a guest is sacred. To give him up
+would be a sin upon my soul, an ineffaceable shame upon my head; respect
+my entreaty; respect our customs."
+
+"I will tell you, in your turn--respect the Russian laws. Remember your
+duty. You have sworn allegiance to the Tsar, and your oath obliges you
+not to spare your own brother if he is a criminal."
+
+"Rather would I give up my brother than my guest, Sir Captain! It is not
+for you to judge my promises and obligations. My tribunal is Allah and
+the padishah! In the field, let fortune take care of the Khan; but
+within my threshold, beneath my roof, I am bound to be his protector,
+and I will be!"
+
+"And you shall be answerable for this traitor!"
+
+The Khan had lain in haughty silence during this dispute, breathing the
+smoke from his pipe: but at the word "traitor," his blood was fired, he
+started up, and rushed indignantly to the Captain.
+
+"Traitor, say you?" he cried. "Say rather, that I refused to betray him
+to whom I was bound by promise. The Russian padishah gave me rank, the
+sardar[35] caressed me--and I was faithful so long as they demanded of
+me nothing impossible or humiliating. But, all of a sudden, they wished
+me to admit troops into Av�r--to permit fortresses to be built there;
+and what name should I have deserved, if I had sold the blood and sweat
+of the Av�retzes, my brethren! If I had attempted this, think ye that I
+could have done it? A thousand free daggers, a thousand unhired bullets,
+would have flown to the heart of the betrayer. The very rocks would have
+fallen on the son who could betray his father. I refused the friendship
+of the Russians; but I was not their enemy--and what was the reward of
+my just intentions, my honest counsels? I was deeply, personally
+insulted by the letter of one of your generals, whom I had warned. That
+insolence cost him dear at B�shli ... I shed a river of blood for some
+few drops of insulting ink, and that river divides us for ever."
+
+     [35] The commander-in-chief.
+
+"That blood cries for vengeance!" replied the enraged Captain. "Thou
+shalt not escape it, robber!"
+
+"Nor thou from me!" shouted the infuriated Khan, plunging his dagger
+into the body of the Captain, as he lifted his hand to seize him by the
+collar. Severely wounded, the officer fell groaning on the carpet.
+
+"Thou hast undone me!" cried Ammal�t, wringing his hands. "He is a
+Russian, and my guest!"
+
+"There are insults which a roof cannot cover," sullenly replied the
+Khan. "The die is cast: it is no time to hesitate. Shut your gate, call
+your people, and let us attack the enemy."
+
+"An hour ago I had no enemy ... there are no means now for repulsing
+them ... I have neither powder nor ball ... The people are dispersed."
+
+"They have fled!" cried Saphir-Ali in despair. "The Russians are
+advancing at full march over the hill. They are close at hand!"
+
+"If so, go with me, Ammal�t!" said the Khan. "I rode to Tchetchn�
+yesterday, to raise the revolt along the line ... What will be the end,
+God knows; but there is bread in the mountains. Do you consent?"
+
+"Let us go!" ... replied Ammal�t, resolvedly.... "When our only safety
+is in flight, it is no time for disputes and reproaches."
+
+"Ho! horses, and six no�kers with me!"
+
+"And am I to go with you?" said Saphir-Ali, with tears in his
+eyes--"with you for weal or woe!"
+
+"No, my good Saphir-Ali, no. Remain you here to govern the household,
+that our people and the strangers may not seize every thing. Give my
+greeting to my wife, and take her to my father-in-law, the Shamkh�l.
+Forget me not, and farewell!"
+
+They had barely time to escape at full gallop by one gate, when the
+Russians dashed in at the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The vernal noon was shining upon the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud
+voices of the moollahs had called the inhabitants of Tchetchn� to
+prayer. By degrees they came forth from the mosques, and though
+invisible to each other from the towers on which they stood, their
+solitary voices, after awaking for a moment the echoes of the hills,
+sank to stillness in the silent air.
+
+The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a Turkish devotee, one of those
+missionaries annually sent into the mountains by the Divan of Stamboul,
+to spread and strengthen the faith, and to increase the detestation felt
+by the inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing on the roof of the
+mosque, having performed the usual call, ablution, and prayer. He had
+not been long installed as moollah of Ig�li, a village of Tchetchn�; and
+plunged in a deep contemplation of his hoary beard, and the circling
+smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe, he gazed from time to time with a
+curious interest on the mountains, and on the defiles which lay towards
+the north, right before his eyes. On the left arose the precipitous
+ridges dividing Tchetchn� from Av�r, and beyond them glittered the snows
+of Caucasus; s�klas scattered disorderly along the ridges half-way up
+the mountain, and narrow paths led to these fortresses built by nature,
+and employed by the hill-robbers to defend their liberty, or secure
+their plunder. All was still in the village and the surrounding hills;
+there was not a human being to be seen on the roads or streets; flocks
+of sheep were reposing in the shade of the cliffs; the buffaloes were
+crowded in the muddy swamps near the springs, with only their muzzles
+protruded from the marsh. Nought save the hum of the insects--nought
+save the monotonous chirp of the grasshoppers indicated life amid the
+breathless silence of the mountains; and Hadji Suleiman, stretched under
+the cupola, was intensely enjoying the stillness and repose of nature,
+so congenial to the lazy immobility of the Turkish character. Indolently
+he turned his eyes, whose fire was extinguished, and which no longer
+reflected the light of the sun, and at length they fell upon two
+horsemen, slowly climbing the opposite side of the declivity.
+
+"N�phtali!" cried our Moollah, turning towards a neighbouring s�kla, at
+the gate of which stood a saddled horse. And then a handsome
+Tchetchenetz, with short cut beard, and shaggy cap covering half his
+face, ran out into the street. "I see two horsemen," continued the
+Moollah; "they are riding round the village!"
+
+"Most likely Jews or Armenians," answered N�phtali. "They do not choose
+to hire a guide, and will break their necks in the winding road. The
+wild-goats, and our boldest riders, would not plunge into these recesses
+without precaution."
+
+"No, brother N�phtali; I have been twice to Mecca, and have seen plenty
+of Jews and Armenians every where. But these riders look not like Hebrew
+chafferers, unless, indeed, they exchange steel for gold in the mountain
+road. They have no bales of merchandise. Look at them yourself from
+above; your eyes are surer than mine; mine have had their day, and done
+their work. There was a time when I could count the buttons on a Russian
+soldier's coat a verst off, and my rifle never missed an infidel; but
+now I could not distinguish a ram of my own afar."
+
+By this time N�phtali was at the side of the Moollah, and was examining
+the travellers with an eagle glance.
+
+"The noonday is hot, and the road rugged," said Suleiman; "invite the
+travellers to refresh themselves and their horses: perhaps they have
+news: besides, the Koran commands us to show hospitality."
+
+"With us in the mountains, and before the Koran, never did a stranger
+leave a village hungry or sad; never did he depart without tchourek,[36]
+without blessing, without a guide; but these people are suspicious: why
+do they avoid honest men, and pass our village by by-roads, and with
+danger to their life?"
+
+     [36] A kind of dried bread.
+
+"It seems that they are your countrymen," said Suleiman, shading his
+eyes with his hand: "their dress is Tchetchn�. Perhaps they are
+returning from a plundering exhibition, to which your father went with a
+hundred of his neighbours; or perhaps they are brothers, going to
+revenge blood for blood."
+
+"No, Suleiman, that is not like us. Could a mountaineer's heart refrain
+from coming to see his countrymen--to boast of his exploits against the
+Russians, and to show his booty? These are neither avengers of blood nor
+Abreks--their faces are not covered by the b�shlik; besides, dress is
+deceptive. Who can tell that those are not Russian deserters! The other
+day a K�zak, who had murdered his master, fled from Goumbet-Ao�l with
+his horse and arms.... The devil is strong!"
+
+"He is strong in them in whom the faith is weak, N�phtali;--yet, if I
+mistake not, the hinder horseman has hair flowing from under his cap."
+
+"May I be pounded to dust, but it is so! It is either a Russian, or, what
+is worse, a Tartar Shageed.[37] Stop a moment, my friend; I will comb
+your zilfl�rs for you! In half-an-hour I will return, Suleiman, either
+with them,--or one of us three shall feed the mountain berkoots
+(eagles.)"
+
+     [37] The mountaineers are bad Mussulmans, the Sooni sect is
+     predominant; but the Daghest�netzes are in general Shageeds, as
+     the Persians. The sects hate each other with all their heart.
+
+N�phtali rushed down the stairs, threw the gun on his shoulders, leapt
+into his saddle and dashed down the hill, caring neither for furrow nor
+stone. Only the dust arose, and the pebbles streamed down after the bold
+horseman."
+
+"Alla akb�r!" gravely exclaimed Suleiman, and lit his pipe.
+
+N�phtali soon came up with the strangers. Their horses were covered with
+foam, and the sweat-drops rained from them on the narrow path by which
+they were climbing the mountain. The first was clothed in a shirt of
+mail, the other in the Circassian dress: except that he wore a Persian
+sabre instead of a sh�shka,[38] suspended by a laced girdle. His left
+arm was covered with blood, bound up with a handkerchief, and supported
+by the sword-knot. The faces of both were concealed. For some time he
+rode behind them along the slippery path, which overhung a precipice;
+but at the first open space he galloped by them, and turned his horse
+round. "Sal�m aleikom!" said he, opposing their passage along the rugged
+and half-built road among the rocks, as he made ready his arms. The
+foremost horseman suddenly wrapped his bo�rka[39] round his face, so as
+to leave visible only his knit brows: "Aleikom Sal�m!" answered he,
+cocking his gun, and fixing himself in the saddle.
+
+     [38] The Circassian sabre.
+
+     [39] A rough cloak, used as a protection in bad weather.
+
+"God give you a good journey!" said N�phtali. repeating the usual
+salutation, and preparing, at the first hostile movement, to shoot the
+stranger.
+
+"God give you enough of sense not to interrupt the traveller," replied
+his antagonist, impatiently: "What would you with us, Koun�k?"[40]
+
+     [40] Friend, comrade.
+
+"I offer you rest, and a brother's repast, barley and stalls for your
+horses. My threshold flourishes by hospitality: the blessing of the
+stranger increaseth the flock, and giveth sharpness to the sword of the
+master. Fix not the seal of reproach on our whole village. Let them not
+say, 'They have seen travellers in the heat of noon, and have not
+refreshed them nor sheltered them.'"
+
+"We thank you for your kindness; but we are not wont to take forced
+hospitality; and haste is even more necessary for us than rest."
+
+"You ride to your death without a guide."
+
+"Guide!" exclaimed the traveller; "I know every step of the Caucasus. I
+have been where your serpents climb not, your tigers cannot mount, your
+eagles cannot fly. Make way, comrade: thy threshold is not on God's
+high-road, and I have no time to prate with thee."
+
+"I will not yield a step, till I know who and whence you are!"
+
+"Insolent scoundrel, out of my way, or thy mother shall beg thy bones
+from the jackall and the wind! Thank your luck, N�phtali, that thy
+father and I have eaten one another's salt; and often have ridden by his
+side in the battle. Unworthy son! thou art rambling about the roads, and
+ready to attack the peaceable travellers, while thy father's corse lies
+rotting on the fields of Russia, and the wives of the Kaz�ks are selling
+his arms in the bazar. N�phtali, thy father was slain yesterday beyond
+the T�rek. Dost thou know me now?"
+
+"Sultan Akhmet Khan!" cried the Tchetchenetz, struck by the piercing
+look and by the terrible news. His voice was stifled, and he fell
+forward on his horse's neck in inexpressible grief.
+
+"Yes, I am Sultan Akhmet Khan! but grave this in your memory,
+N�phtali--that if you say to any one, 'I have seen the Khan of Av�r,' my
+vengeance will live from generation to generation."
+
+The strangers passed on, the Khan in silence, plunged, as it seemed, in
+painful recollections; Ammal�t (for it was he) in gloomy thought. The
+dress of both bore witness to recent fighting; their mustaches were
+singed by the priming, and splashes of blood had dried upon their faces;
+but the proud look of the first seemed to defy to the combat fate and
+chance; a gloomy smile, of hate mingled with scorn, contracted his lip.
+On the other hand, on the features of Ammal�t exhaustion was painted. He
+could hardly turn his languid eyes; and from time to time a groan
+escaped him, caused by the pain of his wounded arm. The uneasy pace of
+the Tartar horse, unaccustomed to the mountain roads, renewed the
+torment of his wound. He was the first to break the silence.
+
+"Why have you refused the offer of these good people? We might have
+stopped an hour or two to repose, and at dewfall we could have
+proceeded."
+
+"You think so, because you feel like a young man, dear Ammal�t: you are
+used to rule your Tartars like slaves, and you fancy that you can
+conduct yourself with the same ease among the free mountaineers. The
+hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;--we are defeated and flying.
+Hundreds of brave mountaineers--your no�kers and my own--have fallen in
+fight with the Russians; and the Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight
+the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan, which they are wont to behold the star
+of victory! To accept the beggar's repast, perhaps to hear reproaches
+for the death of fathers and sons, carried away by me in this rash
+expedition--'twould be to lose their confidence for ever. Time will
+pass, tears will dry up; the thirst of vengeance will take place of
+grief for the dead; and then again Sultan Akhmet will be seen the
+prophet of plunder and of blood. Then again the battle-signal shall echo
+through the mountains, and I shall once more lead flying bands of
+avengers into the Russian limits. If I go now, in the moment of defeat,
+the Tchetchenetz will judge that Allah giveth and taketh away victory.
+They may offend me by rash words, and with me an offence is
+ineffaceable; and the revenge of a personal offence would obstruct the
+road that leads me to the Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel with a
+brave people--and destroy the idol of glory on which they are wont to
+gaze with rapture? Never does man appear so mean as in weakness, when
+every one can measure his strength with him fearlessly: besides, you
+need a skilful leech, and nowhere will you find a better than at my
+house. To-morrow we shall be at home; have patience until then."
+
+With a gesture of gratitude Ammal�t Bek placed his hand upon his heart
+and forehead: he perfectly felt the truth of the Khan's words, but
+exhaustion for many hours had been overwhelming him. Avoiding the
+villages, they passed the night among the rocks, eating a handful of
+millet boiled in honey, without the mountaineers seldom set out on a
+journey. Crossing the Koi-So� by the bridge near the Ashe�rt, quitting
+its northern branch, and leaving behind them And�h, and the country of
+the Boulin�tzes of the Koi-So�, and the naked chain of Salata�u. A rude
+path lay before them, winding among forests and cliffs terrible to body
+and soul; and they began to climb the last chain which separated them on
+the north from Khounz�kh or Av�r, the capital of the Khans. The forest,
+and then the underwood, had gradually disappeared from the naked flint
+of the mountain, on which cloud and tempest could hardly wander. To
+reach the summit, our travellers were compelled to ride alternately to
+the right and to the left, so precipitous was the ascent of the rocks.
+The experienced steed of the Khan stepped cautiously and surely from
+stone to stone, feeling his way with his hoofs, and when they slipped,
+gliding on his haunches down the declivities: while the ardent fiery
+horse of Ammal�t, trained in the hills of Daghest�n, fretted, curveted,
+and slipped. Deprived of his customary grooming, he could not support a
+two days' flight under the intense cold and burning sunshine of the
+mountains, travelling among sharp rocks, and nourished only by the
+scanty herbage of the crevices. He snorted heavily as he climbed higher
+and higher; the sweat streamed from his poitrel; his large nostrils were
+dry and parched, and foam boiled from his bit. "Allah berek�t!"
+exclaimed Ammal�t, as he reached the crest from which there opened
+before him a view of Av�r: but at the very moment his exhausted horse
+fell under him; the blood spouted from his open mouth, and his last
+breath burst the saddle-girth.
+
+The Khan assisted the Bek to extricate himself from the stirrups; but
+observed with alarm that his efforts had displaced the bandage on
+Ammal�t's wounded arm, and that the blood was soaking through it afresh.
+The young man, it seemed, was insensible to pain; tears were rolling
+down his face upon the dead horse. So one drop fills not, but overflows
+the cup. "Thou wilt never more bear me like down upon the wind," he
+said, "nor hear behind thee from the dust-cloud of the race, the shouts,
+unpleasing to the rival, the acclamations of the people: in the blaze of
+battle no more shalt thou carry me from the iron rain of the Russian
+cannon. With thee I gained the fame of a warrior--why should I survive,
+or it, or thee?" He bent his face upon his knee, and remained silent a
+long time, while the Khan carefully bound up his wounded arm: at length
+Ammal�t raised his head: "Leave me!" he cried, resolutely: "leave,
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, a wretch to his fate! The way is long, and I am
+exhausted. By remaining with me, you will perish in vain. See! the eagle
+soars around us; he knows that my heart will soon quiver beneath his
+talons, and I thank God! Better find an airy grave in the maw of a bird
+of prey, than leave my corse beneath a Christian foot. Farewell, linger
+not."
+
+"For shame, Ammal�t! you trip against a straw....! What the great harm?
+You are wounded, and your horse is dead. Your wound will soon healed,
+and we will find you a better horse! Allah sendeth not misfortunes
+alone. In the flower of your age, and the full vigour of your faculties,
+it is a sin to despair. Mount my horse, I will lead him by the bridle,
+and by night we shall be at home. Time is precious!"
+
+"For me, time is no more, Sultan Ahkmet Khan ... I thank you heartily
+for your brotherly care, but I cannot take advantage of it ... you
+yourself cannot support a march on foot after such fatigue. I repeat ...
+leave me to my fate. Here, on these inaccessible heights, I will die
+free and contented ... And what is there to recall me to life! My
+parents lie under the earth, my wife is blind, my uncle and
+father-in-law the Shamkh�l are cowering at Tarki before the Russians ...
+the Giaour is revelling in my native land, in my inheritance; and I
+myself an a wanderer from my home, a runaway from battle. I neither can,
+nor ought to live."
+
+"You ought _not_ to talk such nonsense, dear Ammal�t:--and nothing but
+fever can excuse you. We are created that we may live longer than our
+fathers. For wives, if one has not teazed you enough, we will find you
+three more. If you love not the Shamkh�l, yet love your own
+inheritance--you ought to live, if but for that; since to a dead man
+power is useless, and victory impossible. Revenge on the Russians is a
+holy duty: live, if but for that. That we are beaten, is no novelty for
+a warrior; to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls to us. Allah gives
+fortune; but a man creates his own glory, not by fortune, but by
+firmness. Take courage, my friend Ammal�t.... You are wounded and weak;
+I am strong from habit, and not fatigued by flight. Mount! and we may
+yet live to beat the Russians."
+
+The colour returned to Ammal�t's face ... "Yes, I will live for
+revenge!" he cried: "for revenge both secret and open. Believe me,
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I accept your generosity!
+Henceforth I am yours; I swear by the graves of my fathers.... I am
+yours! Guide my steps, direct the strokes of my arm; and if ever,
+drowned in softness, I forget my oath, remind me of this moment, of this
+mountain peak: Ammal�t Bek will awake, and his dagger will be
+lightning!"
+
+The Khan embraced him, as he lifted the excited youth into the saddle.
+"Now I behold in you the pure blood of the Em�rs!" said he: "the burning
+blood of their children, which flows in our veins like the sulphur in
+the entrails of the rocks, which, ever and anon inflaming, shakes and
+topples down the crags." Steadying with one hand the wounded man in the
+saddle, the Khan began cautiously to descend the rugged croft.
+Occasionally the stones fell rattling from under their feet, or the
+horse slid downward over the smooth granite, so that they were well
+pleased to reach the mossy slopes. By degrees, creeping plants began to
+appear, spreading their green sheets; and, waving from the crevices like
+fans, they hung down in long ringlets like ribbons or flags. At length
+they reached a thick wood of nut-trees; then came the oak, the wild
+cherry, and, lower still, the tchin�r,[41] and the tchind�r. The
+variety, the wealth of vegetation, and the majestic silence of the
+umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary adoration of the wild
+strength of nature. Ever and anon, from the midnight darkness of the
+boughs, there dawned, like the morning, glimpses of meadows, covered
+with a fragrant carpet of flowers untrodden by the foot of man. The
+pathway at one time lost itself in the depth of the thicket; at another,
+crept forth upon the edge of the rock, below which gleamed and murmured
+a rivulet, now foaming over the stones, then again slumbering on its
+rocky bed, under the shade of the barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants,
+sparkling with their rainbow tails, flitted from shrub to shrub; flights
+of wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes in an horizontal troop,
+sometimes like a column, rising to the sky; and sunset flooded all with
+its airy purple, and light mists began to rise from the narrow gorges:
+every thing breathed the freshness of evening. Our travellers were now
+near the village of Aki, and separated only by a hill from Khounz�kh. A
+low crest alone divided them from that village, when the report of a gun
+resounded from the mountain, and, like an ominous signal, was repeated
+by the echoes of the cliffs. The travellers halted irresolute: the
+echoes by degrees sank into stillness. "Our hunters!" cried Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, wiping the sweat from his face: "they expect me not, and
+think not to meet me here! Many tears of joy, and many of sorrow, do I
+bear to Khounz�kh!" Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in the face of Akhmet
+Khan. Vividly does every soft and every savage sentiment play on the
+features of the Asiatic.
+
+     [41] Tchin�r, the palmated-leaved plane.
+
+Another report soon interrupted his meditation; then another, and
+another. Shot answered shot, and at length thickened into a warm fire.
+"'Tis the Russians!" cried Ammal�t, drawing his sabre. He pressed his
+horse with the stirrup, as though he would have leaped over the ridge at
+a single bound; but in a moment his strength failed him, and the blade
+fell ringing on the ground, as his arm dropped heavily by his side.
+"Khan!" said he, dismounting, "go to the succour of your people; your
+face will be worth more to them than a hundred warriors."
+
+The Khan heard him not; he was listening intently for the flight of the
+balls, as if he would distinguish those of the Russian from the Av�rian.
+"Have they, besides the agility of the goat, stolen the wings of the
+eagle of Kazb�c? Can they have reached our inaccessible fastnesses?"
+said he, leaning to the saddle, with his foot already in the stirrup.
+"Farewell, Ammal�t!" he cried at length, listening to the firing, which
+now grew hotter: "I go to perish on the ruins I have made, after
+striking like a thunderbolt!" At this moment a bullet whistled by, and
+fell at his feet. Bending down and picking it up, his face was lighted
+with a smile. He quietly took his foot from the stirrup, and turning to
+Ammal�t, "Mount!" said he, "you shall presently find with your own eyes
+an answer to this riddle. The Russian bullets are of lead; but this is
+copper[42]--an Av�retz, my dear countryman. Besides, it comes from the
+south, where the Russians cannot be."
+
+     [42] Having no lead, the Av�retzes use balls of copper, as they
+     possess small mines of that metal.
+
+They ascended to the summit of the crest, and before their view opened
+two villages, situated on the opposite sides of a deep ravine; from
+behind them came the firing. The inhabitants sheltering themselves
+behind rocks and hedges, were firing at each other. Between them the
+women were incessantly running, sobbing and weeping when any combatant,
+approaching the edge of the ravine, fell wounded. They carried stones,
+and, regardless of the whistling of the balls, fearlessly piled them up,
+so as to make a kind of defence. Cries of joy arose from one side or the
+other, as a wounded adversary was carried from the field; a groan of
+sorrow ascended in the air when one of their kinsmen or comrades was
+hit. Ammal�t gazed at the combat for some time with surprise, a combat in
+which there was a great deal more noise than execution. At length he
+turned an enquiring eye upon the Khan.
+
+"With us these are everyday affairs!" he answered, delightedly marking
+each report. "Such skirmishes cherish among us a warlike spirit and
+warlike habits. With you, private quarrels end in a few blows of the
+dagger; among us they become the common business of whole villages, and
+any trifle is enough to occasion them. Probably they are fighting about
+some cow that has been stolen. With us it is no disgrace to steal in
+another village--the shame is, to be found out. Admire the coolness of
+our women; the balls are whizzing about like gnats, yet they pay no
+attention to them! Worthy wives and mothers of brave men! To be sure,
+there would be eternal disgrace to him who could wound a woman, yet no
+man can answer for a ball. A sharp eye may aim it; but blind chance
+carries it to the mark. But darkness is falling from heaven, and
+dividing these enemies for a moment. Let us hasten to my kinsmen."
+
+Nothing but the experience of the Khan could have saved our travellers
+from frequent falls in the precipitous descent to the river Ouz�n.
+Ammal�t could see scarcely any thing before him; the double veil of
+night and weakness enveloped his eyes; his head turned: he beheld, as it
+were in a dream, when they again mounted an eminence, the gate and
+watch-tower of the Khan's house. With an uncertain foot he dismounted in
+a courtyard, surrounded by shouting no�kers and attendants; and he had
+hardly stepped over the grated threshold when his breath failed him--a
+deadly paleness poured its snow over the wounded man's face; and the
+young Bek, exhausted by loss of blood, fatigued by travel, hunger, and
+anguish of soul, fell senseless on the embroidered carpets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
+
+No. VI.
+
+
+THE LAY OF THE BELL.
+
+     "Vivos voco--Mortuous plango--Fulgura frango."
+
+      Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,
+        Awaits the mould of bak�d clay.
+      Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth--
+        THE BELL that shall be born to-day!
+            And wearily now,
+            With the sweat of the brow,
+    Shall the work win its grace in the master's eye,
+    But the blessing that hallows must come from high.
+
+    And well an earnest word beseems
+      The work the earnest hand prepares;
+    Its load more light the labour deems,
+      When sweet discourse the labour shares.
+    So let us ponder--nor in vain--
+      What strength has wrought when labour wills;
+    For who would not the fool disdain
+      Who ne'er can feel what he fulfills?
+    And well it stamps our Human Race,
+      And hence the gift TO UNDERSTAND,
+    When in the musing heart we trace
+      Whate'er we fashion with the hand.
+
+      From the fir the fagot take,
+        Keep it, heap it hard and dry,
+      That the gather'd flame may break
+        Through the furnace, wroth and high.
+            Smolt the copper within--
+            Quick--the brass with the tin,
+    That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell
+    May flow in the right course glib and well.
+
+    What now these mines so deeply shroud,
+      What Force with Fire is moulding thus,
+    Shall from yon steeple, oft and loud,
+      Speak, witnessing of us!
+    It shall, in later days unfailing,
+      Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;
+    Its solemn voice with Sorrow wailing,
+      Or choral chiming to Devotion.
+    Whatever sound in man's deep breast
+      Fate wakens, through his winding track,
+    Shall strike that metal-crown�d crest,
+      Which rings the moral answer back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      See the silvery bubbles spring!
+        Good! the mass is melting now!
+      Let the salts we duly bring
+        Purge the flood, and speed the flow.
+            From the dross and the scum,
+            Pure, the fusion must come;
+    For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,
+    That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.
+
+    That voice, with merry music rife,
+      The cherish'd child shall welcome in;
+    What time the rosy dreams of life,
+      In the first slumber's arms begin.
+    As yet in Time's dark womb unwarning,
+      Repose the days, or foul or fair;
+    And watchful o'er that golden morning,
+      The Mother-Love's untiring care!
+
+      And swift the years like arrows fly--
+      No more with girls content to play,
+      Bounds the proud Boy upon his way,
+      Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,
+      With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;
+      And, wearied with the wish to roam,
+      Again seeks, stranger-like, the Father-Home.
+      And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks
+        Out from its native morning skies,
+      With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,
+        The Virgin stands before his eyes.
+      A nameless longing seizes him!
+        From all his wild companions flown;
+      Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;
+        He wanders all alone.
+      Blushing, he glides where'er she move;
+        Her greeting can transport him;
+      To every mead to deck his love,
+        The happy wild flowers court him!
+      Sweet Hope--and tender Longing--ye
+        The growth of Life's first Age of Gold;
+      When the heart, swelling, seems to see
+        The gates of heaven unfold!
+    O Love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,
+    Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Browning o'er the pipes are simmering,
+        Dip this fairy rod within;
+      If like glass the surface glimmering,
+        Then the casting may begin.
+            Brisk, brisk to the rest--
+            Quick!--the fusion to test;
+    And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign,
+    If the ductile and brittle united combine.
+
+    For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,
+    And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,
+      Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong:
+    So be it with thee, if for ever united,
+    The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;
+      Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.
+
+    Lovely, thither are they bringing,
+      With her virgin wreath, the Bride!
+    To the love-feast clearly ringing,
+      Tolls the church-bell far and wide!
+    With that sweetest holyday,
+      Must the May of Life depart;
+    With the cestus loosed--away
+      Flies ILLUSION from the heart!
+        Yet Love lingers lonely,
+          When Passion is mute,
+        And the blossoms may only
+          Give way to the fruit.
+
+        The Husband must enter
+          The hostile life,
+          With struggle and strife,
+          To plant or to watch,
+          To snare or to snatch,
+          To pray and importune,
+        Must wager and venture
+          And hunt down his fortune!
+      Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,
+      And the garners are fill'd with the gold of the grain,
+      Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!
+        Within sits Another,
+          The thrifty Housewife;
+        The mild one, the mother--
+          Her home is her life.
+        In its circle she rules,
+        And the daughters she schools,
+          And she cautions the boys,
+        With a bustling command,
+        And a diligent hand
+          Employ'd she employs;
+        Gives order to store,
+        And the much makes the more;
+    Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,
+    And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;
+    And she hoards in the presses, well polish'd and full,
+    The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;
+    Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavour
+    Rests never!
+      Blithe the Master (where the while
+      From his roof he sees them smile)
+        Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;
+      There, the beams projecting far,
+      And the laden store-house are,
+      And the granaries bow'd beneath
+        The blessings of the golden grain;
+      There, in undulating motion,
+      Wave the corn-fields like an ocean.
+      Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:--
+      "My house is built upon a rock,
+      And sees unmoved the stormy shock
+        Of waves that fret below!"
+      What chain so strong, what girth so great,
+      To bind the giant form of Fate?--
+        Swift are the steps of Woe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now the casting may begin;
+        See the breach indented there:
+      Ere we run the fusion in,
+        Halt--and speed the pious prayer!
+          Pull the bung out--
+          See around and about
+    What vapour, what vapour--God help us!--has risen?--
+    Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!
+
+    What, friend, is like the might of fire
+    When man can watch and wield the ire?
+    Whate'er we shape or work, we owe
+    Still to that heaven-descended glow.
+    But dread the heaven-descended glow,
+    When from their chain its wild wings go,
+      When, where it listeth, wide and wild
+      Sweeps the free Nature's free-born Child!
+      When the Frantic One fleets,
+        While no force can withstand,
+      Through the populous streets
+        Whirling ghastly the brand;
+      For the Element hates
+      What Man's labour creates,
+        And the work of his hand!
+      Impartially out from the cloud,
+        Or the curse or the blessing may fall!
+      Benignantly out from the cloud
+        Come the dews, the revivers of all!
+      Avengingly our from the cloud
+        Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!
+      Hark--a wail from the steeple!--aloud
+      The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!
+        Look--look--red as blood
+          All on high!
+        It is not the daylight that fills with its flood
+          The sky!
+        What a clamour awaking
+        Roars up through the street,
+        What a hell-vapour breaking
+          Rolls on through the street,
+        And higher and higher
+        Aloft moves the Column of Fire!
+        Through the vistas and rows
+        Like a whirlwind it goes,
+        And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.
+      Beams are crackling--posts are shrinking--
+      Walls are sinking--windows clinking--
+        Children crying--
+        Mothers flying--
+    And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)
+    Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!
+    Hurry and skurry--away--away,
+    And the face of the night is as clear as day!
+        As the links in a chain,
+        Again and again
+      Flies the bucket from hand to hand;
+        High in arches up rushing
+        The engines are gushing,
+    And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,
+    With a roar on the breast of the element bounds.
+      To the grain and the fruits,
+      Through the rafters and beams,
+    Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!
+    As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,
+      Rush the flames to the sky
+      Giant-high;
+    And at length,
+    Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!
+    With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,
+    And submits to his doom!
+        Desolate
+      The place, and dread
+      For storms the barren bed.
+      In the deserted gaps that casements were,
+      Looks forth despair;
+      And, where the roof hath been,
+      Peer the pale clouds within!
+
+      One look
+        Upon the grave
+        Of all that Fortune gave
+      The loiterer took--
+    Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,
+    One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left--
+    _The faces that he loves_! He counts them o'er--
+    And, see--not one dear look is missing from _that_ store!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now clasp'd the bell within the clay--
+        The mould the mingled metals fill--
+      Oh, may it, sparkling into day,
+        Reward the labour and the skill!
+          Alas! should it fail,
+          For the mould may be frail--
+    And still with our hope must be mingled the fear--
+    And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!
+
+      To the dark womb of sacred earth
+        This labour of our hands is given,
+      As seeds that wait the second birth,
+        And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!
+      Ah seeds, how dearer far than they
+        We bury in the dismal tomb,
+      Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray
+      That suns beyond the realm of day
+        May warm them into bloom!
+
+        From the steeple
+          Tolls the bell,
+        Deep and heavy,
+          The death-knell!
+      Measured and solemn, guiding up the road
+      A wearied wanderer to the last abode.
+        It is that worship'd wife--
+        It is that faithful mother![43]
+    Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,
+    From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.
+    Far from those blithe companions, born
+    Of her, and blooming in their morn;
+    On whom, when couch'd, her heart above
+    So often look'd the Mother-Love!
+
+    Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,
+      And never, never more to come--
+    She dwells within the shadowy land,
+      Who was the Mother of that Home!
+    How oft they miss that tender guide,
+      The care--the watch--the face--the MOTHER--
+    And where she sate the babes beside,
+      Sits with unloving looks--ANOTHER!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    While the mass is cooling now,
+      Let the labour yield to leisure,
+    As the bird upon the bough,
+      Loose the travail to the pleasure.
+        When the soft stars awaken,
+        Each task be forsaken!
+
+    And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,
+    If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!
+
+    Gleesome and gay,
+    On the welcoming way,
+    Through the wood glides the wanderer home!
+    And the eye and ear are meeting,
+    Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating--
+    Now, the wonted shelter near,
+    Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;
+    Creaking now the heavy wain,
+    Reels with the happy harvest grain.
+    Which with many-coloured leaves,
+    Glitters the garland on the sheaves;
+    And the mower and the maid
+    Bound to the dance beneath the shade!
+    Desert street, and quiet mart;--
+    Silence is in the city's heart;
+    Round the taper burning cheerly,
+    Gather the groups HOME loves so dearly;
+    And the gate the town before
+    Heavily swings with sullen roar!
+
+      Though darkness is spreading
+        O'er earth--the Upright
+      And the Honest, undreading,
+        Look safe on the night.
+      Which the evil man watching in awe,
+      For the Eye of the Night is the Law!
+        Bliss-dower'd: O daughter of the skies,
+    Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ
+    Blends like to like in light and joy--
+    Builder of Cities, who of old
+    Call'd the wild man from waste and wold.
+    And in his hut thy presence stealing,
+    Roused each familiar household feeling;
+      And, best of all the happy ties,
+    The centre of the social band,--
+    _The Instinct of the Fatherland!_
+
+    United thus--each helping each,
+      Brisk work the countless hands for ever;
+    For nought its power to strength can teach,
+    Like Emulation and Endeavour!
+    Thus link'd the master with the man,
+      Each in his rights can each revere,
+    And while they march in freedom's van,
+      Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!
+    To freemen labour is renown!
+      Who works--gives blessings and commands;
+    Kings glory in the orb and crown--
+      Be ours the glory of our hands.
+
+    Long in these walls--long may we greet
+    Your footfalls, Peace and concord sweet!
+    Distant the day, Oh! distant far,
+    When the rude hordes of trampling War
+      Shall scare the silent vale;
+      And where,
+      Now the sweet heaven when day doth leave
+      The air;
+      Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of Eve;
+    Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,
+    From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now, its destined task fulfill'd,
+        Asunder break the prison-mould;
+      Let the goodly Bell we build,
+        Eye and heart alike behold.
+          The hammer down heave,
+          Till the cover it cleave.
+    For the Bell to rise up to the freedom of day,
+    Destruction must seize on the shape of the clay.
+
+    To break the mould, the master may,
+      If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;
+    But woe, when on its fiery way
+      The metal seeks itself to pour.
+    Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,
+      Exploding from its shattered home,
+    And glaring forth, as from a hell,
+      Behold the red Destruction come!
+    When rages strength that has no reason,
+    _There_ breaks the mould before the season;
+    When numbers burst what bound before,
+    Woe to the State that thrives no more!
+    Yea, woe, when in the City's heart,
+      The latent spark to flame is blown;
+    And Millions from their silence start,
+      To claim, without a guide, their own!
+    Discordant howls the warning Bell,
+      Proclaiming discord wide and far,
+    And, born but things of peace to tell,
+      Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:
+    "Freedom! Equality!"--to blood,
+      Rush the roused people at the sound!
+    Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
+      And banded murder closes round!
+    The hy�na-shapes, that women were!
+      Jest with the horrors they survey;
+    They hound--they rend--they mangle there--
+      As panthers with their prey!
+    Nought rests to hallow--burst the ties
+      Of life's sublime and reverent awe;
+    Before the Vice the Virtue flies,
+      And Universal Crime is Law!
+    Man fears the lion's kingly tread;
+      Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;
+    And still the dreadliest of the dread,
+      Is Man himself in error!
+    No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes
+      The Blind!--Why place it in his hand?
+    It lights not him--it but consumes
+      The City and the Land!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!
+        The kernel bursts its husk--behold
+      From the dull clay the metal rise,
+        Clear shining, as a star of gold!
+          Neck and lip, but as one beam,
+          It laughs like a sun-beam.
+    And even the scutcheon, clear graven, shall tell
+    That the art of a master has fashion'd the Bell!
+
+    Come in--come in
+    My merry men--we'll form a ring
+    The new-born labour christening;
+      And "CONCORD" we will name her!--
+    To union may her heart-felt call
+      In brother-love attune us all!
+    May she the destined glory win
+      For which the master sought to frame her--
+    Aloft--(all earth's existence under,)
+      In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar
+    To dwell--the Neighbour of the Thunder,
+      The Borderer of the Star!
+    Be hers above a voice to raise
+      Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,
+    Who, while they move, their Maker praise,
+      And lead around the wreath�d year!
+    To solemn and eternal things
+      We dedicate her lips sublime!--
+    To fan--as hourly on she swings
+      The silent plumes of Time!--
+    No pulse--no heart--no feeling hers!
+      She lends the warning voice to Fate;
+    And still companions, while she stirs,
+      The changes of the Human State!
+    So may she teach us, as her tone
+      But now so mighty, melts away--
+    That earth no life which earth has known
+      From the Last Silence can delay!
+
+    Slowly now the cords upheave her!
+      From her earth-grave soars the Bell;
+    Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her
+      In the Music-Realm to dwell!
+        Up--upwards--yet raise--
+        She has risen--she sways.
+    Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,
+    And oh, may thy first sound be hallow'd to--PEACE![44]
+
+     [43] The translation adheres to the original, in forsaking the
+     rhyme in these lines and some others.
+
+     [44] Written in the time of French war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VOTIVE TABLETS.
+
+    What the God taught me--what, through life, my friend
+      And aid hath been,
+    With pious hand, and grateful, I suspend
+      The temple walls within.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE GOOD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+    Foster the Good, and thou shalt tend the Flower
+      Already sown on earth;--
+    Foster the Beautiful, and every hour
+      Thou call'st new flowers to birth!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO ----.
+
+    Give me that which thou know'st--I'll receive and attend;--
+    But thou giv'st me _thyself_--pri'thee spare me, my friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+    That which hath been can INTELLECT declare,
+      What Nature built--it imitates or gilds--
+    And REASON builds o'er Nature--but in air--
+      _Genius_ alone in Nature--Nature builds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CORRECTNESS--(Free translation.)
+
+    The calm correctness where no fault we see
+    Attests Art's loftiest--or its least degree;
+    Alike the smoothness of the surface shows
+    The Pool's dull stagnor--the great Sea's repose!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE IMITATOR.
+
+    Good out of good--_that_ art is known to all--
+    But Genius from the bad the good can call--
+    Thou, mimic, not from leading strings escaped,
+    Work'st but the matter that's already shaped!
+    The already shaped a nobler hand awaits--
+    All matter asks a spirit that creates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MASTER.
+
+    The herd of Scribes by what they tell us
+    Show all in which their wits excel us;
+    But the true Master we behold
+    In what his art leaves--just untold!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO THE MYSTIC.
+
+    That is the real mystery which around
+      All life, is found;--
+    Which still before all eyes for aye has been,
+      Nor eye hath seen!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ASTRONOMICAL WORKS.
+
+    All measureless, all infinite in awe,
+      Heaven to great souls is given--
+    And yet the sprite of littleness can draw
+      Down to its inch--the Heaven!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE DIVISION OF RANKS.
+
+    Yes, there's a patent of nobility
+      Above the meanness of our common state;
+    With what they _do_ the vulgar natures buy
+      Its titles--and with what they _are_, the great!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THEOPHANY.
+
+    When draw the Prosperous near me, I forget
+      The gods of heaven; but where
+    Sorrow and suffering in my sight are set,
+      The gods, I feel, are there!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE CHIEF END OF MAN.
+
+    What the chief end of Man?--Behold yon tree,
+      And let it teach thee, Friend!
+    _Will_ what that will-less yearns for;--and for thee
+      Is compass'd Man's chief end!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ULYSSES.
+
+    To gain his home all oceans he explored--
+    Here Scylla frown'd--and there Charybdis roar'd;
+    Horror on sea--and horror on the land--
+    In hell's dark boat he sought the spectre land,
+    Till borne--a slumberer--to his native spot
+    He woke--and sorrowing, knew his country not!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOVE TO HERCULES.
+
+    'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,
+    But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE SOWER.
+
+    See, full of hope, thou trustest to the earth
+      The golden seed, and waitest till the spring
+    Summons the buried to a happier birth;
+      But in Time's furrow duly scattering,
+    Think'st thou, how deeds by wisdom sown may be,
+      Silently ripen'd for Eternity?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MERCHANT.
+
+    Where sails the ship?--It leads the Tyrian forth
+    For the rich amber of the liberal North.
+    Be kind ye seas--winds lend your gentlest wing,
+    May in each creek, sweet wells restoring spring!--
+    To you, ye gods, belong the Merchant!--o'er
+    The waves, his sails the wide world's goods explore;
+    And, all the while, wherever waft the gales,
+    The wide world's good sails with him as he sails!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+COLUMBUS.
+
+    Steer on, bold Sailor--Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,
+    And hopeless at the helm may drop the weak and weary hand,
+    YET EVER--EVER TO THE WEST, for there the coast must lie,
+    And dim it dawns and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;
+    Yea, trust the guiding God--and go along the floating grave,
+    Though hid till now--yet now, behold the New World o'er the wave!
+    With Genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,
+    And ever what the One foretels the Other shall fulfil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE TO THE NORTHERN WANDERER.
+
+    And o'er the river hast thou past, and o'er the mighty sea,
+    And o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me;
+    To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows,
+    And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes--
+    Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here,
+    But art thou nearer now to me--or I to thee more near?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS.
+
+    What the Grecian arts created,
+    May the victor Gaul, elated,
+      Bear with banners to his strand.[45]
+    In museums many a row,
+    May the conquering showman show
+      To his startled Fatherland!
+
+    Mute to him, they crowd the halls,
+    Ever on their pedestals
+      Lifeless stand they!--He alone
+    Who alone, the Muses seeing,
+    Clasps--can warm them into being;
+    The Muses to the Vandal--stone!
+
+     [45] To the shore of the Seine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE POETRY OF LIFE.
+
+    "Who would himself with shadows entertain,
+    Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,
+    Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?
+    Though with my dream my heaven should be resign'd--
+    Though the free-pinion'd soul that now can dwell
+    In the large empire of the Possible,
+    This work-day life with iron chains may bind,
+    Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,
+    And solemn duty to our acts decreed,
+    Meets us thus tutor'd in the hour of need,
+    With a more sober and submissive mind!
+    How front Necessity--yet bid thy youth
+    Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, Truth."
+
+    So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I;
+    As from Experience--that sure port serene--
+    Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,
+    The summer glory withers from the scene,
+    Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,
+    The godlike images that seem'd so fair!
+    Silent the playful Muse--the rosy Hours
+    Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers
+    Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair.
+    Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre,
+    Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;--
+    The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire
+    With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life.
+    The world seems what it _is_--A Grave! and Love
+    Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above,
+    And _sees_!--He sees but images of clay
+    Where he dream'd gods; and sighs--and glides away.
+    The youngness of the Beautiful grows old,
+    And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold;
+    And in the crowd of joys--upon thy throne
+    Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CALEB STUKELY.
+
+PART XII.
+
+THE PARSONAGE.
+
+
+It was not without misgiving that I knocked modestly at the door of Mr
+Jehu Tomkins. For himself, there was no solidity in his moral
+composition, nothing to grapple or rely upon. He was a small weak man of
+no character at all, and but for his powerful wife and active partner,
+would have become the smallest of unknown quantities in the respectable
+parish that contained him. Upon his own weak shoulders he could not have
+sustained the burden of an establishment, and must inevitably have
+dwindled into the lightest of light porters, or the most aged of
+errand-boys. Nothing could have saved him from the operation of a law,
+as powerful and certain as that of gravitation, in virtue of which the
+soft and empty-headed of this world walk to the wall, and resign,
+without a murmur, their places to their betters. As for the deaconess, I
+have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor
+of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in
+reference to her. This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the
+knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales
+that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may
+be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,--and carry hearts
+about with them as easily as they carry bags.
+
+My first application was unsuccessful. The deacon was not at home. "Mr
+Tomkins and his lady had gone _to hear_ the Reverend Doctor
+Whitefroth,"--a northern and eccentric light, now blazing for a time in
+the metropolis. It is a curious fact, and worthy to be recorded, that Mr
+Tomkins, and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist whom I had hitherto
+encountered, never professed to visit the house of prayer with any other
+object than that of _hearing_. It was never by any accident to worship
+or to pray. What, in truth was the vast but lowly looking building, into
+which hundreds crowded with the dapper deacon at their head, sabbath
+after sabbath--what but a temple sacred to vanity and excitement,
+eloquence and perspiration! Which one individual, taken at random from
+the concourse, was not ready to declare that his business there that day
+was "to hear the dear good man," and nothing else? If you could lay
+bare--as, thank Heaven, you cannot--your fellow-creature's heart,
+whither would you behold stealing away the adoration that, in such a
+place, in such a time, is due to one alone--whither, if not to Mr
+Clayton? But let this pass.
+
+I paid a second visit to my friend, and gained admittance. It was about
+half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and the shop had been closed
+some twenty minutes before. I was ushered into a well-furnished room
+behind the shop, where sat the firm--Mrs Jehu and the junior partner.
+The latter looked into his lady's face, perceived a smile upon it, and
+then--but not till then, he offered me his hand, and welcomed me with
+much apparent warmth. This ceremony over, Mr Tomkins grew fidgety and
+uneasy, and betrayed a great anxiety to get up a conversation which he
+had not heart enough to set a going. Mrs Tomkins, a woman of the world,
+evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling, and in peace. I perceived
+immediately that I must state at once the object of my visit, and I
+proceeded to the task.
+
+"Mrs Tomkins," I commenced.
+
+"Sir?" said that lady, and then a postman's knock brought us to a stop,
+and Jehu skipped across the room to listen at the door.
+
+"That's him, my dear Jemima," exclaimed the linen-draper, "I know his
+knock," and then he skipped as quickly to his chair again.
+
+The door of the apartment was opened by a servant girl, who entered the
+room alone and approached her mistress with a card. Mrs Tomkins looked
+at it through her eye-glass, said "she was most happy," and the servant
+then retired. The card was placed upon the table near me, and, as I
+believe, for my inspection. I took it up, and read the following words,
+"_Mr Stanislaus Levisohn_." They were engraven in the centre of the
+paper, and were surrounded by a circle of rays, which in its turn was
+enveloped in a circle of clouds. In the very corner of the card, and in
+very small characters, the words "_general merchant_" were written.
+
+There was a noise of shoe-cleaning outside the door for about five
+minutes, then the door was opened again by the domestic, and a
+remarkable gentleman walked very slowly in. He was a tall individual,
+with small cunning eyes, black eye-brows, and a beard. He was rather
+shabbily attired, and not washed with care. He had thick boorish hands,
+and he smelt unpleasantly of tobacco smoke; an affected grin at variance
+with every feature, was planted on his face, and sickened an
+unprejudiced observer at the very first gaze. His mode of uttering
+English betrayed him for a foreigner. He was a native of Poland. Before
+uttering a syllable, the interesting stranger walked to a corner of the
+room, turned himself to the wall, and muttered a few undistinguishable
+words. He then bowed lowly to the company, and took a chair, grinning
+all the while.
+
+"Is that a Polish move?" asked Mr Tomkins.
+
+"It vos de coshtom mit de anshent tribes, my tear sare, vor alles tings,
+to recommend de family to de protection of de hevins. Vy not now mit all
+goot Christians?"
+
+"Why not indeed?" added Mrs Tomkins. "May I offer you a glass of raisin
+wine?"
+
+"Tank you. For de shtomack's sake--yase."
+
+A glass was poured out. It was but decent to offer me another. I paid my
+compliments to the hostess and the gentlemen, and was about to drink it
+off, when the enlightened foreigner called upon me in a loud voice to
+desist.
+
+"Shtay, mein young friend--ve are not de heathen and de cannibal. It is
+our privilege to live in de Christian society mit de Christian lady. Ve
+most ask blessing--alvays--never forget--you excuse--vait tree minutes."
+
+It was not for me to protest against so pious a movement, albeit it
+presented itself somewhat inopportunely and out of place. Mr Levisohn
+covered his face with one hand, and murmured a few words. The last only
+reached me. It was "Amen," and this was rather heaved up in a sigh, than
+articulately expressed.
+
+"Do you like the wine?" asked Jehu, as if he thought it superfine.
+
+"Yase, I like moch--especially de sherry and de port."
+
+Jehu smiled, but made no reply.
+
+Mrs Tomkins supposed that port and sherry were favourite beverages in
+Poland, but, for her part, she had found that nothing agreed so well
+with British stomachs as the native wines.
+
+"Ah! my lady," said the Pole, "ve can give up very moch so long ve got
+British religions."
+
+"Very true, indeed," answered Mrs Tomkins. "Pray, Mr Levisohn, what may
+be your opinion of the lost sheep? Do you think they will come into the
+fold during our time?"
+
+Before the gentleman replies, it may be proper to state on his behalf,
+that he had never given his questioner any reason to suppose that he was
+better informed on such mysterious subjects than herself. The history of
+his introduction into the family of the linen-draper is very short. He
+had been for some years connected with Mr Tomkins in the way of
+business, having supplied that gentleman with all the genuine foreign,
+but certainly English, perfumery, that was retailed with considerable
+profit in his over-nice and pious establishment. Mrs Tomkins, no less
+zealous in the cause of the church than that of her own shop, at length,
+and all on a sudden, resolved to set about his conversion, and to
+present him to the chapel as a brand plucked with her own hand from the
+burning. As a preliminary step, he was invited to supper, and treated
+with peculiar respect. The matter was gently touched upon, but
+discussion postponed until another occasion. Mr Levisohn being very
+shrewd, very needy, and enjoying no particular principles of morality
+and religion, perceived immediately the object of his hostess, met her
+more than half-way in her Christian purposes, and accepted her numerous
+invitations to tea and supper with the most affectionate readiness.
+Within two months he was received into the bosom of the church, and
+became as celebrated for the depth and intensity of his belief as for
+the earnestness and promptitude with which he attended the meetings of
+the brethren, particularly those in which eating and drinking did not
+constitute the least important part of the proceedings. Being a
+foreigner, he was listened to with the deepest attention, very often
+indeed to his serious annoyance, for his ignorance was awful, and his
+assurance, great as it was, not always sufficient to get him clear of
+his difficulties. His foreign accent, however, worked wonders for him,
+and whenever too hard pressed, afforded him a secure and happy retreat.
+An unmeaning grin, and "_me not pronounce_," had saved him from
+precipices, down which an Englishman, _c�teris paribus_, must
+unquestionably have been dashed.
+
+"Vill dey come?" said Mr Levisohn, in answer to the question. "Yase,
+certainly, if dey like, I tink."
+
+"Ah, sir, I fear you are a latitudinarian," said the lady.
+
+"I hope Hevin, my dear lady, vill forgive me for dat, and all my
+wickedness. I am a shinner, I shtink!"
+
+I looked at the converted gentleman, at the same moment that Mrs Jehu
+assured him that it would be a great thing if they were all as satisfied
+of their condition as he might be. "Your strong convictions of your
+worthlessness is alone a proof," she added, "of your accepted state."
+
+"My lady," continued the humble Stanislaus, "I am rotten, I am a tief, a
+blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket, a housebreak, a sticker mit de
+knife. I vish somebody would call me names all de day long, because I
+forget sometime dat I am de nashty vurm of de creation. I tink I hire a
+boy to call me names, and make me not forget. Oh, my lady, I alvays
+remember those fine words you sing--
+
+    'If I could read my title clear
+      To manshions in de shkies,
+    I say farevell to every fear,
+      And vipe my veeping eyes.'"
+
+"That is so conscientious of you. Pray, my dear sir, is there an
+Establishment in Poland? or have you Independent churches?"
+
+"Ah, my dear lady, we have noting at all!"
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"Yase, it is possible--it is true."
+
+"Who could have thought it! What! nothing?"
+
+"Noting at all, my lady. Do not ask me again, I pray you. It is
+frightful to a goot Christian to talk dese tings."
+
+"What is your opinion of the Arminian doctrine, Mr Stanislaus?"
+
+"Do you mean de doctrine?" enquired Stanislaus, slowly, as though he
+found some difficulty in answering the question.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir."
+
+"I tink," said the gentleman, after some delay, "it vould he very goot
+if were not for someting."
+
+"Dear me!" cried Mrs Jehu, "that is so exactly my opinion!"
+
+"Den dere is noting more to be said about dat," continued Stanislaus,
+interrupting her; "and I hope you vill not ask dese deep questions, my
+dear lady, vich are not at all proper to be answered, and vich put me
+into de low spirits. Shall ve sing a hymn?"
+
+"By all means," exclaimed the hostess, who immediately made preparations
+for the ceremony. Hymn-books were introduced, and the servant-maid
+ordered up, and then a quartet was performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs
+Tomkins, her husband, and Betsy. The subject of the song was the
+courtship of Isaac. Two verses only have remained in my memory, and the
+manner in which they were given out by the fervent Stanislaus will never
+be forgotten. They ran thus:--
+
+    "Ven Abraham's servant to procure
+      A vife for Isaac vent,
+    He met Rebekah, tould his vish,
+      Her parents gave conshent.
+
+    'Shtay,' Satan, my old master, cries,
+      'Or force shall thee detain.'
+    'Hinder me not, I vill be gone,
+      I vish to break my chain.'"
+
+This being concluded, Mr Tomkins asked Mr Levisohn what he had to say in
+the business line, to which Mr Levisohn replied, "Someting very goot,
+but should he not vait until after soppare?" whereupon Mr Tomkins gave
+his lady a significant leer, and the latter retired, evidently to
+prepare the much desired repast. Then did little Jehu turn
+confidentially to Stanislaus, and ask him when he meant to deliver that
+ere _conac_ that he had promised him so long ago.
+
+"Ven Providence, my tear dikkon, paremits--I expect a case of goots at
+de cushtom-house every day; but my friend vot examins de marchandis, and
+vot saves me de duties ven I makes it all right mit him, is vary ill, I
+am sorry for to say, and ve most vait, mit Christian patience, my dear
+sare, till he get well. You see dat?"
+
+"Oh, yes; that's clear enough. Well, Stanny, I only hope that fellow
+won't die. I don't think you'd find it so easy to make it _all right_
+with any other chap; that's all!"
+
+"I hope he vill not die. Ve mosht pray dat he live, my dear dikkon. I
+tink it vill be vell if der goot Mr Clayton pray mit der church for him.
+You shall speak for him."
+
+"Well, what have you done about the _Eau de Cologne_?" continued Jehu
+Tomkins. "Have you nailed the fellow?"
+
+"It vos specially about dis matter dat I vish to see you, my dear sare.
+I persvade der man to sell ten cases. He be very nearly vot you call in
+der mess. He valk into de Gazette next week. He shtarve now. I pity him.
+De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I give fifty shilling--two pound ten.
+He buy meat for de childs, and is tankful. I take ten shillings for my
+trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit vary little."
+
+"Any good bills in the market, Stanny?"
+
+Stanislaus Levisohn winked.
+
+"Ho--you don't say so," said the deacon. "Have you got 'em with you?"
+
+"After soppare, my dear sare," answered Stanislaus, who looked at me,
+and winked again significantly at Jehu.
+
+Mrs Tomkins returned, accompanied by the vocal Betsy. The cloth was
+spread, and real silver forks, and fine cut tumblers, and blue plates
+with scripture patterns, speedily appeared. Then came a dish of fried
+sausages and parsley--then baked potatoes--then lamb chops. Then we all
+sat round the table, and then, against all order and propriety, Mrs Jehu
+grossly and publicly insulted her husband at his own board, by calling
+upon the enlightened foreigner to ask a blessing upon the meal.
+
+The company sat down; but scarcely were we seated before Stanislaus
+resumed.
+
+"I tank you, my tear goot Mrs Tomkins for dat shop mit der brown, ven it
+comes to my turn to be sarved. It look just der ting."
+
+Mrs Jehu served her guest immediately.
+
+"I vill take a sossage, tear lady, also, if you please."
+
+"And a baked potato?"
+
+"And a baked potato? Yase."
+
+He was served.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Christian lady, have you got, perhaps, der littel
+pickel-chesnut and der crimson cabbage?"
+
+"Mr Tomkins, go down-stairs and get the pickles," said the mistress of
+the house, and Tomkins vanished like a mouse on tiptoe.
+
+Before he could return, Stanislaus had eaten more than half his chop,
+and discovered that, after all, "it was _not_ just the ting." Mrs Jehu
+entreated him to try another. He declined at first; but at length
+suffered himself to be persuaded. Four chops had graced the dish
+originally; the remaining two were divided equally between the lady and
+myself. I begged that my share might be left for the worthy host, but
+receiving a recommendation from his wife "not to mind _him_," I said no
+more, but kept Mr Stanislaus Levisohn in countenance.
+
+"I hope you'll find it to your liking, Mr Stukely," said our hostess.
+
+"Mishter vat?" exclaimed the foreigner, looking quickly up. "I tink
+I"----
+
+"What is the matter, my dear sir?" enquired the lady of the house.
+
+"Noting, my tear friend, I tought der young gentleman vos a poor
+unconverted sinner dat I met a long time ago. Dat is all. Ve talk of
+someting else."
+
+Has the reader forgotten the dark-visaged individual, who at the
+examination of my lamented father before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy
+made his appearance in company with Mr Levy and the ready Ikey? Him I
+mean of the vivid imagination, who swore to facts which were no facts at
+all, and whom an unpoetic jury sentenced to vile imprisonment for wilful
+perjury? _There he sat_, transformed into a Pole, bearded and whiskered,
+and the hair of his head close clipped, but in every other regard the
+same as when the constable invited him to forsake a too prosaic and
+ungrateful world: and had Mr Levisohn been wise and guarded, the
+discovery would never have been made by me; for we had met but once
+before, then only for a short half hour, and under agitating
+circumstances. But my curiosity and attention once roused by his
+exclamation, it was impossible to mistake my man. I fixed my eye upon
+him, and the harder he pulled at his chop, and the more he attempted to
+evade my gaze, the more satisfied was I that a villain and an impostor
+was seated amongst us. Thinking, absurdly enough, to do my host and
+hostess a lasting service, I determined without delay to unmask the
+pretended saint, and to secure his victims from the designs he purposed.
+
+"Mr Levisohn," I said immediately, "you have told the truth--we have met
+before."
+
+"Nevare, my tear friend, you mistake; nevare in my life, upon my vurd."
+
+"Mrs Tomkins," I continued, rising, "I should not be worthy of your
+hospitality if I did not at once make known to you the character of that
+man. He is a convicted criminal. I have myself known him to be guilty of
+the grossest practices." Mr Levisohn dropped his chop, turned his greasy
+face up, and then looked round the room, and endeavoured to appear
+unconcerned, innocent, and amazed all at once. At this moment Jehu
+entered the room with the pickles, and the face of the deaconess grew
+fearfully stern.
+
+"Were you ever in the Court of Bankruptcy, Mr Levisohn?" I continued.
+
+"I have never been out of London, my good sare. You labour under de
+mistake.--I excuse you. Ah!" he cried our suddenly, as if a new idea had
+struck him very hard; "I see now vot it is. I explain. You take me for
+somebody else."
+
+"I do not, sir. I accuse you publicly of having committed perjury of the
+most shameless kind, and I can prove you guilty of the charge. Do you
+know a person of the name of Levy?"
+
+Mr Stanislaus looked to the ceiling after the manner of individuals who
+desire, or who do not desire, as the case may be, to call a subject to
+remembrance. "No," he answered, after a long pause; "certainly not. I
+never hear dat name."
+
+"Beware of him, Mrs Tomkins," I continued, "he is an impostor, a
+disgrace to mankind, and to the faith which he professes."
+
+"What do you mean by that, you impertinent young man?" said Mrs Tomkins,
+her blood rising to her face, herself rising from her chair. "I should
+have thought that a man who had been so recently expelled from his
+church would have had more decency. A pretty person you must be, to
+bring a charge of this kind against so good a creature as that."
+
+"No, do not say dat," interposted Stanny; "I am not goot. I am a brute
+beast."
+
+"Mr Tomkins," continued the lady, "I don't know what object that person
+has in disturbing the peace of our family, or why he comes here at all
+to-night. He is a mischief-making, hardened young man, or he would never
+have come to what he has. Well, I'm sure--What will Satan put into his
+head next!"
+
+"I vould vish you be not angry. Der young gentleman is, I dare say, vary
+goot at heart. He is labouring under de deloosions."
+
+"Mr Levisohn, pardon me, I am not. Proofs exist, and I can bring them to
+convict you."
+
+"Do you hear that, Mr Tomkins. Were you ever insulted so before? Are you
+master in your own house?"
+
+"What shall I do?" said Jehu, trembling with excitement at the door.
+
+"Do! What! Give him his hat, turn him out."
+
+"Oh, my dear goot Christian friends," said Mr Levisohn, imploringly; "de
+booels of der Christian growls ven he shees dese sights; vot is de goot
+of to fight? It is shtoopid. Let me be der peacemaker. Der yong man has
+been drink, perhaps. I forgive him from te bottom of my heart. If ve
+quarrel ve fight. If ve fight ve lose every ting.
+
+    'So Samson, ven his hair vos lost,
+    Met the Philistines to his cost,
+    Shook his vain limbs in shad shurprise,
+    Made feeble fight, and lost his eyes.'"
+
+"Mr Tomkins," I exclaimed, "I court inquiry, I can obtain proofs."
+
+"We want none of your proofs, you backslider," cried the deaconess.
+
+"Madam, you"----
+
+"Get out of the house, ambassador of Satan! Mr Tomkins, will you tell
+him instantly to go?"
+
+"Go!" squealed Tomkins from the door, not advancing an inch.
+
+I seized my hat, and left the table.
+
+"You will be sorry for this, sir," said I; "and you, madam"----
+
+"Don't talk to me, you bad man. If you don't go this minute I'll spring
+the rattle and have up the watchmen."
+
+I did not attempt to say another word. I left the room, and hurried from
+the house. I had hardly shut the street door before it was violently
+opened again, and the head of Mr Levisohn made itself apparent.
+
+"Go home," exclaimed that gentleman, "and pray to be shaved, you
+shtoopid ass."
+
+It was not many days after the enacting of this scene, that I entered
+upon my duties as the instructor of the infant children of my friend. It
+was useless to renew my application to the deacon, and I abandoned the
+idea. The youngest of my pupils was the lisping Billy. It was my honour
+to introduce him at the very porch of knowledge--to place him on the
+first step of learning's ladder--to make familiar to him the simple
+letters of his native tongue, in whose mysterious combinations the
+mighty souls of men appear and speak. The lesson of the alphabet was the
+first that I gave, and a heavy sadness depressed and humbled me when, as
+the child repeated wonderingly after me, letter by letter, I could not
+but feel deeply and acutely the miserable blighting of my youthful
+promises. How long was it ago--it seemed but yesterday, when the sun
+used to shine brightly into my own dear bed-room, and awake me with its
+first gush of light, telling my ready fancy that he came to rouse me
+from inaction, and to encourage me to my labours. Oh, happy labours!
+Beloved books! What joy I had amongst you! The house was silent--the
+city's streets tranquil as the breath of morning. I heard nothing but
+the glorious deeds ye spoke of, and saw only the worthies that were but
+dust, when centuries now passed were yet unborn, but whose immortal
+spirits are vouchsafed still to elevate man, and cheer him onward. How
+intense and sweet was our communion; and as I read and read on, how
+gratefully repose crept over me; how difficult it seemed to think
+unkindly of the world, or to believe in all the tales of human
+selfishness and cruelty with which the old will ever mock the ear and
+dull the heart of the confiding and the young. How willing I felt to
+love, and how gay a place was earth, with her constant sun, and
+overflowing lap, and her thousand joys, for man! And how intense was the
+fire of _hope_ that burned within me--fed with new fuel every passing
+hour, and how abiding and how beautiful _the future_! THE FUTURE! and it
+was here--a nothing--a dream--a melancholy phantasm!
+
+There are seasons of adversity, in which the mind, plunged in
+despondency and gloom, is startled and distressed by pictures of a
+happier time, that travel far to fool and tantalize the suffering heart.
+I sat with the child, and gazing full upon him, beheld him not, but--a
+vision of my father's house. There sits the good old man, and at his
+side--ah, how seldom were they apart!--my mother. And there, too, is the
+clergyman, my first instructor. Every well-remembered piece of furniture
+is there. The chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated by me for its age,
+and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew myself.
+The antique bookcase--the solid chest of drawers--the solemn sofa, all
+substantial as ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable and
+natural properties of the domestic parlour. My mother has her eyes upon
+me, and they are full of tears. My father and the minister are building
+up my fortunes, are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity an edifice
+formed of glittering words, incorporeal as the breath that rears it. And
+the feelings of that hour come back upon me. I glow with animation,
+confidence, and love. I have the strong delight that beats within the
+bosom of the boy who has the parents' trusty smile for ever on him. I
+dream of pouring happiness into those fond hearts--of growing up to be
+their prop and staff in their decline. I pierce into the future, and
+behold myself the esteemed and honoured amongst men--the patient,
+well-rewarded scholar--the cherished and the cherisher of the dear
+authors of my life--all brightness--all glory--all unsullied joy. The
+child touches my wet cheek, and asks me why I weep?--why?--why? He knows
+not of the early wreck that has annihilated the unhappy teacher's peace.
+
+We were still engaged upon our lesson, when John Thompson interrupted
+the proceeding, by entering the apartment in great haste, and placing in
+my hands a newspaper. "He had been searching," he said, "for one whole
+fortnight, to find a situation that would suit me, and now he thought
+that he had hit upon it. There it was, 'a tutorer in a human family,' to
+teach the languages and the sciences. Apply from two to four. It's just
+three now. Send the youngster to his mother, and see after it, my
+friend. I wouldn't have you lose it for the world." I took the journal
+from his hands, and, as though placed there by the hand of the avenger
+to arouse deeper remorse, to draw still hotter blood from the lacerated
+heart, the following announcement, and nothing else, glared on the
+paper, and took possession of my sight.
+
+"UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. After a contest more severe than any known for
+years, MR JOHN SMITHSON, _of Trinity College, Cambridge_, has been
+declared THE SENIOR WRANGLER of his year. Mr Smithson is, we understand,
+the son of a humble curate in Norfolk, whose principal support has been
+derived from the exertions of his son during his residence in the
+University. The honour could not have been conferred on a more deserving
+child of Alma Mater."
+
+A hundred recollections crowded on my brain. My heart was torn with
+anguish. The perseverance and the filial piety of Smithson, so opposite
+to my unsteadiness and unnatural disloyalty, confounded and unmanned me.
+I burst into tears before the faithful Thompson, and covered my face for
+very shame.
+
+"What is the matter, lad?" exclaimed the good fellow, pale with
+surprise, his eye trembling with honest feeling. "Have I hurt you? Drat
+the paper! Don't think, Stukely, I wished to get rid of you. Don't think
+so hard of your old friend. I thought to help and do you service; I know
+you have the feelings of a gentleman about you, and I wouldn't wound
+'em, God knows, for any thing. There, think no more about it. I am so
+rough a hand, I'm not fit to live with Christians. I mean no harm,
+believe me. Get rid of you, my boy! I only wish you'd say this is your
+home, and never leave me--that would make me happy."
+
+"Thompson," I answered, through my tears, "I am not deserving of your
+friendship. You have not offended me. You have never wronged me. You are
+all kindness and truth. I have had no real enemy but myself. Read that
+paper."
+
+I pointed to the paragraph, and he read it.
+
+"What of it?" he asked.
+
+"Thompson," listen to me; "what do you say of such a son?"
+
+"I can guess his father's feelings," said my friend. "Earth's a heaven,
+Stukely, when father and child live together as God appointed them."
+
+"But when a child breaks a parent's heart, Thompson--what then?"
+
+"Don't talk about it, lad. I have got eleven of 'em, and that's a side
+of the picture that I can't look at with pleasure. I think the boys are
+good. They have gone on well as yet; but who can tell what a few years
+will do?"
+
+"Or a few months, Thompson," I answered quickly, "or a few days, or
+hours, when the will is fickle, principles unfixed, and the heart
+treacherous and false. That Smithson and I, Thompson, were fellow
+students. We left home together--we took up our abode in the University
+together--we were attached to the same college--taught by the same
+master--read from the same books. My feelings were as warm as his. My
+resolution to do well apparently as firm, my knowledge and attainments
+as extensive. If he was encouraged, and protected, and urged forward by
+the fond love of a devoted household--so was I. If parental blessings
+hallowed his entrance upon those pursuits which have ended so
+successfully for him--so did they mine. If he had motive for exertion, I
+had not less--we were equal in the race which we began together--look at
+us now!"
+
+"How did it happen, then?"
+
+"He was honest and faithful to his purpose. I was not. He saw one object
+far in the distance before him, and looked neither to the right nor
+left, but dug his arduous way towards it. He craved not the false
+excitement of temporary applause, nor deemed the opinion of weak men
+essential to his design. He had a sacred duty to perform, which left him
+not the choice of action, and he performed it to the letter. He had a
+feeling conscience, and a reasoning heart, and the home of his youth,
+and the sister who had grown up with him, the father who had laboured,
+the mother who had striven for him, visited him by night and by day--in
+his silent study, and in his lonely bed, comforting, animating, and
+supporting him by their delightful presence."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"Just the reverse of this. I had neither simplicity of aim, nor
+stability of affection. One slip from the path, and I hadn't energy to
+take the road again. One vicious inclination, and the virtuous resolves
+of years melted before it. The sneer of a fool could frighten me from
+rectitude--the smile of a girl render me indifferent to the pangs that
+tear a parent's heart. Look at us both. Look at him--the man whom I
+treated with contemptuous derision. What a return home for him--his
+mission accomplished--HIS DUTY DONE! Look at me, the outcast, the
+beggar, the despised--the author of a mother's death, a father's
+bankruptcy and ruin--with no excuse for misconduct, no promise for the
+future, no self-justification, and no hope of pardon beyond that
+afforded to the vilest criminal that comes repentant to the mercy throne
+of God!"
+
+"Well--but, sir--Stukely--don't take the thing to heart. You are
+young--look for'rads. Oh, I tell you, it's a blessed thing to be sorry
+for our faults, and to feel as if we wished to do better for the time to
+come. I'm an older man than you, and I bid you take comfort, and trust
+to God for better things, and better things will come, too. You are not
+so badly off now as you were this time twelvemonth. And you know I'll
+never leave you. Don't despond--don't give away. It's unnatural for a
+man to do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh, bless you, this is a life of
+suffering and sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't go mad to think
+of leaving all his young 'uns behind him, and every thing he loves, if
+he wasn't taught that there's a quieter place above, where all shall
+meet agin? You know me, my boy; I can't talk, but I want to comfort you
+and cheer you up--and so, give me your hand, old fellow, and say you
+won't think of all this any more, but try and forget it, and see about
+settling comfortably in life. What do you say to the advertisement? A
+tutorer in a human family, to teach the languages and the sciences. Come
+now, that's right; I'm glad to see you laugh. I suppose I don't give the
+right pronunciation to the words. Well, never mind; laugh at your old
+friend. He'd rather see you laugh at him than teaze your heart about
+your troubles."
+
+Thompson would not be satisfied until I had read the advertisement, and
+given him my opinion of its merits. He would not suffer me to say
+another word about my past misfortunes, but insisted on my looking
+forward cheerfully, and like a man. The situation appeared to him just
+the thing for me; and after all, if I had wrangled as well as that 'ere
+Smithson--(though, at the same time, _wrangling_ seemed a very
+aggravating word to put into young men's mouths at all)--perhaps I
+shouldn't have been half as happy as a quiet comfortable life would make
+me. "I was cut out for a tutorer. He was sure of it. So he'd thank me to
+read the paper without another syllable." The advertisement, in truth,
+was promising. "The advertiser, in London, desired to engage the
+services of a young gentleman, capable of teaching the ancient
+languages, and giving his pupils 'an introduction to the sciences.' The
+salary would be liberal, and the occupation with a humane family in the
+country, who would receive the tutor as one of themselves. References
+would be required and given."
+
+"References would be required and given," I repeated, after having
+concluded the advertisement, and put the paper down.
+
+"Yes, that's the only thing!" said Thompson, scratching his honest ear,
+like a man perplexed and driven to a corner. "We haven't got no
+references to give. But I'll tell you what we've got though. We've got
+the papers of these freehold premises, and we've something like two
+thousand in the bank. I'll give 'em them, if you turns out a bad 'un.
+That I'll undertake to do, and shan't be frightened either. Now, you
+just go, and see if you can get it. Where do you apply?"
+
+"Wait, Thompson. I must not suffer you"----
+
+"Did you hear what I said, sir? where do you apply?"
+
+"At X.Y.Z." said I, "in Swallow street, Saint James's."
+
+"Then, don't you lose a minute. I shouldn't be surprised if the place is
+run down already. London's overstocked with tutorers and men of larning.
+You come along o' me, Billy, and don't you lose sight of this 'ere
+chance, my boy. If they wants a reference, tell 'em I'll be glad to wait
+upon 'em."
+
+Three days had not elapsed after this conversation, before my services
+were accepted by X.Y.Z.--and I had engaged to travel into Devonshire to
+enter at once upon my duties, as teacher in the dwelling-house of the
+Reverend Walter Fairman. X.Y.Z. was a man of business; and, fortunately
+for me, had known my father well. He was satisfied with my connexion,
+and with the unbounded recommendation which Thompson gave with me. Mr
+Fairman was incumbent of one of the loveliest parishes in England, and
+the guardian and teacher of six boys. My salary was fifty pounds per
+annum, with board and lodging. The matter was settled in a few hours,
+and before I had time to consider, my place was taken in the coach, and
+a letter was dispatched to Mr Fairman, announcing my intended departure.
+Nothing could exceed the joy of Thompson at my success--nothing could be
+kinder and more anxious than his valuable advice.
+
+"Now," he said as we walked together from the coach-office, "was I wrong
+in telling you that better things would turn up? Take care of yourself,
+and the best wrangler of the lot may be glad to change places with you.
+It isn't lots of larning, or lots of money, or lots of houses and
+coaches, that makes a man happy in this world. They never can do it; but
+they can do just the contrarery, and make him the miserablest wretch as
+crawls. _A contented mind_ is 'the one thing needful.' Take what God
+gives gratefully, and do unto others as you would that they should do
+unto you. That's a maxim that my poor father was always giving me, and,
+I wish, when I take the young 'uns to church, that they could always
+hear it, for human natur needs it."
+
+The evening before my setting out was spent with Thompson's family. I
+had received a special invitation, and Thompson, with the labouring
+sons, were under an engagement to the mistress of the house, to leave
+the workshop at least an hour earlier than usual. Oh, it was a sight to
+move the heart of one more hardened than I can boast to be, to behold
+the affectionate party assembled to bid me farewell, and to do honour to
+our leave-taking. A little feast was prepared for the occasion, and my
+many friends were dressed, all in their Sunday clothes, befittingly.
+There was not one who had not something to give me for a token. Mary had
+worked me a purse; and Mary blushed whilst her mother betrayed her, and
+gave the little keepsake. Ellen thought a pincushion might be useful;
+and the knitter of the large establishment provided me with comforters.
+All the little fellows, down to Billy himself, had a separate gift,
+which each must offer with a kiss, and with a word or two expressive of
+his good wishes. All hoped I would come soon again, and Aleck more than
+hinted a request that I would postpone my departure to some indefinite
+period which he could not name. Poor tremulous heart! how it throbbed
+amongst them all, and how sad it felt to part from them! Love bound me
+to the happy room--the only love that connected the poor outcast with
+the wide cold world. This was the home of my affections--could I leave
+it--could I venture once more upon the boisterous waters of life without
+regret and apprehension?
+
+Thompson kindly offered to accompany me on the following morning to the
+inn from which I was destined to depart, but I would not hear of it. He
+was full of business; had little time to spare, and none to throw away
+upon me. I begged him not to think of it, and he acquiesced in my
+wishes. We were sitting together, and his wife and children had an hour
+or two previously retired to rest.
+
+"Them's good children, ain't they, Stukely?" enquired Thompson, after
+having made a long pause.
+
+"You may well be proud of them," I answered.
+
+"It looked nice of 'em to make you a little present of something before
+you went. But it was quite right. That's just as it should be. I like
+that sort of thing, especially when a man understands the sperrit that a
+thing's given with. Now, some fellows would have been offended if any
+thing had been offered 'em. How I do hate all that!"
+
+"I assure you, Thompson, I feel deeply their kind treatment of their
+friend. I shall never forget it."
+
+"You ain't offended, then?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Well, now, I am so happy to hear it, you can't think," continued
+Thompson, fumbling about his breeches pocket, and drawing from it at
+length something which he concealed in his fist. "There, take that," he
+suddenly exclaimed; "take it, my old fellow, and God bless you. It's no
+good trying to make a fuss about it."
+
+I held a purse of money in my hand.
+
+"No, Thompson," I replied, "I cannot accept it. Do not think me proud or
+ungrateful; but I have no right to take it."
+
+"It's only twenty guineas, man, and I can afford it. Now look, Stukely,
+you are going to leave me. If you don't take it, you'll make me as
+wretched as the day is long. You are my friend, and my friend mustn't go
+amongst strangers without an independent spirit. If you have twenty
+guineas in your pocket, you needn't be worrying yourself about little
+things. You'll find plenty of ways to make the money useful. You shall
+pay me, if you like, when you grow rich, and we meets again; but take it
+now, and make John Thompson happy."
+
+In the lap of nature the troubled mind gets rest; and the wounds of the
+heart heal rapidly, once delivered there, safe from contact with the
+infectious world; and the bosom of the nursing mother is not more
+powerful or quick to lull the pain and still the sobs of her distressed
+ones. It is the sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to arrive at it is
+to secure shelter and to find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed,
+birthright and joy of angels, whither do those glimpses hover that we
+catch of thee in this tumultuous life, weak, faint, and transient though
+they be, melting the human soul with heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if
+not upon the everlasting hills, where the brown line divides the sky, or
+on the gentle sea, where sea and sky are one--a liquid cupola--or in the
+leafy woods and secret vales, where beauty lends her thrilling voice to
+silence? How often will the remembrance only of one bright spot--a
+vision of Paradise rising over the dull waste of my existence--send a
+glow of comfort to my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of repose which
+the harsh business of life cannot extinguish or disturb! And what a fair
+history comes with that shadowy recollection! How much of passionate
+condensed existence is involved in it, and how mysteriously, yet
+naturally connected with it, seem all the noblest feelings of my
+imperfect nature! The scene of beauty has become "a joy for ever."
+
+I recall a spring day--a sparkling day of the season of youth and
+promise--and a nook of earth, fit for the wild unshackled sun to skip
+along and brighten with his inconstant giddy light. Hope is everywhere;
+murmuring in the brooks, and smiling in the sky. Upon the bursting trees
+she sits; she nestles in the hedges. She fills the throat of mating
+birds, and bears the soaring lark nearer and nearer to the gate of
+Heaven. It is the first holiday of the year, and the universal heart is
+glad. Grief and apprehension cannot dwell in the human breast on such a
+day; and, for an hour, even _Self_ is merged in the general joy. I reach
+my destination; and the regrets for the past, and the fear for the
+future, which have accompanied me through the long and anxious journey,
+fall from the oppressed spirit, and leave it buoyant, cheerful,
+free--free to delight itself in a land of enchantment, and to revel
+again in the unsubstantial glories of a youthful dream. I paint the
+Future in the colours that surround me, and I confide in her again.
+
+It was noon when we reached the headquarters of the straggling parish of
+Deerhurst--its chief village. We had travelled since the golden sunrise
+over noble earth, and amongst scenes scarcely less heavenly than the
+blue vault which smiled upon them. Now the horizon was bounded by a
+range of lofty hills linked to each other by gentle undulations, and
+bearing to their summits innumerable and giant trees; these, crowded
+together, and swayed by the brisk wind, presented to the eye the figure
+of a vast and supernatural sea, and made the intervening vale of
+loveliness a neglected blank. Then we emerged suddenly--yes,
+instantaneously--as though designing nature, with purpose to surprize,
+had hid behind the jutting crag, beneath the rugged steep--upon a world
+of beauty; garden upon garden, sward upon sward, hamlet upon hamlet, far
+as the sight could reach, and purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes
+of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at
+intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake,
+buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions,
+larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty
+element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves,
+her flowers and gems, is on the shore to greet her.
+
+The entrance to the village is by a swift, precipitous descent. On
+either side are piled rude stones, placed there by a subtle hand, and
+with a poet's aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe the traveller with
+thoughts of other times--of ruined castles, and of old terrace walks.
+Already have the stones fulfilled their purpose, and the ivy, the brier,
+and the saxifrage have found a home amongst them. At the foot of the
+declivity, standing like a watchful mother, is the church--the small,
+the unpretending, the venerable and lovely village church. You do not
+see a house till she is passed. Before a house was built about her, she
+was an aged church, and her favoured graves were rich in heavenly clay.
+The churchyard gate; and then at once, the limited and quiet village,
+nestling in a valley and shut out from the world: beautiful and
+self-sufficient. Hill upon hill behind, each greener than the last--hill
+upon hill before, all exclusion, and nothing but her own surpassing
+loveliness to console and cheer her solitude. And is it not enough? What
+if she know little of the sea beyond its voice, and nothing of external
+life--her crystal stream, her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden plots,
+her variegated flowers and massive foliage, her shady dells and scented
+lanes are joys enough for her small commonwealth. Thin curling smoke
+that rises like a spirit from the hidden bosom of one green hillock,
+proclaims the single house that has its seat upon the eminence. It is
+the parsonage--my future home.
+
+With a trembling heart I left the little inn, and took my silent way to
+the incumbent's house. There was no eye to follow me, the leafy street
+was tenantless, and seemed made over to the restless sun and dissolute
+winds to wanton through it as they pleased. As I ascended, the view
+enlarged--beauty became more beauteous, silence more profound. I reached
+the parsonage gate, and my heart yearned to tell how much I longed to
+live and die on this sequestered and most peaceful spot. The
+dwelling-house was primitive and low; its long and overhanging roof was
+thatched; its windows small and many. A myrtle, luxuriant as a vine,
+covered its entire front, and concealed the ancient brick and wood. A
+raised bank surrounded the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted to a
+lawn fringed with the earliest flowers of the year. I rang the loud
+bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl gave me admittance to the house.
+In a room of moderate size, furnished by a hand as old at least as the
+grandsires of the present occupants, and well supplied with books, sat
+the incumbent. He was a man of fifty years of age or more, tall and
+gentlemanly in demeanour. His head was partly bald, and what remained of
+his hair was grey almost to whiteness. He had a noble forehead, a marked
+brow, and a cold grey eye. His mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual deep
+reflection, and the expression of every other feature tended to
+seriousness. The first impression was unfavourable. A youth, who was
+reading with the minister when I entered the apartment, was dismissed
+with a simple inclination of the head, and the Rev. Walter Fairman then
+pointed to a seat.
+
+"You have had a tedious journey, Mr Stukely," began the incumbent, "and
+you are fatigued, no doubt."
+
+"What a glorious spot this is, sir!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it is pretty," answered Mr Fairman, very coldly as I thought. "Are
+you hungry, Mr Stukely? We dine early; but pray take refreshment if you
+need it."
+
+I declined respectfully.
+
+"Do you bring letters from my agent?"
+
+"I have a parcel in my trunk, sir, which will be here immediately. What
+magnificent trees!" I exclaimed again, my eyes riveted upon a stately
+cluster, which were about a hundred yards distant.
+
+"Have you been accustomed to tuition?" asked Mr Fairman, taking no
+notice of my remark.
+
+"I have not, sir, but I am sure that I shall be delighted with the
+occupation. I have always thought so."
+
+"We must not be too sanguine. Nothing requires more delicate handling
+than the mind of youth. In no business is experience, great discernment
+and tact, so much needed as in that of instruction."
+
+"Yes, sir, I am aware of it."
+
+"No doubt," answered Mr Fairman quietly. "How old are you?"
+
+I told my age, and blushed.
+
+"Well, well," said the incumbent, "I have no doubt we shall do. You are
+a Cambridge man, Mr Graham writes me?"
+
+"I was only a year, sir, at the university. Circumstances prevented a
+longer residence. I believe I mentioned the fact to Mr Graham."
+
+"Oh yes, he told me so. You shall see the boys this afternoon. They are
+fine-hearted lads, and much may be done with them. There are six. Two of
+them are pretty well advanced. They read Euripides and Horace. Is
+Euripides a favourite of yours?"
+
+"He is tender, plaintive, and passionate," I answered; "but perhaps I
+may be pardoned if I venture to prefer the vigour and majesty of the
+sterner tragedian."
+
+"You mean you like �schylus better. Do you write poetry, Mr Stukely? Not
+Latin verses, but English poetry."
+
+"I do not, sir."
+
+"Well, I am glad of that. It struck me that you did. Will you really
+take no refreshment? Are you not fatigued?"
+
+"Not in the least, sir. This lovely prospect, for one who has seen so
+little of nature as I have, is refreshment enough for the present."
+
+"Ah," said Mr Fairman, sighing faintly, "you will get accustomed to it.
+There is something in the prospect, but more in your own mind. Some of
+our poor fellows would be easily served and satisfied, if we could feed
+them on the prospect. But if you are not tired you shall see more of it
+if you will. I have to go down to the village. We have an hour till
+dinner-time. Will you accompany me?"
+
+"With pleasure, sir."
+
+"Very well." Mr Fairman then rang the bell, and the servant girl came
+in.
+
+"Where's Miss Ellen, Mary?" asked the incumbent.
+
+"She has been in the village since breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word
+that she was ill, and Miss took her the rice and sago that Dr Mayhew
+ordered."
+
+"Has Warden been this morning?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Foolish fellow. I'll call on him. Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman
+comes, give him that bottle of port wine; but tell him not to touch a
+drop of it himself. It is for his sick child, and it is committing
+robbery to take it. Let him have the blanket also that was looked out
+for him."
+
+"It's gone, sir. Miss sent it yesterday."
+
+"Very well. There is nothing more. Now, Mr Stukely, we will go."
+
+I have said already that the first opinion which I formed of the
+disposition of Mr Fairman was not a flattering one. Before he spoke a
+word, I felt disappointed and depressed. My impression after our short
+conversation was worse than the first. The natural effect of the scene
+in which I suddenly found myself, had been to prepare my ever too
+forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm and poetic temperament. Mr
+Fairman was many degrees removed from warmth. He spoke to me in a sharp
+tone of voice, and sometimes, I suspected, with the intention of mocking
+me. His _manner_, when he addressed the servant-girl, was not more
+pleasing. When I followed him from the room, I regretted the haste with
+which I had accepted my appointment; but a moment afterwards I entered
+into fairyland again, and the passing shadow left me grateful to
+Providence for so much real enjoyment. We descended the hill, and for a
+time, in silence, Mr Fairman was evidently engaged in deep thought, and
+I had no wish to disturb him. Every now and then we lighted upon a view
+of especial beauty, and I was on the point of expressing my unbounded
+admiration, when one look at my cool and matter-of-fact companion at
+once annoyed and stopped me.
+
+"Yes," said Mr Fairman at length, still musing. "It is very
+difficult--very difficult to manage the poor. I wonder if they are
+grateful at heart. What do you think, Mr Stukely?"
+
+"I have nothing to say of the poor, sir, but praise."
+
+Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and smiled unpleasantly.
+
+"It is the scenery, I suppose. That will make you praise every thing for
+the next day or so. It will not do, though. We must walk on our feet,
+and be prosaic in this world. The poor are not as poets paint them, nor
+is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect.
+The poets are like you--they have nothing to say but praise. Ah, me!
+they draw largely on their imaginations."
+
+"I do not, sir, in this instance," I answered, somewhat nettled. "My
+most valued friends are in the humblest ranks of life. I am proud to say
+so. I am not prepared to add, that the most generous of men are the most
+needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at
+the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves."
+
+"I believe you, Mr Stukely," answered the incumbent in a more feeling
+tone. "I am not fond of theories; yet that's a theory with which I would
+willingly pass through life; but it will not answer. It is knocked on
+the head every hour of the day. Perhaps it is our own fault. We do not
+know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant
+and helpless. Just step in here."
+
+We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill. It was a low
+dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it.
+One window was in the cob-wall. It had been fixed there originally,
+doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light,
+not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants,
+was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied
+the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A
+child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair,
+unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was
+heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and
+a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly
+countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire,
+and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an
+unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not
+twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There
+was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete
+article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed
+down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who
+sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor
+before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting,
+however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving
+family with bread?
+
+The man did not rise upon our entrance. He changed colour very slightly,
+and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.
+
+"Well, Jacob Warden," said the incumbent, "you are determined to brave
+it out, I see." The fellow did not answer.
+
+"When I told you yesterday that your idleness and bad habits were
+bringing you to ruin, you answered--_I was a liar_. I then said, that
+when you were sorry for having uttered that expression, you might come
+to the parsonage and tell me so. You have not been yet--I am grieved to
+say it. What have I ever done to you, Jacob Warden, that you should
+behave so wickedly? I do not wish you to humble yourself to me, but I
+should have been glad to see you do your duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I
+should give you up, and see you no more, for I fear you are a hardened
+man."
+
+"He hasn't had no work for a month," said the wife, in a tone of
+upbraiding, as if the minister had been the wilful cause of it.
+
+"And whose fault is that, Mrs Warden? There is work enough for sober and
+honest men in the parish. Why was your husband turned away from the
+Squire's?"
+
+"Why, all along of them spoons. They never could prove it agin him,
+that's one thing--though they tried it hard enough."
+
+"Come, come, Mrs Warden, if you love that man, take the right way to
+show it. Think of your children."
+
+"Yes; if I didn't--who would, I should like to know? The poor are
+trodden under foot."
+
+"Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor are taken care of, if they are deserving.
+God loves the poor, and commands us all to love them. Give me your
+Bible?" The woman hesitated a minute, and then answered--
+
+"Never mind the Bible, that won't get us bread."
+
+"Give me your Bible, Mrs Warden."
+
+"We have'nt got it. What's the use of keeping a Bible in the house for
+children as can't read, when they are crying for summat to eat?"
+
+"You have sold it, then?"
+
+"We got a shilling on it--that's all."
+
+"Have you ever applied to us for food, and has it been denied you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. The servant always looks grumpy at us when we come
+a-begging, and seems to begrudge us every mouthful. It's all very well
+to live on other persons' leavings. I dare say you don't give us what
+you could eat yourselves."
+
+"We give the best we can afford, Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with no
+such feeling as you suppose. How is the child? Is it better?"
+
+"Yes, no thanks to Doctor Mayhew either."
+
+"Did he not call, then?"
+
+"Call! Yes, but he made me tramp to his house for the physic, and when
+he passed the cottage the other day, I called after him; but devil a bit
+would he come back. We might have died first, of course: he knows, he
+isn't paid, and what does he care?"
+
+"It is very wrong of you to talk so. You are well aware that he was
+hurrying to a case of urgency, and could not be detained. He visited you
+upon the following day, and told you so."
+
+"Oh yes, the following day! What's that to do with it?"
+
+"Woman" exclaimed Mr Fairman, solemnly, "my heart bleeds for those poor
+children. What will become of them with such an example before their
+eyes? I can say no more to you than I have repeated a hundred times
+before. I would make you happy in this world if I could; I would save
+you. You forbid me. I would be your true friend, and you look upon me as
+an enemy. Heaven, I trust, will melt your heart! What is that child
+screaming for?"
+
+"What! she hasn't had a blessed thing to-day. We had nothing for her."
+
+Mr Fairman took some biscuits from his pockets, and placed them on the
+table. "Let the girl come in, and eat," said he. "I shall send you some
+meat from the village. Warden, I cannot tell you how deeply I feel your
+wickedness. I did expect you to come to the parsonage and say you were
+sorry. It would have looked well, and I should have liked it. You put it
+out of my power to help you. It is most distressing to see you both
+going headlong to destruction. May you live to repent! I shall see you
+again this evening, and I will speak to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely, our
+time is getting short."
+
+The incumbent spoke rapidly, and seemed affected. I looked at him, and
+could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I had
+at first imagined him.
+
+We pursued our way towards the village.
+
+"There, sir," said the minister in a quick tone of voice, "what is the
+beautiful prospect, and what are the noble trees, to the heart of that
+man? What have they to do at all with man's morality? Had those people
+never seen a shrub or flower, could they have been more impenetrable,
+more insolent and suspicious, or steeped in vice much deeper? That man
+wants only opportunity, a large sphere of action, and the variety of
+crime and motive that are to be found amongst congregated masses of
+mankind, to become a monster. His passions and his vices are as wilful
+and as strong as those of any man born and bred in the sinks of a great
+city. They have fewer outlets, less capability of mischief--and there is
+the difference."
+
+I ventured no remark, and the incumbent, after a short pause, continued
+in a milder strain.
+
+"I may be, after all, weak and inefficient. Doubtless great delicacy and
+caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to
+these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is
+useless to sow the seed. Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?"
+
+Mr Fairman stopped at the first house in the village--the prettiest of
+the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages before alluded to. Here he tapped
+softly, and a gentle foot that seemed to know the visitor hastened to
+admit him.
+
+"Well, Mary," said the minister, glancing round the room--a clean and
+happy-looking room it was--"where's Michael?"
+
+"He is gone, sir, as you bade him, to make it up with Cousin Willett. He
+couldn't rest easy, sir, since you told him that it was no use coming to
+church so long as he bore malice. He won't be long, sir."
+
+Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his grey eye might be, it did not seem so
+steady now.
+
+"Mary, that is good of him; tell him his minister is pleased. How is
+work with him?"
+
+"He has enough to do, to carry him to the month's end, sir."
+
+"Then at the month's end, Mary, let him come to the parsonage. I have
+something for him there. But we can wait till then. Have you seen the
+itinerary preacher since?"
+
+"It is not his time, sir. He didn't promise to come till Monday week."
+
+"Do neither you nor Michael speak with him, nor listen to his public
+preachings. I mean, regard him not as one having authority. I speak
+solemnly, and with a view to your eternal peace. Do not forget."
+
+Every house was visited, and in all, opportunity was found for the
+exercise of the benevolent feelings by which the incumbent was
+manifestly actuated. He lost no occasion of affording his flock sound
+instruction and good advice. It could not be doubted for an instant that
+their real welfare, temporal and everlasting, lay deeply in his heart. I
+was struck by one distinguishing feature in his mode of dealing with his
+people; it was so opposed to the doctrine and practice of Mr Clayton,
+and of those who were connected with him. With the latter, a certain
+degree of physical fervour, and a conventional peculiarity of
+expression, were insisted upon and accepted as evidences of grace and
+renewed life. With Mr Fairman, neither acquired heat, nor the more
+easily acquired jargon of a clique, were taken into account. He rather
+repressed than encouraged their existence; but he was desirous, and even
+eager, to establish rectitude of conduct and purity of feeling in the
+disciples around him: these were to him tangible witnesses of the
+operation of that celestial Spirit before whose light the mists of
+simulation and deceit fade unresistingly away. I could not help
+remarking, however, that in every cottage the same injunction was given
+in respect of the itinerant; the same solemnity of manner accompanied
+the command; the same importance was attached to its obedience. There
+seemed to me, fresh from the hands of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry
+and uncharitableness in all this. I did not hint at this effect upon my
+own mind, nor did I inquire into the motives of the minister. I was not
+pleased; but I said nothing. As if Mr Fairman read my very thoughts, he
+addressed me on the subject almost before the door of the last cottage
+was closed upon us.
+
+"_Bigoted_ and _narrow-minded,_ are the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the
+extremely liberal would characterize the line of conduct which I am
+compelled by duty to pursue. I cannot be frightened by harsh terms. I am
+the pastor of these people, and must decide and act for them. I am their
+shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor and ignorant, and unripe in
+judgment, and easily deceived by the shows and counterfeits of truth as
+the ignorant are, is it for me to hand them over to perplexity and risk?
+They are simple believers, and are contented. They worship God, and are
+at peace. They know their lot, and do not murmur at it. Is it right that
+they should be disturbed with the religious differences and theological
+subtleties which have already divided into innumerable sects the
+universal family of Christians whom God made one? Is it fair or merciful
+to whisper into their ears the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction,
+envy, and complaining, to which the uninformed of all classes but too
+eagerly listen? I have ever found the religious and the political
+propagandist united in the same individual. The man who proposes to the
+simple to improve his creed, is ready to point out the way to better his
+condition. He succeeds in rendering him unhappy in both, and there he
+leaves him. So would this man, and I would rather die for my people,
+than tamely give them over to their misery."
+
+A tall, stout, weather-beaten man, in the coarse dress of a fisherman,
+descending the hill, intercepted our way. It was the man Cuthbert,
+already mentioned by Mr Fairman. He touched his southwester to the
+incumbent.
+
+"How is the boy, Cuthbert?" asked the minister, stopping at the same
+moment.
+
+"All but well, sir. Doctor Mayhew don't mean to come again. It's all
+along of them nourishments that Miss Ellen sent us down. The Doctor says
+he must have died without them."
+
+"Well, Cuthbert, I trust that we shall find you grateful."
+
+"Grateful, sir!" exclaimed the man. "If ever I forget what you have done
+for that poor child, I hope the breath----" The brawny fisherman could
+say no more. His eyes filled suddenly with tears, and he held down his
+head, ashamed of them. He had no cause to be so.
+
+"Be honest and industrious, Cuthbert; give that boy a good example.
+Teach him to love his God, and his neighbour as himself. That will be
+gratitude enough, and more than pay Miss Ellen."
+
+"I'll try to do it, sir. God bless you!"
+
+We said little till we reached the parsonage again; but before I
+re-entered its gate the Reverend Walter Fairman had risen in my esteem,
+and ceased to be considered a cold and unfeeling man.
+
+We dined; the party consisting of the incumbent, the six students, and
+myself. The daughter, the only daughter and child of Mr Fairman, who was
+himself a widower, had not returned from the cottage to which she had
+been called in the morning. It was necessary that a female should be in
+constant attendance upon the aged invalid; a messenger had been
+despatched to the neighbouring village for an experienced nurse; and
+until her arrival Miss Fairman would permit no one but herself to
+undertake the duties of the sick chamber. It was on this account that we
+were deprived of the pleasure of her society, for her accustomed seat
+was at the head of her father's table. I was pleased with the pupils.
+They were affable and well-bred. They treated the incumbent with marked
+respect, and behaved towards their new teacher with the generous
+kindness and freedom of true young gentlemen. The two eldest boys might
+be fifteen years of age. The remaining four could not have reached their
+thirteenth year. In the afternoon I had the scholars to myself. The
+incumbent retired to his library, and left us to pass our first day in
+removing the restraint that was the natural accompaniment of our
+different positions, and in securing our intimacy. I talked of the
+scenery, and found willing listeners. They understood me better than
+their master, for they were worshippers themselves. They promised to
+show me lovelier spots than any I had met with yet; sacred corners,
+known only to themselves, down by the sea, where the arbute and
+laurustinus grew like trees, and children of the ocean. Then there were
+villages near, more beautiful even than their own; one that lay in the
+lap of a large hill, with the sea creeping round, or rolling at its feet
+like thunder, sometimes. What lanes, too, Miss Fairman knew of! She
+would take me into places worth the looking at; and oh, what drawings
+she had made from them! Their sisters had bought drawings, and paid very
+dearly for them too, that were not half so finely done! They would ask
+her to show me her portfolio, and she would do it directly, for she was
+the kindest creature living. It was not the worst trait in the
+disposition of these boys, that, whatever might be the subject of
+conversation, or from whatever point we might start in our discourse,
+they found pleasure in making all things bear towards the honour and
+renown of their young mistress. The scenery was nothing without Miss
+Fairman and her sketches. The house was dull without her, and the
+singing in the church, if she were ill and absent, was as different as
+could be. There were the sweetest birds that could be, heard warbling in
+the high trees that lined the narrow roads; but at Miss Fairman's window
+there was a nightingale that beat them all. The day wore on, and I did
+not see the general favourite. It was dusk when she reached the
+parsonage, and then she retired immediately to rest, tired from the
+labours of the day. The friend of the family, Doctor Mayhew, had
+accompanied Miss Fairman home; he remained with the incumbent, and I
+continued with my young companions until their bedtime. They departed,
+leaving me their books, and then I took a survey of the work that was
+before me. My duties were to commence on the following day, and our
+first subject was the tragedy of _Hecuba_. How very grateful did I feel
+for the sound instruction which I had received in early life from my
+revered pains-taking tutor, for the solid groundwork that he had
+established, and for the rational mode of tuition which he had from the
+first adopted. From the moment that he undertook to cultivate and inform
+the youthful intellect, this became itself an active instrument in the
+attainment of knowledge--not, as is so often the case, the mere idle
+depositary of encumbering _words_. It was little that he required to be
+gained by rote, for he regarded all acquisitions as useless in which the
+understanding had not the chiefest share. He was pleased to communicate
+facts, and anxious to discover, from examination, that the principles
+which they contained had been accurately seen and understood. Then no
+labour and perseverance on his part were deemed too great for his pupil,
+and the business of his life became his first pleasure. In the study of
+Greek, for which at an early age I evinced great aptitude, I learnt the
+structure of the language and its laws from the keen observations of my
+master, whose rules were drawn from the classic work before us--rather
+than from grammars. To this hour I retain the information thus obtained,
+and at no period of my life have I ever had greater cause for
+thankfulness, than when, after many months of idleness and neglect, with
+a view to purchase bread I opened, not without anxiety, my book again,
+and found that time had not impaired my knowledge, and that light shone
+brightly on the pages, as it did of old. Towards the close of the
+evening, I was invited to the study of Mr Fairman. Doctor Mayhew was
+still with him, and I was introduced to the physician as the teacher
+newly arrived from London. The doctor was a stout good-humoured
+gentleman of the middle height, with a cheerful and healthy-looking
+countenance. He was, in truth, a jovial man, as well as a great
+snuff-taker. The incumbent offered me a chair, and placed a decanter of
+wine before me. His own glass of port was untouched, and he looked
+serious and dejected.
+
+"Well, sir, how does London look?" enquired the doctor, "are the folks
+as mad as they used to be? What new invention is the rage now? What
+bubble is going to burst? What lord committed forgery last? Who was the
+last woman murdered before you started?"
+
+I confessed my inability to answer.
+
+"Well, never mind. There isn't much lost. I am almost ashamed of old
+England, that's the truth on't. I have given over reading the
+newspapers, for they are about as full of horrors as Miss
+What's-her-name's tales of the Infernals. What an age this is! all crime
+and fanaticism! Everyman and everything is on the rush. Come, Fairman,
+take your wine."
+
+Mr Fairman sat gazing on the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the
+request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned
+topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are
+about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an
+advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my
+father was alive, as a ship sailing along this coast keel upwards. You
+saw it, Fairman. It was just under the Everlasting Life Pill
+advertisement; and announced that the Reverend Mr Somebody would preach
+on the Sunday following, at some conventicle, when the public were
+invited to listen to him--and that the doors would be opened half an
+hour earlier than usual to prevent squeezing. That's modern religion,
+and it looks as much like ancient play-acting as two peas. Where will
+these marching days of improvement bring us to at last?"
+
+"Tell me, Mayhew," said Mr Fairman, "does it not surprise you that a
+girl of her age should be so easily fatigued?"
+
+"My dear friend, that makes the sixth time of asking. Let us hope that
+it will be the last. I don't know what you mean by '_so easily_'
+fatigued. The poor girl has been in the village all day, fomenting and
+poulticing old Mrs Barnes, and if it had been any girl but herself, she
+would have been tired out long before. Make your mind easy. I have sent
+the naughty puss to bed, and she'll be as fresh as a rose in the
+morning."
+
+"She must keep her exertions within proper bounds," continued the
+incumbent. "I am sure she has not strength enough to carry out her good
+intentions. I have watched her narrowly, and cannot be mistaken."
+
+"You do wrong, then, Fairman. Anxious watching creates fear, without the
+shadow of an excuse for it. When we have anything like a bad symptom, it
+is time to get uneasy."
+
+"Yes, but what do you call a bad symptom, Doctor?"
+
+"Why, I call your worrying yourself into fidgets, and teazing me into an
+ill temper, a shocking symptom of bad behaviour. If it continue, you
+must take a doze. Come, my friend, let me prescribe that glass of good
+old port. It does credit to the cloth."
+
+"Seriously, Mayhew, have you never noticed the short, hacking cough that
+sometimes troubles her?"
+
+"Yes; I noticed it last January for the space of one week, when there
+was not a person within ten miles of you who was not either hacking, as
+you call it, or blowing his nose from morning till night. The dear child
+had a cold, and so had you, and I, and everybody else."
+
+"And that sudden flush, too?"
+
+"Why, you'll be complaining of the bloom on the peach next! That's
+health, and nothing else, take my word for it."
+
+"I am, perhaps, morbidly apprehensive; but I cannot forget her poor
+mother. You attended her, Mayhew, and you know how suddenly that came
+upon us. Poor Ellen! what should I do without her!"
+
+"Fairman, join me in wishing success to our young friend here. Mr
+Stukely, here's your good health; and success and happiness attend you.
+You'll find little society here; but it is of the right sort, I can tell
+you. You must make yourself at home." The minister became more cheerful,
+and an hour passed in pleasant conversation. At ten o'clock, the horse
+of Doctor Mayhew was brought to the gate, and the gentleman departed in
+great good-humour. Almost immediately afterwards, the incumbent himself
+conducted me to my sleeping apartment, and I was not loth to get my
+rest. I fell asleep with the beautiful village floating before my weary
+eyes, and the first day of my residence at the parsonage closed
+peacefully upon me.
+
+It was at the breakfast table on the succeeding morning that I beheld
+the daughter of the incumbent, the favourite and companion of my pupils,
+and mistress of the house--a maiden in her twentieth year. She was
+simply and artlessly attired, gentle and retiring in demeanour, and
+femininely sweet rather than beautiful in expression. Her figure was
+slender, her voice soft and musical; her hair light brown, and worn
+plain across a forehead white as marble. The eye-brows which arched the
+small, rich, hazel eyes were delicately drawn, and the slightly aquiline
+nose might have formed a study for an artist. With the exception,
+however, of this last-named feature, there was little in the individual
+lineaments of the face to surprise or rivet the observer. Extreme
+simplicity, and perfect innocence--these were stamped upon the
+countenance, and were its charm. It was a strange feeling that possessed
+me when I first gazed upon her through the chaste atmosphere that dwelt
+around her. It was degradation deep and unaffected--a sense of shame and
+undeservedness. I remembered with self-abhorrence the relation that had
+existed between the unhappy Emma and myself, and the enormity and
+disgrace of my offence never looked so great as now, and here--in the
+bright presence of unconscious purity. She reassured and welcomed me
+with a natural smile, and pursued her occupation with quiet cheerfulness
+and unconstraint. I did not wonder that her father loved her, and
+entertained the thought of losing her with fear; for, young and gentle
+as she was, she evinced wisdom and age in her deep sense of duty, and in
+the government of her happy home. Method and order waited on her doings,
+and sweetness and tranquillity--the ease and dignity of a matron
+elevating and upholding the maiden's native modesty. And did she not
+love her sire as ardently? Yes, if her virgin soul spoke faithfully in
+every movement of her guileless face. Yes, if there be truth in tones
+that strike the heart to thrill it--in thoughts that write their meaning
+in the watchful eye, in words that issue straight from the fount of
+love, in acts that do not bear one shade of selfish purpose. It was not
+a labour of time to learn that the existence of the child, her peace and
+happiness, were merged in those of the fond parent. He was every thing
+to her, as she to him. She had no brother--he no wife: these natural
+channels of affection cut away, the stream was strong and deep that
+flowed into each other's hearts. My first interview with the young lady
+was necessarily limited. I would gladly have prolonged it. The morning
+was passed with my pupils, and my mind stole often from the work before
+me to dwell upon the face and form of her, whom, as a sister, I could
+have doated on and cherished. How happy I should have been, I deemed, if
+I had been so blessed. Useless reflection! and yet pleased was I to
+dwell upon it, and to welcome its return, as often as it recurred. At
+dinner we met again. To be admitted into her presence seemed the reward
+for my morning toil--a privilege rather than a right. What labour was
+too great for the advantage of such moments?--moments indeed they were,
+and less--flashes of time, that were not here before they had
+disappeared. We exchanged but few words. I was still oppressed with the
+conviction of my own unworthiness, and wondered if she could read in my
+burning face the history of shame. How she must avoid and despise me,
+thought I, when she has discovered all, and how bold and wicked it was
+to darken the light in which she lived with the guilt that was a part of
+me! Not the less did I experience this when she spoke to me with
+kindness and unreserve. The feeling grew in strength. I was conscious of
+deceit and fraud, and could not shake the knowledge off. I was taking
+mean advantage of her confidence, assuming a character to which I had no
+claim, and listening to the accents of innocence and virtue with the
+equanimity of one good and spotless as herself. In the afternoon the
+young students resumed their work. When it was over, we strolled amongst
+the hills; and, at the close of a delightful walk, found ourselves in
+the enchanting village. Here we encountered Miss Fairman and the
+incumbent, and we returned home in company. In one short hour we reached
+it. How many hours have passed since _that_ was ravished from the hand
+of Time, and registered in the tenacious memory! Years have floated by,
+and silently have dropped into the boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted;
+and these few minutes--sacred relics--live and linger in the world, in
+mercy it may be, to lighten up my lonely hearth, or save the whitened
+head from drooping. The spirit of one golden hour shall hover through a
+life, and shed glory where he falls. What are the unfruitful,
+unremembered years that rush along, frightening mortality with their
+fatal speed--an instant in eternity! What are the moments loaded with
+passion, intense, and never-dying--years, ages upon earth! Away with the
+divisions of time, whilst one short breath--the smallest particle or
+measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. Breathless and silent is the
+dewy eve. Trailing a host of glittering clouds behind him, the sun
+stalks down, and leaves the emerald hills in deeper green. The lambs are
+skipping on the path--the shepherd as loth to lead them home as they to
+go. The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back. The
+minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family. They hear
+the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them
+think it over. Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the
+twilight group. She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the
+good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us: she
+smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful
+eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss,
+and cannot bear their weight of happiness.
+
+Another day of natural gladness--and then the Sabbath; this not less
+cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding. The sun shone fair upon the
+ancient church, and made its venerable gray stones sparkle and look
+young again. The dark-green ivy that for many a year has clung there,
+looked no longer sad and sombre, but gay and lively as the newest of the
+new-born leaves that smiled on every tree. The inhabitants of the
+secluded village were already a-foot when we proceeded from the
+parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to
+join them. The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale;
+for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature. Willows
+and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the
+living wend their way beneath them, subdued to seriousness, it may be,
+by the breathless voice that dwells in every well-remembered mound.
+There is not one who does not carry on his brow the thoughts that best
+become it now. All are well dressed, all look cleanly and contented. The
+children are with their parents, their natural and best instructors.
+Whom should they love so well? To whom is honour due if not to them? The
+village owns no school to disannul the tie of blood, to warp and weaken
+the affection that holds them well together.
+
+All was quietness and decorum in the house of prayer. Every earnest eye
+was fixed, not upon Mr Fairman, but on the book from which the people
+prayed, in which they found their own good thoughts portrayed, their
+pious wishes told, their sorrow and repentance in clearest form
+described. Every humble penitent was on his knees. With one voice, loud
+and heartfelt, came the responses which spoke the people's acquiescence
+in all the pastor urged and prayed on their behalf. The worship over, Mr
+Fairman addressed his congregation, selecting his subject from the
+lesson of the day, and fitting his words to the capacities of those who
+listened. Let me particularly note, that whilst the incumbent pointed
+distinctly to the cross as the only ground of a sinner's hope, he
+insisted upon good works as the necessary and essential accompaniment of
+his faith. "Do not tell me, my dear friends," he said, at the conclusion
+of his address--"do not tell me that you believe, if your daily life is
+unworthy a believer. I will not trust you. What is your belief, if your
+heart is busy in contrivances to overreach your neighbour? What is it,
+if your mind is filled with envy, malice, hatred, and revenge? What if
+you are given over to disgraceful lusts--to drunkenness and debauchery?
+What if you are ashamed to speak the truth, and are willing to become a
+liar? I tell you, and I have warrant for what I say, that your conduct
+one towards another must be straightforward, honest, generous, kind, and
+affectionate, or you cannot be in a safe and happy state. You owe it to
+yourselves to be so; for if you are poor and labouring men, you have an
+immortal soul within you, and it is your greatest ornament. It is that
+which gives the meanest of us a dignity that no earthly honours can
+supply; a dignity that it becomes the first and last of us by every
+means to cherish and support. Is it not, my friends, degrading, fearful
+to know that we bear about with us the very image of our God, and that
+we are acting worse than the very brutes of the field? Do yourselves
+justice. Be pure--pure in mind and body. Be honest, in word and deed. Be
+loving to one another. Crush every wish to do evil, or to speak harshly;
+be brothers, and feel that you are working out the wishes of a
+benevolent and loving Father, who has created you for love, and smiles
+upon you when you do his bidding." There was more to this effect, but
+nothing need be added to explain the scope and tendency of his
+discourse. His congregation could not mistake his meaning; they could
+not fail to profit by it, if reason was not proof against the soundest
+argument. As quietly as, and, if it be possible, more seriously than,
+they entered the church, did the small band of worshippers, at the close
+of the service, retire from it. Could it be my fancy, or did the wife in
+truth cling closer to her husband--the father clasp his little boy more
+firmly in his hand? Did neighbour nod to neighbour more eagerly as they
+parted at the churchyard gate--did every look and movement of the many
+groups bespeak a spirit touched, a mind reproved? I may not say so, for
+my own heart was melted by the scene, and might mislead my judgment.
+There was a second service in the afternoon. This concluded, we walked
+to the sea-beach. In the evening Mr Fairman related a connected history
+from the Old Testament, whilst the pupils tracked his progress on their
+maps, and the narrative became a living thing in their remembrances.
+Serious conversation then succeeded; to this a simple prayer, and the
+day closed, sweetly and calmly, as a day might close in Paradise.
+
+The events of the following month partook of the character of those
+already glanced at. The minister was unremitting in his attendance upon
+his parishioners, and no day passed during which something had not been
+accomplished for their spiritual improvement or worldly comfort. His
+loving daughter was a handmaid at his side, ministering with him, and
+shedding sunshine where she came. The villagers were frugal and
+industrious; and seemed, for the most part, sensible of their
+incumbent's untiring efforts. Improvement appeared even in the cottage
+of the desperate Warden. Mr Fairman obtained employment for him. For a
+fortnight he had attended to it, and no complaint had reached the
+parsonage of misbehaviour. His wife had learned to bear her imagined
+wrongs in silence, and could even submit to a visit from her best friend
+without insulting him for the condescension. My own days passed smoothly
+on. My occupation grew every day more pleasing, and the results of my
+endeavours as gratifying as I could wish them. My pupils were attached
+to me, and I beheld them improving gradually and securely under their
+instruction. Mr Fairman, who, for a week together, had witnessed the
+course of my tuition, and watched it narrowly, was pleased to express
+his approbation in the warmest terms. Much of the coldness with which I
+thought he had at first encountered me disappeared, and his manner grew
+daily more friendly and confiding. His treatment was most generous. He
+received me into the bosom of his family as a son, and strove to render
+his fair habitation my genuine and natural home.
+
+Another month passed by, and the colour and tone of my existence had
+suffered a momentous change. In the acquirement of a fearful joy, I had
+lost all joy. In rendering every moment of my life blissful and
+ecstatic, I had robbed myself of all felicity. A few weeks before, and
+my state of being had realized a serenity that defied all causes of
+perturbation and disquiet. Now it was a sea of agitation and disorder;
+and a breath, a nothing had brought the restless waves upon the quiet
+surface. Through the kindness of Mr Fairman, my evenings had been almost
+invariably passed in the society of himself and his daughter. The lads
+were early risers, and retired, on that account, at a very early hour to
+rest. Upon their dismission, I had been requested to join the company in
+the drawing-room. This company included sometimes Doctor Mayhew, the
+neighbouring squire, or a chance visitor, but consisted oftenest only of
+the incumbent and his daughter. Aware of the friendly motive which
+suggested the request, I obeyed it with alacrity. On these occasions,
+Miss Fairman used her pencil, whilst I read aloud; or she would ply her
+needle, and soothe at intervals her father's ear with strains of music,
+which he, for many reasons, loved to hear. Once or twice the incumbent
+had been called away, and his child and I were left together. I had no
+reason to be silent whilst the good minister was present, yet I found
+that I could speak more confidently and better when he was absent. We
+conversed with freedom and unrestraint. I found the maiden's mind well
+stored--her voice was not more sweet than was her understanding clear
+and cloudless. Books had been her joy, which, in the season of
+suffering, had been my consolation. They were a common source of
+pleasure. She spoke of them with feeling, and I could understand her. I
+regarded her with deep unfeigned respect; but, the evening over, I took
+my leave, as I had come--in peace. Miss Fairman left the parsonage to
+pay a two-days' visit at a house in the vicinity. Until the evening of
+the first day I was not sensible of her absence. It was then, and at the
+customary hour of our reunion, that, for the first time, I experienced,
+with alarm, a sense of loneliness and desertion--that I became
+tremblingly conscious of the secret growth of an affection that had
+waited only for the time and circumstance to make its presence and its
+power known and dreaded. In the daily enjoyment of her society, I had
+not estimated its influence and value. Once denied it, and I dared not
+acknowledge to myself how precious it had become, how silently and
+fatally it had wrought upon my heart. The impropriety and folly of
+self-indulgence were at once apparent--yes, the vanity and
+wickedness--and, startled by what looked like guilt, I determined
+manfully to rise superior to temptation. I took refuge in my books; they
+lacked their usual interest, were ineffectual in reducing the ruffled
+mind to order. I rose and paced my room, but I could not escape from
+agitating thought. I sought the minister in his study, and hoped to
+bring myself to calm and reason by dwelling seriously on the business of
+the day--with him, the father of the lady, and _my master_. He was not
+there. He had left the parsonage with Doctor Mayhew an hour before. I
+walked into the open air restless and unhappy, relying on the freshness
+and repose of night to be subdued and comforted. It was a night to
+soften anger--to conquer envy--to destroy revenge--beautiful and bright.
+The hills were bathed in liquid silvery light, and on their heights, and
+in the vale, on all around, lay passion slumbering. What could I find on
+such a night, but favour and incitement, support and confirmation,
+flattery and delusion? Every object ministered to the imagination, and
+love had given that wings. I trembled as I pursued my road, and fuel
+found its unobstructed way rapidly to the flame within. Self-absorbed, I
+wandered on. I did not choose my path. I believed I did not, and I
+stopped at length--before the house that held her. I gazed upon it with
+reverence and love. One room was lighted up. Shadows flitted across the
+curtained window, and my heart throbbed sensibly when, amongst them, I
+imagined I could trace her form. I was borne down by a conviction of
+wrong and culpability, but I could not move, or for a moment draw away
+my look. It was a strange assurance that I felt--but I did feel it,
+strongly and emphatically--that I should see her palpably before I left
+the place. I waited for that sight in certain expectation, and it came.
+A light was carried from the room. Diminished illumination there, and
+sudden brightness against a previously darkened casement, made this
+evident. The light ascended--another casement higher than the last was,
+in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed her figure. She approached the
+window, and, for an instant--oh how brief!--looked into the heavenly
+night. My poor heart sickened with delight, and I strained my eyes long
+after all was blank and dark again.
+
+Daylight, and the employments of day, if they did not remove, weakened
+the turbulence of the preceding night. The more I found my passion
+acquiring mastery, with greater vigour I renewed my work, and with more
+determination I pursued the objects that were most likely to fight and
+overcome it. I laboured with the youths for a longer period. I undertook
+to prepare a composition for the following day which I knew must take
+much thought and many hours in working out. I armed myself at all
+points--but the evening came and found me once more conscious of a void
+that left me prostrate. Mr Fairman was again absent from home. I could
+not rest in it, and I too sallied forth, but this time, to the village.
+I would not deliberately offer violence to my conscience, and I shrunk
+from a premeditated visit to the distant house. My own acquaintances in
+the village were not many, or of long standing, but there were some half
+dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent's daughter. To one of these
+I bent my steps, with no other purpose than that of baffling time that
+hung upon me painfully and heavily at home. For a few minutes I spoke
+with the aged female of the house on general topics; then a passing
+observation--in spite of me--escaped my lips in reference to Miss Ellen.
+The villager took up the theme and expatiated widely. There was no end
+to what she had to say of good and kind for the dear lady. I could have
+hugged her for her praise. Prudence bade me forsake the dangerous
+ground, and so I did, to return again with tenfold curiosity and zest. I
+asked a hundred questions, each one revealing more interest and ardour
+than the last, and involving me in deeper peril. It was at length
+accomplished. My companion hesitated suddenly in a discourse, then
+stopped, and looked me in the face, smiling cunningly. "I tell you what,
+sir," she exclaimed at last, and loudly, "you are over head and ears in
+love, and that's the truth on't."
+
+"Hush, good woman," I replied, blushing to the forehead, and hastening
+to shut an open door. "Don't speak so loud. You mistake, it is no such
+thing. I shall be angry if you say so--very angry. What can you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say, sir. Why, do you know how old I am? Seventy-three. I
+think I ought to tell, and where's the harm of it? Who couldn't love the
+sweetest lady in the parish--bless her young feeling heart!"
+
+"I tell you--you mistake--you are to blame. I command you not to repeat
+this to a living soul. If it should come to the incumbent's ears"--
+
+"Trust me for that, sir. I'm no blab. He shan't be wiser for such as me.
+But do you mean to tell me, sir, with that red face of your'n, you
+haven't lost your heart--leave alone your trembling? ah, well, I hopes
+you'll both be happy, anyhow."
+
+I endeavoured to remonstrate, but the old woman only laughed and shook
+her aged head. I left her, grieved and apprehensive. My secret thoughts
+had been discovered. How soon might they be carried to the confiding
+minister and his unsuspecting daughter! What would they think of me! It
+was a day of anxiety and trouble, that on which Miss Fairman returned to
+the parsonage. I received my usual invitation; but I was indisposed, and
+did not go. I resolved to see her only during meals, and when it was
+impossible to avoid her. I would not seek her presence. Foolish effort!
+It had been better to pass hours in her sight, for previous separation
+made union more intense, and the passionate enjoyment of a fleeting
+instant was hoarded up, and became nourishment for the livelong day.
+
+It was a soft rich afternoon in June, and chance made me the companion
+of Miss Fairman. We were alone: I had encountered her at a distance of
+about a mile from the parsonage, on the sea-shore, whither I had walked
+distressed in spirit, and grateful for the privilege of listening in
+gloomy quietude to the soothing sounds of nature--medicinal ever. The
+lady was at my side almost before I was aware of her approach. My heart
+throbbed whilst she smiled upon me, sweetly as she smiled on all. Her
+deep hazel eye was moist. Could it be from weeping?
+
+"What has happened, Miss Fairman?" I asked immediately.
+
+"Do I betray my weakness, then?" she answered. "I am sorry for it; for
+dear papa tells all the villagers that no wise man weeps--and no wise
+woman either, I suppose. But I cannot help it. We are but a small family
+in the village, and it makes me very sad to miss the old faces one after
+another, and to see old friends dropping and dropping into the silent
+grave."
+
+As she spoke the church-bell tolled, and she turned pale, and ceased. I
+offered her my arm, and we walked on.
+
+"Whom do you mourn, Miss Fairman?" I asked at length.
+
+"A dear good friend--my best and oldest. When poor mamma was dying, she
+made me over to her care. She was her nurse, and was mine for years. It
+is very wrong of me to weep for her. She was good and pious, and is
+blest."
+
+The church-bell tolled again, and my companion shuddered.
+
+"Oh! I cannot listen to that bell," she said. "I wish papa would do away
+with it. What a withering sound it has! I heard it first when it was
+tolling for my dear mother. It fell upon my heart like iron then, and it
+falls so now."
+
+"I cannot say that I dislike the melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its
+messenger should not be gay."
+
+"It is the soul that sees and hears. Beauty and music are created
+quickly if the heart be joyful. So my book says, and it is true. You
+have had no cause to think that bell a hideous thing."
+
+"Yet I have suffered youth's severest loss. I have lost a mother."
+
+"You speak the truth. Yes, I have a kind father left me--and you"--
+
+"I am an orphan, friendless and deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman, you
+may be spared my fate for years."
+
+"Not friendless or deserted either, Mr Stukely," answered the young lady
+kindly; "papa does not deserve, I am sure, that you should speak so
+harshly."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did not mean to say that. He has been most
+generous to me--kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still
+must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He needs
+no greater punishment."
+
+"You must not talk so. Papa will, I am sure, be a father to you, as he
+is to all who need one. You do not know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is
+overflowing with tenderness and charity. You cannot judge him by his
+manner. He has had his share of sorrow and misfortune; and death has
+been at his door oftener than once. Friends have been unfaithful and men
+have been ungrateful; but trial and suffering have not hardened him. You
+have seen him amongst the poor, but you have not seen him as I have; nor
+have I beheld him as his Maker has, in the secret workings of his
+spirit, which is pure and good, believe me. He has received injury like
+a child, and dealt mercy and love with the liberality of an angel. Trust
+my father, Mr Stukely."--
+
+The maiden spoke quickly and passionately, and her neck and face
+crimsoned with animation. I quivered, for her tones communicated
+fire--but my line of conduct was marked, and it shone clear in spite of
+the clouds of emotion which strove to envelope and conceal it--as they
+did too soon.
+
+"I would trust him, Miss Fairman, and I do," I answered with a faltering
+tongue. "I appreciate his character and I revere him. I could have made
+my home with him. I prayed that I might do so. Heaven seemed to have
+directed my steps to this blissful spot, and to have pointed out at
+length a resting place for my tired feet. I have been most happy
+here--too happy--I have proved ungrateful, and I know how rashly I have
+forfeited this and every thing. I cannot live here. This is no home for
+me. I will go into the world again--cast myself upon it--do any thing. I
+could be a labourer on the highways, and be contented if I could see
+that I had done my duty, and behaved with honour. Believe me, Miss
+Fairman, I have not deliberately indulged--I have struggled, fought, and
+battled, till my brain has tottered. I am wretched and forlorn--but I
+will leave you--to-morrow--would that I had never come----." I could say
+no more. My full heart spoke its agony in tears.
+
+"What has occurred? What afflicts you? You alarm me, Mr Stukely."
+
+I had sternly determined to permit no one look to give expression to the
+feeling which consumed me, to obstruct by force the passage of the
+remotest hint that should struggle to betray me; but as the maiden
+looked full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance of me, and against
+all opposition, the tell-tale passion rising from my soul, and creeping
+to my eye. It would not be held back. In an instant, with one
+treacherous glance, all was spoken and revealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    By that dejected city, Arno runs,
+    Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.
+    There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes
+    Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.
+    And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring
+    Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing
+    Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,
+    And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,
+    Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest
+    My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:
+    For many griefs had wounded it, and more
+    Thy little hands could lighten were in store.
+    But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow
+    Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.
+    What then the bliss to see again thy face,
+    And all that Rumour has announced of grace!
+    I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.
+    O! could I sleep to wake again in May.
+
+    WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.
+
+
+_Sandt_.--Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice
+of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into
+their studies or their society.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--They should rather those than others. The young _must_
+cease to be young, and the unlearned _may_ cease to be unlearned.
+According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth
+against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have
+studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other
+courses than the paths of wisdom.
+
+_Sandt_.--Do you approve of the pursuit?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Who does not?
+
+_Sandt_.--None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the
+game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the
+slough. May I ask you another question?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Certainly.
+
+_Sandt_.--Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
+to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek
+information from you?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
+truth and happiness.
+
+_Sandt_.--If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from
+civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful
+persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at
+seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our
+consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what
+rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only
+to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is
+better than falsehood; and we come to that.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--How?
+
+_Sandt_.--No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to
+happiness--I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe
+that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we
+are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our
+tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer
+who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a
+truth--whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me
+a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet,
+the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has
+not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or
+reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his
+rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless
+for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even
+the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much
+lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of
+the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own
+scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for
+more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you,
+even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where
+the Old Serpent went before you.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic
+and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.
+
+_Sandt_.--I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the
+power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease,
+comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The idea is, truly, no humble one.
+
+_Sandt_.--A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The
+power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my
+aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine
+work of creating the capacity.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Childish! childish!--Men have cravings enow already; give
+them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be
+contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place
+us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power,
+without idle aspirations after impracticable good.
+
+_Sandt_.--O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of
+your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small
+and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Is this to me?
+
+_Sandt_.--To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could
+not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and
+travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.
+
+_Sandt_.--You sought celebrity.--I blame not that. The thick air of
+multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of
+solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping
+of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us
+come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What
+letters do they countenance--do they tolerate?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Plays.
+
+_Sandt_.--Playthings.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Travels.
+
+_Sandt_.--On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along
+which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke
+of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--We are not such drudges.
+
+_Sandt_.--Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can
+call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich
+possessions.
+
+_Sandt_.--None; not the highest.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost
+yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow
+them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force.
+The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude.
+The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that
+she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both;
+in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never
+more agitated than in the midst of peace.
+
+_Sandt_.--The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing
+that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that
+lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our
+homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and
+where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir,
+at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them,
+quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age--neither in
+difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself
+the tutor or the guardian of mankind.
+
+_Sandt_.--I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and
+gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the
+travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of
+princes in strange countries?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--They themselves.
+
+_Sandt_.--They have no more right to take you away from your country,
+than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to
+the land that bore you, and were not at liberty--(if right and liberty
+are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)--you were not
+at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
+freedom are these!
+
+_Sandt_.--A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the
+servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in
+his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that
+he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and
+tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you
+voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be
+coerced to act against Germans.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would not.
+
+_Sandt_.--Perhaps you think so.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Sir, I know my duty.
+
+_Sandt_.--We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the
+will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you
+left the ranks of your fellow-citizens--already have you taken the
+enlisting money and marched away.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
+polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak
+rather the language of books than of men.
+
+_Sandt_.--What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect
+than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men.
+I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the
+productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the
+continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to
+maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware
+that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can
+think of the matter, and bad enough is this.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our
+circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our
+patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical
+mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so
+minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and
+governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take
+pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out
+of place.
+
+_Sandt_.--We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is
+better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this
+indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He
+who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other,
+soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every
+thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men.
+Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and
+familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate
+for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with
+people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to
+those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others:
+but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We
+irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the
+water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those
+that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once
+with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them,
+and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must
+have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to
+us, will be useless.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at
+all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old
+enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no
+means deficient in the relations I bear to society.
+
+_Sandt_.--Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds
+can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover
+against the rain and the wind.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with
+large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my
+dear young man! and less enthusiastic.
+
+_Sandt_.--They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by
+force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must
+love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all,
+profess a parity.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.
+
+_Sandt_.--I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and
+kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could
+speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their
+ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died
+sadly!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of
+authority, your voice is gentle--almost plaintive.
+
+_Sandt_.--It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor
+require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each
+other for many years.
+
+_Sandt_.--What! should I have asked you such a question as the last,
+after long knowing you?
+
+_Kotzebue_, (_aside_.)--This resembles insanity.
+
+_Sandt_.--The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick
+apprehensions.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I really beg your pardon.
+
+_Sandt_.--I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness
+could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them
+grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again
+and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that
+fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the
+remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have
+held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have
+nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and
+security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful.
+Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that
+never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France
+falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and
+crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried
+in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the
+wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most
+literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those
+laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we
+surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled
+cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push
+us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the
+victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are
+the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed
+are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what
+they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you.
+There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.
+
+_Sandt_.--There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great,
+for instance, in our disunion.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.
+
+_Sandt_.--No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny
+princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns
+from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and
+spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured
+them, and slept upon their feathers.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of
+our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to
+us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages
+of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.
+
+_Sandt_.--Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
+and hirelings.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival
+us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.
+
+_Sandt_.--While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with
+England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on
+our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than
+they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their
+children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our
+desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and
+generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under
+disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose
+through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to
+be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and
+secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat
+by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in
+the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
+poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the
+future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush
+we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure
+at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms
+ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps
+of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow
+on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her
+venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am bound to oppose such a project.
+
+_Sandt_.--Say not so: in God's name, say not so.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and
+rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if
+possible.
+
+_Sandt._--Bound! I must then release you.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--How should you, young gentleman, release me?
+
+_Sandt_.--May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again:
+think better: spare me!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I will not betray you.
+
+_Sandt_.--That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me
+can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has
+been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper;
+here is your ink.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Do you imagine me an informer?
+
+_Sandt_.--From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood,
+the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good
+men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the
+bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to
+think of losing you! Be my friend!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would be.
+
+_Sandt_.--Be a German!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am.
+
+_Sandt_, (_having gone out_.)--Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is
+kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of
+the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I
+lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls:
+I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people
+together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim
+follows willingly. (_Enters again_.)
+
+Turn! die! (_strikes_.)
+
+Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with
+one guilty! and writhe longer!
+
+Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me.
+In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have
+sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals
+dishonour, commiseration covers it.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.
+
+A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.
+
+
+When the Empecinado, after escaping from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined his
+band, and again repaired to the favourite skirmishing ground on the
+banks of the Duero, he found the state of affairs in Old Castile
+becoming daily less favourable for his operations. The French overran
+the greater part of the province, and visited with severe punishment any
+disobedience of their orders; so that the peasantry no longer dared to
+assist the guerillas as they had previously done. Many of the villages
+on the Duero had become _afrancesados_, not, it is true, through love,
+but through dread of the invaders, and in the hope of preserving
+themselves from pillage and oppression. However much the people in their
+hearts might wish success to men like the Empecinado, the guerillas were
+too few and too feeble to afford protection to those who, by giving them
+assistance or information, would incur the displeasure of the French.
+The clergy were the only class that, almost without an exception,
+remained stanch to the cause of Spanish independence, and their purses
+and refectories were ever open to those who took up arms in its defence.
+
+Noways deterred by this unfavourable aspect of affairs, the Empecinado
+resolved to carry on the war in Old Castile, even though unaided and
+alone. He established his bivouac in the pine-woods of Coca, and sent
+out spies towards Somosierra and Burgos, to get information of some
+convoy of which the capture might yield both honour and profit.
+
+It was on the second morning after the departure of the spies, and a few
+minutes before daybreak, that the little camp was aroused by a shot from
+a sentry, placed on the skirt of the wood. In an instant every man was
+on his feet. It was the Empecinado's custom, when outlying in this
+manner, to make one-half his band sleep fully armed and equipped, with
+their horses saddled and bridled beside them; and a fortunate precaution
+it was in this instance. Scarcely had the men time to untether and
+spring upon their horses, when the sentry galloped headlong into the
+camp.
+
+"_Los Franceses! Los Franceses_!" exclaimed he, breathless with speed.
+
+One of the Empecinado's first qualities was his presence of mind, which
+never deserted him even in the most critical situations. Instantly
+forming up that moiety of his men which was already in the saddle, he
+left a detachment in front of those who were hastily saddling and
+arming, and with the remainder retired a little to the left of the open
+ground on which the bivouac was established. Almost before he had
+completed this arrangement, the jingling of arms and clattering of
+horses' feet were heard, and a squadron of French cavalry galloped down
+the glade. The Empecinado gave the word to charge, and as Fuentes at the
+head of one party advanced to meet them, he himself attacked them in
+flank. The French, not having anticipated much opposition from a foe
+whom they had expected to find sleeping, were somewhat surprized at the
+fierce resistance they met. A hard fight took place, rendered still more
+confused by the darkness, or rather by a faint grey light, which was
+just beginning to appear, and gave a shadowy indistinctness to
+surrounding objects. The Spaniards were inferior in number to their
+opponents, and it was beginning to go hard with them, when the remainder
+of the guerillas, now armed and mounted, came up to their assistance. On
+perceiving this accession to their adversaries' force, the French
+thought they had been led into an ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable
+order to the edge of the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for
+it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued
+for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in
+making one prisoner. This was a young man in the dress of a peasant, who
+being badly mounted, was easily overtaken. On being brought before the
+Empecinado, the latter with no small surprize recognized a native of
+Aranda, named Pedro Gutierrez, who was one of the emissaries he had sent
+out two days previously to get information concerning the movements of
+the enemy.
+
+With pale cheek and faltering voice, the prisoner answered the
+Empecinado's interrogatories. It appears that he had been detected as a
+spy by the French, who had given him his choice between a halter and the
+betrayal of his countrymen and employers. With the fear of death before
+his eyes, he had consented to turn traitor.
+
+The deepest silence prevailed among the guerillas during his narrative,
+and remained unbroken for a full minute after he had concluded. The
+Empecinado's brow was black as thunder, and his features assumed an
+expression which the trembling wretch well knew how to interpret.
+
+"_Que podia hacer, se�ores_?" said the culprit, casting an appealing,
+imploring glance around him. "The rope was round my neck; I have an aged
+father and am his only support. Life is very sweet. What could I do?"
+
+"_Die_!" replied the Empecinado, in his deep stern voice--"Die like a
+man _then_, instead of dying like a dog _now_!"
+
+He turned his back upon him, and ten minutes later, the body of the
+unfortunate spy was dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree,
+and the guerillas marched off to seek another and a safer bivouac.
+
+A few days after this incident the other spies returned, and after
+receiving their report, and consulting with his lieutenant, Mariano
+Fuentes, the Empecinado broke up the little camp, and led his band in
+the direction of the _camino r�al_.
+
+Along that part of the high-road, from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which
+winds through the mountain range of Onrubias, an escort of fifty French
+dragoons was marching, about an hour before dusk, on an evening of early
+spring. Two carriages, and three or four heavily-laden carts, each drawn
+by half-a-dozen mules, composed the whole of the convoy; the value of
+which, however, might be deemed considerable, judging from the strength
+of the escort, and the precautions observed by the officer in command to
+avoid a surprise--precautions which were not of much avail; for, on
+reaching a spot where the road widened considerably, and was traversed
+by a broad ravine, the party was suddenly charged on either flank by
+double their number of guerillas. The dragoons made a gallant
+resistance, but it was a short one, for they had no room or time to form
+in any order, and were far overmatched in the hand-to-hand contest that
+ensued. With the very first who fled went a gentleman in civilian's
+garb, who sprang out of the most elegant of the two carriages, and
+mounting a fine Andalusian horse led by a groom, was off like the wind,
+disregarding the shrieks of his travelling companion, a female two or
+three-and-twenty years old, of great beauty, and very richly attired.
+The cries and alarm of the lady thus deserted were redoubled, when an
+instant later a guerilla of fierce aspect presented himself at the
+carriage-door.
+
+"Have no fear, se�ora," said the Empecinado, "you are in the hands of
+honourable men, and no harm shall be done you." And having by suchlike
+assurances succeeded in calming her terrors, he obtained from her some
+information as to the contents of the carts and carriages, as well as
+regarding herself and her late companion.
+
+The man who had abandoned her, and consulted his own safety by flying
+with the escort, was her husband, Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond
+merchant to the late King Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the unsettled
+state of things in Spain, he was hastening to take refuge in France,
+with his handsome wife and his great wealth--of the latter of which no
+inconsiderable portion was contained in the carriage, in the shape of
+caskets of jewellery, diamonds, and other valuables.
+
+Repairing to the neighbouring mountains, the guerillas proceeded to
+examine their booty, which the Empecinado permitted them to divide among
+themselves, with the exception of the carriage and its contents,
+including the lady, which he reserved for his own share.
+
+On the following day came letters from the French military governor of
+Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur Barbot, who had taken refuge in that
+town, and offered a large sum as ransom for his wife. To this
+application the Empecinado did not vouchsafe any answer, but marched off
+to his native village of Castrillo, taking with him jewels, carriage,
+and lady. The latter he established in the house of his brother Manuel,
+recommending her to the care of his sister-in-law, and commanding that
+she should be treated with all possible respect, and her wishes attended
+to on every point.
+
+The Empecinado's exultation at the success of his enterprize was great,
+but he little foresaw all the danger and trouble that his rich capture
+was hereafter to occasion him. He had become violently enamoured of his
+fair prisoner, and in order to have leisure to pay his court to her, he
+sent off his partida on a distant expedition under the command of
+Fuentes, and himself remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost to find
+favour in the eyes of the beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then in the
+prime of life, a remarkably handsome man, and notwithstanding that the
+French affected to treat him as a brigand, his courage and patriotism
+were admitted by the unprejudiced among all parties, and his bold and
+successful deeds had already procured him a degree of renown that was an
+additional recommendation of him to the fair sex. It may not, therefore,
+be deemed very surprising that, after the first few days of her
+captivity were passed, and she had become a little used to the novelty
+of her position, the lady began to consider the Empecinado with some
+degree of favour, and seemed not altogether disposed to be inconsolable
+in her widowhood. He on his part spared no pains to please her. His very
+nature seemed changed by the violence of his new passion; and so great
+was the metamorphosis that his best friends scarcely recognized him for
+the same man. He seemed totally to have forgotten the career to which he
+had devoted himself, and the hatred and war of extermination he had
+vowed against the French. The restless activity and spirit of enterprize
+which formed such distinguishing traits in his character, were
+completely lulled to sleep by the charms of the fair Barbot. Nor was the
+change in his external appearance less striking. Aware that the rude
+manners and attire of a guerilla were not likely to please the
+fastidious taste of a town-bred dame, he hastened to discard them. His
+rough bushy beard and mustaches were carefully trimmed and adjusted by
+the most expert barber of the neighbourhood; his sheepskin jacket, heavy
+boots, and jingling double-roweled spurs thrown aside, and in their
+place he assumed the national garb, so well adapted to show off a
+handsome person, and which, although now almost disused throughout
+Spain, far surpasses in elegance the prevailing costumes of the
+nineteenth century: a short light jacket of black velvet, and waistcoat
+of the richest silk, both profusely decorated with gold filigree
+buttons; purple velvet breeches fastened at the knee with bunches of
+ribands; silk stockings, and falling boots of chamois leather, by the
+most expert maker in Cordova; a crimson silk sash round his waist, and
+round his neck a silk handkerchief, of which the ends were drawn through
+a magnificent jewelled ring. A green velvet cap, ornamented with sables
+and silver, and an ample cloak trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of a
+commandant of French gendarmes, completed this picturesque costume.
+
+Thus attired, and mounted on a splendid horse, the Empecinado escorted
+the object of his new flame to all the f�tes and merry-makings of the
+surrounding country. Not a _romeria_ in the neighbouring villages, not a
+fair or a bull-fight in all the valley of the Duero, but were graced by
+the presence of Martin Diez and his dulcinea, whose fine horse and
+gallant equipment, but more especially the beauty of the rider, inspired
+universal admiration. As might be expected, many of those who had known
+the Empecinado a poor vine-dresser, became envious of his good fortune,
+and others who envied him not, were indignant at seeing him waste his
+time in such degrading effeminacy, instead of following up the career
+which he had so nobly begun. There was much murmuring, therefore, to
+which, however, he gave little heed; and several weeks had passed in the
+manner above described, when an incident occurred to rouse him from the
+sort of lethargy in which he was sunk.
+
+A despatch reached him from the Captain-General, Don Gregorio Cuesta,
+requiring his immediate presence at Ciudad Rodrigo, there to receive
+directions concerning the execution of a service of the greatest
+importance, and which was to be intrusted to him.
+
+This order had its origin in circumstances of which the Empecinado was
+totally ignorant. The jeweller Barbot, finding that neither large offers
+nor threats of punishment had any effect upon the Empecinado, who
+persisted in keeping his wife prisoner, made interest with the Duke of
+Infantado, then general of one of the Spanish armies, and besought him
+to exert his influence in favour of the captive lady, and to have her
+restored to her friends. The duke, who was a very important personage at
+the court of Charles the Fourth, and the favourite of Ferdinand the
+Seventh at the beginning of his reign, entertained a particular
+friendship for Barbot; and, if the _chronique scandaleuse_ of Madrid
+might be believed, a still more particular one for his wife. He
+immediately wrote to General Cuesta, desiring that the lady might be
+sent back to her husband without delay, as well as all the jewels and
+other spoil that had been seized by the Empecinado.
+
+With much difficulty did the guerilla make up his mind to abandon the
+inglorious position, and to go where duty called him. Strongly
+recommending his captive to his brother and sister-in-law, he set out
+for Ciudad Rodrigo, escorted by a sergeant and ten men of his partida.
+They had not proceeded half a mile from Castrillo, when, from behind a
+hedge bordering the road, a shot was fired, and the bullet slightly
+wounded the Empecinado's charger. Two of the escort pushed their horses
+through the hedge, and immediately returned, dragging between them a
+grey-haired old man, seventy years of age, who clutched in his wrinkled
+fingers a rusty carbine that had just been discharged.
+
+"He is surely mad!" exclaimed the Empecinado, gazing in astonishment at
+the venerable assassin. "_Dime, viejo_; do you know me? And why do you
+seek my life?"
+
+"_Si, si, te conozes_. You are the Empecinado--the bloody Empecinado.
+Give me back my Pedro, whom you murdered. _Ay di me! mi Pedrillo, te han
+matado!_"
+
+And the old man's frame quivered with rage, as he glared on the
+Empecinado with an expression of unutterable hate.
+
+One of the guerillas stepped forward--
+
+"'Tis old Gutierrez, the father of Pedro, who was hung in the Pi�ares de
+Coca, for betraying us to the French."
+
+"Throw his carbine into yonder pool, and leave the poor wretch," said
+the Empecinado; "his son deserved the death he met."
+
+"He missed his aim to-day, but he may point truer another time," said
+one of the men, half drawing a pistol from his holster.
+
+"Harm him not!" said the Empecinado sternly, and the party rode on.
+
+"_Maldito seas_!" screamed the old man, casting himself in the dust of
+the road, in a paroxysm of impotent fury. "_Maldito! Maldito! Ay de mi!
+mi Pedrillo!_"
+
+And his curses and lamentations continued till the guerillas were out of
+hearing.
+
+On arriving at Ciudad Rodrigo, the Empecinado went immediately to
+General Cuesta, who, although he did not receive him unkindly, could not
+but blame him greatly for the enormous crime he had committed in
+carrying off a lady who was distinguished by so mighty a personage as
+the Duke of Infantado. He told him it was absolutely necessary to devise
+some plan by which the Duke's anger might be appeased. Murat also had
+sent a message to the central junta, saying, that if satisfaction were
+not given, he would send troops to lay waste the whole district of
+Penafiel, in which Castrillo was situated; and it was probable, that if
+he had not done so already, it was because a large portion of the
+inhabitants of that district were believed to be well affected to the
+French. Without exactly telling him what he must do, the old general
+gave him a despatch for the _corregidor_ of Penafiel, and desired him to
+present himself before that functionary, and concert with him the
+measures to be taken.
+
+The Empecinado took his leave, and was quitting the governor's palace
+when he overtook at the door an _avogado_, who was a countryman of his,
+and whom he had left at Castrillo when he set out from that place. The
+sight of this man was a ray of light to the Empecinado, who immediately
+suspected that his enemies were intriguing against him. He proposed to
+the lawyer that they should walk to the inn, to which the latter
+consented. They had to traverse a lonely place, known by the name of San
+Francisco's Meadow, and on arriving there, behind the shelter of some
+walls, the Empecinado seized the advocate by the collar, and swore he
+would strangle him if he did not instantly confess what business had
+brought him to Ciudad Rodrigo, as well as all the plans or plots against
+the Empecinado to which he might be privy.
+
+The lawyer, who had known Diez from his childhood, and was fully aware
+of his desperate character and of his own peril, trembled for his life,
+and besought him earnestly to use no violence, for that he was willing
+to tell all he knew. Thereupon the Empecinado loosened his grasp, which
+had wellnigh throttled the poor avogado, and cocking a pistol, as a sort
+of warning to the other to tell the truth, bade him sit down beside him
+and proceed with his narrative.
+
+The lawyer informed him that the _ayuntamiento_ or corporation of
+Castrillo, and those of all the towns and villages of the district,
+found themselves in great trouble on account of the convoy he had
+intercepted, and more particularly of the lady whom he kept prisoner,
+and whose friends it appeared were persons of much influence with both
+contending parties, for that the junta and the French had alike demanded
+her liberty; and while the latter were about to send troops to put the
+whole country to fire and sword, the former, as well as the Spanish
+generals, had refused to afford them any protection against the
+consequences of her detention, and accused the ayuntamiento and the
+priests of encouraging the Empecinado to hold her in captivity. He
+himself had been sent to Ciudad Rodrigo to beg General Cuesta's advice,
+and the general had declared himself unable to assist them, but
+recommended them to restore the lady and treasure, if they did not wish
+the French to lay waste the country, and take by force the bone of
+contention.
+
+The Empecinado, suspecting that General Cuesta had not used all due
+frankness with him in this matter, handed to the lawyer the letter that
+had been given him for the corregidor of Penafiel, and compelled him,
+much against his will, to open and read it. Its contents coincided with
+what the avogado had told him; the general advising the corregidor to
+use every means to compromise the matter, rather than wait till the
+French should do themselves justice by the strong hand.
+
+Perceiving that, from various motives, every body was against him in
+this matter, the Empecinado bethought himself how he should get out of
+the scrape.
+
+"As an old friend and countryman, and more especially as a lawyer," said
+he to the avogado, "you are the most fitting man to give me advice in
+this difficulty. Tell me, then, what I ought to do, in order that our
+native town, which is innocent in the matter, should suffer no
+prejudice."
+
+"You speak now like a sensible man," replied the other, "and as a friend
+will I advise you. Let us immediately set off to Penafiel, deliver the
+general's letter to the corregidor, and take him with us to Castrillo.
+There, for form's sake, an examination of your conduct in the affair can
+take place. You shall give up the jewels, the carriage, and the lady,
+and set off immediately to join your partida."
+
+"To the greater part of that I willingly agree," said the Empecinado.
+"The jewels are buried in the cellar, and the carriage is in the stable.
+Take both when you list. But as to the lady, before I give her up, I
+will give up my own soul. She is my property; I took her in fair fight,
+and at the risk of my life."
+
+"You will think better of it before we get to Castrillo," replied the
+lawyer.
+
+The Empecinado shook his head, but led the way to the inn, where they
+took horse, and the next day reached Penafiel, whence they set out the
+following morning for Castrillo, which is a couple of leagues further,
+accompanied by the corregidor, his secretary, and two alguazils. The
+Empecinado was induced to leave his escort at Penafiel, in order that
+the sort of _pro form�_ investigation which was to be gone through might
+not appear to have taken place under circumstances of intimidation. The
+avogado started a couple of hours earlier than the rest of the party, to
+have things in readiness, so that the proceedings might be got through
+as rapidly as possible.
+
+It was about eight o'clock on a fine summer's morning that the
+Empecinado and his companions reached Castrillo. As they entered the
+town, an old mendicant, who was lying curled up like a dog in the
+sunshine under the porch of a house, lifted his head at the noise of the
+horses. As his eyes rested upon Diez, he made a bound forward with an
+agility extraordinary in one of his years, and fell almost under the
+feet of the Empecinado's horse, making the startled animal spring aside
+with a violence and suddenness sufficient to unhorse many a less
+practised rider than the one who bestrode him. The Empecinado lifted his
+whip in anger, but the old man, who had risen to his feet, showed no
+sign of fear, and as he stood in the middle of the road, and immediately
+in the path of the Empecinado, the latter recognized the wild features
+and long grey hair of old Gutierrez.
+
+"_Maldito seas_!" cried the old man, extending his arms towards the
+guerilla. "Murderer! the hour of vengeance is nigh. I saw it in my
+dreams. My Pedrillo showed me his assassin trampled under the feet of
+horses. _Asesino! Venga la hora de tu muerte!_"
+
+And the old man, who was half crazed by his misfortunes, relapsed into
+an incoherent strain of lamentations for his son, and curses upon him
+whom he called his murderer.
+
+The Empecinado, who, on recognizing old Gutierrez, had lowered his
+riding-whip, and listened unmoved to his curses and predictions, rode
+forward, explaining as he went, to the astonished corregidor, the scene
+that had just occurred. A little further on he separated from his
+companions, giving them rendezvous at ten o'clock at the house of the
+ayuntamiento. Proceeding to his brother's dwelling, he paid a visit to
+Madame Barbot, breakfasted with her, and then prepared to keep his
+appointment. He placed a brace of pistols and a poniard in his belt, and
+taking a loaded _trabuco_ or blunderbuss, in his hand, wrapped himself
+in his cloak so as to conceal his weapons, and repaired to the
+town-hall.
+
+He found the tribunal already installed, and every thing in readiness.
+Saluting the corregidor, he began pacing up and down the room without
+taking off his cloak. The corregidor repeatedly urged him to be seated,
+but he refused, and continued his walk, replying to the questions that
+were put to him, his answers to which were duly written down. About a
+quarter of an hour had passed in this manner, when a noise of feet and
+talking was heard in the street, and the Empecinado, as he passed one of
+the windows that looked out upon the _plaza_, saw, with no very
+comfortable feelings, that a number of armed peasants were entering the
+town hall. He perceived that he was betrayed, but his presence of mind
+stood his friend, and with his usual promptitude, he in a moment decided
+how he should act. Without allowing it to appear that he had any
+suspicion of what was going on, he walked to the door of the audience
+chamber, and before any one could interfere, shut and locked it. Then
+stepping up to the corregidor, he threw off his cloak, and presented his
+trabuco at the magistrate's head.
+
+"Se�or Corregidor," said he, "this is not our agreement, but a base act
+of treachery. Commend yourself to God, for you are about to die."
+
+The corregidor was so dreadfully terrified at these words, and at the
+menacing action of the Empecinado, that he swooned away, and fell down
+under the table--the escribano fled into an adjoining chamber, and
+concealed himself under a bed--while the alguazils, trembling with fear,
+threw themselves upon their knees, and petitioned for mercy. The
+Empecinado, finding himself with so little trouble master of the field
+of battle, took possession of the papers that were lying upon the table,
+and, unlocking the door, proceeded to the principal staircase, which he
+found occupied by inhabitants of the town, armed with muskets and
+fowling-pieces. Placing his blunderbuss under his arm, with his hand
+upon the trigger, "Make way!" cried he; "the first who moves a finger
+may reckon upon the contents of my trabuco." His menace and resolute
+character produced the desired effect; a passage was opened, and he left
+the house in triumph. On reaching the street, however, he found a great
+crowd of men, women, and even children, assembled, who occupied the
+plaza and all the adjacent streets, and received him with loud cries of
+"Death to the Empecinado! _Muera el ladron y mal Cristiano_!" The armed
+men whom he had left in the town-house fired several shots at him from
+the windows, but nobody dared to lay hands upon him, as he marched
+slowly and steadily through the crowd, trabuco in hand, and casting
+glances on either side that made those upon whom they fell shrink
+involuntarily backwards.
+
+On the low roof of one of the houses of the plaza, that formed the angle
+of the Calle de la Cruz, or street of the cross, old Gutierrez had taken
+his station. With the fire of insanity in his bloodshot eyes, and a grin
+of exultation upon his wasted features, he witnessed the persecution of
+the Empecinado, and while his ears drank in the yells and hootings of
+the multitude, he added his shrill cracked voice to the uproar. When the
+shots were fired from the town-hall, he bounded and capered upon the
+platform, clapping his meagre fingers together in ecstasy; but as the
+Empecinado got further from the house, and the firing was discontinued,
+an expression of anxiety replaced the look of triumph that had lighted
+up the old maniac's face. Diez still moved on unhurt, and was now within
+a few paces of the house on which Gutierrez had perched himself. The old
+man's uneasiness increased. "Va a escapar!" muttered he to himself;
+"they will let him escape. Oh, if I had a gun, my Pedrillo would soon be
+avenged!"
+
+The Empecinado was passing under the house. A sudden thought struck
+Gutierrez. Stamping with his foot, he broke two or three of the tiles on
+which he was standing, and snatching up a large heavy fragment, he
+leaned over the edge of the roof to get a full view of the Empecinado,
+who was at that moment leaving the plaza and entering the Calle de la
+Cruz. In five seconds more he would be out of sight. As it was, it was
+only by leaning very far forward that Gutierrez could see him, walking
+calmly along, and keeping at bay the angry but cowardly mob that yelped
+at his heels, like a parcel of village curs pursuing a bloodhound, whose
+look alone prevents their too near approach.
+
+Throwing his left arm round a chimney, the old man swung himself
+forward, and with all the force that he possessed, hurled the tile at
+the object of his hate. The missile struck the Empecinado upon the
+temple, and he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the ground.
+
+"_Viva_!" screamed Gutierrez; but a cry of agony followed the shout of
+exultation. The chimney by which the old man supported himself was loose
+and crumbling, and totally unfit to bear his weight as he hung on by it,
+and leaned forward to gloat over his vengeance. It tottered for a
+moment, and then fell with a crash into the street. The height was not
+great, but the pavement was sharp and uneven; the old man pitched upon
+his head, and when lifted up was already a corpse.
+
+When the mob saw the Empecinado fall, they threw themselves upon him
+with as much ferocity as they had previously shown cowardice, and beat
+and ill-treated him in every possible manner. Not satisfied with that,
+they bound him hand and foot, and pushed him through a cellar window,
+throwing after him stones, and every thing they could find lying about
+the street. At last, wearied by their own brutality, they left him for
+dead, and he remained in that state till nightfall, when the corregidor
+and the ayuntamiento proceeded to inspect his body, in order to certify
+his death, and have him buried. When he was brought out of the cellar,
+however, they perceived he still breathed, and sent for a surgeon, and
+also for a priest to administer the last sacraments. They then carried
+him upon a ladder to the _posito_, or public granary, a strong building,
+where they considered he would be in safety, and put him to bed, bathed
+in blood and covered with wounds and bruises.
+
+The corregidor, fearing that the news of the riot, and of the death of
+the Empecinado, would reach Penafiel, and that the escort which had been
+left there, and the many partizans that Diez had in that town, would
+come over to Castrillo to avenge his death, persuaded one of the cur�s
+or parish priests of the latter place, to go over to Penafiel in all
+haste, and, counterfeiting great alarm, to spread the report that the
+French had entered Castrillo, seized the Empecinado, and carried him off
+to Aranda. This was accordingly done; and the Empecinado's escort being
+made aware of the vicinity of the French and the risk they ran,
+immediately mounted their horses and marched to join Mariano Fuentes,
+accompanied by upwards of fifty young men, all partizans of the
+Empecinado, and eager to revenge him. This matter being arranged, the
+corregidor had the jewels that were buried in the cellar of Manuel Diez
+dug up, and having taken possession of them, and installed Madame Barbot
+with all due attention in one of the principal houses of the town, he
+forwarded a report to General Cuesta of all that had occurred. The
+general immediately sent an escort to conduct the lady and the treasure
+to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ordered that as soon as the Empecinado was in a
+state to be moved, he should also be sent under a strong guard to that
+city.
+
+Meanwhile, the Empecinado's vigorous constitution triumphed over the
+injuries he had received, and he was getting so rapidly better, that for
+his safer custody the corregidor thought it necessary to have him
+heavily ironed. Deeming it impossible he should escape, and there being
+no troops in the village, no sentry was placed over him, so that at
+night his friends were able to hold discourse with him through the
+grating of one of the windows of the posito. In this manner he contrived
+to send a message to his brother Manuel, who, having also got into
+trouble on account of Madame Barbot's detention, had been compelled to
+take refuge in the mountains of Bilbuena, three leagues from Castrillo.
+Manuel took advantage of a dark night to steal into the town in
+disguise, and to speak with the Empecinado. He informed him that the
+superior of the Bernardine Monastery, in the Sierra de Balbuena, had
+been advised that it was the intention of the Empecinado's enemies to
+deliver him over to the French, in order that they might shoot him. The
+Empecinado replied, that he strongly suspected there was some such plot
+in agitation, and desired his brother to seek out Mariano Fuentes, and
+order him to march his band into the neighbourhood of Castrillo, and
+that on their arrival he would send them word what to do.
+
+Eight days elapsed, and the Empecinado was now completely cured of his
+wounds, so that he was in much apprehension lest he should be sent off
+to Ciudad Rodrio before the arrival of Fuentes. On the eighth night,
+however, his brother came to the window, and informed him that the
+partida was in the neighbourhood, and only waited his orders to march
+upon Castrillo, rescue him, and revenge the treatment he had received.
+This the Empecinado strongly enjoined them not to do, but desired his
+brother to come to his prison door at two o'clock the next morning with
+a led horse, and that he had the means to set himself at liberty. Manuel
+Diez did as he was ordered, wondering, however, in what manner the
+Empecinado intended to get out of the posito, which was a solidly
+constructed edifice with a massive door and grated windows. But the next
+night, when the guerilla heard the horses approaching his prison, he
+seized the door by an iron bar that traversed it on the inner side, and,
+exerting his prodigious strength, tore it off the hinges as though it
+had been of pasteboard. His feet being fastened together by a chain, he
+was compelled to sit sideways upon the saddle; but so elated was he to
+find himself once more at liberty that he pushed his horse into a
+gallop, and with his fetters clanking as he went, dashed through the
+streets of Castrillo, to the astonishment and consternation of the
+inhabitants, who knew not what devil's dance was going on in their
+usually quiet town.
+
+At Olmos, a village a quarter of a league from Castrillo, the fugitives
+halted, and roused a smith, who knocked off the Empecinado's irons.
+After a short rest at the house of an approved friend they remounted
+their horses, and a little after daybreak reached the place where
+Fuentes had taken up his bivouac. The Empecinado was received with great
+rejoicing, and immediately resumed the command. He passed a review of
+his band, and found it consisted of two hundred and twenty men, all well
+mounted and armed.
+
+Great was the alarm of the inhabitants of Castrillo when they found the
+prison broken open and the prisoner gone; and their terror was increased
+a hundred-fold, when a few hours later news was brought that the
+Empecinado was marching towards the town at the head of a strong body of
+cavalry. Some concealed themselves in cellars and suchlike
+hiding-places, others left the town and fled to the neighbouring woods;
+but the majority, despairing of escape by human means from the terrible
+anger of the Empecinado, shut themselves up in their houses, closed the
+doors and windows, and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance from the
+impending evil. Never had there been seen in Castrillo such a counting
+of rosaries and beating of breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling of
+aves and paters, as upon that morning.
+
+At noon the Empecinado entered the town at the head of his band,
+trumpets sounding, and the men firing their pistols and carbines into
+the air, in sign of joy at having recovered their leader. Forming up the
+partida in the market-place, the Empecinado sent for the corregidor and
+other authorities, who presented themselves before him pale and
+trembling, and fully believing they had not five minutes to live.
+
+"Fear nothing!" said the Empecinado, observing their terror. "It is
+certain I have met foul treatment at your hands; and it was the harder
+to bear coming from my own countrymen and townsfolk. But you have been
+misled, and will one day repent your conduct. I have forgotten your ill
+usage, and only remember the poverty of my native town, and the misery
+in which this war has plunged many of its inhabitants."
+
+So saying, he delivered to the alcalde and the parish priests a hundred
+ounces of gold for the relief of the poor and support of the hospital,
+and ten more to be spent in a _novillada_, or bull-bait and festival for
+the whole town. Cutting short their thanks and excuses, he left
+Castrillo and marched to the village of Sacramenia, where he quartered
+his men, and, accompanied by Mariano Fuentes, went to pay a visit to a
+neighbouring monastery. The monks received him with open arms and a
+hearty welcome, hailing him as the main prop of the cause of
+independence in Old Castile. They sat down to dinner in the refectory;
+and the conversation turning upon the state of the country, the
+Empecinado expressed his unwillingness to carry on the war in that
+province, on account of the little confidence he could place in the
+inhabitants, so many of whom had become _afrancesados_; and as a proof
+of this, he related all that had occurred to him at Castrillo. Upon
+hearing this the abbot, who was a man distinguished for his talents and
+patriotism, recommended Diez to lead his band to New Castile, where he
+would not have to encounter the persecutions of those who, having known
+him poor and insignificant, envied him his good fortune, and sought to
+throw obstacles in his path. He offered to get him letters from the
+general of the order of San Bernardo to the superiors of the various
+monasteries, in order that he might receive such assistance and support
+as they could give, and he might chance to require.
+
+"No one is a prophet in his own country," said the good father; "Mahomet
+in his native town of Medina met with the same ill-treatment that you,
+Martin Diez, have encountered in the place of your birth. Abandon, then,
+a province which does not recognize your value, and go where your
+reputation has already preceded you, to defend the holy cause of Spain
+and of religion."
+
+Struck by the justice of this reasoning, the Empecinado resolved to
+change the scene of his operations, and the next morning marched his
+squadron in the direction of New Castile.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.
+
+HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME.
+
+
+After Jack and Martin parted company, you may remember that Jack, who
+had turned his face northward, got into high favour with the landlord of
+the North Farm Estate, who, being mightily edified with his discourses
+and sanctimonious demeanour, and not aware of his having been mad
+before, or being, perchance, just as mad himself--took him in, made much
+of him, gave him a cottage upon his manor to live in, and built him a
+tabernacle in which he might hold forth when the spirit moved him. In
+process of time, however, it happened that North Farm and the Albion
+Estates came into the possession of one proprietor, Esquire Bull, in
+whose house Martin had always been retained as domestic chaplain--at
+least, ever since that desperate scuffle with Lord Peter and his crew,
+when he tried to land some Spanish smugglers on the coast, for the
+purpose of carrying off Martin, and establishing himself in Squire
+Bull's house in his stead. Squire Bull, who was a man of his word, and
+wished to leave all things on North Farm as he found them, Jack and his
+tabernacle included, undertook at once to pay him a reasonable salary,
+with the free use of his house and tabernacle to him and his heirs for
+ever. But knowing that on a previous occasion, (which you may
+recollect,[46]) Jack's melancholy had gone so far that he had hanged
+himself, though he was cut down just before giving up the ghost, and by
+dint of bloodletting and galvanism, had been revived; and also that,
+notwithstanding his periodical fits and hallucinations, he could beat
+even Peter himself, who had been his instructor, for cunning and
+casuistry, he took care that, before Jack was allowed to take possession
+under his new lease, every thing should be made square between them. So
+he had the terms of their indenture all written out on parchment,
+signed, sealed, and delivered before witnesses, and even got a private
+Act of Parliament carried through, for the purpose of making every thing
+between them more secure. And well it was for the Squire that he
+bethought himself of his precaution in time, as you will afterwards
+hear.
+
+     [46] John Bull, Part IV. ch. ii.
+
+This union of the two entailed properties in the Bull family, brought
+Jack and Martin a good deal more into one anothers' company than they
+had formerly been; and 'twas clear, that Jack, who had now got somewhat
+ashamed of his threadbare raiment, and tired of his spare oatmeal diet,
+was mightily struck with the dignified air and comfortable look of
+Martin, and grudged him the frequency with which he was invited to
+Squire Bull's table. By degrees, he began to conform his own uncouth
+manner to an imitation of his. He wore a better coat, which he no longer
+rubbed against the wall to take the gloss from off it; he ceased to
+interlard all his ordinary speech with texts of Scripture; his snuffle
+abated audibly; he gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody, and lost, in
+a great measure, his aversion to Christmas tarts and plum-pudding. After
+a time, he might even be seen with a fishing-rod over his shoulder; then
+he contrived sundry improvements in gun-locks and double-barrels, for
+which he took out a patent, and in fact did not entirely escape the
+suspicion of being a poacher. He held assemblies in his house, where at
+times he allowed a little singing; nay, on one occasion, a son of
+his--for he had now a large family--was found accompanying a psalm-tune
+upon the (barrel) organ, and it was rumoured about the house, that Jack,
+though he thought it prudent to disclaim this overture, had no great
+objection to it. Be that as it may, it is certain, that instead of his
+old peaked hat and band, Jack latterly took to wearing broad-brimmed
+beavers, which he was seen trying to mould into a spout-like shape, much
+resembling a shovel. And so far had the transformation gone, that the
+Vicar of Fudley, meeting him one evening walking to an assembly arrayed
+in a court coat, with this extraordinary hat upon his head, and a pair
+of silver buckles in his shoes, pulled off his hat to him at a little
+distance, mistaking him for a near relation of Martin, if not for Martin
+himself.
+
+There was no great harm you will think in all these whims, and for my
+own part, I believe that Jack was never so honest a fellow as he was
+during this time, when he was profiting by Martin's example. He kept his
+own place, ruling his family in a quiet and orderly way, without
+disturbing the peace of his neighbours: and seemed to have forgotten his
+old tricks of setting people by the ears, and picking quarrels with
+constables and justices of the peace. Howbeit, those who knew him
+longest and best, always said that this was too good to last: that with
+him these intervals of sobriety and moderation were always the prelude
+to a violent access of his peculiar malady, and that by-and-bye he would
+break out again, and that there would be the devil to pay, and no pitch
+hot.
+
+It so happened that Squire Bull had a good many small village schools on
+his Estate of North Farm, to which the former proprietors had always
+been in the custom of appointing the ushers themselves; and much to
+Jack's annoyance, when Squire Bull succeeded, the latter had taken care
+in his bargain with him, to keep the right of appointment to these in
+his own hand. But, at the same time, he told Jack fairly, that as he had
+no wish to dabble in Latin, Greek, or school learning himself, he left
+him at full liberty to say whether those whom he appointed were fit for
+the situation or not--so that if they turned out to be ignoramuses,
+deboshed fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack had only to say so on good
+grounds, and they were forthwith sent adrift. Matters went on for a time
+very smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was even said that Jack was
+inclined to carry his complaisance rather far, and after a time seldom
+troubled himself much about the usher's qualifications, provided his
+credentials were all right. He might ask the young fellow, who presented
+John's commission, perhaps, what was the first letter of the Greek
+alphabet? what was Latin for beef and greens? or where Moses was when
+the candle was blown out?--but if the candidate answered these questions
+correctly, and if there were no scandal or _fama clamosa_ against him,
+as Jack in his peculiar jargon expressed it, he generally shook hands
+with him at once, put the key of the schoolhouse in his hand, and told
+him civilly to walk up-stairs.
+
+The truth was, however, that in this respect Jack had little reason to
+complain; for though the Squire, in the outset, may not have been very
+particular as to his choice, and it was said once or twice gave an
+ushership to an old exciseman, on account of his skill in mensuration of
+fluids, he had latterly become very particular, and would not hear of
+settling any body as schoolmaster on North Farm, who did not come to him
+with an excellent character, certified by two or three respectable
+householders at least. But, strangely enough, it was observed that just
+in proportion as the Squire became more considerate, Jack became more
+arrogant, pestilent, and troublesome. Now-a-days he was always
+discovering some objection to the Squire's appointments: one usher, it
+seemed, spoke too low, another too loud, one used an ear-trumpet,
+another a pair of grass-green spectacles; one had no sufficient gifts
+for flogging; another flogged either too high or too low--(for Jack was
+like the deserter, there was no pleasing him as to the mode of
+conducting the operation;) and, finally, another was rejected because he
+was unacquainted with the vernacular of Ossian--to the great injury and
+damage, as was alleged, of two Highland chairmen, who at an advanced
+period of life were completing their education in the school in
+question. At first Squire Bull, honest gentleman, had given in to these
+strange humours on the part of Jack, believing that this new-born zeal
+on his part was in the main conscientious, though he could not help
+thinking it at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous. He had
+even gone so far, occasionally, as to send Jack a list of those to whom
+he proposed giving the usherships, accompanied with a polite note, in
+some such terms as these, "Squire Bull presents his respects, and begs
+his good friend Jack will read over the enclosed list, and take the
+trouble of choosing for himself;" a request with which Jack was always
+ready to comply. And, further, as Jack had always a great hankering
+after little-goes and penny subscriptions of every kind, and was
+eternally trumpeting forth some new nostrum or _scheme_ of this kind, as
+he used to call it, the Squire had been prevailed upon to purchase from
+him a good many tickets for these schemes from time to time, for which
+he always paid in hard cash, though I have never heard that any of them
+turned up prizes, except it may have been to Jack himself.
+
+Jack, as we have said, grew bolder as the Squire became more complying,
+thinking that, in the matter of these appointments, as he had once got
+his hand in, it would be his own fault if he could not contrive to
+wriggle in his whole body. It so happened, too, that just about the very
+time that one of John's usherships became vacant, one of those
+atrabilious and hypochondriac fits came over Jack, with which, as we
+have said, he was periodically afflicted, and which, though they
+certainly unsettled his brain a little, only served, as in the case of
+other lunatics, to render him, during the paroxysm, more cunning,
+inventive, and mischievous. After moving about in a moping way for a day
+or two--mumbling in corners, and pretending to fall on his knees, in his
+old fashion, in the midst of the street, he suddenly got up, flung his
+broad-brimmed beaver into the kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt, so
+as to expose his large ears as of old, ran home, pulled his rusty black
+doublet out of the chest where it had lain for years, squeezing it on as
+he best could--for he had got somewhat corpulent in the mean time--and
+thus transfigured, he set out to consult the village attorney, with whom
+it was observed he remained closeted for several hours, turning over
+Burns' Justice, and perusing an office-copy of his indenture with the
+Squire--a planetary conjunction from which those who were astrologically
+given boded no good.
+
+What passed between these worthies on this occasion--whether the
+attorney really persuaded Jack that, if he set about it, he would
+undertake to find him a flaw in his contract with Squire Bull, which
+would enable him to take the matter of the usherships into his own hand,
+and to do as he pleased; or whether Jack--as he seemed afterwards to
+admit in private--believed nothing of what the attorney told him, but
+was resolved to take advantage of the Squire's good-nature, and to run
+all risks as to the result, 'tis hard to say. Certain it was, however,
+that Jack posted down at once from the attorney's chamber to the village
+school, which happened to be then vacant, and gathering the elder boys
+about him, he told them he had reason to believe the Squire was about to
+send them another usher, very different from the last, who was a mortal
+enemy to marbles, pitch-and-toss, chuck-farthing, ginger-bread, and half
+holydays; with a corresponding liking to long tasks and short commons;
+that the use of the cane would be regularly taught, along with that of
+the globes, accompanied with cuts and other practical demonstrations;
+that the only chance of escaping this visitation was to take a bold
+line, and show face to the usher at once, since otherwise the chance
+was, that at no distant period they might be obliged to do the very
+reverse.
+
+Jack further reasoned the matter with the boys learnedly, somewhat in
+this fashion--"That as no one could have so strong an interest in the
+matter, so no one could be so good a judge of the qualifications of the
+schoolmaster as the schoolboy; that the close and intimate relation
+between these parties was of the nature of a mutual contract, in the
+formation of which both had an equal right to be consulted; so that,
+without mutual consent, or, as it were, a harmonious call by the boys,
+there could be no valid ushership, but a mere usurpation of the power of
+the tawse, and unwarrantable administration of the birchen twig; that,
+further, this latter power involved a fundamental feature, in which they
+could not but feel they had all a deep interest--and which, he might
+say, lay at the bottom of the whole question; that he himself perfectly
+remembered that, in former days, the schoolboys had always exercised
+this privilege, which he held to be equally salutary and constitutional;
+and that he would, at his leisure, show them a private memorandum-book
+of his own, in which, though he had hitherto said nothing about it, he
+had found an entry to that effect made some thirty years before. In
+short, he told them, if they did not wish to be rode over rough-shod,
+they must stand up boldly for themselves, and try to get all the schools
+in the neighbourhood to join them, if necessary, in a regular
+barring-out, or general procession, in which they were to appear with
+flags and banners, bearing such inscriptions as the following: "_Pro
+aris et focis_"--"Liberty is like the air we breathe," &c. &c., and,
+lastly, in large gilt capitals--"_No usher to be intruded into any
+school contrary to the will of the scholars in schoolroom assembled_."
+And, in short, that this process was to be repeated until they succeeded
+in getting quit of Squire Bull's usher, and getting an usher who would
+flog them with all the forbearance and reserve with which Sancho
+chastised his own flesh while engaged in the process of disenchanting
+Dulcinea del Toboso. At the same time, with that cunning which was
+natural to him, Jack took care to let the scholars know that _his_ name
+was not to be mentioned in the transaction; and that, if they were asked
+any questions, they must be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for that
+matter, that they objected to John's usher from no personal dislike to
+the man himself, and without having received fee or reward, in the shape
+of apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar, or sweetmeats
+whatever--or sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or other current coin
+of the realm.
+
+It will be readily imagined that this oration of Jack, pronounced as it
+was with some of his old unction, and accompanied with that miraculous
+and subtle twist of the tongue which we have described in a former
+chapter,[47] produced exactly the effect upon his audience which might
+be expected. The boys were delighted--tossed up their caps--gave Jack
+three cheers, and told him if he stood by them they would stand by him,
+and that they were much mistaken if they did not contrive to make the
+schoolhouse too hot for any usher whom Squire Bull might think fit to
+send them.
+
+     [47] Tale of a Tub. Sect. xi.
+
+It happened not long after, as Jack had anticipated, that one morning a
+young man called upon with a letter from the Squire, intimating that he
+had named him to the vacant ushership; and requesting Jack to examine
+into his qualifications as usual. Jack begged him to be seated, and
+(having privately sent a message to the schoolboys) continued to
+entertain him with enquiries as to John's health and the state of the
+weather, till he heard, by the noise in the court, that the boys had
+arrived. In they marched accordingly, armed with horn-books, primers,
+slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales, and copy-books, taking up their station
+near the writing-desk. The young usher-elect, though he thought this a
+whimsical exhibition, supposed that the urchins had been brought there
+only to do honour to his examination, and accordingly begged Jack, as he
+was in a hurry, to proceed. "Fair and softly, young man," said Jack, in
+his blandest tones; "we must first see what these intelligent young
+gentlemen have got to say to that. Tom, my fine fellow, here is a
+gentleman sent by Squire Bull to be your usher. What do you say to him?"
+"I don't like him," said Tom. "May I venture to ask why?" said the
+usher, putting in a word. "Don't like him," repeated Tom. "Don't like
+him neither," said Dick. "And no mistake," added Peter, with a grin,
+which immediately circulated round the school. "It is quite impossible,"
+said Jack, "under existing circumstances, that the matter can proceed
+any further; it is plain the school can never be edified by such an
+usher. But, stop, that there may be no misconception on the subject.
+Here you, Smith--do you really mean to say, on soul and conscience, you
+don't think this respectable gentleman can do you any good?" Of course,
+Smith stated that his mind was quite made up on the subject. "Come here,
+Jenkins," said Jack, beckoning to another boy; "tell the truth
+now--honour bright, remember. Has any body given or promised you any
+apples, parliament, or other sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to vote
+against the usher?" Jenkins, who had just wiped his lips of the last
+remains of a gingerbread cake, which somehow or other had dropped into
+his pocket by accident, protested, on his honour, that he was quite
+above such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated purely by a conscientious
+zeal for the cause of flogging all over the world. "The scruples of
+these intelligent and ingenuous youths," said John, turning to the
+usher, "must, in conscience, receive effect; the law, as laid down in my
+copy of Squire Bull's own contract, is this--'That noe ushere be
+yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in
+schoole-roome assembled.' So, with your permission, we will adjourn the
+consideration of the case till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas, if
+that be more convenient." And, so saying, he left John's letter lying on
+the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished
+usher.
+
+Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and
+mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and
+chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had
+really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old
+his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to
+the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected,
+and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an
+extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain--generating
+therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations--than to any
+settled intention on Jack's part to pick a quarrel with him or evade
+performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not
+under the influence of hypochondria. And having this notion as to Jack's
+motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village
+lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of
+purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment--and without resorting to a
+strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended
+him to adopt--he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours,
+which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries.
+"I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy
+into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore
+him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire
+it, before the Justices of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred to one but
+he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a
+decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when
+he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit
+with a good grace.'"
+
+So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the
+usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings,
+who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused
+performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day
+appointed, attended by the attorney--though for that matter he might
+have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all
+equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills
+and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect
+of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting
+distinctions and Jesuistical casuistries, notwithstanding his dislike to
+the man himself, he had a certain admiration, founded on a secret
+affinity of nature. Indeed it was wonderful to observe how, with all
+Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended, he took after him in so many
+points--insomuch that at times, their look, voice, manner, and way of
+thinking, were so closely alike, that those who knew them best might
+very well have mistaken them for each other. The usher having produced
+the Squire's copy of the indenture, pointed out the clause by which Jack
+became bound to examine and admit to the schools on North Farm any
+qualified usher whom the Squire might send--as the condition on which he
+was to retain his right to the tabernacle and his own mansion upon the
+Farm--at the same time showing Jack's seal and signature at the bottom
+of the deed. Jack, being called upon by the justices to show cause,
+pulled out of his pocket an old memorandum-book--very greasy, musty, and
+ill-flavoured--and which, from the quantity of dust and cobwebs with
+which it was overlaid, had obviously been lying on the shelf for half a
+century at least. This he placed in the hands of his friend Snacks the
+attorney, pointing out to him a page or two which he had marked with his
+thumb nail, as appropriate to the matter in hand. And there, to be sure,
+was to be found, among a quantity of other nostrums, recipes, cooking
+receipts, prescriptions, and omnium-gatherums of all kinds, an entry to
+this effect:--"That no ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye
+wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled." Whereupon the
+attorney maintained, that, as this memorandum-book of Jack's was plainly
+of older date than the indenture, and had evidently been seen by the
+Squire at or prior to the time of signing, as appeared from some of the
+entries which it contained being incorporated in the deed, it must be
+presumed, that its whole contents, though not to be found in the
+indenture _per expressum_, or _totidem verbis_, were yet included
+therein _implicitly_, or in a latent form, inasmuch as they were not
+_per expressum_ excluded therefrom;--this being, as you will recollect,
+precisely the argument which Jack had borrowed from Peter, when the
+latter construed their father's will in the question as to the
+lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots; and very much of the same
+kind with that celebrated thesis which Peter afterwards maintained in
+the matter of the brown loaf. And though he was obliged to admit (what
+indeed from the very look of the book he could not well dispute) that no
+such rule had ever been known or acted upon--and on the contrary that
+Jack, until this last occasion, had always admitted the Squire's ushers
+without objection whatsoever; yet he contended vehemently, that now that
+his conscience was awakened on the subject, the past must be laid out of
+view; and that the old memorandum-book, as part and parcel of the
+indenture itself, must receive effect; and farther, that whether he,
+Jack, was right or wrong in this matter, the Justices had no right to
+interfere with them.
+
+But the Justices, on looking into this antiquated document, found that,
+besides this notandum, the memorandum-book contained a number of other
+entries of a very extraordinary kind--such, for instance, as that Martin
+was no better than he should be, and ought to be put down speedily: that
+Squire Bull had no more right to nominate ushers than he had to be Khan
+of Tartary: that that right belonged exclusively to Jack himself, or to
+the schoolboys under Jack's control and direction: that Jack was to have
+the sole right of laying down rules for his own government, and of
+enforcing them against himself by the necessary compulsitors, if the
+case should arise; thus, that Jack should have full powers to censure,
+fine, punish, flog, flay, banish, imprison, or set himself in the stocks
+as often as he should think fit; but that whether Jack did right or
+wrong, in any given case, Jack was himself to be the sole judge, and
+neither Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of the Peace was to have one
+word to say to him or his proceedings in the matter: on the contrary,
+that any such interference on their part, was to be regarded as a high
+grievance and misdemeanour on their part, for which Jack was to be
+entitled at the least to read them a lecture from the writing-desk, and
+shut the schoolroom door in their own or their children's face.
+
+There were many other whimsical and extravagant things contained in this
+private note-book, so much so, that it was evident no man in his senses
+could ever have intended to make them part of his bargain with Jack. But
+the matter was put beyond a doubt by the usher producing the original
+draft of the indenture, on which some of these crotchets, including this
+fancy about the right of the schoolboys to reject the usher if they did
+not like him, had been _interlined_ in Jack's hand: but all of which the
+Squire, on revising the deed, had scored out with his own pen, adding in
+the margin, opposite to the very passage, the words, in italics--"_See
+him damned first.--J.B._" And as it could not be disputed that Jack and
+the Squire ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting all this
+nonsense--the Justices had no hesitation in holding, that Jack's private
+memorandum-book, even if he had always carried it in his breeches
+pocket, and quoted it on all occasions, instead of leaving it--as it was
+plain he had done--for many a long year, in some forgotten corner of his
+trunk or lumber-room, could no more affect the construction of the
+indenture between himself and Squire, or afford him any defence against
+performance of his part of that indenture, than if he had founded on the
+statutes of Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug, Fee-Faw-Fum, or any
+other Emperor of China for the time being. And so, after hearing very
+deliberately all that the attorney for Jack had to say to the contrary,
+they decided that Jack must forthwith proceed to examine the usher, and
+give him possession, if qualified, of the schoolhouse and other
+appurtenances; or else make up his mind to a thundering action of
+damages if he did not.
+
+The Justices thought that Jack, on hearing the case fairly stated, and
+their opinion given against him, with a long string of cases in point,
+would yield, and give the usher possession in the usual way; but no: no
+sooner was the sentence written out than Jack entered an appeal to the
+Quarter-sessions. There the whole matter was heard over again, at great
+length, before a full bench; but after Jack and his attorney had spoken
+till they were tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a moment's
+hesitation, confirmed the sentence of the Justices, with costs.
+
+Jack, who had blustered exceedingly as to his chances of bamboozling the
+Quarter-sessions, and quashing the sentence of the Justices, looked
+certainly not a little discomfited at the result of his appeal. For some
+days after, he was observed to walk about looking gloomy and
+disheartened, and was heard to say to some of his family, that he began
+to think matters had really gone too far between him and his good friend
+the Squire, to whom he owed his bread; that, on second thoughts, he
+would give up the point about intruding ushers on the schools, and see
+whether the Squire might not be prevailed on to arrange matters on an
+amicable footing; and that he would take an opportunity, the next time
+he had an assembly at his house, of consulting his friends on the
+subject. And had Jack stuck to this resolution, there is little doubt
+that, by some device or other, he would have gained all he wanted; for
+the Squire, being an easy, good-natured man, and wishing really to do
+his duty in the matter of the ushership, would probably, if Jack had
+yielded in this instance with a good grace, have probably allowed him in
+the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of
+everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose
+up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his
+countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify
+his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a
+long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no
+one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices
+and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not
+understand a word of Jack's contract, and knew nothing of black-letter
+whatever; but that, nevertheless, as they had decided against him, he,
+as a loyal subject, must and would submit;--not, however, that he had
+the least idea of taking the Squire's usher, or any other usher
+whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the schoolboys' wishes; _that_, he
+begged to say, he would never hear of:--still he would obey the law by
+laying no claim himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering with the
+usher's drawing it; and yet that he could not exactly answer for others
+not doing so;"--Jack knowing all the time, that, claim as he might, he
+himself had no more right to the salary than to the throne of the
+Celestial Empire; while, on the other hand, by locking up the
+schoolroom, and keeping the key in his pocket, he had rendered it
+impossible for the poor wight of an usher to recover one penny of
+it--the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of
+the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manoeuvre, had
+contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove
+the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got
+a _private_ friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme
+had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the
+case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund which would have
+belonged to the unlucky usher--in terms, as he said, of some old
+arrangement made by the Squire's predecessor as to school-salaries
+during vacancy; to be applied, as the writ very coolly stated it, "for
+behoof of Jack's destitute widow, in the event of his decease, and of
+his numerous and indigent family."
+
+Many of Jack's own family, who were present on this occasion,
+remonstrated with him on the subject, foreseeing that if he went on as
+he had begun and threatened to proceed, he must soon come to a rupture
+with the Squire, which could end in nothing else than his being turned
+out of house and hall, and thrown adrift upon the wide world, without a
+penny in his pocket. But the majority--who were puffed up with more than
+Jack's own madness and had a notion that by sheer boldness and bullying
+on their part, the Squire would, after a time, be sure to give way,
+encouraged Jack to go on at all hazards, and not to retract a hair's
+breadth in his demands. And Jack, who had now become mischievously
+crazed on the subject, and began to be as arrogant and conceited of his
+own power and authority, as ever my Lord Peter had been in his proudest
+and most pestilential days, was not slow to follow their advice.
+
+'Twas of no consequence that a friend of the Squire's, who had known
+Jack long, and had really a great kindness towards him, tried to bring
+about an arrangement between him and the Squire upon very handsome
+terms. He had a meeting with Jack;--at which he talked the matter over
+in a friendly way--telling him that though the Squire must reserve in
+his own hands the nomination of his own ushers, he had always been
+perfectly willing to listen to reason in any objections that might be
+taken to them; only some reason he must have, were it only that Jack
+could not abide the sight of a red-nosed usher:--let that reason, such
+as it was, be put on paper, and he would consider of it; and if, from
+any peculiar idiosyncracy in Jack's temperament and constitution, he
+found that his antipathy to red noses was unsuperable, probably he would
+not insist on filling up the vacancy with a nose of that colour. Jack,
+who was always more rational when alone than when he had got the
+attorney and the more frantic members of his family at his elbow,
+acknowledged, as he well might, that all this seemed very reasonable;
+and that he really thought that on these terms the Squire and he would
+have little difficulty in coming to an agreement. So they parted,
+leaving the Squire's friend under the impression that all was right, and
+that he had only to get an agreement to that effect drawn out, signed
+and sealed by the parties.
+
+Next morning, however, he received a letter by the penny-post, written
+no doubt in Jack's hand, but obviously dictated by the attorney, in
+these terms:--
+
+     "Honoured Sir--Lest there should be any misconception between
+     us as to our yesterday's conversation, I have put into writing
+     the substance of what was agreed on between us, which I
+     understand to be this: that there shall be no let or impediment
+     to the Squire's full and absolute right of naming an usher in
+     all cases of vacancy; that I shall have an equally full right
+     to object to the said usher for any reasons that may be
+     satisfactory to myself, and thereupon to exclude him from the
+     school; leaving it to the Squire, if he pleases, to send
+     another, whom I shall have the right of handling in the same
+     fashion, with this further proviso, that if the Squire does not
+     fill up the office to my satisfaction within half-a-year, I
+     shall be entitled to take the appointment into my own hands. I
+     need hardly add that no Justices of the Peace are to take
+     cognizance of anything done by me in the matter, be it good,
+     bad, or indifferent. Hoping that this statement of our mutual
+     views will be found correct and satisfactory--I remain, your
+     humble servant,
+
+     "JACK."
+
+The moment the Squire's friend perused this missive, he saw plainly that
+all hope of bringing Jack to his senses was at an end; and that under
+the advice of evil counsellors, lunatic friends, and lewd fellows of the
+baser sort, Jack would shortly bring himself and his family to utter
+ruin.
+
+And now, as might be expected, Jack's disorder, which had hitherto been
+comparatively of the calm and melancholy kind, broke out into the most
+violent and phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes raved incoherently, for
+hours together, against the Squire; often, in the midst of his speeches,
+he was assailed with epileptic fits, during which he displayed the
+strangest contortions and most laughable gestures; he threw entirely
+aside the decent coat he had worn for some time back, and habitually
+attired himself in the old and threadbare raiment, which he had worn
+after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously sent to the right-about
+by Lord Peter, and even ran about the streets with his band tied round
+his peaked beaver, bearing thereon the motto--"_Nemo me impune
+lacessit_." If his madness had only led him to make a spectacle and
+laughing-stock of himself, by these wild vagaries and mountebank
+exhibitions, all had been well, but this did not satisfy Jack; his old
+disposition for a riot had returned, and a riot, right or wrong, he was
+determined to have. So he set to work to frighten the women of the
+village with stories, as to the monsters whom the Squire would send
+among them as ushers, who would do nothing but teach their children
+drinking, chuck-farthing, and cock-fighting; to the schoolboys
+themselves, talked of the length, breadth, and thickness, of the usher's
+birch, which he assured them was dipped in vinegar every evening, in
+order to afford a more agreeable stimulus to the part affected; he plied
+them with halfpence and strong beer; exhorted them to insurrections and
+barrings-out; taught them how to mock at any usher who would not submit
+to be Jack's humble servant; and by gibes and scurril ballads, which he
+would publish in the newspapers, try to make his life a burden to him.
+He also instructed them how best to stick darts into his wig, cover his
+back with spittle, fill his pockets with crackers, burn assafoetida in
+the fire, extinguish the candles with fulminating powder, or blow up the
+writing-desk by a train of combustibles. Above all, he counselled the
+urchins to stand firm the next time that John sent an usher down to that
+quarter, and vehemently to protest for the doctrine of election as to
+their own usher, and reprobation as to the Squire's; assuring them, that
+provided they took his advice, and followed the plan which he would
+afterwards impart to them in confidence at the proper time, he could
+almost take it upon himself to say, that in a short time, no tyrannical
+usher, or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should venture to show his face,
+with or without tawse or ferule, within the boundaries of North Farm.
+
+It was not long before an opportunity offered of putting these precious
+schemes in practice; for shortly afterwards, the old usher of a school
+on the northermost boundary of the North Farm estates having died, the
+ushership became vacant, and John, as usual, appointed a successor in
+his room. Being warned this time by what had taken place on the last
+occasion, the Squire took care to apply beforehand to the Justices of
+the Peace--got a peremptory _mandamus_ from them, directing Jack to
+proceed forthwith, and, after the usual trials, to put the usher in
+possession of the schoolhouse by legal form, and without re-regard to
+any protest or interruption from any or all of the schoolboys put
+together. So down the usher proceeded, accompanied by a posse of
+constables and policemen of various divisions, till they arrived at the
+schoolhouse, which lay adjacent to the churchyard, and then demanded
+admittance. It happened that in this quarter resided some of Jack's
+family, who, as we have already mentioned, differed from him entirely,
+thinking him totally wrong in the contest with the Squire and being
+completely satisfied that all his glosses upon his contract were either
+miserable quibbles or mere hallucinations, and that it was his duty, so
+long as he ate John's bread, and slept under John's roof, to perform
+fairly the obligations he had come under:--and so, on reading the
+Justices' warrant, which required them, on pain of being set in the
+stocks, and forfeiture of two shillings and sixpence of penalty, besides
+costs, to give immediate possession to the Squire's usher, they at once
+resolved to obey, called for the key of the schoolhouse, and proceeded
+to the door, accompanied by the usher and the authorities, for the
+purpose of complying with the warrant and admitting the usher as in
+times past. But on arriving there, never was there witnessed such a
+scene of confusion. The churchyard was crowded with ragamuffins of every
+kind, from all the neighbouring parishes; scarcely was there a sot or
+deboshed fellow within the district who had not either come himself or
+found a substitute; gipsies, beggarwomen, and thimbleriggers were thick
+as blackberries; while Jack himself--who, upon hearing of what was going
+forward, had come down by the night coach with all expedition--was
+standing on a tombstone near the doorway, and holding forth to the whole
+bevy of rascals whom he had assembled about him. It was evident from his
+tones and gestures that Jack had been exciting the mob in every possible
+way; but as the justices and the constables drew near, he changed the
+form of his countenance, pulled a psalm-book out of his pocket, and,
+with much sanctity and appearance of calmness, gave out the tune; in
+which the miscellaneous assemblage around him joined, with similar
+unction and devotion. When the procession reached the door, they found
+the whole inside of the schoolhouse already packed with urchins and
+blackguards of all kinds, who, having previously gained admission by the
+window, had forcibly barricaded the door against the constables, being
+assisted in the defence thereof by the mob without, who formed a double
+line, and kept hustling the poor usher and the constables from side to
+side, helping themselves to a purse or two in passing, and calling out
+at the same time, "take care of pickpockets"--occasionally amusing
+themselves also by playfully smashing the beaver of some of the justices
+of the peace over their face, to the tune of "all round my hat," sung in
+chorus, on the Mainzerian system, amidst peals of laughter.
+
+Meantime Jack was skipping up and down upon the tombstone, calling out
+to his myrmidons--"Good friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your
+spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very
+handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly
+entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the
+respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of
+his--though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just
+provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a
+third--"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder
+puddle--the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there;
+though, to be sure, the ground _is_ slippery, and the thing _might_
+happen, in a manner without any one's being able to prevent it." And so
+on he went, taking care to say nothing for which the justices could
+afterwards venture to commit him to Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring
+up the rabble to the utmost, by nods, looks, winks, and covert speeches,
+intended to convey exactly the opposite meaning from what the words
+bore.
+
+At last by main force, and after a hard scuffle, the constables
+contrived to force the schoolhouse door open, and so to make way for the
+justices, the usher, and those of Jack's family who, as we have seen
+already, had made up their minds to give the usher possession, to enter.
+But having entered, the confusion and bedevilment was ten times worse
+than even in the churchyard itself. The benches were lined with a pack
+of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments, and with leather at the
+knees, from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a
+Scotch bagpiper, flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant performer
+on the hurdygurdy, accompanied by his monkey--who in the course of his
+circuit through the village, had that morning received a special
+retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion;
+while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen
+years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl,
+with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the
+writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence--till the
+Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he
+opened his mouth than the whole multitude burst forth as if the
+confusion of tongues had taken place for the first time; twenty spoke
+together, ten whistled, as many more sang psalms and obscene songs
+alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes
+that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the
+hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in
+which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the
+honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones,
+tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and
+desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, in
+the most agreeable confusion.
+
+One of the justices tried to speak, but even from the first it was all
+dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded through two sentences, when his
+oration was extinguished as suddenly and by the same means as the
+conflagration of the Royal Palace at Lilliput. After many attempts to
+obtain a hearing, it became obvious that all chance of doing so in the
+schoolhouse was at an end; and so the usher, the justices, and the rest,
+adjourned to the next ale-house, where they had the usher's commission
+quietly read over in presence of the landlord and the waiter, and handed
+him over the keys of the house before the same witnesses; of all which,
+and of their previous deforcement by a mob of rapscallions, they took
+care to have an instrument regularly drawn out by a notary-public.
+Thereafter they ordered a rump and dozen, being confident that as the
+day was bitterly cold, and the snow some feet deep upon the ground, the
+courage of the rioters would be cooled before they had finished dinner;
+and so it was, for towards evening, the temperature having descended
+considerably beneath the freezing point, the mob, who had now exhausted
+their beer and gin, and who saw that there was no more fun to be
+expected for the day, began to disperse each man to his home, so that
+before nightfall the coast was clear; on which the justices, with the
+_posse comitatus_, escorted the usher to the schoolhouse, opened the
+door, put him formally in possession, and, wishing him much good of his
+new appointment, departed.
+
+But how did Jack, you will ask, bear this rebuff on the part of his own
+kin? Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he became furious, and seemed to
+have lost all natural feelings towards his own flesh and blood. He
+summoned such of his family as had given admission to the usher before
+him, called a sort of court-martial of the rest of his relations to
+enquire into their conduct; and, notwithstanding the accused protested
+that they had the highest respect and regard for Jack, were his humble
+servants to command in all ordinary matters, and only acted in this
+instance in obedience to the justices' warrant, (the which, if they had
+disobeyed, they were certain to have been at that moment cooling their
+heels in the stocks,) Jack, who was probably worked up to a kind of
+frenzy by his more violent of his inmates, kicked them out of the room,
+and sent a set of his myrmidons after them, with instructions to tear
+their coats off their backs, strip them of their wigs and small-clothes,
+and turn them into the street. Against this the unlucky wights appealed
+to the justices for protection, who, to be sure, sent down some
+policemen, who beat off the mob, and enabled them to make their doors
+fast against Jack and his emissaries. But beyond that they could give
+them little assistance; for though Jack and his abettors could not
+actually venture upon a trespass by forcing their way within doors, they
+contrived to render the very existence of all who were not of their way
+of thinking miserable. If it was an usher who, in spite of all their
+efforts to exclude him, had fairly got admittance into the schoolhouse,
+they set up a sentry-box at his very door, in which a rival usher held
+forth on Cocker and the alphabet; they drew off a few stray boys from
+the village school, and this detachment, recruited and reinforced by all
+the idlers of the neighbourhood, to whom mischief was sport, was
+studiously instructed to keep up a perpetual whistling, hooting,
+howling, hissing, and imitations of the crowing of a cock, so as to
+render it impossible for the usher and boys within the school to hear or
+profit by one word that was said. If the scholars within were told to
+say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked
+how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be
+"ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some
+ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper,
+headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:--"We have just
+learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a
+hundred miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately been detected in various
+acts of forgery, petty larceny, sedition, high treason, burglary, &c.
+&c. If this report be not officially contradicted by the said usher
+within a fortnight, by advertisement, duly inserted and paid for in this
+newspaper, we shall hold the same to be true." Or sometimes more
+mysteriously thus:--"Delicacy forbids us to allude to the shocking
+reports which are current respecting the usher of Mullaglass. Christian
+charity would lead us to hope they were unfounded, but Christian verity
+compels us to state that we believe every word of them." And though Jack
+and his editor sometimes overshot their mark, and got soused in damages
+at the instance of those whom they had libelled, yet Jack, who found
+that it answered his ends, persevered, and so kept the whole
+neighbourhood in hot water.
+
+You would not believe me were I to tell you of half the tyrannical and
+preposterous pranks which he performed about this period; but some of
+them I can't help noticing. He had picked up some subscriptions, for
+instance, from charitable folks in the neighbourhood, to build a school
+upon a remote corner of North Farm, where not a single boy had learned
+his alphabet within the memory of man; and what, think ye, does he do
+with the money, but insists on clapping down the new school exactly
+opposite the old school in the village, merely to spite the poor usher,
+against whom he had taken a dislike--though there was no more need to
+build a school there than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle. Again,
+having ascertained that one of his servants had been seen shaking hands
+with some of Jack's family with whom he had quarrelled as above
+mentioned, he refused to give him a character, though the poor fellow
+was only thinking of taking service somewhere in the plantations.
+
+Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts, however, it sometimes happened that
+when an usher was appointed he could not get up a sufficient cabal
+against him, and that even the schoolboys, knowing something of the man
+before, had no objection to him. In such cases Jack resorted to various
+schemes in order to cast the candidate upon his examinations. Sometimes
+he would shut him up in a small closet, telling him he must answer a
+hundred and fifty questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry, within
+as many minutes, and that he would be allowed the assistance of
+Johnson's Dictionary, and the _Gradus ad Parnassum_, for the purpose. At
+other tines he would ask the candidate, with a bland smile, what was his
+opinion of things in general, and of the dispute between him (Jack) and
+the Squire in particular; and if that question was not answered to his
+satisfaction, he remitted him to his studies. When no objection could be
+made to the man's parts, Jack would say that he had scruples of
+conscience, because he doubted whether his commission had been fairly
+come by, or whether he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound note to
+obtain it. At last he did not even take the trouble of going through
+this farce, but would at once, if he disliked the look of the man's
+face, tell him he was busy at the moment;--that he might lay the
+Squire's letter on the table, and call again that day six months for an
+answer. He no longer pretended, in fact, to any fairness or justice in
+his dealings; for though those who sided with him might be guilty of all
+the offences in the calendar, Jack continued to wink so hard, and shut
+his ears so close, as not to see or hear of them; while as to the
+unhappy wights who differed from him, he had the eyes of Argus and the
+ear of Dionysius, and the tender mercies of a Spanish inquisitor,
+discovering _scandalum magnatum_ and high treason in ballads which they
+had written twenty years before, and in which Jack, though he received a
+presentation copy at the time, had never pretended, up to that moment,
+to detect the least harm.
+
+The last of these freaks which I shall here mention took place on this
+wise. Jack had never been accustomed to invite any one to his assemblies
+but the ushers who had been appointed by the Squire, and it was always
+understood that they alone had a vote in all vestry matters. But when
+John quarrelled with his family, as above mentioned, and a large part of
+the oldest and most respectable of his relatives drew off from him, it
+occurred to Jack that he could bring in a set of new auxiliaries, upon
+whose vote he could count in all his family squabbles, or his deputes,
+with Squire Bull; and the following was the device he fell upon for that
+end.
+
+Here and there upon North Farm, where the village schools were crowded,
+little temporary schoolhouses had been run up, where one or two of the
+monitors were accustomed to teach such of the children as could not be
+accommodated in the larger school. But these assistants had always been
+a little looked down upon, and had never been allowed a seat at Jack's
+board. Now, however, he began to change his tone towards them, and to
+court and flatter them on all occasions. One fine morning he suddenly
+made his appearance on the village green, followed by some of his
+hangers on, bearing a theodolite, chains, measuring rods, sextants,
+compasses, and other instruments of land-surveying. Jack set up his
+theodolite, took his observations, began noting measurements, and laying
+down the bases of triangles in all directions, then, having summed up
+his calculations with much gravity, gave directions to those about him
+to line off with stakes and ropes the space which he pointed out to
+them, and which in fact enclosed nearly half the village. In the course
+of these operations, the usher, who had witnessed these mathematical
+proceedings of Jack from the window, but could not comprehend what the
+man would be at, sallied forth, and accosting Jack, asked him what he
+meant by these strange lines of circumvallation. "Why," answered Jack,
+"I have been thinking for some time past of relieving you of part of
+your heavy duties, and dividing the parish-school between you and your
+assistant; so in future you will confine yourself to the space outside
+the ropes, and leave all within the inclosure to him." It was in vain
+that the usher protested he was quite equal to the duty; that the boys
+liked him, and disliked his assistant; that if the village was thus
+divided, the assistant would be put upon a level with him, and have a
+vote in the vestry, to which he had no more right than to a seat in the
+House of Commons. Jack was not to be moved from his purpose, but gave
+orders to have a similar apportionment made in most of the neighbouring
+villages, and then inviting the assistants to a party at his house, he
+had them sworn in as vestrymen, telling them, that in future they had
+the same right to a seat at his board as the best of John's ushers had.
+Here again, however, he found he had run his head against a wall, and
+that he was not the mighty personage he took himself for; for, on a
+complaint to the justices of the peace, a dozen special constables were
+sent down, who tore up the posts, removed the ropes, and demolished all
+Jack's inclosures in a trice.
+
+These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic. He now began to
+quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had
+gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly
+they would never set foot in it again. He burst forth into loud
+invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his
+penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when
+Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom
+and Jack there had long been a bloody feud. Jack now denounced Martin in
+set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said
+he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of
+setting the Squire's mind against him (Jack)--whereas poor Martin, till
+provoked by Jack's abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind
+word against him. Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did
+not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly
+against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and
+knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack
+chose to tell them. He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour,
+at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which
+he endured. He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him;
+that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding
+his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one
+occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff's officer had made his way into his
+house and served him with a writ of _fieri facias_ even in the midst of
+one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could
+not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the
+corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in
+short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety--and all this
+because he had done his best to save them and their children from the
+awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers. At the conclusion of
+these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly
+women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be
+applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private
+advantage.
+
+Jack, however, with all his craze, was too knowing not to see that the
+women, beyond advancing him a few shillings at a time, would do little
+for his cause so far as any terms with Squire Bull was concerned; so,
+with the view of making a last attack upon the Squire, and driving him
+into terms, he began to look about for assistance among those with whom
+he had previously been at loggerheads. It cost him some qualms before he
+could so far abase his stomach as to do so; but at last he ventured to
+address a long and pitiful letter to Hugh, in which he set forth all his
+disputes with John, and dwelt much on his scruples of conscience; begged
+him to forget old quarrels, and put down his name to a Round Robin,
+which he was about to address to the Squire in his own behalf. To this
+epistle Hugh answered as follows:--"Dearly beloved,--my bowels are
+grieved for your condition, but I see only one cure for your scruples of
+conscience. Strip off the Squire's livery, and give up your place, as I
+did, and your peace of mind will be restored to you. In the mean time, I
+do not see very well why I should help you to pocket the Squire's wages,
+and do nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit of meekness and
+forgiveness--HUGH." After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily believe, saw
+there was little hope of assistance from that quarter.
+
+As a last resource, he called a general meeting of his friends, at which
+it was resolved to present the proposed Round Robin to John, signed by
+as many names as they could muster; in which Jack, who seemed to be of
+opinion that the more they asked the greater was their chance of getting
+something at least, set forth the articles he wanted, and without which,
+he told John, he could no longer remain in his house; but that he and
+his relatives and friends would forthwith, if this petition was
+rejected, walk out, to the infinite scandal of the neighbourhood,
+leaving the Squire without a teacher or a writing-master within fifty
+miles to supply their place. They demanded that the Squire should give
+up the nomination of the ushers entirely, though in whose favour they
+did not explain; and that Jack was in future to be a law unto himself,
+and to be supreme in all matters of education, with power to himself to
+define in what such matters consisted. On these requests being conceded,
+they stated that they would continue to give their countenance to the
+Squire as in times past; otherwise the whole party must quit possession
+incontinently. Jack prevailed on a good many to sign this
+document--though some did not like the idea of walking out, demurred,
+and added after the word _incontinently_, "i.e. when convenient,"--and
+thus signed, they put the Round Robin under a twopenny cover, and
+dispatched it to "John Bull, Esquire"--with haste.
+
+If they really thought the Squire was to be bullied into these terms by
+this last sally, they found themselves consumedly mistaken; for after a
+time down came a long and perfectly civil letter from the Squire's
+secretary, telling them their demands were totally out of the question,
+and that the Squire would see them at the antipodes sooner than comply
+with them.
+
+Did Jack then, you will ask, walk out as he had threatened, when he got
+the Squire's answer? Not he. He now gave notice that he intended to
+apply for an Act of Parliament on the subject: and that, in the
+meantime, the matter might stand over. Meantime, and in case matters
+should come to the worst, he is busily engaged begging all over the
+country, for cash to erect a new wooden tenement for him, in the event
+of his having to leave his old one of stone and lime. Some say even that
+he has been seen laying down several pounds of gunpowder in the cellar
+of his present house, and has been heard to boast of his intention to
+blow up his successor when he takes possession; but for my own part, and
+seeing how he has shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is no nearer
+removing than he was a year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially to
+several people, that even if his new house were all ready for him, he
+could not, with his asthmatic tendency, think of entering it for a
+twelvemonth or so, till the lath and plaster should be properly
+seasoned. Of all this, however, we shall hear more anon.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.
+
+BY A COCKNEY.
+
+
+When any one thinks of French literature, there immediately rises before
+him a horrid phantasmagoria of repulsive objects--murders, incests,
+parricides, and every imaginable shape of crime that horror e'er
+conceived or fancy feigned. He sees the whole efforts of a press,
+brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has
+hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the
+happiness of domestic life--marriage deliberately written down, and
+proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and
+strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords
+and strongest lances are wielded by women. Those women are received into
+society--men's wives and daughters associate with them--and their books
+are noticed in the public journals without any allusions to the
+Association for the prevention of vice, but rather with the praises
+which, in other times and countries, would have been bestowed on works
+of genius and virtue. The taste of the English public has certainly
+deteriorated within the last few years; and popularity, the surest index
+of the public's likings, though not of the writer's deservings, has
+attended works of which the great staple has been crime and
+blackguardism. A certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy energy, has
+enabled the writer to throw an interest round pickpockets and murderers;
+and if this interest were legitimately produced, by the exhibition of
+human passions modified by the circumstances of the actor--if it arose
+from the development of one real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering
+man's heart, we could only wonder at the author's choice of such a
+subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge that he had widened our
+sphere of knowledge--and made us feel, as we all do, without taking the
+same credit for it to ourselves that the old blockhead in France does,
+that being human, we have sympathies with all, even the lowest and
+wickedest of our kind. But the interest those works excite arises from
+no such legitimate source--not from the development of our common
+nature, but from the creation of a new one--from startling contrasts,
+not of two characters but of one--tenderness, generosity in one page;
+fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English _tastes_ are
+so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of
+cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press--our English
+_morals_ would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which
+forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The
+very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their
+female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to
+contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions
+of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine--high in
+rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty--has for the hero a
+villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes--we are
+not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut
+throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. He
+is the philosopher,--the instructor--the guide. The object of _his_
+introduction is to show the iniquity of human laws--the object of _her_
+introduction is to show the absurdity of the institution of marriage.
+This would never be tolerated in England. Again, a married woman is
+presented to us--for the sympathy which with us attends a young couple
+to the church-door, only begins in France after they have left it: as a
+child she has been betrothed to a person of her own rank--at five or six
+incurable idiocy takes possession of her proposed husband--but when she
+is eighteen the marriage takes place--the husband is a mere child still;
+for his intellect has continued stationary though his body has reached
+maturity--a more revolting picture was never presented than that of the
+condition of the idiot's wife--her horror of her husband--and of course
+her passion for another. The most interesting scenes between the lovers
+are constantly interrupted by the hideous representative of matrimony,
+the grinning husband, who rears his slavering countenance from behind
+the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate wife with a sacred awe for the
+holy obligations of marriage.
+
+Again, a dandy of fifty is presented to us, whose affection for his ward
+has waited, of course, till she is wedded to another, to ripen into
+love. He still continues her protector against the advances of others;
+for jealousy is a good point of character in every one but the husband,
+and there it is only ridiculous. The husband in this case is another
+admirable specimen of the results of wedlock for life--he is a
+chattering, shallow pretender--a political economist, prodigiously dull
+and infinitely conceited--an exaggerated type of the Hume-Bowring
+statesman--and, as is naturally to be expected, our sympathies are
+awakened for the wretched wife, and we rejoice to see that her beauty
+and talents, her fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated by a dashing
+young fellow, who outwits our original friend the dandy of fifty and the
+philosophical deput�; the whole leaving a pleasing impression on the
+reader's mind from the conviction that the heroine is no longer
+neglected.
+
+From the similarity of these stories--and they are only taken at random
+from a great number--it will be seen that the spirit of almost all of
+them is the same. But when we go lower in the scale, and leave the class
+of philosophic novels, we find their tales of life and manners still
+more absurd in their total untrueness than the others were hateful in
+their design. There is a novel just now appearing in one of the most
+widely-circulated of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely overdone, that
+if it had been meant for a caricature of the worst parts of our own
+hulk-and-gallows authors, it would have been very much admired; but
+meant to be serious, powerful, harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is
+a most curious exhibition of a nation's taste and a writer's audacity.
+The _Mysteries of Paris_, by Eugene Sue, has been dragging its slow
+length along for a long time, and gives no sign of getting nearer its
+denouement than when it began. A sovereign prince is the hero--his own
+daughter, whom he has disowned, the heroine; and the tale commences by
+his fighting a man on the street, and taking a fancy to his unknown
+child, who is the inhabitant of one of the lowest dens in the St Giles'
+of Paris! The other _dramatis person�_ are convicts, receivers of stolen
+goods, murderers, intriguers of all ranks--the aforesaid prince,
+sometimes in the disguise of a workman, sometimes of a pickpocket,
+acting the part of a providence among them, rewarding the good and
+punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah
+McGregor--the lawful wife of the prince--her brother Tom, and Sir Walter
+Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and
+flurried--first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in
+country farms, and then in halls and palaces--and so intermixed and
+confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of
+the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds.
+How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and
+we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his
+poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step.
+Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of
+France, and in the _Myst�res de Paris_ the most confirmed glutton of
+such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst of such depraved and
+revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of satisfaction, though not of the
+loftiest kind, to turn to the coarse fun and ludicrous descriptions of
+Paul de Kock. And, after all, our friend Paul has not many more sins
+than coarseness and buffoonery to answer for. As to his attempting, of
+set purpose, to corrupt people's morals, it never entered into his head.
+He does not know what morals are; they never form any part of his idea
+of manners or character. If a good man comes in his way, he looks at him
+with a strange kind of unacquaintance that almost rises into respect;
+but he is certainly more affectionate, and on far better terms, with men
+about town--amative hairdressers, flirting grisettes, and the whole
+genus, male and female, of the epiciers. It would no doubt be an
+improvement if the facetious Paul could believe in the existence of an
+honest woman; but such women as come in his way he describes to the
+life. A ball in a dancing-master's private room up six pairs of stairs,
+a pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner at a restaurateur's, or a
+family consultation on a proposal of marriage, are far more in Paul's
+way than tales of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity. One is only
+sorry, in the midst of so much gaiety and good-humour, to stumble on
+some scene or sentiment that gives on the inclination to throw the book
+in the fire, or start, like C�sar, on the top of the diligence to pull
+the author's ears. But the next page sets all right again; and you go on
+laughing at the disasters of my neighbour Raymond, or admiring the
+graces or Chesterfieldian politeness of M. Bellequeue. French nature
+seems essentially different from all the other natures hitherto known;
+and yet, though so new, there never rises any doubt that it is _a_
+nature, a reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and not a sham. The
+personages presented to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely, in the strict
+sense of the word, be called human beings; but they are French beings of
+real flesh and blood, speaking and thinking French in the most decided
+possible manner, and at intervals possessed of feelings which make us
+inclined to include them in the great genus _homo_, though with so many
+inseparable accidents, that it is impossible for a moment to shut one's
+eyes to the species to which they belong. But such as they are in their
+shops, and back-parlours, and ball-rooms, and _f�tes champ�tres_, there
+they are in Paul de Kock--nothing extenuated, little set down in
+malice--vain, empty, frivolous, good-tempered, gallant, lively, and
+absurd. Let us go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the
+anniversary of the marriage of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the day of St
+Eustache.
+
+"At a little distance from the ball, towards the middle of the wood, a
+numerous party is seated on the grass, or rather on the sand; napkins
+are spread on the ground, and covered with plates and cold meat and
+fruits. The bottles are placed in the cool shade, the glasses are filled
+and emptied rapidly; good appetites and open air make every thing appear
+excellent. They make plates out of paper, and toss pieces of pat� and
+sausage to each other. They eat, they drink, they sing, they laugh and
+play tricks. It seems a struggle who shall be funniest. It is well known
+that all things are allowable in the country; and the cits now assembled
+in the wood of Romainville seem fully persuaded of the fact. A jolly old
+governor of about fifty tries to carve a turkey, and can't succeed. A
+little woman, very red, very fat, and very round, hastens to seize a
+limb of the bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly old governor at the
+other--the leg separates at last, and the lady goes sprawling on the
+grass, while the gentleman topples over in the opposite direction with
+the remainder of the animal in his hand. The shouts of laughter
+redouble, and M. Moutonnet--such is the name of the jolly old
+governor--resumes his place, declaring that he will never try to carve
+any thing again. 'I knew you would never be able to manage it,' said a
+large woman bluntly, in a tone that agreed exactly with her starched and
+crabbed features. She was sitting opposite the stout gentleman, and had
+seen with indignation the alacrity with which the little lady had flown
+to M. Moutonnet's assistance.
+
+"'In the twenty years we have been married,' she continued, 'have you
+ever carved any thing at home, sir?'
+
+"'No, my dear, that's very true;' replied the stout gentleman in a
+submissive voice, and trying to smile his better half into good-humour.
+
+"'You don't know how to help a dish of spinach, and yet you attempt a
+dish like that!'
+
+"'My dear--in the country, you know----'
+
+"'In the country, sir, as in the town, people shouldn't try things they
+can't perform.'
+
+"'You know, Madame Moutonnet, that generally I never attempt any
+thing--but to day'----
+
+"'To day you should have done as you do on other days,' retorted the
+lady.
+
+"'Ah, but, my love, you forget that this is Saint Eustache----'
+
+"'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!' is repeated in chorus by the whole
+company, and the glasses are filled and jingled as before.
+
+"'To the health of Eustache; Eustache for ever!'
+
+"'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,' replied M. Moutonnet graciously
+smiling--'and yours, my angel.'
+
+"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume
+an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M.
+Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue
+St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever
+protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has
+kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till
+eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and
+ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the
+bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an
+old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall
+presently become better acquainted.
+
+"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not
+commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all
+things. When she is in good-humour--a somewhat extraordinary
+occurrence--she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of
+coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the
+corner of the Rue Mauconseil--for it is famous for its liberal allowance
+of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his
+wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a
+promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the
+country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the
+f�te-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder
+the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men--so true is it
+that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was
+born with simple tastes--she required to be led and managed like a
+child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen,
+so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think
+yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions
+every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M.
+Moutonnet has no fear of that--he has no passions--he knows nothing but
+his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very
+happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself
+be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is
+a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never
+was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded
+she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to
+every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her
+husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame
+Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A
+daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and
+Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at
+eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced.
+But Eugenie has been educated severely--and although possessed of a good
+deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a
+single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness,
+grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has
+received from nature--her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the
+bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish--or rather she scarcely
+ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads
+them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little
+arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror
+every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft
+and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed
+by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In
+short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first
+sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more
+regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we
+have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party
+who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint
+Eustache.
+
+"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M.
+Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who
+is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the
+fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even
+puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking,
+and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly
+breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on--for she is determined to
+have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very
+lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an
+expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom
+she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll,
+by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a
+young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes
+when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six
+months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has
+undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.
+
+"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly
+countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated
+beside Eugenie. M. Dupont--such is his name--is a rich grocer of the Rue
+aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are
+becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very
+aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat,
+give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably
+with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two
+watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great
+satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own
+remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the
+presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a
+bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where
+there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the
+Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant
+gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious
+rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he
+overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and
+perfumes--accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in
+sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has
+a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little
+Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes
+as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a
+little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never
+could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were
+delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'
+
+"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every
+opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs
+every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old
+clerk of the laceman--M. Bidois--who waits for Madame Moutonnet's
+permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she
+is not looking--is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard;
+who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that
+she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her
+neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all
+the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with
+handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is
+intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of
+calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose
+name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame
+Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him
+to the f�te of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party
+who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."
+
+We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the
+party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the
+foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people
+who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to
+compare M. Moutonnet and _his_ friends, with any laceman and _his_
+friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in
+the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a
+perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at
+Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom--and as to admitting
+such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the
+unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon
+think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three
+friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for
+not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic
+manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems
+no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he
+is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has
+no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet
+seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever,
+superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed
+volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are
+all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other
+hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all
+other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated,
+but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme
+disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The
+husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the
+shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or
+seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a
+gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies
+torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely
+flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks
+are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich
+perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to
+them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters;
+whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any
+affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical
+attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real
+unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's
+character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more
+interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a
+Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only
+acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or
+the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo
+enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester
+warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may
+be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single
+exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to
+distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the
+world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of
+citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether
+our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible--all three of which
+epithets are generally applicable to the same individual--or that they
+have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic
+habits of the animal--it is certain that, however better they may be
+qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far
+less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that
+wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either
+been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie
+never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he
+does in _Rob Roy_. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the
+universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the
+prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which
+he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of
+Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude
+town--consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge
+of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit
+subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable
+Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in
+the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long
+ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon
+him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of
+the harem--threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as
+he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes
+scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from
+odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and
+brigands--but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops,
+and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set
+of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because
+non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take
+his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No
+decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the
+appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their
+rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course
+of the _chaine Anglaise_ beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at
+the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the
+above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his
+daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of
+going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have
+left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C.
+But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser--for the mere
+gleaner of beards is not intended by the name--into his own amusements.
+In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
+and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the
+offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his
+graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a
+very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is
+whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner,
+with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and
+his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend
+goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and
+water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night
+of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the
+order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and
+being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has
+a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to
+be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a
+tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his
+hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats
+himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and
+thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong
+ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions.
+Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with
+dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his
+next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their
+sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music
+now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a
+strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the
+coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the
+landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is
+over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is
+now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a
+distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box
+to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so
+full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that
+he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher,
+who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic
+performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces
+a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song,
+where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers,
+are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
+admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last,
+time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr
+Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts
+he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great
+comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in
+the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in
+the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into
+mischief from an overdose of _eau sucr�e_, though sometimes he certainly
+becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of _vin ordinaire_; and
+nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink
+which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French
+population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative,
+and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small
+beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We
+constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of
+excitement after two rounds of a bottle--jostling the peasants, and
+talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what
+a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or
+two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious
+disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other
+from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling
+women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant
+mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and
+swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster--but not a single blow!
+The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish
+into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful _m�l�e_, the
+violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a
+marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these
+methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we
+confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on
+the claret-cork)--all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to
+work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a
+manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel
+kind.
+
+The affectations of a French cit, when that nondescript animal
+condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those
+of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts--he talks about
+the opera--likes to know artists and authors--and, though living up five
+or six pairs of stairs in a narrow lane, gives _soir�es_ and
+_conversazion�s_. More ludicrous all this, and decidedly less
+disgusting, than the assumptions of our man-milliners and fishmongers.
+There is short sketch by Paul de Kock, called a _Soir�e Bourgeoise_,
+which we translate entire, as an illustration of this curious phase of
+French character; and we shall take an early opportunity of bringing
+before our readers the essays of the daily feuilletonists of the
+Parisian press, which give a clearer insight into the peculiarities of
+French domestic literature than can be acquired in any other quarter.
+
+
+A CIT'S SOIREE.
+
+Lights were observed some time ago, in the four windows of an apartment
+on the second floor of a house in the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite so
+brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers, but still it announced something.
+These four windows, with lights glancing in them all, had an air of
+rejoicing, and the industrious inhabitants of the Rue Grenetat, who
+don't generally go to much expense for illumination, even in their
+shops, looked at the four windows which eclipsed the street lamps in
+their brilliancy, and said, "There's certainly something very
+extraordinary going on this evening at M. Lupot's!" M. Lupot is an
+honest tradesman, who has retired from business some time. After having
+sold stationary for thirty years, without ever borrowing of a neighbour,
+or failing in a payment, M. Lupot, having scraped together an income of
+three hundred and twenty pounds, disposed of his stock in trade, and
+closed his ledger, to devote himself entirely to the pleasures of
+domestic life with his excellent spouse, Madam Felicit� Lupot--a woman
+of an amazingly apathetic turn of mind, who did admirably well in the
+shop as long as she had only to give change for half-crowns, but whose
+abilities extended no further. But this had not prevented her from
+making a very good wife to her husband, (which proves that much talent
+is not required for that purpose,) and presenting him with a daughter
+and a son.
+
+The daughter was the eldest, and had attained her seventeenth year; and
+M. Lupot, who spared nothing on her education, did not despair of
+finding a husband for her with a soul above sticks of sealing-wax and
+wafers--more especially as it was evident she had no turn for trade, and
+believed she had a decided genius for the fine arts--for she had painted
+her father as a shepherd with his crook, when she was only twelve, and
+had learned a year after to play "Je suis Lindore" by ear on the piano.
+M. Lupot was proud of his daughter, who was thus a painter and a
+musician; who was a foot taller than her papa; who held herself as
+upright as a Prussian grenadier; who made a curtsy like Taglioni, who
+had a Roman nose three times the size of other people's, a mouth to
+match, and eyes so arch and playful, that it was difficult to discover
+them. The boy was only seven; he was allowed to do whatever he chose--he
+was so very young; and Monsieur Ascanius availed himself of the
+permission, and was in mischief from morning to night. His father was
+too fond of him to scold him, and his mother wouldn't take the trouble
+to get into a passion.
+
+Well, then, one morning M. Lupot soliloquized--"I have a good fortune, a
+charming family, and a wife who has never been in a rage; but all this
+does not lead to a man's being invited, courted, and made much of in the
+world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove and red sealing-wax, I have
+seen nobody but a few friends--retired tradesmen like myself--who drop
+in to take a hand at _vingt-et-un_, or loto; but I wish more than
+that--my daughter must not live in so narrow a circle; my daughter has a
+decided turn for the arts; I ought to have artists to my house. I will
+give soir�es, tea-parties--yes, with punch at parting, if it be
+necessary. We shall play _bouillote_ and _�carte_, for my daughter can't
+endure loto. Indeed, I wish to set people talking about my re-unions,
+and to find a husband for Celanire worthy of her." M. Lupot was seated
+near his wife, who was seated on an elastic sofa, and was caressing a
+cat on her knee. He said to her--
+
+"My dear Felicit�, I intend to give soir�es--to receive lots of company.
+We live in too confined a sphere for our daughter, who was born for the
+arts--and for Ascanius, who, it strikes me, will make some noise in the
+world."
+
+Madame Lupot continued to caress the cat, and replied, "Well, what have
+I to do with that? Do I hinder you from receiving company? If it doesn't
+cause me any trouble--for I must tell you first of all, you musn't count
+on me to help you"--
+
+"You will have nothing at all to do, my dear Felicit�, but the honours
+of the house."
+
+"I must be getting up every minute"--
+
+"You do it so gracefully," replied the husband--"I will give all the
+orders, and Celanire will second me."
+
+Mademoiselle was enchanted with the intention of her sire, and threw her
+arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh yes! papa," she said, "invite as many as you can, I will learn to
+play some country-dances that we may have a ball, and finish my head of
+Belisarius--you must get it framed for the occasion."
+
+And the little Ascanius whooped and hollo'd in the middle of the room.
+"I shall have tea and punch and cakes. I'll eat every thing!"
+
+After this conversation M. Lupot had set to work. He went to his friends
+and his friends' friends--to people he hardly knew, and invited them to
+his party, begging them to bring any body with them they liked. M. Lupot
+had formerly sold rose-coloured paper to a musician, and drawing pencils
+to an artist. He went to his ancient customers, and pressed them to come
+and to bring their professional friends with them. In short, M. Lupot
+was so prodigiously active that in four days he had run through nearly
+the whole of Paris, caught an immense cold, and spent seven shillings in
+cab hire. Giving an entertainment has its woes as well as its pleasures.
+
+The grand day, or rather the grand evening, at last arrived. All the
+lamps were lighted, and they had even borrowed some from their
+neighbours; for Celanire had discovered that their own three lamps
+did not give light enough both for the public-room and the
+supper-room--(which on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.) It was the
+first time that M. Lupot had borrowed any thing--but also it was the
+first time that M. Lupot gave a soir�e.
+
+From the dawn of day M. Lupot was busy in preparation: He had ordered in
+cakes and refreshments; bought sundry packs of cards, brushed the
+tables, and tucked up the curtains. Madame Lupot had sat all the time
+quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from time to time, "I'm afraid 'twill
+be a troublesome business all this receiving company."
+
+Celanire had finished her Belisarius, who was an exact likeness of Blue
+Beard, and whom they had honoured with a Gothic frame, and placed in a
+conspicuous part of the room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed with
+amazing care. She had a new gown, her hair plaited _� la Clotilde_. All
+this must make a great sensation. Ascanius was rigged out in his best;
+but this did not hinder him from kicking up a dust in the room, from
+getting up on the furniture, handling the cards, and taking them to make
+houses; from opening the cupboards, and laying his fingers on the cakes.
+
+Sometimes M. Lupot's patience gave way, and he cried, "Madame, I beg
+you'll make your son be quiet." But Madame Lupot answered without
+turning her head, "Make him quiet yourself, M. Lupot--You know very well
+it's _your_ business to manage him."
+
+It was now eight o'clock, and nobody was yet arrived. Mademoiselle
+looked at her father, who looked at his wife, who looked at her cat. The
+father of the family muttered every now and then--"Are we to have our
+grand soir�e all to ourselves?" And he cast doleful looks on his lamps,
+his tables, and all his splendid preparations. Mademoiselle Celanire
+sighed and looked at her dress, and then looked in the mirror. Madame
+Lupot was as unmoved as ever, and said, "Is this what we've turned every
+thing topsy-turvy for?" As for little Ascanius, he jumped about the
+room, and shouted, "If nobody comes, what lots of cakes we shall have!"
+At last the bell rang. It is a family from the Rue St Denis, retired
+perfumers, who have only retained so much of their ancient profession,
+that they cover themselves all over with odours. When they enter the
+room, you feel as if a hundred scent-bottles were opened at once. There
+is such a smell of jasmine and vanille, that you have good luck if you
+get off without a headache. Other people drop in. M. Lupot does not know
+half his guests, for many of them are brought by others, and even these
+he scarcely knows the names of. But he is enchanted with every thing. A
+young fashionable is presented to him by some unknown third party, who
+says, "This is one of our first pianists, who is good enough to give up
+a great concert this evening to come here." The next is a famous singer,
+a lion in musical parties, who is taken out every where, and who will
+give one of his latest compositions, though unfortunately labouring
+under a cold. This man won the first prize at the Conservatory, an
+unfledged Boildieu, who will be a great composer of operas--when he can
+get librettos to his music, and music to his librettos. The next is a
+painter. He has shown at the exhibition--he has had wonderful success.
+To be sure nobody bought his pictures, because he didn't wish to sell
+them to people that couldn't appreciate them. In short, M. Lupot sees
+nobody in his rooms that is not first-rate in some way or other. He is
+delighted with the thought--ravished, transported. He can't find words
+enough to express his satisfaction at having such geniuses in his house.
+For their sakes he neglects his old friends--he scarcely speaks to them.
+It seems the new-comers, people he has never seen before, are the only
+people worthy of his attentions. Madame Lupot is tired of getting up,
+curtsying, and sitting down again. But her daughter is radiant with joy;
+her husband goes from room to room, rubbing his hands, as if he had
+bought all Paris, and got it a bargain. And little Ascanius never comes
+out of the bed-room without his mouth full. But it is not enough to
+invite a large party; you must know how to amuse them; it is a thing
+which very few people have the art of, even those most accustomed to
+have soir�es. In some you get tired, and you are in great ceremony; you
+must restrict yourself to a conversation that is neither open, nor
+friendly, nor amusing. In others, you are pestered to death by the
+amphitryon, who is perhaps endowed with the bump of music, and won't
+leave the piano for fear some one else should take his place. There are
+others fond of cards, who only ask their friends that they may make up a
+table. Such individuals care for nothing but the game, and don't trouble
+themselves whether the rest of their guests are amused or not. Ah! there
+are few homes that know how to receive their company, or make every body
+pleased. It requires a tact, a cleverness, an absence of self, which
+must surely be very unusual since we see so few specimens of them in the
+soir�es we attend.
+
+M. Lupot went to and fro--from the reception-room to the bed-chamber,
+and back again--he smiled, he bowed, and rubbed his hands. But the
+new-comers, who had not come to his house to see him smile and rub his
+hands, began to say, in very audible whispers, "Ah, well, do people pass
+the whole night here looking at each other? Very delightful--very!"
+
+M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation with a big man in spectacles,
+with a neckcloth of great dimensions, and who makes extraordinary faces
+as he looks round on the company. M. Lupot has been told, that the
+gentleman with the large neckcloth is a literary man, and that he will
+probably be good enough to read or recite some lines of his own
+composition. The ancient stationer coughs three times before venturing
+to address so distinguished a character, but says at last--"Enchanted to
+see at my house a gentleman so--an author of such----"
+
+"Ah, you're the host here, are you?--the master of the house?"--said the
+man in the neckcloth.
+
+"I flatter myself I am--with my wife, of course--the lady on the
+sofa--you see her? My daughter, sir--she's the tall young lady, so
+upright in her figure. She designs, and has an excellent touch on the
+piano. I have a son also--a little fiend--it was he who crept this
+minute between my legs--he's an extraordinary clev----"
+
+"There is one thing, sir," replied the big man, "that I can't
+comprehend--a thing that amazes me--and that is, that people who live in
+the Rue Grenetat should give parties. It is a miserable street--a horrid
+street--covered eternally with mud--choked up with cars--a wretched part
+of the town, dirty, noisy, pestilential--bah!"
+
+"And yet, sir, for thirty years I have lived here."
+
+"Oh Lord, sir, I should have died thirty times over! When people live in
+the Rue Grenetat they should give up society, for you'll grant it is a
+regular trap to seduce people into such an abominable street. I"----
+
+M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing his hands. He moves off from the
+big man in the spectacles, whose conversation had by no means amused
+him, and he goes up to a group of young people who seem examining the
+Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.
+
+"They're admiring my daughter's drawing," said M. Lupot to himself; "I
+must try to overhear what these artists are saying." The young people
+certainly made sundry remarks on the performance, plentifully intermixed
+with sneers of a very unmistakable kind.
+
+"Can you make out what the head is meant for?"
+
+"Not I. I confess I never saw any thing so ridiculous."
+
+"It's Belisarius, my dear fellow."
+
+"Impossible!--it's the portrait of some grocer, some relation, probably,
+of the family--look at the nose--the mouth--"
+
+"It is intolerable folly to put a frame to such a daub."
+
+"They must be immensely silly."
+
+"Why, it isn't half so good as the head of the Wandering Jew at the top
+of a penny ballad."
+
+M. Lupot has heard enough. He slips off from the group without a word,
+and glides noiselessly to the piano. The young performer who had
+sacrificed a great concert to come to his soir�e, had sat down to the
+instrument and run his fingers over the notes.
+
+"What a spinnet!" he cried--"what a wretched kettle! How can you expect
+a man to perform on such a miserable instrument? The thing is
+absurd--hear this A--hear this G--it's like a hurdygurdy--not one note
+of it in tune!" But the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding,
+and played incessantly, thumping the keys with such tremendous force,
+that every minute a chord snapped; when such a thing happened--he burst
+into a laugh, and said, "Good! there's another gone--there will soon be
+none left."
+
+M. Lupot flushed up to the ears. He felt very much inclined to say to
+the celebrated performer, "Sir, I didn't ask you here to break all the
+chords of my piano. Let the instrument alone if you don't like it, but
+don't hinder other people from playing on it for our amusement."
+
+But the good M. Lupot did not venture on so bold a speech, which would
+have been a very sensible speech nevertheless; and he stood quietly
+while his chords were getting smashed, though it was by no means a
+pleasant thing to do.
+
+Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to her father. She is distressed at the
+way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but
+she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old
+neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar.
+
+It is not without some difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his
+daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a
+smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the
+gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ,
+and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to
+hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time
+with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much
+the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see on a mantelpiece.
+Nevertheless Mademoiselle Lupot essays her ballad; but she can never
+manage to overtake her accompanier, who, instead of following the
+singer, seems determined to make no alteration in the movement of his
+head and feet. The ballad is a failure--Celanire is confused, she has
+mistaken her notes--she loses her recollection; and, instead of hearing
+his daughter's praises, M. Lupot overhears the young people
+whispering--"It wouldn't do in a beer-shop."
+
+"I must order in the tea," thought the ex-stationer--"it will perhaps
+put them into good-humour."
+
+And M. Lupot rushes off to give instructions to the maid; and that old
+individual, who has never seen such a company before, does not know how
+to get on, and breaks cups and saucers without mercy, in the effort to
+make haste.
+
+"Nannette, have you got ready the other things you were to bring in with
+the tea?--the muffins--the cakes?"
+
+"Yes, sir"--replied Nannette--"all is ready--every thing will be in in a
+moment."
+
+"But there is another thing I told you, Nannette--the sandwiches."
+
+"The witches, sir?--the sand?"--enquired the puzzled Nannette.
+
+"It is an English dish--I explained it to you before--slices of bread
+and butter, with ham between."
+
+"Oh la, sir!" exclaimed the maid--"I have forgotten that rago�t--oh
+dear!"
+
+"Well--make haste, Nannette; get ready some immediately, while my
+daughter hands round the tea and muffins--you can bring them in on a
+tray."
+
+The old domestic hurries into the kitchen grumbling at the English
+dainty, and cuts some slices of bread and covers them with butter; but
+as she had never thought of the ham, she cogitates a long time how she
+can supply the want of it--at last, on looking round, she discovers a
+piece of beef that had been left at dinner.
+
+"Pardieu," she says, "I'll cut some lumps of this and put them on the
+bread. With plenty of salt they'll pass very well for ham--they'll drive
+me wild with their English dishes--they will."
+
+The maid speedily does as she says, and then hurries into the room with
+a tray covered with her extempore ham sandwiches.
+
+Every body takes one,--for they have grown quite fashionable along with
+tea. But immediately there is an universal murmur in the assembly. The
+ladies throw their slices into the fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on
+the furniture, and they cry--"why the devil do people give us things
+like these?--they're detestable."
+
+"It's my opinion, God forgive me! the man means to feed us with scraps
+from the pig-trough," says another.
+
+"It's a regular do, this soir�e," says a third.
+
+"The tea is disgustingly smoked," says a fourth.
+
+"And all the little cakes look as if they had been fingered before,"
+says the fifth.
+
+"Decidedly they wish to poison us," says the big man in the neckcloth,
+looking very morose.
+
+M. Lupot is in despair. He goes in search of Nannette, who has hidden
+herself in the kitchen; and he busies himself in gathering up the
+fragments of the bread and butter from the floor and the fireplace.
+
+Madame Lupot says nothing; but she is in very bad humour, for she has
+put on a new cap, which she felt sure would be greatly admired; and a
+lady has come to her and said--
+
+"Ah, madame, what a shocking head-dress!--your cap is very
+old-fashioned--those shapes are quite gone out."
+
+"And yet, madame," replies Madame Lupot, "I bought it, not two days ago,
+in the Rue St Martin."
+
+"Well, madame--Is that the street you go to for the fashions? Go to
+Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous Gaillon--you'll get delicious caps
+there--new fashions and every thing so tasteful: for Heaven's sake,
+madame, never put on that cap again. You look, at least, a hundred."
+
+"It's worth one's while, truly," thought Madame Lupot, "to tire one's
+self to death receiving people, to be treated to such pretty
+compliments."
+
+Her husband, in the meanwhile, continued his labours in pursuit of the
+rejected sandwiches.
+
+The big man in spectacles, who wondered that people could live in the
+Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless, of coming there for nothing. He
+has seated himself in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, and
+informs the company that he is going to repeat a few lines of his own to
+them.--The society seems by no means enchanted with the announcement,
+but forms itself in a circle, to listen to the poet. He coughs and
+spits, wipes his mouth, tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has the lamps
+raised, the doors shut, asks a tumbler of sugar and water, and passes
+his hand through his hair. After continuing these operations for some
+minutes, the literary man at last begins. He spouts his verses in a
+voice enough to break the glasses; before he has spoken a minute, he has
+presented a tremendous picture of crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds,
+sufficient to appal the stoutest hearts, when suddenly a great crash
+from the inner room attracts universal attention. It is the young
+Ascanius, who was trying to get a muffin on the top of a pile of dishes,
+and has upset the table, with muffin, and dishes, and all on his own
+head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain the cause of the dreadful cries of
+his son; the company follow him, not a little rejoiced to find an excuse
+for hearing no more of the poem; and the poet, deprived in this way of
+an audience, gets up in a furious passion, takes his hat, and rushes
+from the room, exclaiming--"It serves me right. How could I have been
+fool enough to recite good verses in the Rue Grenetat!"
+
+Ascanius is brought in and roars lustily, for two of the dishes have
+been broken on his nose; and as there is no chance now, either of poetry
+or music, the party have recourse to cards--for it is impossible to sit
+all night and do nothing.
+
+They make up a table at _bouillote_, and another at _ecart�_. M. Lupot
+takes his place at the latter. He is forced to cover all the bets when
+his side refuses; and M. Lupot, who never played higher than shilling
+stakes in his life, is horrified when they tell him--"You must lay down
+fifteen francs to equal our stakes."
+
+"Fifteen francs!" says M. Lupot, "what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"It means, that you must make up the stakes of your side, to what we
+have put down on this. The master of the house is always expected to
+make up the difference."
+
+M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays down his fifteen francs and loses
+them; next game the deficiency is twenty. In short, in less than half an
+hour, the ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His eyes start out of his
+head--he scarcely knows where he is; and to complete his misery, the
+opposite party, in lifting up the money they have won, upset one of the
+lamps he had borrowed from his neighbours, and smashed it into fifty
+pieces.
+
+At last the hour of separation comes. The good citizen has been anxious
+for it for a long time. All his gay company depart, without even wishing
+good-night to the host who has exerted himself so much for their
+entertainment. The family of the Lupots are left alone; Madame, overcome
+with fatigue, and vexed because her cap had been found fault with;
+Celanire, with tears in her eyes, because her music and Belisarius had
+been laughed at; and Ascanius sick and ill, because he has nearly burst
+himself with cakes and muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the unhappiest of
+all, thinking of his ninety francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette
+gathered up the crumbs of the sandwiches, and muttered--"Do they think
+people make English dishes to have them thrown into the corners of the
+room?"
+
+"It's done," said M. Lupot; "I shall give no more soir�es. I begin to
+think I was foolish in wishing to leave my own sphere. When people of
+the same class lark and joke each other, it's all very well; but when
+you meddle with your superiors, and they are uncivil, it hurts your
+feelings. Their mockery is an insult, and you don't get over it soon. My
+dear Celanire, I shall decidedly try to marry you to a stationer."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.
+
+THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.
+
+OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.
+
+
+The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in our last for the admiration and
+instruction of remote ages. When the nineteenth century shall be long
+out of date, and centuries in general out of their _teens_, posterity
+will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure
+undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the
+macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in
+our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is,
+after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his
+_monomania_, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly
+be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if,
+indeed, it can be said to injure him who glories in his vocation--who is
+the echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.
+
+The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to
+society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold
+iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families,
+and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the
+text of Scripture, which commandeth us, "in whatever station we are,
+therewith to be content."
+
+The gentility-monger is a family man, having a house somewhere in
+Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is sometimes a man of independent
+fortune--how acquired, nobody knows; that is his secret, his mystery. He
+will let no one suppose that he has ever been in trade; because, when a
+man intends gentility-mongering, it must never be known that he has
+formerly carried on the tailoring, or the shipping, or the
+cheese-mongering, or the fish-mongering, or any other mongering than the
+gentility-mongering. His house is very stylishly furnished; that is to
+say, as unlike the house of a man of fashion as possible--the latter
+having only things the best of their kind, and for use; the former
+displaying every variety of extravagant gimcrackery, to impress you with
+a profound idea of combined wealth and taste, but which, to an educated
+eye and mind only, conveys a lively idea of ostentation. When you call
+upon a gentility-monger, a broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike
+footman, in Aurora plushes, ushers you to a drawing-room, where, on
+tables round, and square, and hexagonal, are set forth jars, porcelain,
+china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed parrots under bell-glasses;
+corals, minerals, and an infinity of trumpery, among which albums,
+great, small, and intermediate, must by no means be forgotten.
+
+The room is papered with some _splendacious_ pattern in blue and gold; a
+chandelier of imposing gingerbread depends from the richly ornamented
+ceiling; every variety of ottoman, lounger, settee, is scattered about,
+so that to get a chair involves the right-of-search question; the
+bell-pulls are painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels carpet of flaming
+colours, curtains with massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous frames;
+prints, after Ross, of her Majesty and Prince Albert, of course; and
+mezzotints of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for whom the
+gentility-monger has a profound respect, and of whom he talks with a
+familiarity showing that it is not _his_ fault, at least, if these
+exalted personages do not admit him to the honour of their acquaintance.
+
+In fact, you see the drawing-room is not intended for sitting down in,
+and when the lady appears, you are inclined to believe she never sits
+down; at least the full-blown swell of that satin skirt seems never
+destined to the compression of a chair. The conversation is as
+usual--"Have you read the morning paper?"--meaning the Court Circular
+and fashionable intelligence; "do you know whether the Queen is at
+Windsor or Claremont, and how long her Majesty intends to remain;
+whether town is fuller than it was, or not so full; when the next
+Almacks' ball takes place; whether you were at the last drawing-room,
+and which of the fair _debutantes_ you most admire; whether Tamburini is
+to be denied us next year?" with many lamentations touching the possible
+defection, as if the migrations of an opera thrush were of the least
+consequence to any rational creature--of course you don't say so, but
+lament Tamburini as if he were your father; "whether it is true that we
+are to have the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito, this season; and what
+a heaven of delight we shall experience from the united action of these
+twenty supernatural pettitoes." You needn't express yourself after this
+fashion, else you will shock miss, who lounges near you in an agony of
+affected rapture: you must sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your cane,
+and say "divine--yes--hope it may be so--exquisite--_exquisite_." This
+naturally leads you to the last new songs, condescendingly exhibited to
+you by miss, if you are _somebody_, (if _nobody_, miss does not appear;)
+you are informed that "_My heart is like a pickled salmon_" is dedicated
+to the Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon you are favoured with sundry
+passages (out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages, &c., of that
+illustrious family; you are asked whether Bishop is the composer of "_I
+saw her in a twinkling_," and whether the _minor_ is not fine? Miss
+tells you she has transposed it from G to C, as suiting her voice
+better--whereupon mamma acquaints you, that a hundred and twenty guineas
+for a harp is moderate, she thinks; you think so too, taking that
+opportunity to admire the harp, saying that you saw one exactly like it
+at Lord (any Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in St James's Square.
+This produces an invitation to dinner; and with many lamentations on
+English weather, and an eulogium on the climate of Florence, you pay
+your parting compliments, and take your leave.
+
+At dinner you meet a claret-faced Irish absentee, whose good society is
+a good dinner, and who is too happy to be asked any where that a good
+dinner is to be had; a young silky clergyman, in black curled whiskers,
+and a white _choker_; one of the meaner fry of M.P.'s; a person who
+_calls himself_ a foreign count; a claimant of a dormant peerage; a
+baronet of some sort, not above the professional; sundry propriety-faced
+people in yellow waistcoats, who say little, and whose social position
+you cannot well make out; half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age,
+dressed in grand style, with turbans of imposing _tournure_; and a
+young, diffident, equivocal-looking gent who sits at the bottom of the
+table, and whom you instinctively make out to be a family doctor, tutor,
+or nephew, with expectations. No young ladies, unless the young ladies
+of the family, appear at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers;
+because the motive of the entertainment is pride, not pleasure; and
+therefore prigs and frumps are in keeping, and young women with brains,
+or power of conversation, would only distract attention from the grand
+business of life, that is to say, dinner; besides, a seat at table here
+is an object, where the expense is great, and nobody is asked for his or
+her own sake, but for an object either of ostentation, interest, or
+vanity. Hospitality never enters into the composition of a
+gentility-monger: he gives a dinner, wine, and a shake of the hand, but
+does not know what the word _welcome_ means: he says, now and then, to
+his wife "My dear, I think we must give a dinner;" a dinner is
+accordingly determined on, cards issued three weeks in advance, that you
+may be premeditatedly dull; the dinner is gorgeous to repletion, that
+conversation may be kept as stagnant as possible. Of those happy
+surprize invitations--those unexpected extemporaneous dinners, that as
+they come without thinking or expectation, so go off with _eclat_, and
+leave behind the memory of a cheerful evening--he has no idea; a man of
+fashion, whose place is fixed, and who has only himself to please, will
+ask you to a slice of crimped cod and a hash of mutton, without
+ceremony; and when he puts a cool bottle on the table, after a dinner
+that he and his friend have really enjoyed, will never so much as
+apologize with, "my dear sir, I fear you have had a wretched dinner," or
+"I wish I had known: I should have had something better." This affected
+depreciation of his hospitality he leaves to the gentility-monger, who
+will insist on cramming you with fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are
+like to burst; and then, by way of apology, get his guests to pay the
+reckoning in plethoric laudation of his mountains of victual.
+
+If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after
+the appointed time, although you arrived to a _minute_, as every
+Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the
+gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and
+has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host,
+hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of
+Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats
+attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the
+other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow
+waistcoats, and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig
+of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of
+miss, asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back
+of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening
+parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and
+another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every
+opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes
+with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud
+but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a
+prolonged _rat-tat-tat_ announces the arrival of the noble beast, the
+lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in
+the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the
+day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed
+coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a
+sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by
+the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and
+wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.
+
+As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not
+strictly understood, the host desires Honourable Sniftky to take down
+miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master
+of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where
+you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has
+inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.
+
+You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that
+distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky,
+_ex-officio_, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy
+round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured
+by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in
+attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of
+assize, go circuit.
+
+Then comes hobnobbing, with an interlocutory dissertation upon a
+_plateau, candelabrum_, or some other superfluous machine, in the centre
+of the table. One of the professed diners-out, discovers for the
+twentieth time an inscription in dead silver on the pedestal, and
+enquires with well-affected ignorance whether that is a _present_; the
+gentility-monger asks the diner-out to wine, as he deserves, then enters
+into a long apologetical self-laudation of his exertions in behalf of
+the CANNIBAL ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION, AND BRITISH SUBJECT
+TRANSPORTATION SOCIETY, (some emigration crimping scheme, in short,) in
+which his humble efforts to diffuse civilization and promote
+Christianity, however unworthy, ("No, no!" from the diner-out,) gained
+the esteem of his fellow-labourers, and the approbation of his own
+con----"Shall I send you some fish, sir?" says the man at the foot of
+the table, addressing himself to the Honourable Sniftky, and cutting
+short the oration.
+
+A monstrous salmon and a huge turbot are now dispensed to the hungry
+multitude; the gentility-monger has no idea that the biggest turbot is
+not the best; he knows it is the _dearest_, and that is enough for him;
+he would have his dishes like his cashbook, to show at a glance how much
+he has at his banker's. When the flesh of the guests has been
+sufficiently fishified, there is an _interregnum_, filled up with
+another circuit of wine, until the arrival of the _pi�ces de
+resistance_, the imitations of made dishes, and the usual _etceteras_.
+The conversation, meanwhile, is carried on in a _staccato_ style; a
+touch here, a hit there, a miss almost every where; the Honourable
+Sniftky turning the head of mamma with affected compliments, and
+hobnobbing to himself without intermission. After a sufficiently tedious
+interval, the long succession of wasteful extravagance is cleared away
+with the upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a look from our hostess,
+rise with dignity and decorously retire, miss modestly bringing up the
+rear--the man at the foot of the table with the handle of the door in
+one hand, and a napkin in the other, bowing them out.
+
+Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair
+closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive
+dinner, can be jovial _to order_. The wine goes round, and laudations go
+with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr
+Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking
+only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several
+speakers, as much as to say, "What a fellow you are, to talk;" the host
+essays a _bon-mot_, or tells a story bordering on the _ideal_, which he
+thinks is fashionable, and shows that he knows life; the Honourable
+Sniftky drinks claret from a beer-glass, and after the third bottle
+affects to discover his mistake, wondering what he could be thinking of;
+this produces much laughter from all save the professed diners-out, who
+dare not take such a liberty, and is _the_ jest of the evening.
+
+When the drinkers, drinkables, and talk are quite exhausted, the noise
+of a piano recalls to our bewildered recollections the ladies, and we
+drink their healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending that it is
+foreign-post night at the Foreign Office, walks off without even a bow
+to the assembled diners, the gentility-monger following him submissively
+to the door; then returning, tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone,
+he's such a good-natured fellow, while the gentleman so characterized
+gets into his cab, drives to his club, and excites the commiseration of
+every body there, by relating how he was bored with an old _ruffian_,
+who insisted upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner in Bryanston Square;
+at which there are many "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" and "what could you
+expect?--Bryanston Square!--served you right."
+
+In the mean time, the guests, relieved of the presence of the Honourable
+Sniftky, are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor,
+or something of that sort) waxes jocular, and gives decided indications
+of something like "how came you so;" the man at the foot of the table
+contradicts one of the diners-out, and is contradicted in turn by the
+baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured
+man, supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of
+the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands' Aborigines Protection
+Society, in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the
+dormant peerage retails his pedigree, pulling to pieces the
+attorney-general, who has expressed an opinion hostile to his
+pretensions.
+
+In the mean time, the piano is joined by a harp, in musical solicitation
+of the company to join the ladies in the drawing-room; they do so,
+looking flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs, sip tea, the
+younger beaux turning over, with miss, Books of Beauty and Keepsakes: at
+eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with
+a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the
+evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a
+bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless,
+stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual,
+selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon,
+assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where
+gulosity has been unrelieved by one single sally of wit, humour,
+good-nature, humanity, or charity; where you come without a welcome, and
+leave without a friend.
+
+The whole art of the gentility-mongers of all sorts in London, and _�
+fortiori_ of their wives and families, is to lay a tax upon social
+intercourse as nearly as possible amounting to a prohibition; their
+dinners are criminally wasteful, and sinfully extravagant to this end;
+to this end they insist on making _price_ the test of what they are
+pleased to consider _select society_ in their own sets, and they
+consequently cannot have a dance without guinea tickets nor a _pic-nic_
+without dozens of champagne. This shows their native ignorance and
+vulgarity more than enough; genteel people go upon a plan directly
+contrary, not merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying themselves
+without extravagance or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers
+would do well to imitate people of fashion.
+
+The exertions a gentility-monger will make, to rub his skirts against
+people above him; the humiliations, mortifications, snubbing, he will
+submit to, are almost incredible. One would hardly believe that a
+retired tradesman, of immense wealth, and enjoying all the respect that
+immense wealth will secure, should actually offer large sums of money to
+a lady of fashion, as an inducement to procure for him cards of
+invitation to her _set_, which he stated was the great object of his
+existence. Instead of being indignant at his presumption, the lady in
+question, pitying the poor man's folly, attempted to reason with him,
+assuring him with great truth that whatever might be his wealth, his
+power or desire of pleasing, he would be rendered unhappy and
+ridiculous, by the mere dint of pretension to a circle to which he had
+no legitimate claim, and advising him, as a friend, to attempt some more
+laudable and satisfactory ambition.
+
+All this good advice was, however, thrown away; our gentility-monger
+persevered, contriving somehow to gain a passport to some of the _outer_
+circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed, laughed at, and honoured
+with the _soubriquet_ (he was a pianoforte maker) of the _Semi-Grand_!
+
+We know another instance, where two young men, engaged in trade in the
+city, took a splendid mansion at the West End, furnished it sumptuously,
+got some desperate knight or baronet's widow to give parties at their
+house, inviting whomsoever she thought proper, at their joint expense.
+It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows succeeded in getting into
+good society, not indeed in the _Court Circular_, but in the--_Gazette_.
+
+There is another class of gentility-mongers more to be pitied than the
+last; those, namely, who are endeavouring to "make a connexion," as the
+phrase is, by which they may gain advancement in their professions, and
+are continually on the look-out for introductions to persons of quality,
+their hangers-on and dependents. There is too much of this sort of thing
+among medical men in London, the family nature of whose profession
+renders connexion, private partiality, and personal favour, more
+essential to them than to others. The lawyer, for example, need not be a
+gentility-monger; he has only to get round attorneys, for the
+opportunity to show what he can do, when he has done this, in which a
+little toadying, "_on the sly_," is necessary--all the rest is easy. The
+court and the public are his judges; his powers are at once appreciable,
+his talent can be calculated, like the money in his pocket; he can now
+go on straight forward, without valuing the individual preference or
+aversion of any body.
+
+But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women,
+and an inexhaustible variety of _sotto voce_ contrivances, must needs
+have a tendency to create a subserviency of spirit and of manner, which
+naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering: where realities, such
+as medical experience, reading, and skill, are remotely, or not at all,
+appreciable, we must take up with appearances; and of all appearances,
+the appearance of proximity to people of fashion is the most taking and
+seductive to people _not_ of fashion. It is for this reason that a
+rising physician, if he happen to have a lord upon his sick or visiting
+list, never has done telling his plebeian patients the particulars of
+his noble case, which they swallow like almond milk, finding it an
+excellent _placebo_.
+
+As it is the interest of a gentility-monger, and his constant practice,
+to be attended by a fashionable physician, in order that he may be
+enabled continually to talk of what Sir Henry thinks of this, and how
+Sir Henry objects to that, and the opinion of Sir Henry upon t'other, so
+it is the business of the struggling doctor to be a gentility-monger,
+with the better chance of becoming one day or other a fashionable
+physician. Acting on this principle, the poor man must necessarily have
+a house in a professional neighbourhood, which usually abuts upon a
+neighbourhood fashionable or exclusive; he must hire a carriage by the
+month, and be for ever stepping in and out of it, at his own door,
+keeping it purposely bespattered with mud to show the extent of his
+visiting acquaintance; he must give dinners to people "who _may_ be
+useful," and be continually on the look-out for those lucky accidents
+which have made the fortunes, and, as a matter of course, the _merit_,
+of so many professional men.
+
+He becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society, which gives him the chance of
+conversing with a lord, and the right of entering a lord's (the
+president's) house, which is turned into sandwich-shop four times a-year
+for his reception; this, being the nearest approach he makes to
+acquaintance with great personages, he values with the importance it
+deserves.
+
+His servants, with famine legibly written on their bones, are assiduous
+and civil; his wife, though half-starved, is very genteel, and at her
+dinner parties burns candle-ends from the palace.[48]
+
+     [48] In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St.
+     James's Street, may be seen stumps, or, as the Scotch call
+     them, _doups_ of wax-lights, with the announcement "Candle-ends
+     from Buckingham Palace." These are eagerly bought up by the
+     gentility-mongers, who burn, or it may be, in the excess of
+     their loyalty, _eat_ them!
+
+If you pay her a morning visit, you will have some such conversation as
+follows.
+
+"Pray, Mr ----, is there any news to-day?"
+
+"Great distress, I understand, throughout the country."
+
+"Indeed--the old story, shocking--very.--Pray, have you heard the
+delightful news? The Princess-Royal has actually cut a tooth!"
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, I assure you; and the sweet little royal love of a martyr has
+borne it like a hero."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+"Positively, I assure you; Doctor Tryiton has just returned from a
+consultation with his friend Sir Henry, upon a particularly difficult
+case--Lord Scruffskin--case of elephantiasis I think they call it, and
+tells me that Sir Henry has arrives express from Windsor with the news."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Do you think, Mr ----, there will be a general illumination?"
+
+"Really, madam, I cannot say."
+
+"_There ought to be_, [with emphasis.] You must know, Mr ----, Dr
+Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter a beautifully bound copy of his
+work on ulcerated sore throat; he says there is a great analogy between
+ulcers of the throat and den--den--den--something, I don't know
+what--teething, in short. If nothing comes of it, Dr Tryiton, thank
+Heaven, can do without it; but you know, Mr ----, it may, on a future
+occasion, be _useful to our family_."
+
+If there is, in the great world of London, one thing more spirit-sinking
+than another, it is to see men condemned, by the necessities of an
+overcrowded profession, to sink to the meannesses of pretension for a
+desperate accident by which they may insure success. When one has had an
+opportunity of being behind the scenes, and knowing what petty shifts,
+what poor expedients of living, what anxiety of mind, are at the bottom
+of all this empty show, one will not longer marvel that many born for
+better things should sink under the difficulties of their position, or
+that the newspapers so continually set forth the miserably unprovided
+for condition in which they so often are compelled to leave their
+families. To dissipate the melancholy that always oppresses us when
+constrained to behold the ridiculous antics of the gentility-mongers,
+which we chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation--let us contrast
+the hospitality of those who, with wiser ambition, keep themselves, as
+the saying is, "_to themselves_;" and, as a bright example, let us
+recollect our old friend Joe Stimpson.
+
+Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller in Bermondsey, the architect
+of his own fortune, which he has raised to the respectable elevation of
+somewhere about a quarter of a million sterling. He is now in his
+seventy-second year, has a handsome house, without and pretension,
+overlooking his tanyard. He has a joke upon prospects, calling you to
+look from the drawing-room window at his tanpits, asking you if you ever
+saw any thing like that at the west end of the town; replying in the
+negative, Joe, chuckling, observes that it is the finest prospect _he_
+ever saw in his life, and although he has been admiring it for half a
+century, he has not done admiring it yet. Joe's capacity for the
+humorous may be judged of by this specimen; but in attention to business
+few can surpass him, while his hospitality can command a wit whenever he
+chooses to angle for one with a good dinner. He has a wife, a venerable
+old smiling lady in black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes; three
+daughters, unmarried; and a couple of sons, brought up, after the London
+fashion, to inherit their father's business, or, we might rather say,
+_estate_.
+
+Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain unmarried, we cannot say, nor would
+it be decorous to enquire; but hearing them drop a hint now and then
+about visits, "a considerable time ago," to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we
+are led, however reluctantly in the case of ladies _now_ evangelical, to
+conclude, their attention has formerly been directed to
+gentility-mongering at these places of fashionable resort; the tanyard
+acting as a repellent to husbands of a social position superior to their
+own, and their great fortunes operating in deterring worthy persons of
+their own station from addressing them; or being the means of inducing
+them to be too prompt with refusals, these amiable middle-aged young
+ladies are now "on hands," paying the penalty of one of the many curses
+that pride of wealth brings in its train. At present, however, their
+"affections are set on things above;" and, without meaning any thing
+disrespectful to my friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet, and Susan
+Stimpson are certainly the three least agreeable members of the family.
+The sons are, like all other sons in the houses of their fathers,
+steady, business-like, unhappy, and dull; they look like fledged birds
+in the nest of the old ones, out of place; neither servants nor masters,
+their social position is somewhat equivocal, and having lived all their
+lives in the house of their father, seeing as he sees, thinking as he
+thinks, they can hardly be expected to appear more than a brace of
+immature Joe Stimpsons. They are not, it is true, tainted with much of
+the world's wickedness, neither have they its self-sustaining trials,
+its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles, or that experience which is
+gathered only by men who quit, when they can quit it, the petticoat
+string, and the paternal despotism of even a happy home. As for the old
+couple, time, although silvering the temples and furrowing the front, is
+hardly seen to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder of either, much less
+to put his finger on eyes, ears, or lips--the two first being yet as
+"wide awake," and the last as open to a joke, or any other good thing,
+as ever they were; in sooth, it is no unpleasing sight to see this jolly
+old couple with nearly three half centuries to answer for, their
+affection unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and temper undisturbed by the
+near approach, beyond hope of respite, of that stealthy foe whose
+assured advent strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson, if he thinks of
+death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down
+stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far
+from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring.
+The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife,
+unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual
+absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings,
+somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven,
+they don't care who goes to ----," a place that Virgil and Tasso have
+taken much pains in describing, but which the old gentleman sufficiently
+indicates by one emphatic monosyllable.
+
+Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates cant and humbug, and has no
+prejudices--hating the French he will not acknowledge is a prejudice,
+but considers the bounden duty of an Englishman; and, though fierce
+enough upon other subjects of taxation, thinks no price too high for
+drubbing them. He was once prevailed upon to attempt a journey to Paris;
+but having got to Calais, insisted upon returning by the next packet,
+swearing it was a shabby concern, and he had seen enough of it.
+
+He takes in the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ because his father did it before
+him--but he never reads it; he takes pride in a corpulent dog, which is
+ever at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache, and swears at any
+body who calls it _tic-douloureux._
+
+When you go to dine with him, you are met at the door by a rosy-checked
+lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles a hearty welcome, and assures
+you, though an utter stranger, of the character of the house and its
+owner. You are conducted to the drawing-room, a plain, substantial,
+_honest_-looking apartment; there you find the old couple, and are
+received with a warmth that gives assurance of the nearest approach to
+what is understood by _home_. The sons, released from business, arrive,
+shake you heartily by the hand, and are really glad to see you; of the
+daughters we say nothing, as there is nothing in _them_.
+
+The other guests of the day come dropping in--all straightforward,
+business-like, free, frank-hearted fellows--aristocrats of wealth, the
+best, because the _unpretending_, of their class; they come, too,
+_before_ their time, for they know their man, and that Joe Stimpson
+keeps nobody waiting for nobody. When the clock--for here is no
+_gong_--strikes five, you descend to dinner; plain, plentiful, good, and
+well dressed; no tedious course, with long intervals between; no
+oppressive _set-out_ of superfluous plate, and what, perhaps, is not the
+least agreeable accessory, no piebald footmen hanging over your chair,
+whisking away your plate before you have done with it, and watching
+every bit you put into your mouth.
+
+Your cherry-cheeked friend and another, both in the family from
+childhood, (another good sign of the house,) and looking as if they
+really were glad--and so they are--to have an opportunity of obliging
+you, do the servitorial offices of the table; you are sure of a glass of
+old sherry, and you may call for strong beer, or old port, with your
+cheese--or, if a Scotchman, for a dram--without any other remark than an
+invitation to "try it again, and make yourself comfortable."
+
+After dinner, you are invited, as a young man, to smoke a cigar with the
+"boys," as Joe persists in calling them. You ascend to a bed-room, and
+are requested to keep your head out o' window while smoking, lest the
+"Governor" should snuff the fumes when he comes up stairs to bed: while
+you are "craning" your neck, the cherry-cheeked lass enters with brandy
+and water, and you are as merry and easy as possible. The rest of the
+evening passes away in the same unrestrained interchange of friendly
+courtesy; nor are you permitted to take your leave without a promise to
+dine on the next Sunday or holiday--Mrs Stimpson rating you for not
+coming last Easter Sunday, and declaring she cannot think "why young men
+should mope by themselves, when she is always happy to see them."
+
+Honour to Joe Stimpson and his missus! They have the true _ring_ of the
+ancient coin of hospitality; none of your hollow-sounding _raps_: they
+know they have what I want, _a home_, and they will not allow me, at
+their board, to know that I want one: they compassionate a lonely,
+isolated man, and are ready to share with him the hearty cheer and
+unaffected friendliness of their English fireside: they know that they
+can get nothing by me, nor do they ever dream of an acknowledgment for
+their kindness; but I owe them for many a social day redeemed from
+cheerless solitude; many an hour of strenuous labour do I owe to the
+relaxation of the old wainscotted dining-room at Bermondsey.
+
+Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all who are satisfied with their station,
+happy in their home, have no repinings after empty sounds of rank and
+shows of life; and who extend the hand of friendly fellowship to the
+homeless, _because they have no home_!
+
+
+THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.
+
+     "There is a quantity of talent latent among men, ever rising to
+     the level of the great occasions that call it forth."
+
+This illustration, borrowed by Sir James Mackintosh from chemical
+science, and so happily applied, may serve to indicate the undoubted
+truth, that talent is a _growth_ as much as a _gift_; that circumstances
+call out and develop its latent powers; that as soil, flung upon the
+surface from the uttermost penetrable depths of earth, will be found to
+contain long-dormant germs of vegetable life, so the mind of man, acted
+upon by circumstances, will ever be found equal to a certain sum of
+production--the amount of which will be chiefly determined by the force
+and direction of the external influence which first set it in motion.
+
+The more we reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more,
+that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing
+in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various
+countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that
+example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing
+after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds,
+and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes
+of expression; in brief, that great occasions will have great
+instruments, and there never was yet a noted time that had not noted
+men. Dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial times will make, if they
+do not find, dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial men: in times when
+ostentation and expense are the measures of respect, when men live
+rather for the world's opinion than their own, poverty becomes not only
+the evil but the shame, not only the curse but the disgrace, and will be
+shunned by every man as a pestilence; every one will fling away
+immortality, to avoid it; will sink, as far as he can, his art in his
+trade; and _he_ will be the greatest genius who can turn most money.
+
+It may be urged that true genius has the power not only to _take_
+opportunities, but to make them: true, it may make such opportunities as
+the time in which it lives affords; but these opportunities will be
+great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise.
+All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low
+Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon,
+a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but
+which we take leave to designate the "_dot-and-carry-one_" century. If a
+Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five
+seconds would elapse until he would be "_hooked_" off to the
+station-house by Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D division, with an
+exulting mob of men and boys hooting at his heels: if Demosthenes or
+Cicero, disguised as Chartist orators, mounting a tub at Deptford, were
+to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against
+Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division,
+with a _posse_ of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator
+from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice
+of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
+point of view with any other vagabond.
+
+What is become of the eloquence of the bar? Why is it that flowery
+orators find no grist coming to their mills? How came it that, at
+Westminster Hall, Charles Philips missed his market? What is the reason,
+that if you step into the Queen's Bench, or Common Pleas, or Exchequer,
+you will hear no such thing as a speech--behold no such animal as an
+orator--only a shrewd, plain, hard-working, steady man, called an
+attorney-general, or a sergeant, or a leading counsel, quietly talking
+over a matter of law with the judge, or a matter of fact with the jury,
+like men of business as they are, and shunning, as they would a
+rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments, figures, flowers, and the obsolete
+embroidery of rhetoric?
+
+The days of romantic eloquence are fled--the great constitutional
+questions that called forth "thoughts that breathe, and words that
+burn," from men like Erskine, are _determined_. Would you have men
+oratorical over a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about an action of trespass
+on the case, or a rule to compute?
+
+To be sure, when Follett practised before committees of the House of
+Commons, and, by chance, any question involving points of interest and
+difficulty in Parliamentary law and practice came before the Court,
+there was something worth hearing: the _opportunity_ drew out the _man_,
+and the _orator_ stepped before the _advocate_. Even now, sometimes, it
+is quite refreshing to get a topic in these Courts worthy of Austin, and
+Austin working at it. But no man need go to look for orators in our
+ordinary courts of law; judgment, patience, reading, and that rare
+compound of qualities known and appreciated by the name of _tact_, tell
+with judges, and influence juries; the days of _palaver_ are gone, and
+the talking heroes extinguished for ever.
+
+All this is well known in London; but the three or four millions (it may
+be _five_) of great men, philosophers, poets, orators, patriots, and the
+like, in the rural districts, require to be informed of this our
+declension from the heroics, in order to appreciate, or at least to
+understand, the modesty, sobriety, business-like character, and division
+of labour, in the vast amount of talent abounding in every department of
+life in London.
+
+London overflows with talent. You may compare it, for the purpose of
+illustration, to one of George Robins' patent filters, into which pours
+turbid torrents of Thames water, its sediment, mud, dirt, weeds, and
+rottenness; straining through the various _strata_, its grosser
+particles are arrested in their course, and nothing that is not pure,
+transparent, and limpid is transmitted. In the great filter of London
+life, conceit, pretension, small provincial abilities, _pseudo_-talent,
+_soi-disant_ intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung out again. True
+genius is tested by judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty,
+privation; and, passing through many ordeals, persevering, makes its way
+through all; and at length, in the fulness of time, flows forth, in
+acknowledged purity and refinement, upon the town.
+
+There is a perpetual onward, upward tendency in the talent, both high
+and low, mechanical and intellectual, that abounds in London:
+
+     "Emulation hath a thousand sons,"
+
+who are ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time
+to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but
+step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied--you are
+edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle
+slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to
+be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses
+you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you
+_live_ but while you _labour_, and are no longer remembered than while
+you are reluctant to repose.
+
+Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated
+upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise
+and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although _knowledge_
+diffused immortalizes itself, diffused _talent_ is but a shallow pool,
+glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated; _concentrated_, it
+is a well, from whose depths perpetually may we draw the limpid waters.
+Therefore is the talent of London concentrated, and the division of
+labour minute. When we talk of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, in
+a provincial place, we recognize at once a man who embraces all that his
+opportunities present him with, in whatever department of his
+profession. The lawyer is, at one and the same time, advocate, chamber
+counsel, conveyancer, pleader; the doctor an accoucheur, apothecary,
+physician, surgeon, dentist, or at least, in a greater or less degree,
+unites in his own person, these--in London, distinct and
+separate--professions, according as his sphere of action is narrow or
+extended; the country journalist is sometimes proprietor, editor,
+sub-editor, traveller, and canvasser, or two or more of these
+heterogeneous and incompatible avocations. The result is, an obvious,
+appreciable, and long-established superiority in that product which is
+the result of minutely divided labour.
+
+The manufacture of a London watch or piano will employ, each, at least
+twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers, importers, and venders of the
+raw material used in these articles; every one of these tradesmen shall
+be nay, _must_ be, the best of their class, or at least the best that
+can be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are
+held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment
+enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same
+with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be
+placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor,
+a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to
+understand the case; each of these doctors shall have read lectures and
+published books, and made himself known for his study and exclusive
+attention to one of the "thousand ills that flesh is heir to:" the
+latter shall go through the hands of dozens of men skilful in that
+branch of the law connected with the particular injury. So it is with
+every thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both,
+that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute
+division of labour, and the minute division of labour reacts upon the
+market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs
+of a legitimate superiority.
+
+Hence the superior intelligence of working men, of all classes, high and
+low, in the World of London; hence that striving after excellence, that
+never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that
+so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place; hence the
+improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow;
+hence speculation, enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants of less
+extended spheres of action.
+
+Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent,
+genius, skill, _tact_, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by
+no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better
+classes, stand prominently before their fellows _socially_, or, that one
+is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after anybody in the
+World of London.
+
+In this respect, no capital, no country on the face of the earth,
+resembles us; every where else you will find a leading class, giving a
+tone to society, and moulding it in some one or other direction; a
+predominating _set_, the pride of those who are _in_, the envy of those
+who are _below_ it. There is nothing of this kind in London; here every
+man has his own set, and every man his proper pride. In every set,
+social or professional, there are great names, successful men, prominent;
+but the set is nothing the greater for them: no man sheds any lustre
+upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister a whit more thought of
+because he and Lyndhurst are of the same profession.
+
+Take a look at other places: in money-getting places, you find society
+following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of 'Change: every man
+knows the worth of every other man, that is to say, _what_ he is worth.
+
+A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is _there_ a man good for _so_
+much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten
+thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the
+aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you
+are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to "doing a
+bill."
+
+Go abroad, to Rome for example--You are smothered beneath the petticoats
+of an ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northern courts of
+Europe--You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in
+military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every
+turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing.
+Make your way into Germany--What do you find there? an aristocracy of
+functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von,
+Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von,
+crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess--for the women there
+must be _better_-half even in their titles--you find society led, or, to
+speak more correctly, society _consisting_ of functionaries, and they,
+every office son of them, and their wives--nay, their very curs--alike
+insolent and dependent. "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at
+_me_!" There, to get into society, you must first get into a place: you
+must contrive to be the _servant_ of the public before you are permitted
+to be the _master_: you must be paid by, before you are in a condition
+to despise, the _canaille_.
+
+Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English
+people, as respects the supremacy of honest industry, its independent
+exercise, and the comparative insignificance of aristocracies,
+conventionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there we find a provincial
+and a Parisian aristocracy--the former a servile mob of placemen, one in
+fifty, at least, of the whole population; and the latter--oh! my poor
+head, what a _clanjaffrey_ of _journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes_,
+dramatists, novelists, _vaudivellistes_, poets, literary ladies, lovers
+of literary ladies, _hommes de lettres, claqueurs, litt�rateurs,
+g�rants, censeurs, rapporteurs_, and _le diable boiteux_ verily knows
+what else!
+
+These people, with whom, or at least with a great majority of whom,
+common sense, sobriety of thought, consistency of purpose, steady
+determination in action, and sound reasoning, are so sadly eclipsed by
+their vivacity, _empressement_, prejudice, and party zeal, form a
+prominent, indeed, _the_ prominent aristocracy of the _salons_: and only
+conceive what must be the state of things in France, when we know that
+Paris acts upon the provinces, and that Paris is acted upon by this
+foolscap aristocracy, without station, or, what is perhaps worse,
+enjoying station without property; abounding in maddening and exciting
+influences, but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed,
+_ungenius-like_ qualities of patience, prudence, charity, forbearance,
+and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn nation, more than any other
+in Europe, stands in need.
+
+When, in the name of goodness, is the heart of the philanthropist to be
+gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled over the earth? When are
+paltry family intrigues to cease, causing the blood of innocent
+thousands to be shed? When will the aristocracy of genius in France give
+over jingling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes "_gloire_" and
+"_victoire_," and apply themselves to objects worthy of creatures
+endowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if they must have fighting, if
+it is their nature, if the prime instinct with them is the thirst of
+human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound on their
+fellow-countrymen to war with England, to war with Spain, to war with
+every body, while snug in their offices, doing their little best to
+bleed nations with their pen!
+
+Why does not the foolscap aristocracy rush forth, inkhorn in hand, and
+restore the glories (as they call them) of the Empire, nor pause till
+they mend their pens victorious upon the brink of the Rhine.
+
+To resume: the aristocracies of our provincial capitals are those of
+literature in the one, and lickspittling in the other: mercantile towns
+have their aristocracies of money, or muckworm aristocracies: Rome has
+an ecclesiastical--Prussia, Russia, military aristocracies: Germany, an
+aristocracy of functionaries: France has two, or even three, great
+aristocracies--the military, place-hunting, and foolscap.
+
+Now, then, attend to what we are going to say: London is cursed with no
+predominating, no overwhelming, no _characteristic_ aristocracy. There
+is no _set_ or _clique_ of any sort or description of men that you can
+point to, and say, that's the London set. We turn round and desire to be
+informed what set do you mean: every _salon_ has its set, and every
+pot-house its set also; and the frequenters of each set are neither
+envious of the position of the other, nor dissatisfied with their own:
+the pretenders to fashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of high
+life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel set, who want the proper
+self-respecting pride which every distinct aristocracy maintains in the
+World of London.
+
+We are a great firmament, a moonless azure, glowing with stars of all
+magnitudes, and myriads of _nebul�_ of no magnitudes at all: we move
+harmoniously in our several orbits, minding our own business, satisfied
+with our position, thinking, it may be, with harmless vanity, that we
+bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all
+terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks,
+are our meteors, our _auror�_, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
+athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our
+tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our
+clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and
+we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday
+of our own bustling time beholds us dimly; but posterity regards us as
+it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies
+his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial
+bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his _ephemeris_
+such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.
+
+If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order--to
+true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal
+equality of outward condition, that republicanism of everyday life,
+which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather
+honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic
+hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming
+interest.
+
+Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred
+great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small
+talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are never told, as a great
+favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead, the phrenologist, is to be there,
+and that we can have our "bumps" felt for nothing; or that the Chevalier
+Doembrownski (a London pickpocket in disguise) is expected to recite a
+Polish ode, accompanying himself on the Jew's harp; we are not bored
+with the misconduct of the librarian, who _never_ has the first volume
+of the last new novel, or invited to determine whether Louisa Fitzsmythe
+or Angelina Stubbsville deserves to be considered the heroine; we are
+not required to be in raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or Clara Novello
+are expected, or to break our hearts with disappointment because they
+didn't come: the arrival, performances, and departure, of Ducrow's
+horses, or Wombwell's wild beasts, affect us with no extraordinary
+emotion; even Assizes time concerns most of us nothing.
+
+Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace in London is the aristocracy of
+wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a provincial town, keeps her carriage, and
+is at once the envy and the scandal of all the Ladies who have to
+proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr Bill Wright,
+the banker, the respected, respectable, influential, twenty per cent
+Wright, in London is merely a licensed dealer in money; he visits at
+Camberwell Hill, or Hampstead Heath, or wherever other tradesmen of his
+class delight to dwell; his wife and daughters patronize the Polish
+balls, and Mr Bill Wright, jun., sports a stall at the (English) opera;
+we are not overdone by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs Bill Wright, or
+the Misses Bill Wright, nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright the younger: in
+a word, we don't care a crossed cheque for the whole Bill Wrightish
+connexion.
+
+What are carriages, or carriage-keeping people in London? It is not
+here, as in the provinces, by their carriages shall you know them; on
+the contrary, the carriage of a duchess is only distinguishable from
+that of a _parvenu_, by the superior expensiveness and vulgarity of the
+latter.
+
+The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth with us, defeats the end it aims
+at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and
+admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to
+contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once
+recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do
+not, all extrinsic and adventitious expenditure availeth its disbursers
+nothing.
+
+What animal on earth was ever so inhumanly preposterous as a lord
+mayor's footman, and yet it takes sixty guineas, at the least, to make
+that poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?
+
+No, sir; in London we see into, and see through, all sorts of
+pretension: the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever kind of quackery
+and imposture. When I say _we_, I speak of the vast multitudes forming
+the educated, discriminating, and thinking classes of London life. We
+pass on to _what_ a man _is_, over _who_ he is, and what he _has_; and,
+with one of the most accurate observers of human character and nature to
+whom a man of the world ever sat for his portrait--the inimitable La
+Bruyere--when offended with the hollow extravagance of vulgar riches, we
+exclaim--"_Tu te trompes, Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant, ce
+grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent, et ces six b�tes qui te
+trainent, tu penses qu'on t'en estime d'avantage: ou ecarte tout cet
+attirail qui t'est �tranger, pour p�n�trer jusq'a toi qui n'es qu'un
+fat_."
+
+In London, every man is responsible for himself, and his position is the
+consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist,
+or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society
+in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his
+private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity.
+Society marks the line between the _public_ and the _social_ man; and
+this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England,
+will enable a public man to confound.
+
+Wherever you are invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by
+any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great
+man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some
+quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small
+tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent
+excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form
+the Cockney school proper of art, literature, the drama, every thing;
+and they go about seeking praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects, with
+their mouths wide open; they pursue their prey in troops, like Jackals,
+and like them, utter at all times a melancholy, complaining howl; they
+imagine that the world is in a conspiracy not to admire them, and they
+would bring an action against the world if they could. But as that is
+impossible, they are content to rail against the world in good set
+terms; they are always puffing in the papers, but in a side-winded way,
+yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly,
+monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention.
+They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they
+admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears
+to the rest of mankind.
+
+These are the men who cultivate extensive tracts of forehead, and are
+deeply versed in the effective display of depending ringlets and
+ornamental whiskers; they dress in black, with white _chokers_, and you
+will be sure to find a lot of them at evening parties of the middling
+sort of doctors, or the better class of boarding-houses.
+
+This class numbers not merely literary men, but actors, artists,
+adventuring politicians, small scientifics, and a thousand others, who
+have not energy or endurance to work their way in solitary labour, or
+who feel that they do not possess the power to go alone.
+
+Public men in London appear naked at the bar of public opinion; laced
+coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail nothing, because these things
+are common, and have the common fate of common things, to be cheaply
+estimated. The eye is satiated with them, they come like shadows, so
+depart; but they do not feed the eye of the mind; the understanding is
+not the better for such gingerbread; we are compelled to look out for
+some more substantial nutriment, and we try the inward man, and test his
+capacity. Instead of measuring his bumps, like a landsurveyor, we
+dissect his brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, whether he be
+high or low, in whatever department of life, not by what he says he can
+do, or means to do, but by what he _has_ done. By this test is every man
+of talent tried in London; this is his grand, his formal difficulty, to
+get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into
+circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by
+the _ring_ of the customer and the _bite_ of the critic; for the
+opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to _wedge_ in, the
+_purchase_ whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on
+the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of
+praise, he must await the long winter of "hope deferred" passing away.
+Patience, the _courage_ of the man of talent, he must exert for many a
+dreary and unrewarded day; he must see the quack and the pretender lead
+an undiscerning public by the nose, and say nothing; nor must he exult
+when the too-long enduring public at length kicks the pretender and the
+quack into deserved oblivion. From many a door that will hereafter
+gladly open for him, he must be content to be presently turned away.
+Many a scanty meal, many a lonely and unfriended evening, in this vast
+wilderness, must he pass in trying on his armour, and preparing himself
+for the fight that he still believes _will_ come, and in which his
+spirit, strong within him, tells him he must conquer. While the night
+yet shrouds him he must labour, and with patient, and happily for him,
+if, with religious hope, he watch the first faint glimmerings of the
+dawning day; for his day, if he is worthy to behold it, will come, and
+he will yet be recompensed "by that time and chance which happeneth to
+all." And if his heart fails him, and his coward spirit turns to flee,
+often as he sits, tearful, in the solitude of his chamber, will the
+remembrance of the early struggles of the immortals shame that coward
+spirit. The shade of the sturdy Johnson, hungering, dinnerless, will
+mutely reproach him for sinking thus beneath the ills that the
+"scholar's life assail." The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith, pursued
+to the gates of a prison by a mercenary wretch who fattened upon the
+produce of that lovely mind, smiling upon him, will bid him be of good
+cheer. A thousand names, that fondly live in the remembrance of our
+hearts, will he conjure up, and all will tell the same story of early
+want, and long neglect, and lonely friendlessness. Then will reproach
+himself, saying, "What am I, that I should quail before the misery that
+broke not minds like these? What am I, that I should be exempt from the
+earthly fate of the immortals?"
+
+Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power
+has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation,
+difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should
+come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent
+assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and
+friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others
+in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude
+of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the
+unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who,
+successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques,
+coteries, and _conversazion�s_, and all the littleness of inferior fry:
+that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or
+that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should
+live for and with such men alone.
+
+But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of
+_pseudo_ talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt,
+miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou
+father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast
+thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the
+schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and
+contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged
+cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and
+the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of
+managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and _claqueurs_,
+and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence
+bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of
+contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute
+necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a
+pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the
+coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O
+Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:--Time misspent, industry
+misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently
+applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions,
+solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!
+
+True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives
+to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no _social_ pre-eminence,
+nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we
+may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all
+other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of
+themselves: they are _individually_ admired, not worshipped as a
+congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their
+public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his
+closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar,
+the man of rank, the politician, the _millionaire_, must merge in the
+gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own
+person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or
+submitted to any where else.
+
+The rewards of intellectual labour applied to purposes of remote, or not
+immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the
+loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be
+worth mentioning, and pity 'tis that it should be so. The law, the
+church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair
+and legitimate remuneration for independent labour, but they have their
+several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward
+when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure
+of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigour crave some haven
+of repose, or, at the least, some mitigated toil, with greater security
+of income: some place of honour with repose--the ambition of declining
+years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and
+other professions in this country, has often been insisted upon with
+great reason: it has been said, and truly said, that not only do these
+prizes reward merit already passed through its probationary stages, but
+serve as inducements to all who are pursuing the same career. It is not
+so much the example of the prize-holder, as the _prize_, that stimulates
+men onward and upward: without the hope of reaching one of those
+comfortable stations, hope would be extinguished, talent lie fallow,
+energy be limited to the mere attainment of subsistence; great things
+would not be done, or attempted, and we would behold only a dreary level
+of indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true of professions, in which,
+after a season of severe study, a term of probation, the knowledge
+acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of
+every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force
+will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is
+perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is
+considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own
+pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and
+figures!
+
+A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the
+conveyancer, the equity craftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of
+that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is
+liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy
+throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect
+the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labour to make a
+respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years
+sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the
+hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power
+exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a
+recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes
+the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of
+course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with,
+recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his
+success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and
+pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of
+a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling
+weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion.
+
+For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox,
+humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set
+himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should
+preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor
+understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on
+respectably. If he is ambitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, he
+must have been a free-thinking reviewer, have written pamphlets, or made
+a fuss about the Greek particle, or, what will avail him more than all,
+have been tutor to a minister of state.
+
+Thus you perceive, for men whose education is _intellectual_, but whose
+practice is more or less _mechanical_, you have many great,
+intermediate, and little prizes in the lottery of life; but where, on
+the contrary, are the prizes for the historian, transmitting to
+posterity the events, and men, and times long since past; where the
+prize of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic, the epic, or the lyric
+poet, the essayist, and all whose works are likely to become the
+classics of future times; where the prize of the public journalist, who
+points the direction of public opinion, and, himself without place,
+station, or even name, teaches Governments their duty, and prevents
+Ministers of State becoming, by hardihood or ignorance, intolerable
+evils; where the prize of the great artist, who has not employed himself
+making faces for hire, but who has worked in loneliness and isolation,
+living, like Barry, upon raw apples and cold water, that he might
+bequeath to his country some memorial worthy the age in which he lived,
+and the art _for_ which he lived? For these men, and such as these, are
+no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful country sets apart for them
+no places where they can retire in the full enjoyment of their fame;
+condemned to labour for their bread, not in a dull mechanical routine of
+professional, official, or business-like duties, but in the most severe,
+most wearing of all labour, _the labour of the brain_, they end where
+they begun. With struggling they begin life, with struggling they make
+their way in life, with struggling they end life; poverty drives away
+friends, and reputation multiplies enemies. The man whose thoughts will
+become the thoughts of our children, whose minds will be reflected in
+the mirror of _his_ mind, who will store in their memories his household
+words, and carry his lessons in their hearts, dies not unwillingly, for
+he has nothing in life to look forward to; closes with indifference his
+eyes on a prospect where no gleam of hope sheds its sunlight on the
+broken spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble friends to a lowly
+sepulchre, and the newspapers of some days after give us the following
+paragraph:--
+
+"We regret to be obliged to state that Dr ----, or ---- ----, Esq. (as
+the case may be) died, on Saturday last at his lodgings two pair back in
+Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his cottage (a miserable cabin where he
+retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is our melancholy duty to
+inform our readers that this highly gifted and amiable man, who for so
+many years delighted and improved the town, and who was a most strenuous
+supporter of the (Radical or Conservative) cause, (_it is necessary to
+set forth this miserable statement to awaken the gratitude of faction
+towards the family of the dead_,) has left a rising family totally
+unprovided for. We are satisfied that it is only necessary to allude to
+this distressing circumstance, in order to enlist the sympathies, &c.
+&c., (in short, _to get up a subscription_)."
+
+We confess we are at a loss to understand why the above advertisement
+should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted with only the interpolation
+of name and date, when any man dies who has devoted himself to pursuits
+of a purely intellectual character. Nor are we unable to discover in the
+melancholy, and, as it would seem, unavoidable fates of such men,
+substantial grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy of talent to
+the pursuit of professional distinction, accompanied by profit, of which
+our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to
+suffer, the consequences.
+
+In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of
+the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite
+as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to
+pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on
+the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will
+be inadequate to maintain the energies even of _great_ minds, in a
+contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any
+man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual
+treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with
+unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse
+than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and
+dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite
+clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for
+merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that
+can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent
+should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their
+subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or
+that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to
+derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never
+extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by
+unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.
+
+We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very
+heartily bid them farewell.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST LAMB.
+
+BY DELTA.
+
+    A shepherd laid upon his bed,
+    With many a sigh, his aching head,
+    For him--his favourite boy--on whom
+    Had fallen death, a sudden doom.
+    "But yesterday," with sobs he cried,
+    "Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,
+    Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,
+    Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!
+    It cannot be that thou art gone;
+    It cannot be, that now, alone,
+    A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,
+    Whilst thou within its bosom lie?
+    Methinks I see thee smiling there,
+    With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,
+    As thou were wont, when fondling me,
+    To clasp my neck from off my knee!
+    Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,
+    My boy, or else my heart will break!"
+
+    Each adding to that father's woes,
+    A thousand bygone scenes arose;
+    At home--a field--each with its joy,
+    Each with its smile--and all his boy!
+    Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,
+    With darkness and with doubt opprest;
+    Now sank despondent, while amain
+    Unnerving tears fell down like rain:
+    Air--air--he breathed, yet wanted breath--
+    It was not life--it was not death--
+    But the drear agony between,
+    Where all is heard, and felt, and seen--
+    The wheels of action set ajar;
+    The body with the soul at war.
+    'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find
+    A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;
+    Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went--
+    The noon from midnight's azure tent
+    Shone down, and, with serenest light,
+    Flooded the windless plains of night;
+    The lake in its clear mirror show'd
+    Each little star that twinkling glow'd;
+    Aspens, that quiver with a breath,
+    Were stirless in that hush of death;
+    The birds were nestled in their bowers;
+    The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;
+    Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven
+    A while its sinless calm had given
+    To lower regions, lest despair
+    Should make abode for ever there;
+    So tranquil--so serene--so bright--
+    Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.
+
+    O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,
+    His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;
+    And, placid, in that calm profound,
+    His silent flocks lay slumbering round:
+    With flowing mantle, by his side,
+    Sudden, a stranger he espied,
+    Bland was his visage, and his voice
+    Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.--
+    "Why is thy mourning thus?" he said,
+    "Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?
+    Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so
+    Abroad despairing thou dost go?
+    As if the God who gave thee breath,
+    Held not the keys of life and death!
+    When from the flocks that feed about,
+    A single lamb thou choosest out,
+    Is it not that which seemeth best
+    That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?
+    Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,
+    With his choice little ones below
+    Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks
+    Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,
+    Early, ere sin hath render'd dim
+    The image of the seraphim!"
+
+    Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;
+    Again within his bosom burn'd
+    The light of faith; and, from that day,
+    He trode serene life's onward way.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+COMTE.
+
+     _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, par M. Auguste Comte.
+
+
+It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work,
+written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of
+truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the
+mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate
+views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a
+thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the
+more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had
+passed over its surface. Some such experience have we just had. Our
+Conservative principles, our calm and patient manner of viewing things,
+have rarely received a stronger corroboration than from the perusal or
+the extraordinary work of M. Comte--a work written, assuredly, for no
+such comfortable purpose, but for the express object (so far as we can
+at present state it to our readers) of re-organizing political society,
+by means of an intellectual reformation amongst political thinkers.
+
+We would not be thought to throw an idle sneer at those generous hopes
+of the future destiny of society which have animated some of the noblest
+and most vigorous minds. It is no part of a Conservative philosophy to
+doubt on the broad question of the further and continuous improvement of
+mankind. Nor will the perusal of M. Comte's work induce, or permit, such
+a doubt. But while he leaves with his reader a strong impression of the
+unceasing development of social man, he leaves a still stronger
+impression of the futile or mischievous efforts of those--himself
+amongst the number--who are thrusting themselves forward as the peculiar
+and exclusive advocates of progress and improvement. He exhibits himself
+in the attitude of an innovator, as powerless in effect as he is daring
+to design; whilst, at the same time, he deals a _crashing_ blow (as upon
+rival machinators) on that malignant party in European politics, whether
+it call itself liberal or of the movement, whose most distinct aim seems
+to be to unloose men from the bonds of civil government. We, too,
+believe in the silent, irresistible progress of human society, but we
+believe also that he is best working for posterity, as well as for the
+welfare of his contemporaries, who promotes order and tranquil effort in
+his own generation, by means of those elements of order which his own
+generation supplies.
+
+That which distinguishes M. Comte's work from all other courses of
+philosophy, or treatises upon science, is the attempt to reduce to
+the _scientific method_ of cogitation the affairs of human
+society--morality, politics; in short, all those general topics which
+occupy our solitary and perplexed meditation, or sustain the incessant
+strife of controversy. These are to constitute a new science, to be
+called _Social Physics_, or _Sociology_. To apply the Baconian, or, as
+it is here called, the positive method, to man in all phases of his
+existence--to introduce the same fixed, indissoluble, imperturbable
+order in our ideas of morals, politics, and history, that we attain to
+astronomy and mechanics, is the bold object of his labours. He does not
+here set forth a model of human society based on scientific conclusions;
+something of this kind is promised us in a future work; in the present
+undertaking he is especially anxious to compel us to think on all such
+topics in the scientific method, _and in no other_. For be it known,
+that science is not only weak in herself, and has been hitherto
+incompetent to the task of unravelling the complicate proceedings of
+humanity, but she has also a great rival in the form of theologic
+method, wherein the mind seeks a solution for its difficulties in a
+power above nature. The human being has contracted an inveterate habit
+of viewing itself as standing in a peculiar relation to a supreme
+Architect and Governor of the world--a habit which in many ways, direct
+and indirect, interferes, it seems, with the application of the positive
+method. This habit is to be corrected; such supreme Architect and
+Governor is to be dismissed from the imagination of men; science is to
+supply the sole mode of thought, and humanity to be its only object.
+
+We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary book, and this is an epithet
+which our readers are already fully prepared to apply. But the book, in
+our judgment, is extraordinary in more senses than one. It is as
+remarkable for the great mental energy it displays, for its originality
+and occasional profundity of thought, as it is for the astounding
+conclusions to which it would conduct us, for its bold paradoxes, and
+for what we can designate no otherwise than its egregious errors. As a
+discipline of the mind, so far as a full appreciation is concerned of
+the scientific method, it cannot be read without signal advantage. The
+book is altogether an anomaly; exhibiting the strangest mixture that
+ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual
+power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither
+does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and
+destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned.
+Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how
+they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our
+intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal
+temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure,
+will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills
+move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and
+be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and
+stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.
+
+For the _style_ of M. Comte's work, it is not commendable. The
+philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for
+excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so
+remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of
+writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which
+characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are
+occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices
+of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the
+great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow
+distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them
+of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and
+the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its
+prolixity, has become intolerable.
+
+Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features,
+remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising
+hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a
+manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers
+will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors--supposing we
+are capable of coping with them--are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as
+we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics,
+eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar
+vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to
+preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more
+calculated to render us content with an _empirical_ condition of
+tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here
+presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to
+substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the
+social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley
+of human thought. Upon that portion of the _Cours de Philosophie
+Positive_ which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not
+intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our
+limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M.
+Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any
+justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the
+subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.
+
+And first, as to the title of the work, _Philosophie Positive_, which
+has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons
+which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words;
+they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been
+given of the object he had in view.
+
+     "There is doubtless," he says, in his _Avertissement_, "a close
+     resemblance between my _Philosophie Positive_, and what the
+     English, especially since the days of Newton, understand by
+     _Natural Philosophy_. But I would not adopt this last
+     expression, any more than that of _Philosophy of the Sciences_,
+     which would have perhaps been still more precise, because
+     neither of these has yet been extended to all orders of
+     phenomena, whilst _Philosophie Positive_, in which I comprehend
+     the study of the social phenomena, as well as all others,
+     designs a uniform manner of reasoning applicable to all
+     subjects on which the human mind can be exerted. Besides which,
+     the expression _Natural Philosophy_ is employed in England to
+     denote the aggregate of the several sciences of observation,
+     considered even in their most minute details; whereas, by the
+     title of _Philosophie Positive_, I intimate, with regard to the
+     several positive sciences, a study of them only in their
+     generalities, conceiving them as submitted to a uniform method,
+     and forming the different parts of a general plan of research.
+     The term which I have been led to construct is, therefore, at
+     once more extended and more restricted than other
+     denominations, which are so far similar that they have
+     reference to the same fundamental class of ideas."
+
+This very announcement of M. Comte's intention to comprehend in his
+course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels
+us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application
+of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free
+agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional
+interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a
+manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it
+be possible to make of the affairs of society--legislation and politics,
+for instance--a department of science?
+
+The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of
+enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt
+hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that
+to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and
+dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content
+ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal
+facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of
+qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in
+the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the
+statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of
+guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing
+them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still
+more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in
+his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in
+under his conclusions _all_ the political truths he is master of! He
+reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the
+usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone
+to others of more extensive or more urgent application.
+
+But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the
+task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the
+half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only
+prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is
+here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict
+application of _the method_. There is, however, one essential,
+distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in
+the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same
+scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world
+that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and
+incessant _developement_ which humanity has displayed, and is still
+displaying. Who can tell us that that _experience_ on which a fixed and
+positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From
+age to age that experience is enlarging.
+
+In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and
+continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears
+new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable
+sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of
+childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not
+the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we
+possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before
+a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism,
+notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself,
+and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this
+department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is
+otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at
+work--has a progressive movement--_grows_ from age to age. He discovers,
+he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor;
+his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here
+_new facts_ are actually from time to time starting into existence; new
+elements are introduced into society, which science could not have
+foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have
+been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of
+speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey
+society, a _creator_. In short, that stability in the order of events,
+that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science
+depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such
+degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or
+developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the
+scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us,
+but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but
+half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts _we are_ in
+our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some
+extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need
+to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but
+variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand
+such a race as ours.
+
+What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of
+society than that of property?--a law which so justly governs all our
+political reasonings, and determines the character of our political
+measures the most prospective--a law which M. Comte has not failed
+himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of
+demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so
+that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress?
+That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in
+the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of
+property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all
+regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as
+far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the
+basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it
+must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in
+man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a
+quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we
+should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our
+proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted.
+Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been
+manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the
+individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the
+participated prosperity of the general body--where the good of the whole
+should be felt as the interest of each. _How_ such a principle is to be
+established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that
+no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the
+circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and
+establish such a principle--this is what no scientific mind would
+venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of
+activity, nor need it, nor _can_ it, pass beyond that sphere. We know
+that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an
+attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we
+know this also, that _at no time_ can its opposite principle be
+established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous
+harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where
+it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our
+convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no
+confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different
+principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be
+intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for
+their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?
+
+"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the
+impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of
+his age--"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of
+ancient times, (_la plus forte t�te de toute l'antiquit�_,) could not
+conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable
+abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."--Vol. iv.
+p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a
+fundamental law.
+
+There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which
+bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot
+now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the
+comparative _happiness_ of the savage and the civilized man. He will not
+entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and
+contents himself with asserting the fuller _development_ of his nature
+displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale
+for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was
+there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of
+our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind--of
+the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are,
+for the most part, practically decided by those who have to _feel_; but
+to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the
+task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to
+establish a _standard measure_ for human felicity.
+
+We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science.
+A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the
+examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the
+moralist, the jurist, and the politician--though it is worthy of
+observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some
+measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently
+and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author,
+for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental
+law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of
+this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of
+a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will
+not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of
+society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which
+secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and
+obeyed.
+
+With relation to the _past_, and in one point of view--namely, so far as
+regards the development of man in his speculative career--our
+Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the
+peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific
+survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the
+threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a _new law_,
+which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest
+state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M.
+Comte's system--as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work--as
+it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific
+manner--as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to
+explain the _provisional existence_ of all theology, explaining it in
+the past, and removing it from the future--it becomes necessary to enter
+into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers'
+attention to the following statement of it:--
+
+     "In studying the entire development of the human intelligence
+     in its different spheres of activity, from its first efforts
+     the most simple up to our own days, I believe I have discovered
+     a great fundamental law, to which it is subjected by an
+     invariable necessity, and which seems to me capable of being
+     firmly established, whether on those proofs which are furnished
+     by a knowledge of our organization, or on those historical
+     verifications which result from an attentive examination of the
+     past. The law consists in this--that each of our principal
+     conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively
+     through three different states of theory: the _theologic_, or
+     fictitious; the _metaphysic_, or abstract; the scientific, or
+     _positive_. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature,
+     employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods
+     of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially
+     different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic
+     method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method.
+     Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of
+     conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually
+     exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point
+     of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite
+     state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of
+     transition.
+
+     "In the _theologic_ state, the human mind, directing its
+     researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes
+     and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its
+     attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things,
+     represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct
+     and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less
+     numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the
+     apparent anomalies of the universe.
+
+     "In the _metaphysic_ state, which is, in its essence, a
+     modification of the former, the supernatural agents are
+     displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
+     abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of
+     engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena--whose
+     explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its
+     corresponding entity.
+
+     "At last, in the _positive_ state the human mind, recognizing
+     the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
+     search after the origin and destination of the universe, and
+     the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
+     itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of
+     ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is
+     to say, their invariable relations of succession and of
+     similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real
+     terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established
+     between the various individual phenomena and certain general
+     facts, the number of which the progress of science tends
+     continually to diminish.
+
+     "The _theologic_ system has reached the highest state of
+     perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted
+     the providential action of one only being for the capricious
+     agency of the numerous independent divinities who had
+     previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the
+     _metaphysic_ system consists in conceiving, instead of the
+     different special entities, one great general entity, _nature_,
+     considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection
+     of the _positive_ system, towards which it unceasingly tends,
+     though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be
+     the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular
+     cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of
+     gravitation."--Vol. I. p. 5.
+
+After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the
+necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early
+period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought
+whatever, he proceeds thus:--
+
+     "It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to
+     proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass
+     abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the
+     _theologic_ to the _positive_ philosophy. Theology and physics
+     are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a
+     character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one
+     to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of
+     intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that
+     very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the
+     natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no
+     other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena,
+     for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity
+     residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely
+     as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by
+     degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of
+     these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they
+     are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but
+     the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what
+     other process our understanding could pass from considerations
+     purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the
+     theologic to the positive _r�gime_."--P. 13.
+
+We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition
+that theology is not the _last_, as well as the _first_, of our forms of
+thought--against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work,
+made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its
+appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great
+argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of
+theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous
+for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more
+displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject,
+though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified
+by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought
+conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with
+this protest, and with adding--as a fact of experience, which, in
+estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted
+on--that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident.
+Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation
+requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great
+article of religion--that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the
+remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times,
+men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to
+the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact
+that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their
+inductive labours by assigning that _unity_ and _correlation_ which
+science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining
+intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in
+this age to find a reflective man who does not read _thought_ in this
+unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in
+some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to
+see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference
+of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to
+blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating
+this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.
+
+Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration
+of the _new law_. That there is, in the statement here made of the
+course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of
+truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be
+traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be
+at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling
+of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have
+welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a
+_law_--a scientific law--which from its nature admits of no exception;
+at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of
+necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some
+branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be
+understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in
+cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely
+difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they
+bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application
+of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on
+this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find
+the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically
+speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger
+commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"--that,
+in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and
+proportions, both _theologic_ and _positive_.
+
+What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the _succession_ of these
+several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here
+called the positive method of thought is not equally _spontaneous_ to
+the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its
+development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its
+complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and
+an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified,
+or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have
+been a portion of his experience entertained merely _as experience_. The
+very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a
+practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces
+observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a
+theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on
+the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The
+rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates
+the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and
+then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
+
+Or does M. Comte mean this only--which we presume to be the case--that
+these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to
+maturity? If so, what necessity for this _metaphysic_ apparatus for the
+sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive
+and theological, has its independent source, and is equally
+spontaneous--if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though
+in different stages of development, the function attributed to the
+metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it;
+there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law
+of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of
+invariable sequence, between the phenomena?
+
+Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his
+two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between
+which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are _not_
+equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature
+precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition,
+it would follow--since the mind, or _organization_, of man remains from
+age to age the same in its fundamental powers--that, at this very time,
+no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of
+knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic.
+Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be
+eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a
+theology of the rudest description--a result certainly not contemplated
+by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they _are_ equally
+spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we
+repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed
+to the _metaphysic_ of effectuating a transition between them? And how
+can we describe that as a scientific _law_ in which there is confessedly
+no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The
+statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or
+laws, capable of explaining it.
+
+Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in
+a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps,
+concluded that this author could not have here required their assent,
+strictly speaking, to a _law_, but that he used the term vaguely, as
+many writers have done--meaning nothing more by it than a course of
+events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this
+impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth
+contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed
+M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he
+requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the
+recognized laws of science--to that of gravitation for instance, to
+which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his
+work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think
+what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could
+not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social
+science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the
+past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at
+once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates
+our mundane affairs.
+
+It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of
+the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto
+unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival
+in the field--theology--which, besides imparting its own supernatural
+tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions.
+Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those
+tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly
+above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule
+absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by
+explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is
+destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate,
+it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or
+has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure--otherwise
+it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the
+office which the law of development we have just considered is intended
+to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must
+now leave our readers to decide.
+
+Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and
+exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect
+the _hierarchy_, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several
+sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most
+intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish
+from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as
+seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review
+of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and
+independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which
+presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage
+of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge
+acquired in the one preceding.
+
+     "The positive philosophy," he tells us, "falls naturally into
+     five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of
+     succession is determined by the necessary or invariable
+     subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions)
+     of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics,
+     (_la physique_,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social
+     physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the
+     most abstract, the most remote from humanity; they influence
+     all others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena
+     considered by the last are, on the contrary, the most
+     complicated, the most concrete, the most directly interesting
+     to man; they depend more or less on all the preceding
+     phenomena, without exercising on them any influence. Between
+     these two extremes, the degrees of speciality, of complication
+     and personality, of phenomena, gradually increase, as well as
+     their successive dependence."--Vol. I. p. 96.
+
+The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt
+out of this _hierarchy_? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are
+wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit--where are
+they? They are dismissed from their labours--their place is occupied by
+others--and what was considered as having substance and reality in their
+proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist
+is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto
+an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician,
+with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte
+considers the _mind_ as one of those abstract entities which it is the
+first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man,
+of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his
+_mind_. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the _metaphysic_
+stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory
+psychology, the last transformation of theology!"--though, by the way,
+so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the
+_metaphysic_ condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old,
+quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether
+M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not
+stay to discuss--it were too wide a question; but thus much we can
+briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as
+underrates, the _kind of research_ to which psychologists are addicted.
+As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole
+passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of
+demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole
+class of Parisian _savans_, added something to the piquancy of the
+style?
+
+     "Such has gradually become, since the time of Bacon, the
+     preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present
+     assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even
+     which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians
+     devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to
+     delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting
+     their doctrines as founded also upon the observation of facts.
+     For this purpose they have, in these later times, attempted to
+     distinguish, by a very singular subtilty, two sorts of
+     observations of equal importance, the one external, the other
+     internal; the last of which is exclusively destined for the
+     study of intellectual phenomena. This is not the place to enter
+     into the special discussion of this sophism. I will limit
+     myself to indicate the principal consideration, which clearly
+     proves that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by
+     itself, is a pure illusion.
+
+     "Not a long while ago men imagined they had explained vision by
+     saying that the luminous action of bodies produces on the
+     retina pictures representative of external forms and colours.
+     To this the physiologists [query, the _physiologists_] have
+     objected, with reason, that if it was _as images_ that the
+     luminous impressions acted, there needed another eye within the
+     eye to behold them. Does not a similar objection hold good
+     still more strikingly in the present case?
+
+     "It is clear, in fact, from an invincible necessity, that the
+     human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own.
+     For by whom can the observation be made? It is conceivable
+     that, relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe himself in
+     regard to the passions which animate him, from this anatomical
+     reason, that the organs which are the seat of them are distinct
+     from those destined to the function of observation. Though each
+     man has had occasion to make on himself such observations, yet
+     they can never have any great scientific importance; and the
+     best means of knowing the passions will be always to observe
+     them without; [_indeed_!] for every state of passion very
+     energetic--that is to say, precisely those which it would be
+     most essential to examine, are necessarily incompatible with
+     the state of observation. But as to observing in the same
+     manner intellectual phenomena, while they are proceeding, it is
+     manifestly impossible. The thinking individual cannot separate
+     himself in two parts, of which the one shall reason, and the
+     other observe it reasoning. The organ observed and the organ
+     observing being in this case identical, how can observation be
+     carried on?
+
+     "This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd.
+     And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory
+     it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you
+     to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external
+     sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every
+     intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in
+     making the most simple calculation, what would become of your
+     _internal_ observation? On the other hand, after having thus,
+     by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of
+     intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in
+     contemplating the operations passing in your mind--while there
+     is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one
+     day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the
+     stage."--P. 34.
+
+They seem transferred to the stage already--so completely burlesqued is
+the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does
+not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember
+previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual
+effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no
+difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being
+much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of
+objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them,
+in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering,
+in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness
+to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate,
+this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in
+search--something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be
+applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary
+course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply
+pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences;
+observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but
+which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human
+being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology,
+let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as
+speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of
+the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone
+that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so
+exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the
+fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately
+absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which
+at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so
+far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his
+consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And
+how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the
+cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of
+craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal
+observations which he is pleased here to deride?
+
+His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several
+received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous,
+application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a
+portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall
+we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before
+opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will
+not be beside our object to take a glance at the _method_ itself, as
+applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it
+is called--to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.
+
+We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of
+the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated
+mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline--to make room
+for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid
+waste.
+
+Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of
+their succession--such is the material of science. All enquiry into
+causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory;
+the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed,
+perhaps, to have a meaning--such is the supreme dictate of the method,
+and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is
+the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities,
+than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard
+from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen,
+gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying
+experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The
+museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to
+another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as
+strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls
+through space--ask not how!--the mathematician will tell you at what
+rate it flies--let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations
+are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous
+transformations--the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of
+proportions--names and figures both--_why_ these transmutations take
+place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from
+the earth, and _grow_, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with
+delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask
+what is _life?_ Science will generalize the fact to you--give you its
+formula for the expression of _growth, decomposition, and
+recomposition_, under circumstances not as yet very accurately
+collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since
+stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such
+subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it
+needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain!
+Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his
+formula of decomposition and recomposition. As _attraction_ in the
+planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical
+expression, so _life_ in the plant is to be known only as decomposition
+and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it
+as such--no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall
+tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will
+believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will
+believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something
+I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what
+life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks
+why? Child! I respond, that the hands _do_ move is an ultimate fact--so,
+represent it to yourself--and here, moreover, is the law of their
+movement--the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter
+revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you--more you
+cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye
+upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.
+
+But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this
+beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth--what is
+this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined
+motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing,
+seeking, this way and that, its pasture?--what have we here?
+_Irritability and a tissue._ Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the
+philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself--what is this?
+_Sensation and a nerve._ Does the nerve _feel_? you inconsiderately ask,
+or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which
+sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the
+philosopher. _There is sensation_--you cannot express the fact in
+simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope,
+on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask
+not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of
+ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the
+thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more
+perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to
+have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the
+surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something
+else within him, _think_?--does the organization of that worm, or
+something else within it, _feel_?--they are virtually the same
+questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science.
+Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like
+sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we
+can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with
+me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with
+which it is, or _was_, connected.
+
+All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this _method_,
+for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it
+imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and
+well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that
+leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of
+steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem,
+by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to
+Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on
+earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it
+rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable
+abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our
+intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the
+fantastic, inexplicable interval.
+
+We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of
+_Physique Social_. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if
+our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall
+reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the
+work--perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole--where, in order
+to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte
+enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more
+or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being
+to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of
+organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the
+purpose of exposition will allow:--
+
+     "It is impossible to deny that the political world is
+     intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of
+     _order_ are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of
+     religious and military power, regarded especially in its
+     constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the
+     philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents
+     incontestably the _theologic_ state of the social science. All
+     our ideas of _progress_ continue to be exclusively deduced from
+     a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from
+     Protestantism, has taken in the last age its final form and
+     complete development; the doctrines of which constitute, in
+     reality, the _metaphysic_ state of politics. Different classes
+     of society adopt the one or the other of these, just as they
+     are disposed to feel chiefly the want of conservation or that
+     of amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these antagonist
+     doctrines present themselves in all their plenitude, and with
+     their primitive homogeneity; they are found less and less in
+     this form, except in minds purely speculative. But the
+     monstrous medley which men attempt in our days of their
+     incompatible principles, cannot evidently be endowed with any
+     virtue foreign to the elements which compose it, and tends
+     only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.
+
+     "However pernicious may be at present the theologic doctrine,
+     no true philosophy can forget that the formation and first
+     development of modern societies were accomplished under its
+     benevolent tutelage; which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate
+     in the historical portion of this work. But it is not the less
+     incontestably true that, for about three centuries, its
+     influence has been, amongst the nations most advanced,
+     essentially retrograde, notwithstanding the partial services it
+     has throughout that period rendered. It would be superfluous to
+     enter here into a special discussion of this doctrine, in order
+     to show its extreme insufficiency at the present day. The
+     deplorable absence of all sound views of social organization
+     can alone account for the absurd project of giving, in these
+     times, for the support of social order, a political system
+     which has already been found unable to sustain itself before
+     the spontaneous progress of intelligence and of society. The
+     historical analysis which we shall subsequently institute of
+     the successive changes which have gradually brought about the
+     entire dissolution of the catholic and feudal system, will
+     demonstrate, better than any direct argument, its radical and
+     irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other
+     method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than
+     by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable
+     proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when
+     hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and
+     attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence,
+     to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial
+     for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration,
+     and the character, are all left equally obscure."...--P.14
+
+     "In a point of view strictly logical, the social problem might
+     be stated thus:--construct a doctrine that shall be so
+     rationally conceived that it shall be found, as it develops
+     itself, to be still always consistent with its own principles.
+     Neither of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition,
+     even by the rudest approximation. Both display numerous and
+     direct contradictions, and on important points. By this alone
+     their utter insufficiency is clearly exhibited. The doctrine
+     which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be
+     recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it
+     is an _intellectual reorganization_ that is first wanted--a
+     re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our
+     social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation.
+     Should this regeneration be accomplished in one intelligence
+     only, (and such must necessarily be its manner of
+     commencement,) its extension would be certain; for the number
+     of intelligences to be convinced can have no influence except
+     as a question of time. I shall not fail to point out, when the
+     proper opportunity arrives, the eminent superiority, in this
+     respect, of the positive philosophy, which, once extended to
+     social phenomena, will necessarily combine the ideas of men in
+     a strict and complete manner, which in no other way can be
+     attained."--P. 20.
+
+M. Comte then mentions some of the inconsistencies of the theologic
+school.
+
+     "Analyze, for example, the vain attempts, so frequently renewed
+     during two centuries by so many distinguished minds, to
+     subordinate, according to the theologic formula, reason to
+     faith; it is easy to recognize the radical contradiction this
+     attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme
+     judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of
+     which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid
+     decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic
+     school, the illustrious _De Maistre_, himself affords a proof,
+     as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction
+     in his philosophy, when, renouncing all theologic weapons, he
+     labours in his principal work to re-establish the Papal
+     supremacy on purely historical and political reasonings,
+     instead of limiting himself to command it by right divine--the
+     only mode in true harmony with such a doctrine, and which a
+     mind, at another epoch, would not certainly have hesitated to
+     adopt."--P. 25.
+
+After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school,
+he turns to the _metaphysic_, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes
+_doctrine critique_, for M. Comte is rich in names.
+
+     "In submitting, in their turn, the _metaphysic_ doctrine to a
+     like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though
+     exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it
+     has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of
+     progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal
+     political improvements accomplished in the course of the three
+     last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a _negative_
+     description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its
+     dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when
+     viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to
+     the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state,
+     necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.
+
+     "By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity
+     inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social
+     system to another can never be direct and continuous; it
+     supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of
+     interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and
+     duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation
+     to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though
+     undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a
+     class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we
+     see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_--a
+     source which at once explains the indispensable services it has
+     hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now
+     opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies....
+
+     "Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the
+     metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a
+     normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and
+     transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of
+     political notions, the most fundamental, it represents
+     government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of
+     society, against which it sedulously places itself in a
+     constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed
+     incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity,
+     in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to
+     leave it no other than the simple functions of general police,
+     without any essential participation in the supreme direction of
+     the action of the collective body or of its social development.
+
+     "Approaching to a more detailed examination of this doctrine,
+     it is evident that the absolute right of free examination
+     (which, connected as it is with the liberty of the press and
+     the freedom of education, is manifestly its principal and
+     fundamental dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the
+     consecration, under the vicious abstract form common to all
+     metaphysic conceptions, of that transitional state of unlimited
+     liberty in which the human mind has been spontaneously placed,
+     in consequence of the irrevocable decay of the theologic
+     philosophy, and which must naturally remain till the
+     establishment in the social domain of the positive method.[49]
+     ... However salutary and indispensable in its historical
+     position, this principle opposes a grave obstacle to the
+     reorganization of society, by being erected into an absolute
+     and permanent dogma. To examine always without deciding ever,
+     would be deemed great folly in any individual. How can the
+     dogmatic consecration of a like disposition amongst all
+     individuals, constitute the definitive perfection of the social
+     order, in regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so
+     peculiarly important, and so difficult, to establish? Is it not
+     evident, on the contrary, that such a disposition is, from its
+     nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as, if it could be
+     indefinitely prolonged, it must hinder every true mental
+     organization?
+
+     "No association whatever, though destined for a special and
+     temporary purpose, and though limited to a small number of
+     individuals, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal
+     confidence, both intellectual and moral, between its members,
+     each one of whom finds a continual necessity for a crowd of
+     notions, to the formation of which he must remain a stranger,
+     and which he cannot admit but on the faith of others. By what
+     monstrous exception can this elementary condition of all
+     society be banished from that total association of mankind,
+     where the point of view which the individual takes, is most
+     widely separated from that point of view which the collective
+     interest requires, and where each member is the least capable,
+     whether by nature or position, to form a just appreciation of
+     these general rules, indispensable to the good direction of his
+     personal activity. Whatever intellectual development we may
+     suppose possible, in the mass of men it is evident, that social
+     order will remain always necessarily incompatible with the
+     permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into
+     endless discussion the first principles even of society....
+
+     "The dogma of _equality_ is the most essential and the most
+     influential after that which I have just examined, and is,
+     besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the
+     unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly
+     leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental
+     character--an equality of intelligence. In its bearing on the
+     ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of
+     modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of
+     the old social classification. But this function constitutes
+     the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which
+     tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since
+     its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis
+     of every new classification. For, whatever that basis may be,
+     it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to
+     all intelligent men, can now only signify the triumph of the
+     inequalities developed by modern civilization, over those which
+     had predominated in the infancy of society....
+
+     "The same philosophical appreciation is applicable with equal
+     ease to the dogma of the _sovereignty of the people_. Whilst
+     estimating, as is fit, the indispensable transitional office of
+     this revolutionary dogma, no true philosopher can now
+     misunderstand the fatal anarchical tendency of this
+     metaphysical conception, since in its absolute application it
+     opposes itself to all regular institution, condemning
+     indefinitely all superiors to an arbitrary dependence on the
+     multitude of their inferiors, by a sort of transference to the
+     people of the much-reprobated right of kings."
+
+     [49] "There is," says M. Comte here in a note, which consists
+     of an extract from a previous work--"there is no liberty of
+     conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in
+     physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit
+     to the principles established in these sciences by competent
+     men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the ancient
+     principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed,
+     there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established
+     principles."
+
+As our author had shown how the _theologic_ philosophy was inconsistent
+often with itself, so, in criticising the _metaphysics_, he exposes here
+also certain self-contradictions. He reproaches it with having, in its
+contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and
+adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was
+engaged in destroying.
+
+     "Thus," he says, "there arose a Christianity more and more
+     simplified, and reduced at length to a vague and powerless
+     theism, which, by a strange medley of terms, the metaphysicians
+     distinguished by the title of _natural religion_, as if all
+     religion was not inevitably _supernatural_. In pretending to
+     direct the social reorganization after this vain conception,
+     the metaphysic school, notwithstanding its destination purely
+     revolutionary, has always implicitly adhered, and does so,
+     especially and distinctly, at the present day, to the most
+     fundamental principle of the ancient political doctrine--that
+     which represents the social order as necessarily reposing on a
+     theological basis. This is now the most evident, and the most
+     pernicious inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine. Armed with
+     this concession, the school of Bossuet and De Maistre will
+     always maintain an incontestable logical superiority over the
+     irrational detractors of Catholicism, who, while they proclaim
+     the want of a religious organization, reject, nevertheless, the
+     elements indispensable to its realization. By such a concession
+     the revolutionary school concur in effect, at the present day,
+     with the retrograde, in preventing a right organization of
+     modern societies, whose intellectual condition more and more
+     interdicts a system of politics founded on theology."
+
+Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political
+parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to
+abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author)
+displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one
+of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions
+to make. We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly
+_conservative_, and this quotation has already borne us out. For without
+implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here
+put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in
+Westminster Hail, _if this be so_, then it follows that we of the
+retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England--seeing this
+country has not progressed so rapidly as France--we of the stationary
+party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory
+though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been
+revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political
+world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no
+proper office but that of destruction--if its nature be essentially
+transitional--can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our
+present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred? Shall
+we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our
+church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange? M. Comte
+would not advise so irrational a proceeding.
+
+But M. Comte has himself a _constructive_ doctrine; M. Comte will give
+us in exchange--what? The Scientific Method!
+
+We have just seen something of this scientific method. M. Comte himself
+is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the
+multitude. Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an
+altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race
+of _savans_ or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to
+exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the
+truths to which that method shall give birth. This class will take under
+its control all that relates to education. It will be the seat of the
+moral power, not of the administrative. This, together with some
+arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the
+fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all
+that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of
+society.
+
+We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which
+lies at the basis of all this--how far it is possible to construct a
+science of Sociology. There is only one way in which the question can be
+resolved in the affirmative--namely, by constructing the science.
+
+Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order
+of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the
+purposes of government. We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the
+chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed
+principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the
+graduated politician. But it is worth while to consider what it is we do
+when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the
+astronomer. We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts
+which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these
+facts we must be able to comprehend. We follow him as he explains the
+facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a
+rational conviction. Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any
+knowledge whatever of the subject--any chemistry or astronomy at all.
+Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as
+that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of
+understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by
+it. We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which
+can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.
+
+In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility
+of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side
+of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of
+their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the
+apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume
+it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of
+the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once
+taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a
+submission of their reason to political teachers--teachers who have no
+sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated
+authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very
+reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a
+difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true
+Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.
+
+We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be
+simply classed amongst the _Destructives_, so little applicable to the
+generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it
+is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great
+sacrifices.
+
+The fifth volume--the most remarkable, we think, of the whole--contains
+that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the
+foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any
+expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of
+original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above
+all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte
+has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical
+facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete
+matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the
+volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are
+shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.
+
+We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we
+must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind,
+he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of
+Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that
+primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which _things themselves_
+were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a
+life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.
+
+     "Exclusively habituated, for so long a time, to a theology
+     eminently metaphysic, we must feel at present greatly
+     embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive
+     mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been
+     confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied
+     the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to
+     the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would,
+     no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of
+     worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present
+     day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we
+     are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a
+     difficulty in conceiving it, yet each one of us has but to
+     retrace his own mental history, to detect the essential
+     characters of this initial state. Nay, even eminent thinkers of
+     the present day, when they allow themselves to be involuntarily
+     ensnared (under the influence, but partially rectified, of a
+     vicious education) to attempt to penetrate the mystery of the
+     essential production of any phenomenon whose laws are not
+     familiar to them, they are in a condition personally to
+     exemplify this invariable instinctive tendency to trace the
+     generation of unknown effects to a cause analogous to life,
+     which is no other, strictly speaking, than the principle of
+     fetishism....
+
+     "Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated, has always
+     necessarily for its base pure fetishism, which deifies
+     instantly each body and each phenomenon capable of exciting the
+     feeble thought of infant humanity. Whatever essential
+     transformations this primitive philosophy may afterwards
+     undergo, a judicious sociological analysis will always expose
+     to view this primordial base, never entirely concealed, even in
+     a religious state the most remote from the original point of
+     departure. Not only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy has
+     presented, at the time of its greatest splendour, the
+     established and prolonged coexistence, in the several castes of
+     the hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs, since the
+     inferior ranks still remained in simple fetishism, whilst the
+     higher orders were in possession of a very remarkable
+     polytheism, and the most exalted of its members had probably
+     raised themselves to some form of monotheism; but we can at all
+     times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in the theologic spirit
+     traces of this original fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst
+     subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical forms. What, in
+     reality, is that celebrated conception of a soul of the world
+     amongst the ancients, or that analogy, more modern, drawn
+     between the earth and an immense living animal, and other
+     similar fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the pomp of
+     philosophical language? And, in our own days even, what is this
+     cloudy pantheism which so many metaphysicians, especially in
+     Germany, make great boast of, but generalized and systematized
+     fetishism enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze the
+     vulgar."--Vol. V. p. 38.
+
+He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to
+the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the
+labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The
+mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to
+transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we
+feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our
+own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute
+unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with
+quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition
+of the rude intellect.
+
+     "All observable bodies," he says "being thus immediately
+     personified and endowed with passions suited to the energy of
+     the observed phenomena, the external world presents itself
+     spontaneously to the spectator in a perfect harmony, such as
+     never again has been produced, and which must have excited in
+     him a peculiar sentiment of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us
+     in the present day to be characterized, even when we refer back
+     with a meditation the most intense on this cradle of humanity."
+
+Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and
+censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of
+man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The
+principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many
+respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application;
+but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the
+origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst
+rude thinkers--we do not find any condition of mankind which displays
+that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author
+would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly
+a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of
+fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this
+animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with
+a desire to explain _their_ phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied
+relation between those objects and the human being. The _charm_ or the
+_amulet_--some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases,
+or bring good-luck--grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading
+the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of
+granting his prayer.[50]
+
+     [50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism
+     in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand,
+     and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only
+     who never read _The Doctor_, will be surprised to find it
+     quoted on a grave occasion:--
+
+     "The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is
+     known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for
+     witchcraft, _feiti�o_; the vernacular name is _Bossum_, or
+     _Bossifoe_. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every
+     village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a
+     rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree,
+     is generally the national Fetish. The king's is usually the
+     largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one,
+     take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless--a
+     stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the
+     worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
+     and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The
+     ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his
+     family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling
+     them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
+     in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and
+     with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on
+     that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this
+     superstition, but believed in it, and practised it
+     themselves."--Vol. V. p. 136.
+
+We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating
+the impracticable _unmanageable_ nature of our author's generalizations
+when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the
+development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to
+extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such
+scientific precision, fixed it.
+
+     "Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the
+     religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the
+     most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at
+     present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent
+     and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a
+     less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the
+     more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has
+     naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance--an importance
+     extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I
+     shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism
+     supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being
+     truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an
+     inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary
+     will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to
+     comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious
+     _r�gime_ to the other."--P. 97.
+
+The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of
+generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects,
+and classified them into one species, so they approximated the
+corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal
+Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from
+matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became
+a god.
+
+     "For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a
+     character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their
+     indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a
+     special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less
+     extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only,
+     from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
+     resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary
+     to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a
+     chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a
+     god--that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
+     whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist,
+     properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this
+     would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily
+     endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the
+     similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks,
+     led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what
+     was _common_ in these objects, this abstract being could no
+     longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the
+     forest."--P. 101.
+
+This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is
+utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate
+a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any
+natural event is _invisible_, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism;
+it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be
+theologically explained--and there is no event in nature more likely to
+suggest such explanation--the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it
+must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose
+mind had not been solely and purely _scientific_, would have created for
+itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]
+
+     [51] At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is
+     taken, the _Doctor_ tells a story which, if faith could be put
+     in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves, (and
+     such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,)
+     might deserve a place in the history of superstition.
+
+     "One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a
+     reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a
+     boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful
+     schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear
+     produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used
+     every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12761-8.txt or 12761-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/7/6/12761/
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page images provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/12761-8.zip b/old/12761-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b16039c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12761-8.zip
diff --git a/old/12761-h.zip b/old/12761-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b8bccc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12761-h.zip
diff --git a/old/12761-h/12761-h.htm b/old/12761-h/12761-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd2d6aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12761-h/12761-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,16231 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html lang="EN">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+    "text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+    <title>Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. 53, No. 329.</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         }
+    HR { width: 33%;
+	margin-top: 1em;
+	margin-bottom: 1em;
+       }
+    hr.full {width: 100%;}
+    BODY{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */
+    .note     {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */
+    .blkquot  {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
+    .pagenum  {display: none; } /* page numbers */
+    .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 2em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem p           {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem p.i1        {margin-left: 1em;}
+    .poem p.i2        {margin-left: 2em;}
+    .poem p.i3        {margin-left: 3em;}
+    .poem p.i4        {margin-left: 4em;}
+    .poem .caesura    {vertical-align: -200%;}
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+   </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.
+       March, 1843, Vol. LIII.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12761]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page images provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE</h1>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>NO. CCCXXIX. MARCH, 1843. VOL. LIII.</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s1">AMMAL&Aacute;T BEK. A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARL&Iacute;NSKI</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s2">POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.&mdash;NO. VI.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s3">CALEB STUKELY. PART XII.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s4">IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. SANDT AND KOTZEBUE</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s5">THE JEWELLER'S WIFE. A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s6">THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER&mdash;HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s7">PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS, BY A COCKNEY</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s8">THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s9">THE LOST LAMB. BY DELTA</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329s10">COMTE</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw329-footnotes">[FOOTNOTES]</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="page281" id="page281" title="page281"></a>
+<a name="bw329s1" id="bw329s1"></a>
+<h2>AMMAL&Aacute;T BEK.</h2>
+
+<h3>A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS.</h3>
+
+<p>TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARL&Iacute;NSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A.
+OF CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL
+LYCEUM OF TSARSKO&Euml; SELO.</p>
+
+<h3>THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.</h3>
+
+<p>The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental neighbours
+with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of no very
+recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem to possess
+us:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;&mdash;&mdash;tenet insanabile multos</p>
+<p><i>Terrarum</i> <span lang="EL" title="kakoithes">&kappa;&alpha;&kappa;&omicron;&eta;&theta;&epsilon;&sigmaf;</span>, et &aelig;gro in corde senescit:&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>when the press groans with &quot;Tours,&quot; &quot;Trips,&quot; &quot;Hand-books,&quot; &quot;Journeys,&quot;
+&quot;Visits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England knows
+very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social condition, manners,
+and literature of one of the most powerful among her continental sisters.</p>
+
+<p>The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in the
+reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that epoch, so
+auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by Chancellor in 1554,
+has never since been relaxed: the two nations have advanced, each at its own
+pace, and by its own paths, towards the sublime goal of improvement and
+civilization&mdash;have stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle for the weal and
+liberty of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and Elizabeth
+is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter and of Catharine.
+The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be found in any indifference
+or want of curiosity on the part of English travellers. There is no lack of
+pilgrims annually leaving the bank of Thames,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;With cockle hat and staff,</p>
+<p class="i2">With gourd and sandal shoon;&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>armed duly with note-book and &quot;patent Mordan,&quot; directing their wandering
+steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a very
+<a class="pagenum" name="page282" id="page282" title="page282"></a>short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince a foreigner
+how defective, and often how false, is the information given by travellers respecting
+the social and national character of the Russians. These abundant
+and singular misrepresentations are not, of course, voluntary; and it may not
+be useless to point out their principal sources.</p>
+
+<p>The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the language,
+and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten track&mdash;from
+St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny N&oacute;vgorod, without
+any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may enjoy, during a
+visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which the higher classes are so
+justly celebrated; but his association with the nobility will be found an absolute
+obstacle to the making even a trifling progress in the Russian language;
+which, though now regaining a degree of attention from the elevated
+classes,<a name="footnotetag1" id="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a>
+too long denied to it by those with whom their native tongue <i>was</i> an unfashionable
+one&mdash;he would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very
+frequent opportunities of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a determination
+to study the noble and interesting language of the country, an intention of
+remaining here long enough to learn it, he was often discouraged by the belief,
+that the literature was too poor to repay his time and labour. Besides,
+the Russian language has so little relation to the other European tongues&mdash;it
+stands so much alone, and throws so little direct light upon any of them, that
+another obstacle was thrown into his way.</p>
+
+<p>The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all derived,
+more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the whole south
+and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon the other cognate
+dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental tongues facilitates,
+nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand others, which are less languages
+of distinct type than dialects of the same speech, offshoots from the
+same stock.</p>
+
+<p>Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in every
+disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German periodicals
+with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched rags of translation
+which are all that has been hitherto done towards the reproduction, in
+our own language, of the literature of Russia. These versions were made by
+persons utterly unacquainted with the country, the manners, and the people, or
+made after the Russian had been distilled through the alembic of a previous
+French or German translation.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation sooner
+than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than honourable to the
+literary enterprise of England, that the present is the first attempt to introduce
+to the British public any work of Russian Prose Fiction whatever, with any
+thing like a reasonable selection of subject and character, at least <i>directly</i> from
+the original language.</p>
+
+<p>The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of
+&quot;Russian Anthology,&quot; and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would appear
+at first sight an exception to that indifference to the productions of Russian
+genius of which we have accused the English public; and the popularity
+of that collection would be an additional encouragement to the hope, that our
+charge may be, if not ill-founded, at least exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>We are willing to believe, that the degree&mdash;if we are rightly informed, no
+slight one&mdash;of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in England,
+was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme incompetency with which
+the translations they contained were executed.</p>
+
+<p>It is always painful to find fault&mdash;more painful to criticise with severity&mdash;the
+work of a person whose motive was the same as that which actuates the present
+<a class="pagenum" name="page283" id="page283" title="page283"></a>publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness<a
+name="footnotetag2" id="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> exhibited in the versions
+in question tends to give a false and disparaging idea of the value and the tone
+of Russian poetry, we may be excused for our apparent uncourteousness in
+thus pointing out their defects.</p>
+
+<p>It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a brief
+sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin, growth, and fortunes
+of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In doing this we shall
+content ourselves with noting, as briefly as possible, the events which preceded
+and accompanied the birth of letters in Russia, and the evolution of a literature
+not elaborated by the slow and imperceptible action of time, but bursting,
+like the armed Pallas, suddenly into light.</p>
+
+<p>In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the department
+of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety, though not
+without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more fully the intellectual
+annals of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril<a
+name="footnotetag3" id="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> and
+Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious
+boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisl&aacute;ff, Sviatop&oacute;lk, and K&oacute;tsel, then chiefs
+of the Moravians.</p>
+
+<p>The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek alphabet,
+to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain sounds which do not
+occur in the Greek language,<a name="footnotetag4" id="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> to add a number of other signs borrowed from
+the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So closely, indeed, did this alphabet,
+called the Cyrillian, follow the Greek characters, that the use of the
+aspirates was retained without any necessity.</p>
+
+<p>These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the Russian)
+varied surprisingly little in their form,<a name="footnotetag5" id="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> and perhaps without any change
+whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern alphabet of the Russian language;
+an examination of which would go far, in our opinion, to settle the
+long agitated question respecting the ancient pronunciation of the classic languages,
+particularly as Cyril and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a
+language totally foreign from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.</p>
+
+<p>In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the first
+monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril immediately
+after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken at Thessalonika
+was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely Greek
+words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of the version
+<a class="pagenum" name="page284" id="page284" title="page284"></a>being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the Scriptures were not translated
+into any specific spoken dialect at all; but that a kind of <i>mezzo-termine</i>
+was selected&mdash;or rather formed&mdash;for the purpose. What we have advanced
+derives a still stronger degree of probability from the circumstance, that the
+Slavonic Bible follows the Greek <i>construction</i>. This Bible, with slight changes
+and corrections produced by three or four revisions made at different periods,
+is that still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language
+of the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the
+Bible forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper
+classes&mdash;who are instructed in this <i>dead</i> language, precisely as an Italian must
+study Latin in order to read the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history, towers,
+like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid, one colossal
+figure&mdash;that of Vlad&iacute;mir Sviatosl&aacute;vitch; the first to surmount the bloody
+splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet<a name="footnotetag6" id="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> with the mildly-radiant Cross of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>From the conversion to Christianity of Vlad&iacute;mir and his subjects&mdash;passing
+over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for
+about 250 years&mdash;we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have
+been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century&mdash;the one the written
+or learned, the other the spoken language.</p>
+
+<p>The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were translated:
+and this remained the learned or official language for a long period.
+In this&mdash;or in an imitation of this, effected with various degrees of success&mdash;were
+compiled the different collections of Monkish annals which form the
+treasury whence future historians were to select their materials from among
+the valuable, but confused accumulations of facts; in this the solemn acts of
+Government, treaties, codes, &amp;c., were composed; and the few writings which
+cannot be comprised under the above classes<a name="footnotetag7" id="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> were naturally compiled in the
+language, emphatically that of the Church and of learning.</p>
+
+<p>The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much
+allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran,
+like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a half the fertile
+plains of central and southern Russia, contented themselves with exacting
+tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire
+of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced
+hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue.<a
+name="footnotetag8" id="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>It is to the reign of Alex&eacute;i Mikh&aacute;ilovitch, who united Little Russia to
+Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the
+country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little Russian,
+tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit of classicism which
+so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.</p>
+
+<p>The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future
+fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would possibly have
+brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia such as we now find it,
+had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of
+Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing&mdash;if, indeed, they may not be called
+in some measure impeding&mdash;forces. That giant hand which broke down the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page285" id="page285" title="page285"></a>long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of
+Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West
+to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying
+and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was national&mdash;that
+hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse the infant seedling
+of literature; and the command and example of Peter perhaps rather
+favoured the imitation of what was good in other languages, than the production
+of originality in his own.</p>
+
+<p>This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems to
+derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number of foreign
+words which make the Russian of Peter's time</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;A Babylonish dialect;&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an
+infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms
+which might have been&mdash;have, indeed, since been&mdash;translated into words of
+Russian form and origin. A review of the literary progress made at this
+time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very
+large proportion of translations, but very few original productions.</p>
+
+<p>From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note: we
+shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian
+literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction,
+and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this
+kind, living and dead.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will
+be convenient to keep in mind) three languages&mdash;the Slavonic, to which we
+have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from
+which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably raise
+a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing this important
+starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon the circumstance,
+that the literature is&mdash;as we have stated&mdash;divisible into two distinct and widely
+differing regions. It will be sufficiently accurate to date the origin of the
+modern Russian literature at about a century back from the present time;
+and to consider Lomon&oacute;soff as its founder. Mikh&aacute;il Vass&iacute;lievitch Lomon&oacute;soff,
+born in 1711, is the author who may with justice be regarded as the
+Chaucer or the Boccacio of the North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments,
+distinguished in almost every department of literature, and in many
+of the walks of science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose
+principles he had fixed as a grammarian.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in
+conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumar&oacute;koff and Kher&aacute;skoff, he laid
+the foundations of the Russian literature.</p>
+
+<p>Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the reverence
+due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's letters, it will be
+sufficient to remark, that Soumar&oacute;koff was the first to introduce tragedy and
+opera, and Kher&aacute;skoff, the author of two epic poems which we omit to particularize,
+as not coming within our present scope, wrote a work entitled
+&quot;Cadmus and Harmonia,&quot; which may be considered as the first romance.
+It is a narrative and metaphysical work, which we should class as a &quot;prose
+poem;&quot; the style being considerably elevated above the tone of the &quot;Musa
+pedestris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The name of Em&iacute;n comes next in historical, though not literary, importance:
+though the greater part of his productions consists of translations, particularly
+of those shorter pieces of prose fiction called by the Italians &quot;novelle,&quot;
+he was the author of a few original pieces, now but little read; his
+style bears the marks, like that of Kher&aacute;skoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want
+of finish.</p>
+
+<p>The reputation of Karamz&iacute;n is too widely spread throughout Europe to
+render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by him
+to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he commenced
+a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first chapters.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page286" id="page286" title="page286"></a>Nar&eacute;jniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia&mdash;or rather of the South
+or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of vivacity, but as they are
+deformed by defects both in style and taste, his reputation has become almost
+extinct. We cannot quit this division of our subject, which refers to romantic
+fiction anterior to the appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning
+the names of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished
+as having produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical
+event&mdash;Polev&oacute;i and Best&oacute;njeff&mdash;the latter of whom wrote, under the
+name of Marl&iacute;nski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high
+and deserved reputation.</p>
+
+<p>It is with Zag&oacute;skin that we may regard the regular historical novel&mdash;viewing
+that species of composition as exemplified in the works of Scott&mdash;as having
+commenced.</p>
+
+<p>With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is so
+extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory allusion
+to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing which, we shall
+attend more exclusively to those productions of which the subject or treatment
+is purely national.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zag&oacute;skin, whose
+historical romance &quot;Yo&uacute;riy Milosl&aacute;ffskiy,&quot; met with great and permanent
+success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most interesting crisis in the
+Russian history, when the valour of M&iacute;nin enabled his countrymen to shake
+off the hated yoke of Poland. His other work, &quot;Roslavle&oacute;ff,&quot; is less interesting:
+the period is 1812. We may also mention his &quot;Iskons&iacute;tel&quot;&mdash;&quot;the
+Tempter&quot;&mdash;a fantastic story, in which an imaginary being is represented as
+mingling with and influencing the affairs of real life.</p>
+
+<p>Of Boulg&aacute;rin, we may mention, besides his &quot;Ivan Vu&iacute;jgin,&quot; a romance in the
+manner of &quot;Gil Blas,&quot; the scenery and characters of which are entirely Russian,
+two historical novels of considerable importance. &quot;The False Dim&iacute;tri,&quot; and
+&quot;Mazeppa,&quot;&mdash;the hero of the latter being <i>a real person</i>, and not, as most
+readers are aware, a fictitious character invented by Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Next comes the name of Laj&eacute;tchnikoff, whose &quot;Last Page&quot; possesses a
+reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The action
+passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great, and Catharine
+plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Gl&uuml;ck, becoming empress
+at the conclusion. The &quot;House of Ice,&quot; by the same writer, is perhaps
+more generally known than the preceding work. The last-named romance
+depicts with great spirit the struggle between the Russian and foreign parties
+in the reign of Anna Iv&aacute;novna. But perhaps the most remarkable work of
+Laj&eacute;tchnikoff is the romance entitled &quot;Bassourm&aacute;n,&quot; the scene of which is
+laid under Iv&aacute;n III., surnamed the Great.<a name="footnotetag9"
+id="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> Another Polev&oacute;i (Nikol&aacute;i) produced
+a work of great merit:&mdash;&quot;The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord,&quot; a very
+faithful picture of the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the
+circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe to
+Polev&oacute;i a wild story entitled &quot;Abbaddon.&quot; Veltman produced, under the
+title of &quot;Kostsh&eacute;i the Deathless,&quot; a historical study of the manners of the
+twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust to omit
+the name of a lady, the Countess Sh&iacute;shkin, who produced the historical novel
+&quot;Mikh&aacute;il Vass&iacute;lievitch Sk&oacute;pin-Sh&uacute;isky,&quot; which obtained great popularity.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesque career of Lomon&oacute;soff gave materials for a romantic biography
+of that poet, the work of Xenoph&oacute;nt Polev&oacute;i, resembling, in its mixture
+of truth and fiction, the &quot;Wahrheit und Dichtung&quot; of Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those exhibiting
+scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been neglected.
+Kal&aacute;shnikoff wrote &quot;The Merchant J&aacute;loboff's Daughter,&quot; and the &quot;Kamtchad&aacute;lka,&quot;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page287" id="page287" title="page287"></a>both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia; the former
+painting various parts of that wild and interesting country, the latter confined
+more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtch&aacute;tka. Besides G&oacute;gol, whose
+easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many humorous sketches of
+provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitch&eacute;ff, whose &quot;Kh&oacute;lmsky Family&quot;
+possesses much interest; but the delineations of G&oacute;gol depend so much for
+their effect upon delicate shades of manner, &amp;c., that it is not probable they
+can ever be effectively reproduced in another language.</p>
+
+<p>Mentioning Per&oacute;ffsky, whose &quot;Monast&iacute;rka&quot; gives a picture of Russian
+interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation.
+His &quot;Trip to Germany&quot; describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of
+a very curious race&mdash;the Germans of St Petersburg; and &quot;Tch&eacute;rnaia J&eacute;nstchina,&quot;
+&quot;the Black Woman,&quot; presents a picture of Russian society, which
+was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.</p>
+
+<p>The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British readers to
+a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most unaccountably neglected by the
+English public, the present would not be a fit occasion to enter with any
+minuteness into the history of Russian letters, or to give, in fact, more than a
+passing allusion to its chief features; the translator hopes that he will be excused
+for the meagreness of the present notice.</p>
+
+<p>He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any increasing
+desire on the part of his countrymen to become more accurately
+acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is convinced, of a very
+high degree of respect and admiration. How could that acquaintance be so
+delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the interchange of literature? The
+great works of English genius are read, studied, and admired, throughout the
+vast empire of Russia; the language of England is rapidly and steadily extending,
+and justice, no less than policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions
+respecting the social and domestic character, no less than the
+history, of Russia, should be dispelled by truth.</p>
+
+<p>The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to specify
+one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the present romance,
+as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in England the literature
+of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the facts and
+characters are all strictly true;<a name="footnotetag10" id="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a> besides this, the author passed many years
+in the Caucasus, and made full use of the opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming
+familiar with the language, manners, and scenery of a region on
+which the attention of the English public has long been turned with peculiar
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it is
+hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public always
+&quot;<i>novitatis avida</i>,&quot; and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with the &quot;Bismillahs&quot;
+and &quot;Mashallahs&quot; of the ordinary oriental novels, may find some
+piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life&mdash;that of the Caucasian Tartars.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for
+which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon the
+method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian orthography,
+as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as <i>zh</i>, &amp;c.
+&amp;c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the correct pronunciation.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page288" id="page288" title="page288"></a>Throughout these pages the vowels <i>a, e, i, o, y</i>, are supposed to be pronounced
+as in French, the diphthong <i>ou</i> as in the word <i>you</i>, the <i>j</i> always with
+the French sound.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the combinations of consonants employed, <i>kh</i> has the gutteral
+sound of the <i>ch</i> in the Scottish word <i>loch</i>, and <i>gh</i> is like a rather rough
+or coarse aspirate.</p>
+
+<p>The simple <i>g</i> is invariably to be uttered hard, as in <i>gun</i> or <i>gall</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid the possibility of errors, the combination <i>tch</i>, though not a very
+soft one to the eye, represents a Russian sound for which there is no character
+in English. It is, of course, uttered as in the word <i>watch</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As a great deal of the apparent discord of Russian words, as pronounced by
+foreigners, arises from ignorance of the place of the accent, we have added a
+sign over every polysyllable word, indicating the part on which the stress is
+to be laid.</p>
+
+<p>The few preceding rules will, the translator hopes, enable his countrymen
+to <i>attack</i> the pronunciation of the Russian names without the ancient dread
+inspired by terrific and complicated clusters of consonants; and will perhaps
+prove to them that the language is both an easy and a melodious one.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p><i>St Petersburg, November</i> 10, 1842.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="blkquot">
+<p>&quot;Be slow to offend&mdash;swift to revenge!&quot;</p>
+<p><i>Inscription on a dagger of Daghest&aacute;n.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was Djoum&aacute;.<a name="footnotetag11" id="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Not far from
+Bouin&aacute;ki, a considerable village of
+Northern Daghest&aacute;n, the young Tartars
+were assembled for their national
+exercise called &quot;djig&iacute;tering;&quot; that is,
+the horse-race accompanied by various
+trials of boldness and strength. Bouin&aacute;ki
+is situated upon two ledges of
+the precipitous rocks of the mountain:
+on the left of the road leading from
+Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above
+the town, the crest of Caucasus, feathered
+with wood; on the right, the
+shore, sinking imperceptibly, spreads
+itself out into meadows, on which the
+Caspian Sea pours its eternal murmur,
+like the voice of human multitudes.</p>
+
+<p>A vernal day was fading into evening,
+and all the inhabitants, attracted
+rather by the coolness of the breeze
+than by any feeling of curiosity, had
+quitted their s&aacute;klas,<a name="footnotetag12" id="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> and assembled
+in crowds on both sides of the road.
+The women, without veils, and with
+coloured kerchiefs rolled like turbans
+round their heads, clad in the long
+chemise,<a name="footnotetag13" id="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> confined by the short arkhalo&uacute;kh,
+and wide toum&aacute;ns,<a name="footnotetag14" id="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> sat in
+rows, while strings of children sported
+before them. The men, assembled in
+little groups, stood, or rested on their
+knees;<a name="footnotetag15" id="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> others, in twos or threes,
+walked slowly round, smoking tobacco
+in little wooden pipes: a cheerful
+buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded
+the clattering of hoofs, and
+the cry &quot;katch, katch!&quot; (make way!)
+from the horsemen preparing for the
+race.</p>
+
+<p>Nature, in Daghest&aacute;n, is most
+lovely in the month of May. Millions
+of roses poured their blushes over the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page289" id="page289" title="page289"></a>crags; their odour was streaming in
+the air; the nightingale was not silent
+in the green twilight of the wood, almond-trees,
+all silvered with their
+flowers, arose like the cupolas of a
+pagoda, and resembled, with their
+lofty branches twined with leaves,
+the minarets of some Mussulman
+mosque. Broad-breasted oaks, like
+sturdy old warriors, rose here and
+there, while poplars and chenart-trees,
+assembled in groups and surrounded
+by underwood, looked like children
+ready to wander away to the mountains,
+to escape the summer heats.
+Sportive flocks of sheep&mdash;their fleeces
+speckled with rose-colour; buffaloes
+wallowing in the mud of the fountains,
+or for hours together lazily butting
+each other with their horns; here and
+there on the mountains noble steeds,
+which moved (their manes floating on
+the breeze) with a haughty trot along
+the hills&mdash;such is the frame that encloses
+the picture of every Mussulman
+village. On this Djoum&aacute;, the
+neighbourhood of Bouin&aacute;ki was more
+than usually animated. The sun
+poured his floods of gold on the dark
+walls of the flat-roofed s&aacute;klas, clothing
+them with fantastic shadows, and
+adding beauty to their forms. In the
+distance, crawling along the mountain,
+the creaking arbas<a name="footnotetag16" id="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> flitted among
+the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past
+them, before
+them, flew a horseman, raising the
+dust along the road ... the mountain
+crest and the boundless sea gave
+grandeur to this picture, and all nature
+breathed a glow of life.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He comes, he comes!&quot; was murmured
+through the crowd; all was in
+motion. The horsemen, who till now
+had been chattering with their acquaintance
+on foot, or disorderedly
+riding about the meadow, now leaped
+upon their steeds, and dashed forward
+to meet the cavalcade which was descending
+to the plain: it was Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, the nephew of the Shamkh&aacute;l<a name="footnotetag17" id="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a>
+of Tarki, with his suite. He
+was habited in a black Persian cloak,
+edged with gold-lace, the hanging
+sleeves thrown back over his shoulders.
+A Turkish shawl was wound
+round his arkhalo&uacute;kh, which was made
+of flowered silk. Red shalw&aacute;rs were
+lost in his yellow high-heeled riding-boots.
+His gun, dagger, and
+pistol, glittered with gold and silver
+arabesque work. The hilt of his
+sabre was enriched with gems. The
+Prince of Tarki was a tall, well-made
+youth, of frank countenance; black
+curls streamed behind his ears from
+under his cap&mdash;a slight mustache
+shaded his upper lip&mdash;his eyes glittered
+with a proud courtesy. He rode
+a bright bay steed, which fretted under
+his hand like a whirlwind. Contrary
+to custom, the horse's caparison was
+not the round Persian housing, embroidered
+all over with silk, but the
+light Circassian saddle, ornamented
+with silver on a black ground; and
+the stirrups were of the black steel of
+Kharam&aacute;n, inlaid with gold. Twenty
+no&uacute;kers<a name="footnotetag18" id="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> on spirited horses, and
+dressed in cloaks glittering with lace,
+their caps cocked jauntily, and leaning
+affectedly on one side, pranced
+and sidled after him. The people
+respectfully stood up before their Bek,
+and bowed, pressing their right hand
+upon their right knee. A murmur of
+whispered approbation followed the
+young chief as he passed among the
+women. Arrived at the southern extremity
+of the ground, Ammal&aacute;t stopped.
+The chief people, the old men
+leaning upon their sticks, and the
+elders of Bouin&aacute;ki, stood round in a
+circle to catch a kind word from the
+Bek; but Ammal&aacute;t did not pay them
+any particular attention, and with cold
+politeness replied in monosyllables to
+the flatteries and obeisances of his inferiors.
+He waved his hand; this was
+the signal to commence the race.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty of the most fiery horsemen
+dashed forward, without the slightest
+order or regularity, galloping onward
+and back again, placing themselves in
+all kinds of attitudes, and alternately
+passing each other. At one moment
+<a class="pagenum" name="page290" id="page290" title="page290"></a>they jostled one another from the
+course, and at the same time held in
+their horses, then again they let them
+go at full gallop over the plain. After
+this, they each took slender sticks,
+called djigid&iacute;s, and darted them as they
+rode, either in the charge or the pursuit,
+and again seizing them as they
+flew, or picking them up from the
+earth. Several tumbled from their
+saddles under the strong blows; and
+then resounded the loud laugh of the
+spectators, while loud applauses greeted
+the conqueror; sometimes the horses
+stumbled, and the riders were thrown
+over their heads, hurled off by a double
+force from the shortness of their
+stirrups. Then commenced the shooting.
+Ammal&aacute;t Bek had remained a
+little apart, looking on with apparent
+pleasure. His no&uacute;kers, one after the
+other, had joined the crowd of djig&iacute;terers,
+so that, at last, only two were
+left by his side. For some time he
+was immovable, and followed with
+an indifferent gaze the imitation of an
+Asiatic combat; but by degrees his
+interest grew stronger. At first he
+watched the cavaliers with great attention,
+then he began to encourage
+them by his voice and gestures, he
+rose higher in his stirrups, and at last
+the warrior-blood boiled in his veins,
+when his favourite no&uacute;ker could not
+hit a cap which he had thrown down
+before him. He snatched his gun
+from his attendants, and dashed forward
+like an arrow, winding among
+the sporters. &quot;Make way&mdash;make way!&quot;
+was heard around, and all, dispersing
+like a rain-cloud on either side, gave
+place to Ammal&aacute;t Bek.</p>
+
+<p>At the distance of a verst<a name="footnotetag19" id="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> stood ten
+poles with caps hanging on them.
+Ammal&aacute;t rode straight up to them,
+waved his gun round his head, and
+turned close round the pole; as he
+turned he stood up in his stirrups,
+turned back&mdash;bang!&mdash;the cap tumbled
+to the ground; without checking his
+speed he reloaded, the reins hanging
+on his horse's neck&mdash;knocked off another,
+then a third&mdash;and so on the
+whole ten. A murmur of applause
+arose on all sides; but Ammal&aacute;t,
+without stopping, threw his gun into
+the hands of one of his no&uacute;kers, pulled
+out a pistol from his belt, and with
+the ball struck the shoe from the hind
+foot of his horse; the shoe flew off,
+and fell far behind him; he then again
+took his gun from his no&uacute;ker, and
+ordered him to gallop on before him.
+Quicker than thought both darted
+forward. When half-way round the
+course, the no&uacute;ker drew from his
+pocket a rouble, and threw it up in
+the air. Ammal&aacute;t raised himself in
+the saddle, without waiting till it fell;
+but at the very instant his horse stumbled
+with all his four legs together,
+and striking the dust with his nostrils,
+rolled prostrate. All uttered a cry of
+terror; but the dexterous horseman,
+standing up in the stirrups, without
+losing his seat, or even leaning forward,
+as if he had been aware that he
+was going to fall, fired rapidly, and
+hitting the rouble with his ball, hurled
+it far among the people. The crowd
+shouted with delight&mdash;&quot;Igeed, igeed!
+(bravo!) Alla valla-ha!&quot; But Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, modestly retiring, dismounted
+from his steed, and throwing
+the reins to his djillad&aacute;r, (groom,) ordered
+him immediately to have the
+horse shod. The race and the shooting
+was continued.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment there rode up to
+Ammal&aacute;t his emdj&eacute;k,<a name="footnotetag20" id="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> Saphir-Ali, the
+son of one of the poor beks of Bouin&aacute;ki,
+a young man of an agreeable
+exterior, and simple, cheerful character.
+He had grown up with Ammal&aacute;t,
+and therefore treated him with great
+familiarity. He leaped from his horse,
+and nodding his head, exclaimed&mdash;&quot;No&uacute;ker
+M&eacute;met Raso&uacute;l has knocked
+up the old cropped<a name="footnotetag21" id="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> stallion, in trying
+to leap him over a ditch seven
+paces wide.&quot; &quot;And did he leap it?&quot;
+cried Ammal&aacute;t impatiently. &quot;Bring
+him instantly to me!&quot; He went to
+meet the horse&mdash;and without putting
+his foot in the stirrup, leaped into the
+saddle, and galloped to the bed of a
+mountain-torrent. As he galloped, he
+pressed the horse with his knee, but
+the wearied animal, not trusting to his
+strength, bolted aside on the very
+<a class="pagenum" name="page291" id="page291" title="page291"></a>brink, and Ammal&aacute;t was obliged to
+make another turn. The second time,
+the steed, stimulated by the whip,
+reared up on his hind-legs in order to
+leap the ditch, but he hesitated, grew
+restive, and resisted with his fore-feet.
+Ammal&aacute;t grew angry. In vain did
+Saphir-Ali entreat him not to force
+the horse, which had lost in many a
+combat and journey the elasticity of
+his limbs. Ammal&aacute;t would not listen
+to any thing; but urging him with a
+cry, and striking him with his drawn
+sabre for the third time, he galloped
+him at the ravine; and when, for the
+third time, the old horse stopped short
+in his stride, not daring to leap, he
+struck him so violently on the head
+with the hilt of his sabre, that he fell
+lifeless on the earth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the reward of faithful service!&quot;
+said Saphir-Ali, compassionately,
+as he gazed on the lifeless
+steed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the reward of disobedience!&quot;
+replied Ammal&aacute;t, with flashing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing the anger of the Bek, all
+were silent. The horsemen, however,
+continued their djig&iacute;tering.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly was heard the thunder
+of Russian drums, and the bayonets
+of Russian soldiers glittered as
+they wound over the hill. It was a
+company of the Kour&iacute;nsky regiment
+of infantry, sent from a detachment
+which had been dispatched to Ako&uacute;sh,
+then in a state of revolt, under Sheikh
+Ali Khan, the banished chief of Derbend.
+This company had been protecting
+a convoy of supplies from Derbend,
+whither it was returning by the
+mountain road. The commander of
+the company, Captain &mdash;&mdash;, and one
+officer with him, rode in front. Before
+they had reached the race-course,
+the retreat was beaten, and the company
+halted, throwing aside their
+havresacks and piling their muskets,
+but without lighting a fire.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of a Russian detachment
+could have been no novelty to
+the inhabitants of Daghest&aacute;n in the
+year 1819; and even yet, it must be
+confessed, it is an event that gives
+them no pleasure. Superstition made
+them look on the Russians as eternal
+enemies&mdash;enemies, however, vigorous
+and able; and they determined, therefore,
+not to injure them but in secret,
+by concealing their hatred under a
+mask of amity. A buzz spread among
+the people on the appearance of the
+Russians: the women returned by
+winding paths to the village, not forgetting,
+however, to gaze secretly at
+the strangers. The men, on the contrary,
+threw fierce glances at them
+over their shoulders, and began to assemble
+in groups, discussing how they
+might best get rid of them, and relieve
+themselves from the podv&oacute;d<a name="footnotetag22" id="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a>, and so
+on. A multitude of loungers and boys,
+however, surrounded the Russians as
+they reposed upon the grass. Some
+of the Kekkho&uacute;ds (starosts<a name="footnotetag23" id="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a>) and
+Tehao&uacute;shes (desi&aacute;tniks<a name="footnotetag24" id="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a>) appointed
+by the Russian Government, hastily
+advancing to the Captain, pulled off
+their caps, after the usual salutation,
+&quot;Khot ghialdi!&quot; (welcome!) and
+&quot;Yakshimo&uacute;sen, tazamo&uacute;sen, sen-ne-ma-mo&uacute;sen,&quot;
+(I greet you,) arrived
+at the inevitable question at a meeting
+of Asiatics, &quot;What news?&quot;&mdash;&quot;Na
+khaber?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The only news with me is, that
+my horse has cast a shoe, and the
+poor devil is dead lame,&quot; answered
+the Captain in pretty good Tartar:
+&quot;and here is, just <i>&aacute;propos</i>, a blacksmith!&quot;
+he continued, turning to a
+broad-shouldered Tartar, who was
+filing the fresh-shod hoof of Ammal&aacute;t's
+horse. &quot;Koun&aacute;k! (my friend,)&mdash;shoe
+my horse&mdash;the shoes are ready&mdash;'tis
+but the clink of a hammer, and
+'tis done in a moment!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith turned sulkily towards
+the Captain a face tanned by his
+forge and by the sun, looked from the
+corners of his eyes at his questioner,
+stroked the thick mustache which
+overshadowed a beard long unrazored,
+and which might for its bristles have
+done honour to any boar; flattened
+his ar&aacute;kshin (bonnet) on his head,
+and coolly continued putting away his
+tools in their bag.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you understand me, son of a
+wolf race?&quot; said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand you well,&quot; answered
+the blacksmith,&mdash;&quot;you want your
+horse shod.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page292" id="page292" title="page292"></a>&quot;And I should advise you to shoe
+him,&quot; replied the Captain, observing
+on the part of the Tartar a desire to
+jest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-day is a holiday: I will not
+work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will pay you what you like for
+your work; but I tell you that, whether
+you like it or not, you must do what
+I want.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The will of Allah is above ours;
+and he does not permit us to work on
+Djoum&aacute;. We sin enough for gain on
+common days, so on a holiday I do
+not wish to buy coals with silver.&quot;<a name="footnotetag25" id="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;But were you not at work just
+now, obstinate blockhead? Is not
+one horse the same as another?
+Besides, mine is a real Mussulman&mdash;look
+at the mark<a name="footnotetag26" id="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a>&mdash;the blood of Karab&aacute;kh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All horses are alike; but not so
+those who ride them: Ammal&aacute;t Bek
+is my aga (lord.)&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is, if you had taken it into
+your head to refuse him, he would have
+had your ears cropped; but you will
+not work for me, in the hope that I
+would not dare to do the same. Very
+well, my friend! I certainly will not
+crop your ears, but be assured that I
+will warm that orthodox back of yours
+with two hundred pretty stinging
+nogaikas (lashes with a whip) if you
+won't leave off your nonsense&mdash;do you
+hear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hear&mdash;and I answer as I did before:
+I will not shoe the horse&mdash;for I
+am a good Mussulman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I will make you shoe him,
+because I am a good soldier. As you
+have worked at the will of your Bek,
+you shall work for the need of a Russian
+officer&mdash;without this I cannot proceed.
+Corporals, forward!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time a circle of gazers
+had been extending round the obstinate
+blacksmith, like a ring made in
+the water by casting a stone into it.
+Some in the crowd were disputing the
+best places, hardly knowing what they
+were running to see; and at last more
+cries were heard: &quot;It is not fair&mdash;it
+cannot be: to-day is a holiday: to-day
+it is a sin to work!&quot; Some of the
+boldest, trusting to their numbers,
+pulled their caps over their eyes, and
+felt at the hilts of their daggers, pressing
+close up to the Captain, and crying
+&quot;Don't shoe him, Al&eacute;kper! Do
+nothing for him: here's news, my masters!
+What new prophets for us are
+these unwashed Russians?&quot; The Captain
+was a brave man, and thoroughly
+understood the Asiatics. &quot;Away, ye
+rascals!&quot; he cried in a rage, laying
+his hand on the butt of his pistol. &quot;Be
+silent, or the first that dares to let an
+insult pass his teeth, shall have them
+closed with a leaden seal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This threat, enforced by the bayonets
+of some of the soldiers, succeeded
+immediately: they who were timid
+took to their heels&mdash;the bolder held
+their tongues. Even the orthodox
+blacksmith, seeing that the affair was
+becoming serious, looked round on all
+sides, and muttered &quot;Nedjelaim?&quot;
+(What can I do?) tucked up his
+sleeves, pulled out from his bag the
+hammer and pincers, and began to
+shoe the Russian's horse, grumbling
+between his teeth, &quot;<i>Vala billa beetmi
+eddeem</i>, (I will not do it, by God!)&quot;
+It must be remarked that all this took
+place out of Ammal&aacute;t's presence. He
+had hardly looked at the Russians,
+when, in order to avoid a disagreeable
+rencontre, he mounted the horse
+which had just been shod, and galloped
+off to Bouin&aacute;ki, where his house
+was situated.</p>
+
+<p>While this was taking place at one
+end of the exercising ground, a horseman
+rode up to the front of the
+reposing soldiers. He was of middling
+stature, but of athletic frame, and was
+clothed in a shirt of linked mail, his
+head protected by a helmet, and in
+full warlike equipment, and followed
+by five no&uacute;kers. By their dusty
+dress, and the foam which covered
+their horses, it might be seen that they
+had ridden far and fast. The first
+horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers,
+advanced slowly along the piles
+of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids
+of fire-arms. The no&uacute;kers, following
+the steps of their master, far
+from turning aside, coolly rode over
+the scattered weapons. The sentry,
+who had challenged them while they were
+yet at some distance, and warned
+them not to approach, seized the bit
+<a class="pagenum" name="page293" id="page293" title="page293"></a>of the steed bestridden by the mail-coated
+horseman, while the rest of the
+soldiers, enraged at such an insult
+from a Mussulman, assailed the party
+with abuse. &quot;Hold hard! Who are
+you?&quot; was the challenge and question
+of the sentinel. &quot;Thou must be a
+raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan
+Akhmet Khan of Av&aacute;r,&quot;<a name="footnotetag27" id="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a> coolly
+answered the man in mail, shaking off
+the hand of the sentry from his reins.
+&quot;I think last year I left the Russians
+a keepsake at B&aacute;shli. Translate that
+for him,&quot; he said to one of his no&uacute;kers.
+The Av&aacute;retz repeated his words
+in pretty intelligible Russian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis Akhmet Khan! Akhmet
+Khan!&quot; shouted the soldiers. &quot;Seize
+him! hold him fast! down with him!
+pay him for the affair of B&aacute;shli<a name="footnotetag28" id="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a>&mdash;the
+villains cut our wounded to pieces.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Away, brute!&quot; cried Sultan Akhmet
+Khan to the soldier who had again
+seized the bridle of his horse&mdash;&quot;I am
+a Russian general.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A Russian traitor!&quot; roared a multitude
+of voices; &quot;bring him to the
+Captain: drag him to Derbend, to
+Colonel Verkh&oacute;ffsky.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis only to hell I would go with
+such guides!&quot; said Akhmet, with a
+contemptuous smile, and making his
+horse rear, he turned him to the right
+and left; then, with a blow of the
+nogaik,<a name="footnotetag29" id="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a> he made him leap into the
+air, and disappeared. The no&uacute;kers
+kept their eye on the movements of
+their chief, and uttering their warcry,
+followed his steps, and overthrowing
+several of the soldiers, cleared a
+way for themselves into the road. After
+galloping off to a distance of scarce
+a hundred paces, the Khan rode away
+at a slow walk, with an expression of
+the greatest <i>sang-froid</i>, not deigning
+to look back, and coolly playing with
+his bridle. The crowd of Tartars
+assembled round the blacksmith attracted
+his attention. &quot;What are
+you quarrelling about, friends?&quot; asked
+Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining
+in his horse.</p>
+
+<p>In sign of respect and reverence,
+they all applied their hands to their
+foreheads when they saw the Khan.
+The timid or peaceably disposed among
+them, dreading the consequences, either
+from the Russians or the Khan, to
+which this rencontre might expose
+them, exhibited much discomfiture at
+the question; but the idle, the ruffian,
+and the desperate&mdash;for all beheld with
+hatred the Russian domination&mdash;crowded
+turbulently round him with
+delight. They hurriedly told him
+what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you stand, like buffaloes,
+stupidly looking on, while they force
+your brother to work like a brute
+under the yoke!&quot; exclaimed the Khan,
+gloomily, to the bystanders; &quot;while
+they laugh in your face at your customs,
+and trample your faith under
+their feet! and ye whine like old women,
+instead of revenging yourselves
+like men! Cowards! cowards!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can we do?&quot; cried a multitude
+of voices together; &quot;the Russians
+have cannon&mdash;they have bayonets!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And ye, have ye not guns? have
+ye not daggers? It is not the Russians
+that are brave, but ye that are
+cowards! Shame of Mussulmans!
+The sword of Daghest&aacute;n trembles
+before the Russian whip. Ye are
+afraid of the roll of the cannon; but
+ye fear not the reproach of cowardice.
+The ferm&aacute;n of a Russian pr&iacute;stav<a name="footnotetag30" id="footnotetag30"></a><a href="#footnote30"><sup>30</sup></a> is
+holier to you than a chapter of the
+Koran. Siberia frightens you more
+than hell. Did your forefathers act,
+did your forefathers think thus? They
+counted not their enemies, they calculated
+not. Outnumbered or not,
+they met them, bravely fought them,
+and gloriously died! And what fear
+ye? Have the Russians ribs of iron?
+Have their cannon no breach? Is it
+not by the tail that you seize the scorpion?&quot;
+This address stirred the crowd.
+The Tartar vanity was touched to the
+quick. &quot;What do we care for them?
+Why do we let them lord it over us
+<a class="pagenum" name="page294" id="page294" title="page294"></a>here?&quot; was heard around. &quot;Let us
+liberate the blacksmith from his work&mdash;let
+us liberate him!&quot; they roared, as
+they narrowed their circle round the
+Russian soldiers, amidst whom Al&eacute;kper
+was shoeing the captain's horse.
+The confusion increased. Satisfied
+with the tumult he had created, Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, not wishing to mix
+himself up in an insignificant brawl,
+rode out of the crowd, leaving two
+no&uacute;kers to keep alive the violent spirit
+among the Tartars, while, accompanied
+by the remainder, he rode rapidly
+to the ootakh<a name="footnotetag31" id="footnotetag31"></a><a href="#footnote31"><sup>31</sup></a> of Ammal&aacute;t.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mayest thou be victorious,&quot; said
+Sultan Akhmet Khan to Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, who received him at the threshold.
+This ordinary salutation, in the
+Circassian language, was pronounced
+with so marked an emphasis, that
+Ammal&aacute;t as he kissed him, asked,
+&quot;Is that a jest or a prophecy, my fair
+guest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That depends on thee,&quot; replied
+the Sultan. &quot;It is upon the right
+heir of the Shamkhal&aacute;t<a name="footnotetag32" id="footnotetag32"></a><a href="#footnote32"><sup>32</sup></a> that it
+depends to draw the sword from the
+scabbard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To sheath it no more, Khan? An
+unenviable destiny. Methinks it is
+better to reign in Bouin&aacute;ki, than for
+an empty title to be obliged to hide
+in the mountains like a jackal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To bound from the mountains like
+a lion, Ammal&aacute;t; and to repose, after
+your glorious toils, in the palace of
+your ancestors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To repose? Is it not better not
+to be awakened at all?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you behold but in a dream
+what you ought to possess in reality?
+The Russians are giving you the
+poppy, and will lull you with tales,
+while another plucks the golden
+flowers of the garden.&quot;<a name="footnotetag33" id="footnotetag33"></a><a href="#footnote33"><sup>33</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I do with my force?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Force&mdash;that is in thy soul,
+Ammal&aacute;t!... Despise dangers and
+they bend before you.... Dost thou
+hear that?&quot; added Sultan Akhmet
+Khan, as the sound of firing reached
+them from the town. &quot;It is the voice
+of victory!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Saphir-Ali rushed into the chamber
+with an agitated face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bouin&aacute;ki is in revolt,&quot; he hurriedly
+began; &quot;a crowd of rioters
+has overpowered the detachment, and
+they have begun to fire from the
+rocks.&quot;<a name="footnotetag34" id="footnotetag34"></a><a href="#footnote34"><sup>34</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rascals!&quot; cried Ammal&aacute;t, as he
+threw his gun over his shoulder.
+&quot;How dared they to rise without me!
+Run, Saphir-Ali, threaten them with
+my name; kill the first who disobeys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have done all I could to restrain
+them,&quot; said Saphir-Ali, &quot;but none
+would listen to me, for the no&uacute;kers of
+Sultan Akhmet Khan were urging
+them on, saying that he had ordered
+them to slay the Russians.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! did my no&uacute;kers say
+that?&quot; asked the Khan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They did not say so much, but
+they set the example,&quot; said Saphir-Ali.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In that case they have done well,&quot;
+replied Sultan Akhmet Khan: &quot;this
+is brave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What hast thou done, Khan!&quot;
+cried Ammal&aacute;t, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What you might have done long
+ago!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I justify myself to the
+Russians?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With lead and steel.... The
+firing is begun.... Fate works for
+you ... the sword is drawn ... let us
+go seek the Russians!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are here!&quot; cried the Captain,
+who, followed by two men, had
+broken through the disorderly ranks
+of the Tartars, and dashed into the
+house of their chief. Confounded by
+the unexpected outbreak in which
+he was certain to be considered a
+party, Ammal&aacute;t saluted his enraged
+<a class="pagenum" name="page295" id="page295" title="page295"></a>guest&mdash;&quot;Come in peace!&quot; he said to
+him in Tartar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I care not whether I come in
+peace or no,&quot; answered the Captain,
+&quot;but I find no peaceful reception in
+Bouin&aacute;ki. Thy Tartars, Ammal&aacute;t,
+have dared to fire upon a soldier of
+mine, of yours, a subject of our
+Tsar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In very deed, 'twas absurd to fire
+on a Russian,&quot; said the Khan, contemptuously
+stretching himself on the
+cushions of the divan, &quot;when they
+might have cut his throat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here is the cause of all the mischief,
+Ammal&aacute;t!&quot; said the Captain,
+angrily, pointing to the Khan; &quot;but
+for this insolent rebel not a trigger
+would have been pulled in Bouin&aacute;ki!
+But you have done well, Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek, to invite Russians as friends,
+and to receive their foe as a guest, to
+shelter him as a comrade, to honour
+him as a friend! Ammal&aacute;t Bek, this
+man is named in the order of the
+commander-in-chief; give him up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain,&quot; answered Ammal&aacute;t,
+&quot;with us a guest is sacred. To give
+him up would be a sin upon my soul,
+an ineffaceable shame upon my head;
+respect my entreaty; respect our
+customs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will tell you, in your turn&mdash;respect
+the Russian laws. Remember
+your duty. You have sworn allegiance
+to the Tsar, and your oath obliges
+you not to spare your own brother
+if he is a criminal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rather would I give up my brother
+than my guest, Sir Captain! It
+is not for you to judge my promises
+and obligations. My tribunal is Allah
+and the padishah! In the field,
+let fortune take care of the Khan;
+but within my threshold, beneath my
+roof, I am bound to be his protector,
+and I will be!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you shall be answerable for
+this traitor!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Khan had lain in haughty silence
+during this dispute, breathing
+the smoke from his pipe: but at the
+word &quot;traitor,&quot; his blood was fired,
+he started up, and rushed indignantly
+to the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Traitor, say you?&quot; he cried.
+&quot;Say rather, that I refused to betray
+him to whom I was bound by promise.
+The Russian padishah gave
+me rank, the sardar<a name="footnotetag35" id="footnotetag35"></a><a href="#footnote35"><sup>35</sup></a> caressed me&mdash;and
+I was faithful so long as they demanded
+of me nothing impossible or
+humiliating. But, all of a sudden, they
+wished me to admit troops into Av&aacute;r&mdash;to
+permit fortresses to be built
+there; and what name should I have
+deserved, if I had sold the blood and
+sweat of the Av&aacute;retzes, my brethren!
+If I had attempted this, think ye that
+I could have done it? A thousand
+free daggers, a thousand unhired bullets,
+would have flown to the heart of
+the betrayer. The very rocks would
+have fallen on the son who could betray
+his father. I refused the friendship
+of the Russians; but I was not
+their enemy&mdash;and what was the reward
+of my just intentions, my honest
+counsels? I was deeply, personally
+insulted by the letter of one of your
+generals, whom I had warned. That
+insolence cost him dear at B&aacute;shli ... I
+shed a river of blood for some few
+drops of insulting ink, and that river
+divides us for ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That blood cries for vengeance!&quot;
+replied the enraged Captain. &quot;Thou
+shalt not escape it, robber!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor thou from me!&quot; shouted the
+infuriated Khan, plunging his dagger
+into the body of the Captain, as he
+lifted his hand to seize him by the collar.
+Severely wounded, the officer
+fell groaning on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thou hast undone me!&quot; cried
+Ammal&aacute;t, wringing his hands. &quot;He
+is a Russian, and my guest!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are insults which a roof
+cannot cover,&quot; sullenly replied the
+Khan. &quot;The die is cast: it is no
+time to hesitate. Shut your gate, call
+your people, and let us attack the
+enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An hour ago I had no enemy ... there
+are no means now for repulsing
+them ... I have neither powder nor
+ball ... The people are dispersed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They have fled!&quot; cried Saphir-Ali
+in despair. &quot;The Russians are
+advancing at full march over the hill.
+They are close at hand!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If so, go with me, Ammal&aacute;t!&quot;
+said the Khan. &quot;I rode to Tchetchn&aacute;
+yesterday, to raise the revolt along
+<a class="pagenum" name="page296" id="page296" title="page296"></a>the line ... What will be the end,
+God knows; but there is bread in the
+mountains. Do you consent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us go!&quot; ... replied Ammal&aacute;t,
+resolvedly.... &quot;When our
+only safety is in flight, it is no time
+for disputes and reproaches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! horses, and six no&uacute;kers with
+me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And am I to go with you?&quot; said
+Saphir-Ali, with tears in his eyes&mdash;&quot;with
+you for weal or woe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, my good Saphir-Ali, no.
+Remain you here to govern the household,
+that our people and the strangers
+may not seize every thing. Give my
+greeting to my wife, and take her
+to my father-in-law, the Shamkh&aacute;l.
+Forget me not, and farewell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They had barely time to escape at
+full gallop by one gate, when the Russians
+dashed in at the other.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>The vernal noon was shining upon
+the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud
+voices of the moollahs had called the
+inhabitants of Tchetchn&aacute; to prayer.
+By degrees they came forth from the
+mosques, and though invisible to each
+other from the towers on which they
+stood, their solitary voices, after awaking
+for a moment the echoes of the
+hills, sank to stillness in the silent
+air.</p>
+
+<p>The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a
+Turkish devotee, one of those missionaries
+annually sent into the mountains
+by the Divan of Stamboul, to
+spread and strengthen the faith, and
+to increase the detestation felt by the
+inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing
+on the roof of the mosque,
+having performed the usual call, ablution,
+and prayer. He had not been long
+installed as moollah of Ig&aacute;li, a
+village of Tchetchn&aacute;; and plunged in
+a deep contemplation of his hoary
+beard, and the circling smoke-wreaths
+that rose from his pipe, he gazed from
+time to time with a curious interest
+on the mountains, and on the defiles
+which lay towards the north, right
+before his eyes. On the left arose the
+precipitous ridges dividing Tchetchn&aacute;
+from Av&aacute;r, and beyond them glittered
+the snows of Caucasus; s&aacute;klas scattered
+disorderly along the ridges half-way
+up the mountain, and narrow
+paths led to these fortresses built by
+nature, and employed by the hill-robbers
+to defend their liberty, or secure
+their plunder. All was still in the
+village and the surrounding hills;
+there was not a human being to be
+seen on the roads or streets; flocks of
+sheep were reposing in the shade of
+the cliffs; the buffaloes were crowded
+in the muddy swamps near the springs,
+with only their muzzles protruded
+from the marsh. Nought save the
+hum of the insects&mdash;nought save the
+monotonous chirp of the grasshoppers
+indicated life amid the breathless
+silence of the mountains; and Hadji
+Suleiman, stretched under the cupola,
+was intensely enjoying the stillness
+and repose of nature, so congenial to
+the lazy immobility of the Turkish
+character. Indolently he turned his
+eyes, whose fire was extinguished, and
+which no longer reflected the light of
+the sun, and at length they fell upon
+two horsemen, slowly climbing the
+opposite side of the declivity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;N&eacute;phtali!&quot; cried our Moollah,
+turning towards a neighbouring s&aacute;kla,
+at the gate of which stood a saddled
+horse. And then a handsome Tchetchenetz,
+with short cut beard, and
+shaggy cap covering half his face, ran
+out into the street. &quot;I see two horsemen,&quot;
+continued the Moollah; &quot;they
+are riding round the village!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most likely Jews or Armenians,&quot;
+answered N&eacute;phtali. &quot;They do not
+choose to hire a guide, and will break
+their necks in the winding road. The
+wild-goats, and our boldest riders,
+would not plunge into these recesses
+without precaution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, brother N&eacute;phtali; I have
+been twice to Mecca, and have seen
+plenty of Jews and Armenians every
+where. But these riders look not like
+Hebrew chafferers, unless, indeed, they
+exchange steel for gold in the mountain
+road. They have no bales of
+merchandise. Look at them yourself
+from above; your eyes are surer than
+mine; mine have had their day, and
+done their work. There was a time
+when I could count the buttons on a
+Russian soldier's coat a verst off, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page297" id="page297" title="page297"></a>my rifle never missed an infidel; but
+now I could not distinguish a ram of
+my own afar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By this time N&eacute;phtali was at the
+side of the Moollah, and was examining
+the travellers with an eagle
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The noonday is hot, and the road
+rugged,&quot; said Suleiman; &quot;invite the
+travellers to refresh themselves and
+their horses: perhaps they have news:
+besides, the Koran commands us to
+show hospitality.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With us in the mountains, and
+before the Koran, never did a stranger
+leave a village hungry or sad; never
+did he depart without tchourek,<a name="footnotetag36" id="footnotetag36"></a><a href="#footnote36"><sup>36</sup></a> without
+blessing, without a guide; but these
+people are suspicious: why do they
+avoid honest men, and pass our village
+by by-roads, and with danger to their
+life?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems that they are your countrymen,&quot;
+said Suleiman, shading his
+eyes with his hand: &quot;their dress is
+Tchetchn&aacute;. Perhaps they are returning
+from a plundering exhibition, to
+which your father went with a hundred
+of his neighbours; or perhaps they are
+brothers, going to revenge blood for
+blood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Suleiman, that is not like us.
+Could a mountaineer's heart refrain
+from coming to see his countrymen&mdash;to
+boast of his exploits against the
+Russians, and to show his booty?
+These are neither avengers of blood
+nor Abreks&mdash;their faces are not covered
+by the b&aacute;shlik; besides, dress is deceptive.
+Who can tell that those are
+not Russian deserters! The other
+day a K&aacute;zak, who had murdered his
+master, fled from Goumbet-Ao&uacute;l with
+his horse and arms.... The devil is
+strong!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is strong in them in whom
+the faith is weak, N&eacute;phtali;&mdash;yet, if
+I mistake not, the hinder horseman
+has hair flowing from under his cap.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I be pounded to dust, but it
+is so! It is either a Russian, or, what
+is worse, a Tartar Shageed.<a name="footnotetag37" id="footnotetag37"></a><a href="#footnote37"><sup>37</sup></a> Stop a
+moment, my friend; I will comb your
+zilfl&aacute;rs for you! In half-an-hour I will
+return, Suleiman, either with them,&mdash;or
+one of us three shall feed the mountain
+berkoots (eagles.)&quot;</p>
+
+<p>N&eacute;phtali rushed down the stairs,
+threw the gun on his shoulders, leapt
+into his saddle and dashed down the
+hill, caring neither for furrow nor stone.
+Only the dust arose, and the pebbles
+streamed down after the bold horseman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alla akb&eacute;r!&quot; gravely exclaimed
+Suleiman, and lit his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>N&eacute;phtali soon came up with the
+strangers. Their horses were covered
+with foam, and the sweat-drops rained
+from them on the narrow path by
+which they were climbing the mountain.
+The first was clothed in a shirt
+of mail, the other in the Circassian
+dress: except that he wore a Persian
+sabre instead of a sh&aacute;shka,<a name="footnotetag38" id="footnotetag38"></a><a href="#footnote38"><sup>38</sup></a> suspended
+by a laced girdle. His left arm was
+covered with blood, bound up with a
+handkerchief, and supported by the
+sword-knot. The faces of both were
+concealed. For some time he rode
+behind them along the slippery path,
+which overhung a precipice; but at
+the first open space he galloped by
+them, and turned his horse round.
+&quot;Sal&aacute;m aleikom!&quot; said he, opposing
+their passage along the rugged and
+half-built road among the rocks, as he
+made ready his arms. The foremost
+horseman suddenly wrapped his bo&uacute;rka<a name="footnotetag39" id="footnotetag39"></a><a href="#footnote39"><sup>39</sup></a>
+round his face, so as to leave
+visible only his knit brows: &quot;Aleikom
+Sal&aacute;m!&quot; answered he, cocking his
+gun, and fixing himself in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God give you a good journey!&quot;
+said N&eacute;phtali. repeating the usual salutation,
+and preparing, at the first
+hostile movement, to shoot the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God give you enough of sense not
+to interrupt the traveller,&quot; replied his
+antagonist, impatiently: &quot;What would
+you with us, Koun&aacute;k?&quot;<a name="footnotetag40" id="footnotetag40"></a><a href="#footnote40"><sup>40</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I offer you rest, and a brother's
+repast, barley and stalls for your horses.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page298" id="page298" title="page298"></a>My threshold flourishes by hospitality:
+the blessing of the stranger increaseth
+the flock, and giveth sharpness to the
+sword of the master. Fix not the seal
+of reproach on our whole village. Let
+them not say, 'They have seen travellers
+in the heat of noon, and
+have not refreshed them nor sheltered
+them.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We thank you for your kindness;
+but we are not wont to take forced
+hospitality; and haste is even more
+necessary for us than rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ride to your death without a
+guide.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Guide!&quot; exclaimed the traveller;
+&quot;I know every step of the Caucasus.
+I have been where your serpents
+climb not, your tigers cannot mount,
+your eagles cannot fly. Make way,
+comrade: thy threshold is not on
+God's high-road, and I have no time
+to prate with thee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not yield a step, till I know
+who and whence you are!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Insolent scoundrel, out of my way,
+or thy mother shall beg thy bones
+from the jackall and the wind! Thank
+your luck, N&eacute;phtali, that thy father
+and I have eaten one another's salt;
+and often have ridden by his side in
+the battle. Unworthy son! thou art
+rambling about the roads, and ready to
+attack the peaceable travellers, while
+thy father's corse lies rotting on the
+fields of Russia, and the wives of the
+Kaz&aacute;ks are selling his arms in the
+bazar. N&eacute;phtali, thy father was slain
+yesterday beyond the T&eacute;rek. Dost
+thou know me now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sultan Akhmet Khan!&quot; cried the
+Tchetchenetz, struck by the piercing
+look and by the terrible news. His
+voice was stifled, and he fell forward
+on his horse's neck in inexpressible
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I am Sultan Akhmet Khan!
+but grave this in your memory, N&eacute;phtali&mdash;that
+if you say to any one, 'I
+have seen the Khan of Av&aacute;r,' my vengeance
+will live from generation to
+generation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The strangers passed on, the Khan
+in silence, plunged, as it seemed, in
+painful recollections; Ammal&aacute;t (for it
+was he) in gloomy thought. The dress
+of both bore witness to recent fighting;
+their mustaches were singed by the
+priming, and splashes of blood had
+dried upon their faces; but the proud
+look of the first seemed to defy to the
+combat fate and chance; a gloomy
+smile, of hate mingled with scorn, contracted
+his lip. On the other hand,
+on the features of Ammal&aacute;t exhaustion
+was painted. He could hardly turn
+his languid eyes; and from time to time
+a groan escaped him, caused by the
+pain of his wounded arm. The uneasy
+pace of the Tartar horse, unaccustomed
+to the mountain roads, renewed
+the torment of his wound. He
+was the first to break the silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why have you refused the offer of
+these good people? We might have
+stopped an hour or two to repose,
+and at dewfall we could have proceeded.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You think so, because you feel
+like a young man, dear Ammal&aacute;t: you
+are used to rule your Tartars like
+slaves, and you fancy that you can
+conduct yourself with the same ease
+among the free mountaineers. The
+hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;&mdash;we
+are defeated and flying. Hundreds
+of brave mountaineers&mdash;your
+no&uacute;kers and my own&mdash;have fallen in
+fight with the Russians; and the
+Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight
+the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan,
+which they are wont to behold the
+star of victory! To accept the beggar's
+repast, perhaps to hear reproaches
+for the death of fathers and sons, carried
+away by me in this rash expedition&mdash;'twould
+be to lose their confidence
+for ever. Time will pass, tears
+will dry up; the thirst of vengeance
+will take place of grief for the dead;
+and then again Sultan Akhmet will be
+seen the prophet of plunder and of
+blood. Then again the battle-signal
+shall echo through the mountains, and
+I shall once more lead flying bands of
+avengers into the Russian limits. If I
+go now, in the moment of defeat, the
+Tchetchenetz will judge that Allah
+giveth and taketh away victory. They
+may offend me by rash words, and
+with me an offence is ineffaceable; and
+the revenge of a personal offence would
+obstruct the road that leads me to the
+Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel
+with a brave people&mdash;and destroy
+the idol of glory on which they are
+wont to gaze with rapture? Never
+does man appear so mean as in weakness,
+when every one can measure
+his strength with him fearlessly: besides,
+you need a skilful leech, and
+nowhere will you find a better than at
+my house. To-morrow we shall be at
+home; have patience until then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page299" id="page299" title="page299"></a>With a gesture of gratitude Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek placed his hand upon his heart
+and forehead: he perfectly felt the
+truth of the Khan's words, but exhaustion
+for many hours had been
+overwhelming him. Avoiding the villages,
+they passed the night among the
+rocks, eating a handful of millet boiled
+in honey, without the mountaineers
+seldom set out on a journey.
+Crossing the Koi-So&uacute; by the bridge
+near the Ashe&eacute;rt, quitting its northern
+branch, and leaving behind them
+And&eacute;h, and the country of the Boulin&eacute;tzes
+of the Koi-So&uacute;, and the naked
+chain of Salata&oacute;u. A rude path lay
+before them, winding among forests
+and cliffs terrible to body and soul;
+and they began to climb the last chain
+which separated them on the north
+from Khounz&aacute;kh or Av&aacute;r, the capital of
+the Khans. The forest, and then the
+underwood, had gradually disappeared
+from the naked flint of the mountain,
+on which cloud and tempest could
+hardly wander. To reach the summit,
+our travellers were compelled to ride
+alternately to the right and to the left,
+so precipitous was the ascent of the
+rocks. The experienced steed of the
+Khan stepped cautiously and surely
+from stone to stone, feeling his way
+with his hoofs, and when they slipped,
+gliding on his haunches down the declivities:
+while the ardent fiery horse
+of Ammal&aacute;t, trained in the hills of
+Daghest&aacute;n, fretted, curveted, and
+slipped. Deprived of his customary
+grooming, he could not support a two
+days' flight under the intense cold
+and burning sunshine of the mountains,
+travelling among sharp rocks, and
+nourished only by the scanty herbage
+of the crevices. He snorted heavily
+as he climbed higher and higher; the
+sweat streamed from his poitrel; his
+large nostrils were dry and parched,
+and foam boiled from his bit. &quot;Allah
+berek&eacute;t!&quot; exclaimed Ammal&aacute;t, as
+he reached the crest from which there
+opened before him a view of Av&aacute;r:
+but at the very moment his exhausted
+horse fell under him; the blood spouted
+from his open mouth, and his last
+breath burst the saddle-girth.</p>
+
+<p>The Khan assisted the Bek to extricate
+himself from the stirrups; but
+observed with alarm that his efforts
+had displaced the bandage on Ammal&aacute;t's
+wounded arm, and that the blood
+was soaking through it afresh. The
+young man, it seemed, was insensible
+to pain; tears were rolling down his
+face upon the dead horse. So one
+drop fills not, but overflows the cup.
+&quot;Thou wilt never more bear me like
+down upon the wind,&quot; he said, &quot;nor
+hear behind thee from the dust-cloud
+of the race, the shouts, unpleasing to
+the rival, the acclamations of the
+people: in the blaze of battle no more
+shalt thou carry me from the iron rain
+of the Russian cannon. With thee I
+gained the fame of a warrior&mdash;why
+should I survive, or it, or thee?&quot; He
+bent his face upon his knee, and remained
+silent a long time, while the
+Khan carefully bound up his wounded
+arm: at length Ammal&aacute;t raised his
+head: &quot;Leave me!&quot; he cried, resolutely:
+&quot;leave, Sultan Akhmet Khan,
+a wretch to his fate! The way is long,
+and I am exhausted. By remaining
+with me, you will perish in vain. See!
+the eagle soars around us; he knows
+that my heart will soon quiver beneath
+his talons, and I thank God! Better
+find an airy grave in the maw of a bird
+of prey, than leave my corse beneath
+a Christian foot. Farewell, linger
+not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For shame, Ammal&aacute;t! you trip
+against a straw....! What
+the great harm? You are wounded,
+and your horse is dead. Your wound
+will soon healed, and we will find
+you a better horse! Allah sendeth not
+misfortunes alone. In the flower of
+your age, and the full vigour of your
+faculties, it is a sin to despair. Mount
+my horse, I will lead him by the bridle,
+and by night we shall be at home.
+Time is precious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For me, time is no more, Sultan
+Ahkmet Khan ... I thank you
+heartily for your brotherly care, but I
+cannot take advantage of it ... you
+yourself cannot support a march on
+foot after such fatigue. I repeat ...
+leave me to my fate. Here, on these
+inaccessible heights, I will die free and
+contented ... And what is there to
+recall me to life! My parents lie under
+the earth, my wife is blind, my uncle
+and father-in-law the Shamkh&aacute;l are
+cowering at Tarki before the Russians
+... the Giaour is revelling in my
+native land, in my inheritance; and I
+myself an a wanderer from my home,
+a runaway from battle. I neither can,
+nor ought to live.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ought <i>not</i> to talk such nonsense,
+dear Ammal&aacute;t:&mdash;and nothing
+but fever can excuse you. We are
+<a class="pagenum" name="page300" id="page300" title="page300"></a>created that we may live longer than
+our fathers. For wives, if one has
+not teazed you enough, we will find
+you three more. If you love not the
+Shamkh&aacute;l, yet love your own inheritance&mdash;you
+ought to live, if but for
+that; since to a dead man power is
+useless, and victory impossible. Revenge
+on the Russians is a holy duty:
+live, if but for that. That we are
+beaten, is no novelty for a warrior;
+to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls
+to us. Allah gives fortune; but a man
+creates his own glory, not by fortune,
+but by firmness. Take courage, my
+friend Ammal&aacute;t.... You are
+wounded and weak; I am strong from
+habit, and not fatigued by flight.
+Mount! and we may yet live to beat
+the Russians.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The colour returned to Ammal&aacute;t's
+face ... &quot;Yes, I will live for revenge!&quot;
+he cried: &quot;for revenge both
+secret and open. Believe me, Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I
+accept your generosity! Henceforth
+I am yours; I swear by the graves of
+my fathers.... I am yours! Guide
+my steps, direct the strokes of my arm;
+and if ever, drowned in softness, I forget
+my oath, remind me of this moment,
+of this mountain peak: Ammal&aacute;t
+Bek will awake, and his dagger will
+be lightning!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Khan embraced him, as he lifted
+the excited youth into the saddle.
+&quot;Now I behold in you the pure blood
+of the Em&iacute;rs!&quot; said he: &quot;the burning
+blood of their children, which flows in
+our veins like the sulphur in the entrails
+of the rocks, which, ever and
+anon inflaming, shakes and topples
+down the crags.&quot; Steadying with one
+hand the wounded man in the saddle,
+the Khan began cautiously to descend
+the rugged croft. Occasionally the
+stones fell rattling from under their
+feet, or the horse slid downward over
+the smooth granite, so that they were
+well pleased to reach the mossy slopes.
+By degrees, creeping plants began to
+appear, spreading their green sheets;
+and, waving from the crevices like fans,
+they hung down in long ringlets like
+ribbons or flags. At length they reached
+a thick wood of nut-trees; then
+came the oak, the wild cherry, and,
+lower still, the tchin&aacute;r,<a name="footnotetag41" id="footnotetag41"></a><a href="#footnote41"><sup>41</sup></a> and the tchind&aacute;r.
+The variety, the wealth of vegetation,
+and the majestic silence of the
+umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary
+adoration of the wild strength
+of nature. Ever and anon, from the
+midnight darkness of the boughs, there
+dawned, like the morning, glimpses of
+meadows, covered with a fragrant carpet
+of flowers untrodden by the foot
+of man. The pathway at one time
+lost itself in the depth of the thicket;
+at another, crept forth upon the edge
+of the rock, below which gleamed and
+murmured a rivulet, now foaming over
+the stones, then again slumbering on
+its rocky bed, under the shade of the
+barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants,
+sparkling with their rainbow tails,
+flitted from shrub to shrub; flights of
+wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes
+in an horizontal troop, sometimes
+like a column, rising to the sky; and
+sunset flooded all with its airy purple,
+and light mists began to rise from the
+narrow gorges: every thing breathed
+the freshness of evening. Our travellers
+were now near the village of Aki,
+and separated only by a hill from
+Khounz&aacute;kh. A low crest alone divided
+them from that village, when
+the report of a gun resounded from
+the mountain, and, like an ominous
+signal, was repeated by the echoes
+of the cliffs. The travellers halted
+irresolute: the echoes by degrees sank
+into stillness. &quot;Our hunters!&quot; cried
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, wiping the
+sweat from his face: &quot;they expect
+me not, and think not to meet me
+here! Many tears of joy, and many of
+sorrow, do I bear to Khounz&aacute;kh!&quot;
+Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in
+the face of Akhmet Khan. Vividly
+does every soft and every savage sentiment
+play on the features of the Asiatic.</p>
+
+<p>Another report soon interrupted his
+meditation; then another, and another.
+Shot answered shot, and at length
+thickened into a warm fire. &quot;'Tis
+the Russians!&quot; cried Ammal&aacute;t, drawing
+his sabre. He pressed his horse
+with the stirrup, as though he would
+have leaped over the ridge at a single
+bound; but in a moment his strength
+failed him, and the blade fell ringing
+on the ground, as his arm dropped
+heavily by his side. &quot;Khan!&quot; said
+he, dismounting, &quot;go to the succour
+of your people; your face will be
+<a class="pagenum" name="page301" id="page301" title="page301"></a>worth more to them than a hundred
+warriors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Khan heard him not; he was
+listening intently for the flight of the
+balls, as if he would distinguish those
+of the Russian from the Av&aacute;rian.
+&quot;Have they, besides the agility of the
+goat, stolen the wings of the eagle
+of Kazb&eacute;c? Can they have reached
+our inaccessible fastnesses?&quot; said he,
+leaning to the saddle, with his foot already
+in the stirrup. &quot;Farewell, Ammal&aacute;t!&quot;
+he cried at length, listening to
+the firing, which now grew hotter: &quot;I
+go to perish on the ruins I have made,
+after striking like a thunderbolt!&quot; At
+this moment a bullet whistled by, and
+fell at his feet. Bending down and
+picking it up, his face was lighted with
+a smile. He quietly took his foot from
+the stirrup, and turning to Ammal&aacute;t,
+&quot;Mount!&quot; said he, &quot;you shall presently
+find with your own eyes an answer
+to this riddle. The Russian bullets
+are of lead; but this is copper<a name="footnotetag42" id="footnotetag42"></a><a href="#footnote42"><sup>42</sup></a>&mdash;an
+Av&aacute;retz, my dear countryman. Besides,
+it comes from the south, where
+the Russians cannot be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They ascended to the summit of the
+crest, and before their view opened two
+villages, situated on the opposite sides
+of a deep ravine; from behind them
+came the firing. The inhabitants
+sheltering themselves behind rocks and
+hedges, were firing at each other. Between
+them the women were incessantly
+running, sobbing and weeping
+when any combatant, approaching the
+edge of the ravine, fell wounded. They
+carried stones, and, regardless of the
+whistling of the balls, fearlessly piled
+them up, so as to make a kind of defence.
+Cries of joy arose from one side or the
+other, as a wounded adversary was
+carried from the field; a groan of sorrow
+ascended in the air when one of
+their kinsmen or comrades was hit.
+Ammal&aacute;t gazed at the combat for some
+time with surprise, a combat in which
+there was a great deal more noise than
+execution. At length he turned an
+enquiring eye upon the Khan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With us these are everyday affairs!&quot;
+he answered, delightedly marking
+each report. &quot;Such skirmishes
+cherish among us a warlike spirit and
+warlike habits. With you, private
+quarrels end in a few blows of the dagger;
+among us they become the common
+business of whole villages, and any
+trifle is enough to occasion them. Probably
+they are fighting about some cow
+that has been stolen. With us it is no
+disgrace to steal in another village&mdash;the
+shame is, to be found out. Admire the
+coolness of our women; the balls are
+whizzing about like gnats, yet they pay
+no attention to them! Worthy wives
+and mothers of brave men! To be
+sure, there would be eternal disgrace
+to him who could wound a woman,
+yet no man can answer for a ball. A
+sharp eye may aim it; but blind chance
+carries it to the mark. But darkness
+is falling from heaven, and dividing
+these enemies for a moment. Let us
+hasten to my kinsmen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing but the experience of the
+Khan could have saved our travellers
+from frequent falls in the precipitous
+descent to the river Ouz&eacute;n. Ammal&aacute;t
+could see scarcely any thing before
+him; the double veil of night and
+weakness enveloped his eyes; his head
+turned: he beheld, as it were in a
+dream, when they again mounted an
+eminence, the gate and watch-tower of
+the Khan's house. With an uncertain
+foot he dismounted in a courtyard,
+surrounded by shouting no&uacute;kers
+and attendants; and he had hardly stepped
+over the grated threshold when his
+breath failed him&mdash;a deadly paleness
+poured its snow over the wounded
+man's face; and the young Bek, exhausted
+by loss of blood, fatigued by
+travel, hunger, and anguish of soul,
+fell senseless on the embroidered carpets.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s2" id="bw329s2"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page302" id="page302" title="page302"></a>
+<h2>POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.</h2>
+
+<h3>No. VI.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE LAY OF THE BELL.</h3>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Vivos voco&mdash;Mortuous plango&mdash;Fulgura frango.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,</p>
+<p class="i2">Awaits the mould of bak&egrave;d clay.</p>
+<p class="i1">Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">THE BELL that shall be born to-day!</p>
+<p class="i4">And wearily now,</p>
+<p class="i4">With the sweat of the brow,</p>
+<p>Shall the work win its grace in the master's eye,</p>
+<p>But the blessing that hallows must come from high.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">And well an earnest word beseems</p>
+<p class="i2">The work the earnest hand prepares;</p>
+<p class="i1">Its load more light the labour deems,</p>
+<p class="i2">When sweet discourse the labour shares.</p>
+<p class="i1">So let us ponder&mdash;nor in vain&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">What strength has wrought when labour wills;</p>
+<p class="i1">For who would not the fool disdain</p>
+<p class="i2">Who ne'er can feel what he fulfills?</p>
+<p class="i1">And well it stamps our Human Race,</p>
+<p class="i2">And hence the gift TO UNDERSTAND,</p>
+<p class="i1">When in the musing heart we trace</p>
+<p class="i2">Whate'er we fashion with the hand.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">From the fir the fagot take,</p>
+<p class="i2">Keep it, heap it hard and dry,</p>
+<p class="i1">That the gather'd flame may break</p>
+<p class="i2">Through the furnace, wroth and high.</p>
+<p class="i4">Smolt the copper within&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Quick&mdash;the brass with the tin,</p>
+<p>That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell</p>
+<p>May flow in the right course glib and well.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">What now these mines so deeply shroud,</p>
+<p class="i2">What Force with Fire is moulding thus,</p>
+<p class="i1">Shall from yon steeple, oft and loud,</p>
+<p class="i2">Speak, witnessing of us!</p>
+<p class="i1">It shall, in later days unfailing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;</p>
+<p class="i1">Its solemn voice with Sorrow wailing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Or choral chiming to Devotion.</p>
+<p class="i1">Whatever sound in man's deep breast</p>
+<p class="i2">Fate wakens, through his winding track,</p>
+<p class="i1">Shall strike that metal-crown&egrave;d crest,</p>
+<p class="i2">Which rings the moral answer back.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">See the silvery bubbles spring!</p>
+<p class="i2">Good! the mass is melting now!</p>
+<p class="i1">Let the salts we duly bring</p>
+<p class="i2">Purge the flood, and speed the flow.</p>
+<p class="i4">From the dross and the scum,</p>
+<p class="i4">Pure, the fusion must come;</p>
+<p>For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,</p>
+<p>That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page303" id="page303" title="page303"></a>
+<p class="i1">That voice, with merry music rife,</p>
+<p class="i2">The cherish'd child shall welcome in;</p>
+<p class="i1">What time the rosy dreams of life,</p>
+<p class="i2">In the first slumber's arms begin.</p>
+<p class="i1">As yet in Time's dark womb unwarning,</p>
+<p class="i2">Repose the days, or foul or fair;</p>
+<p class="i1">And watchful o'er that golden morning,</p>
+<p class="i2">The Mother-Love's untiring care!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">And swift the years like arrows fly&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">No more with girls content to play,</p>
+<p class="i1">Bounds the proud Boy upon his way,</p>
+<p class="i1">Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,</p>
+<p class="i1">With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;</p>
+<p class="i1">And, wearied with the wish to roam,</p>
+<p class="i1">Again seeks, stranger-like, the Father-Home.</p>
+<p class="i1">And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks</p>
+<p class="i2">Out from its native morning skies,</p>
+<p class="i1">With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,</p>
+<p class="i2">The Virgin stands before his eyes.</p>
+<p class="i1">A nameless longing seizes him!</p>
+<p class="i2">From all his wild companions flown;</p>
+<p class="i1">Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;</p>
+<p class="i2">He wanders all alone.</p>
+<p class="i1">Blushing, he glides where'er she move;</p>
+<p class="i2">Her greeting can transport him;</p>
+<p class="i1">To every mead to deck his love,</p>
+<p class="i2">The happy wild flowers court him!</p>
+<p class="i1">Sweet Hope&mdash;and tender Longing&mdash;ye</p>
+<p class="i2">The growth of Life's first Age of Gold;</p>
+<p class="i1">When the heart, swelling, seems to see</p>
+<p class="i2">The gates of heaven unfold!</p>
+<p>O Love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,</p>
+<p>Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Browning o'er the pipes are simmering,</p>
+<p class="i2">Dip this fairy rod within;</p>
+<p class="i1">If like glass the surface glimmering,</p>
+<p class="i2">Then the casting may begin.</p>
+<p class="i4">Brisk, brisk to the rest&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Quick!&mdash;the fusion to test;</p>
+<p>And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign,</p>
+<p>If the ductile and brittle united combine.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,</p>
+<p>And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,</p>
+<p class="i1">Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong:</p>
+<p>So be it with thee, if for ever united,</p>
+<p>The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;</p>
+<p class="i1">Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Lovely, thither are they bringing,</p>
+<p class="i2">With her virgin wreath, the Bride!</p>
+<p class="i1">To the love-feast clearly ringing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Tolls the church-bell far and wide!</p>
+<p class="i1">With that sweetest holyday,</p>
+<p class="i2">Must the May of Life depart;</p>
+<p class="i1">With the cestus loosed&mdash;away</p>
+<p class="i2">Flies ILLUSION from the heart!</p>
+<p class="i3">Yet Love lingers lonely,</p>
+<p class="i4">When Passion is mute,</p>
+<p class="i3">And the blossoms may only</p>
+<p class="i4">Give way to the fruit.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page304" id="page304" title="page304"></a>
+<p class="i2">The Husband must enter</p>
+<p class="i3">The hostile life,</p>
+<p class="i3">With struggle and strife,</p>
+<p class="i3">To plant or to watch,</p>
+<p class="i3">To snare or to snatch,</p>
+<p class="i3">To pray and importune,</p>
+<p class="i2">Must wager and venture</p>
+<p class="i3">And hunt down his fortune!</p>
+<p>Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,</p>
+<p>And the garners are fill'd with the gold of the grain,</p>
+<p>Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!</p>
+<p class="i2">Within sits Another,</p>
+<p class="i3">The thrifty Housewife;</p>
+<p class="i2">The mild one, the mother&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i3">Her home is her life.</p>
+<p class="i2">In its circle she rules,</p>
+<p class="i2">And the daughters she schools,</p>
+<p class="i3">And she cautions the boys,</p>
+<p class="i2">With a bustling command,</p>
+<p class="i2">And a diligent hand</p>
+<p class="i3">Employ'd she employs;</p>
+<p class="i2">Gives order to store,</p>
+<p class="i2">And the much makes the more;</p>
+<p>Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,</p>
+<p>And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;</p>
+<p>And she hoards in the presses, well polish'd and full,</p>
+<p>The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;</p>
+<p>Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavour</p>
+<p>Rests never!</p>
+<p class="i1">Blithe the Master (where the while</p>
+<p class="i1">From his roof he sees them smile)</p>
+<p class="i2">Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;</p>
+<p class="i1">There, the beams projecting far,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the laden store-house are,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the granaries bow'd beneath</p>
+<p class="i2">The blessings of the golden grain;</p>
+<p class="i1">There, in undulating motion,</p>
+<p class="i1">Wave the corn-fields like an ocean.</p>
+<p class="i1">Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">&quot;My house is built upon a rock,</p>
+<p class="i1">And sees unmoved the stormy shock</p>
+<p class="i2">Of waves that fret below!&quot;</p>
+<p class="i1">What chain so strong, what girth so great,</p>
+<p class="i1">To bind the giant form of Fate?&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">Swift are the steps of Woe.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">Now the casting may begin;</p>
+<p class="i3">See the breach indented there:</p>
+<p class="i2">Ere we run the fusion in,</p>
+<p class="i3">Halt&mdash;and speed the pious prayer!</p>
+<p class="i4">Pull the bung out&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">See around and about</p>
+<p class="i1">What vapour, what vapour&mdash;God help us!&mdash;has risen?&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">What, friend, is like the might of fire</p>
+<p class="i2">When man can watch and wield the ire?</p>
+<p class="i2">Whate'er we shape or work, we owe</p>
+<p class="i2">Still to that heaven-descended glow.</p>
+<p class="i2">But dread the heaven-descended glow,</p>
+<p class="i2">When from their chain its wild wings go,</p>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page305" id="page305" title="page305"></a>
+<p class="i2">When, where it listeth, wide and wild</p>
+<p class="i2">Sweeps the free Nature's free-born Child!</p>
+<p class="i2">When the Frantic One fleets,</p>
+<p class="i3">While no force can withstand,</p>
+<p class="i2">Through the populous streets</p>
+<p class="i3">Whirling ghastly the brand;</p>
+<p class="i2">For the Element hates</p>
+<p class="i2">What Man's labour creates,</p>
+<p class="i3">And the work of his hand!</p>
+<p class="i2">Impartially out from the cloud,</p>
+<p class="i3">Or the curse or the blessing may fall!</p>
+<p class="i2">Benignantly out from the cloud</p>
+<p class="i3">Come the dews, the revivers of all!</p>
+<p class="i2">Avengingly our from the cloud</p>
+<p class="i3">Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!</p>
+<p class="i2">Hark&mdash;a wail from the steeple!&mdash;aloud</p>
+<p class="i2">The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!</p>
+<p class="i3">Look&mdash;look&mdash;red as blood</p>
+<p class="i4">All on high!</p>
+<p class="i3">It is not the daylight that fills with its flood</p>
+<p class="i4">The sky!</p>
+<p class="i3">What a clamour awaking</p>
+<p class="i3">Roars up through the street,</p>
+<p class="i3">What a hell-vapour breaking</p>
+<p class="i4">Rolls on through the street,</p>
+<p class="i3">And higher and higher</p>
+<p class="i3">Aloft moves the Column of Fire!</p>
+<p class="i3">Through the vistas and rows</p>
+<p class="i3">Like a whirlwind it goes,</p>
+<p class="i3">And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.</p>
+<p class="i2">Beams are crackling&mdash;posts are shrinking&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">Walls are sinking&mdash;windows clinking&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Children crying&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Mothers flying&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)</p>
+<p class="i1">Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!</p>
+<p class="i1">Hurry and skurry&mdash;away&mdash;away,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the face of the night is as clear as day!</p>
+<p class="i3">As the links in a chain,</p>
+<p class="i3">Again and again</p>
+<p class="i2">Flies the bucket from hand to hand;</p>
+<p class="i3">High in arches up rushing</p>
+<p class="i3">The engines are gushing,</p>
+<p class="i1">And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,</p>
+<p class="i1">With a road on the breast of the element bounds.</p>
+<p class="i3">To the grain and the fruits,</p>
+<p class="i3">Through the rafters and beams,</p>
+<p class="i1">Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!</p>
+<p class="i1">As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,</p>
+<p class="i3">Rush the flames to the sky</p>
+<p class="i3">Giant-high;</p>
+<p class="i1">And at length,</p>
+<p class="i1">Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!</p>
+<p class="i1">With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,</p>
+<p class="i1">And submits to his doom!</p>
+<p class="i3">Desolate</p>
+<p class="i2">The place, and dread</p>
+<p class="i2">For storms the barren bed.</p>
+<p class="i2">In the deserted gaps that casements were,</p>
+<p class="i2">Looks forth despair;</p>
+<p class="i2">And, where the roof hath been,</p>
+<p class="i2">Peer the pale clouds within!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page306" id="page306" title="page306"></a>
+<p class="i3">One look</p>
+<p class="i4">Upon the grave</p>
+<p class="i4">Of all that Fortune gave</p>
+<p class="i3">The loiterer took&mdash;</p>
+<p>Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,</p>
+<p>One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>The faces that he loves</i>! He counts them o'er&mdash;</p>
+<p>And, see&mdash;not one dear look is missing from <i>that</i> store!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Now clasp'd the bell within the clay&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">The mould the mingled metals fill&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Oh, may it, sparkling into day,</p>
+<p class="i2">Reward the labour and the skill!</p>
+<p class="i3">Alas! should it fail,</p>
+<p class="i3">For the mould may be frail&mdash;</p>
+<p>And still with our hope must be mingled the fear&mdash;</p>
+<p>And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">To the dark womb of sacred earth</p>
+<p class="i2">This labour of our hands is given,</p>
+<p class="i1">As seeds that wait the second birth,</p>
+<p class="i2">And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!</p>
+<p class="i1">Ah seeds, how dearer far than they</p>
+<p class="i2">We bury in the dismal tomb,</p>
+<p class="i1">Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray</p>
+<p class="i1">That suns beyond the realm of day</p>
+<p class="i2">May warm them into bloom!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i3">From the steeple</p>
+<p class="i4">Tolls the bell,</p>
+<p class="i3">Deep and heavy,</p>
+<p class="i4">The death-knell!</p>
+<p class="i1">Measured and solemn, guiding up the road</p>
+<p class="i1">A wearied wanderer to the last abode.</p>
+<p class="i2">It is that worship'd wife&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">It is that faithful mother!<a name="footnotetag43" id="footnotetag43"></a><a href="#footnote43"><sup>43</sup></a></p>
+<p>Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,</p>
+<p>From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.</p>
+<p>Far from those blithe companions, born</p>
+<p>Of her, and blooming in their morn;</p>
+<p>On whom, when couch'd, her heart above</p>
+<p>So often look'd the Mother-Love!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,</p>
+<p class="i2">And never, never more to come&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">She dwells within the shadowy land,</p>
+<p class="i2">Who was the Mother of that Home!</p>
+<p class="i1">How oft they miss that tender guide,</p>
+<p class="i2">The care&mdash;the watch&mdash;the face&mdash;the MOTHER&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">And where she sate the babes beside,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sits with unloving looks&mdash;ANOTHER!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">While the mass is cooling now,</p>
+<p class="i2">Let the labour yield to leisure,</p>
+<p class="i1">As the bird upon the bough,</p>
+<p class="i2">Loose the travail to the pleasure.</p>
+<p class="i3">When the soft stars awaken,</p>
+<p class="i3">Each task be forsaken!</p>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page307" id="page307" title="page307"></a>
+<p>And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,</p>
+<p>If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Gleesome and gay,</p>
+<p class="i1">On the welcoming way,</p>
+<p class="i1">Through the wood glides the wanderer home!</p>
+<p class="i1">And the eye and ear are meeting,</p>
+<p class="i1">Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Now, the wonted shelter near,</p>
+<p class="i1">Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;</p>
+<p class="i1">Creaking now the heavy wain,</p>
+<p class="i1">Reels with the happy harvest grain.</p>
+<p class="i1">Which with many-coloured leaves,</p>
+<p class="i1">Glitters the garland on the sheaves;</p>
+<p class="i1">And the mower and the maid</p>
+<p class="i1">Bound to the dance beneath the shade!</p>
+<p class="i1">Desert street, and quiet mart;&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Silence is in the city's heart;</p>
+<p class="i1">Round the taper burning cheerly,</p>
+<p class="i1">Gather the groups HOME loves so dearly;</p>
+<p class="i1">And the gate the town before</p>
+<p class="i1">Heavily swings with sullen roar!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Though darkness is spreading</p>
+<p class="i2">O'er earth&mdash;the Upright</p>
+<p class="i1">And the Honest, undreading,</p>
+<p class="i2">Look safe on the night.</p>
+<p class="i1">Which the evil man watching in awe,</p>
+<p class="i1">For the Eye of the Night is the Law!</p>
+<p class="i2">Bliss-dower'd: O daughter of the skies,</p>
+<p>Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ</p>
+<p>Blends like to like in light and joy&mdash;</p>
+<p>Builder of Cities, who of old</p>
+<p>Call'd the wild man from waste and wold.</p>
+<p>And in his hut thy presence stealing,</p>
+<p>Roused each familiar household feeling;</p>
+<p class="i1">And, best of all the happy ties,</p>
+<p>The centre of the social band,&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>The Instinct of the Fatherland!</i></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">United thus&mdash;each helping each,</p>
+<p class="i2">Brisk work the countless hands for ever;</p>
+<p class="i1">For nought its power to strength can teach,</p>
+<p class="i2">Like Emulation and Endeavour!</p>
+<p class="i1">Thus link'd the master with the man,</p>
+<p class="i2">Each in his rights can each revere,</p>
+<p class="i1">And while they march in freedom's van,</p>
+<p class="i2">Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!</p>
+<p class="i1">To freemen labour is renown!</p>
+<p class="i2">Who works&mdash;gives blessings and commands;</p>
+<p class="i1">Kings glory in the orb and crown&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">Be ours the glory of our hands.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>Long in these walls&mdash;long may we greet</p>
+<p>Your footfalls, Peace and concord sweet!</p>
+<p>Distant the day, Oh! distant far,</p>
+<p>When the rude hordes of trampling War</p>
+<p class="i1">Shall scare the silent vale;</p>
+<p class="i1">And where,</p>
+<p class="i1">Now the sweet heaven when day doth leave</p>
+<p class="i1">The air;</p>
+<p class="i1">Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of Eve;</p>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page308" id="page308" title="page308"></a>
+<p class="i1">Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,</p>
+<p class="i1">From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Now, its destined task fulfill'd,</p>
+<p class="i2">Asunder break the prison-mould;</p>
+<p class="i1">Let the goodly Bell we build,</p>
+<p class="i2">Eye and heart alike behold.</p>
+<p class="i3">The hammer down heave,</p>
+<p class="i3">Till the cover it cleave.</p>
+<p>For the Bell to rise up to the freedom of day,</p>
+<p>Destruction must seize on the shape of the clay.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">To break the mould, the master may,</p>
+<p class="i2">If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;</p>
+<p class="i1">But woe, when on its fiery way</p>
+<p class="i2">The metal seeks itself to pour.</p>
+<p class="i1">Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Exploding from its shattered home,</p>
+<p class="i1">And glaring forth, as from a hell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Behold the red Destruction come!</p>
+<p class="i1">When rages strength that has no reason,</p>
+<p class="i1"><i>There</i> breaks the mould before the season;</p>
+<p class="i1">When numbers burst what bound before,</p>
+<p class="i1">Woe to the State that thrives no more!</p>
+<p class="i1">Yea, woe, when in the City's heart,</p>
+<p class="i2">The latent spark to flame is blown;</p>
+<p class="i1">And Millions from their silence start,</p>
+<p class="i2">To claim, without a guide, their own!</p>
+<p class="i1">Discordant howls the warning Bell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Proclaiming discord wide and far,</p>
+<p class="i1">And, born but things of peace to tell,</p>
+<p class="i2">Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:</p>
+<p class="i1">&quot;Freedom! Equality!&quot;&mdash;to blood,</p>
+<p class="i2">Rush the roused people at the sound!</p>
+<p class="i1">Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,</p>
+<p class="i2">And banded murder closes round!</p>
+<p class="i1">The hy&aelig;na-shapes, that women were!</p>
+<p class="i2">Jest with the horrors they survey;</p>
+<p class="i1">They hound&mdash;they rend&mdash;they mangle there&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i2">As panthers with their prey!</p>
+<p class="i1">Nought rests to hallow&mdash;burst the ties</p>
+<p class="i2">Of life's sublime and reverent awe;</p>
+<p class="i1">Before the Vice the Virtue flies,</p>
+<p class="i2">And Universal Crime is Law!</p>
+<p class="i1">Man fears the lion's kingly tread;</p>
+<p class="i2">Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;</p>
+<p class="i1">And still the dreadliest of the dread,</p>
+<p class="i2">Is Man himself in error!</p>
+<p class="i1">No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes</p>
+<p class="i2">The Blind!&mdash;Why place it in his hand?</p>
+<p class="i1">It lights not him&mdash;it but consumes</p>
+<p class="i2">The City and the Land!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!</p>
+<p class="i2">The kernel bursts its husk&mdash;behold</p>
+<p class="i1">From the dull clay the metal rise,</p>
+<p class="i2">Clear shining, as a star of gold!</p>
+<p class="i3">Neck and lip, but as one beam,</p>
+<p class="i3">It laughs like a sun-beam.</p>
+<p>And even the scutcheon, clear graven, shall tell</p>
+<p>That the art of a master has fashion'd the Bell!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<a class="pagenum" name="page309" id="page309" title="page309"></a>
+<p class="i1">Come in&mdash;come in</p>
+<p class="i1">My merry men&mdash;we'll form a ring</p>
+<p class="i1">The new-born labour christening;</p>
+<p class="i2">And &quot;CONCORD&quot; we will name her!&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">To union may her heart-felt call</p>
+<p class="i2">In brother-love attune us all!</p>
+<p class="i1">May she the destined glory win</p>
+<p class="i2">For which the master sought to frame her&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">Aloft&mdash;(all earth's existence under,)</p>
+<p class="i2">In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar</p>
+<p class="i1">To dwell&mdash;the Neighbour of the Thunder,</p>
+<p class="i2">The Borderer of the Star!</p>
+<p class="i1">Be hers above a voice to raise</p>
+<p class="i2">Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,</p>
+<p class="i1">Who, while they move, their Maker praise,</p>
+<p class="i2">And lead around the wreath&egrave;d year!</p>
+<p class="i1">To solemn and eternal things</p>
+<p class="i2">We dedicate her lips sublime!&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">To fan&mdash;as hourly on she swings</p>
+<p class="i2">The silent plumes of Time!&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">No pulse&mdash;no heart&mdash;no feeling hers!</p>
+<p class="i2">She lends the warning voice to Fate;</p>
+<p class="i1">And still companions, while she stirs,</p>
+<p class="i2">The changes of the Human State!</p>
+<p class="i1">So may she teach us, as her tone</p>
+<p class="i2">But now so mighty, melts away&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1">That earth no life which earth has known</p>
+<p class="i2">From the Last Silence can delay!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i1">Slowly now the cords upheave her!</p>
+<p class="i2">From her earth-grave soars the Bell;</p>
+<p class="i1">Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her</p>
+<p class="i2">In the Music-Realm to dwell!</p>
+<p class="i3">Up&mdash;upwards&mdash;yet raise&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i3">She has risen&mdash;she sways.</p>
+<p class="i1">Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,</p>
+<p class="i1">And oh, may thy first sound be hallow'd to&mdash;PEACE!<a name="footnotetag44" id="footnotetag44"></a><a href="#footnote44"><sup>44</sup></a></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>VOTIVE TABLETS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>What the God taught me&mdash;what, through life, my friend</p>
+<p class="i1">And aid hath been,</p>
+<p>With pious hand, and grateful, I suspend</p>
+<p class="i1">The temple walls within.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE GOOD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Foster the Good, and thou shalt tend the Flower</p>
+<p class="i1">Already sown on earth;&mdash;</p>
+<p>Foster the Beautiful, and every hour</p>
+<p class="i1">Thou call'st new flowers to birth!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="page310" id="page310" title="page310"></a>TO &mdash;&mdash;.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Give me that which thou know'st&mdash;I'll receive and attend;&mdash;</p>
+<p>But thou giv'st me <i>thyself</i>&mdash;pri'thee spare me, my friend.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>GENIUS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>That which hath been can INTELLECT declare,</p>
+<p class="i1">What Nature built&mdash;it imitates or gilds&mdash;</p>
+<p>And REASON builds o'er Nature&mdash;but in air&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i1"><i>Genius</i> alone in Nature&mdash;Nature builds.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>CORRECTNESS&mdash;(Free translation.)</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>The calm correctness where no fault we see</p>
+<p>Attests Art's loftiest&mdash;or its least degree;</p>
+<p>Alike the smoothness of the surface shows</p>
+<p>The Pool's dull stagnor&mdash;the great Sea's repose!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE IMITATOR.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Good out of good&mdash;<i>that</i> art is known to all&mdash;</p>
+<p>But Genius from the bad the good can call&mdash;</p>
+<p>Thou, mimic, not from leading strings escaped,</p>
+<p>Work'st but the matter that's already shaped!</p>
+<p>The already shaped a nobler hand awaits&mdash;</p>
+<p>All matter asks a spirit that creates.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE MASTER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>The herd of Scribes by what they tell us</p>
+<p>Show all in which their wits excel us;</p>
+<p>But the true Master we behold</p>
+<p>In what his art leaves&mdash;just untold!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>TO THE MYSTIC.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>That is the real mystery which around</p>
+<p class="i1">All life, is found;&mdash;</p>
+<p>Which still before all eyes for aye has been,</p>
+<p class="i1">Nor eye hath seen!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="page311" id="page311" title="page311"></a>ASTRONOMICAL WORKS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>All measureless, all infinite in awe,</p>
+<p class="i1">Heaven to great souls is given&mdash;</p>
+<p>And yet the sprite of littleness can draw</p>
+<p class="i1">Down to its inch&mdash;the Heaven!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE DIVISION OF RANKS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Yes, there's a patent of nobility</p>
+<p class="i1">Above the meanness of our common state;</p>
+<p>With what they <i>do</i> the vulgar natures buy</p>
+<p class="i1">Its titles&mdash;and with what they <i>are</i>, the great!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THEOPHANY.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>When draw the Prosperous near me, I forget</p>
+<p class="i1">The gods of heaven; but where</p>
+<p>Sorrow and suffering in my sight are set,</p>
+<p class="i1">The gods, I feel, are there!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE CHIEF END OF MAN.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>What the chief end of Man?&mdash;Behold yon tree,</p>
+<p class="i1">And let it teach thee, Friend!</p>
+<p><i>Will</i> what that will-less yearns for;&mdash;and for thee</p>
+<p class="i1">Is compass'd Man's chief end!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>ULYSSES.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>To gain his home all oceans he explored&mdash;</p>
+<p>Here Scylla frown'd&mdash;and there Charybdis roar'd;</p>
+<p>Horror on sea&mdash;and horror on the land&mdash;</p>
+<p>In hell's dark boat he sought the spectre land,</p>
+<p>Till borne&mdash;a slumberer&mdash;to his native spot</p>
+<p>He woke&mdash;and sorrowing, knew his country not!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>JOVE TO HERCULES.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,</p>
+<p>But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3><a class="pagenum" name="page312" id="page312" title="page312"></a>THE SOWER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>See, full of hope, thou trustest to the earth</p>
+<p class="i1">The golden seed, and waitest till the spring</p>
+<p>Summons the buried to a happier birth;</p>
+<p class="i1">But in Time's furrow duly scattering,</p>
+<p>Think'st thou, how deeds by wisdom sown may be,</p>
+<p class="i1">Silently ripen'd for Eternity?</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE MERCHANT.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Where sails the ship?&mdash;It leads the Tyrian forth</p>
+<p>For the rich amber of the liberal North.</p>
+<p>Be kind ye seas&mdash;winds lend your gentlest wing,</p>
+<p>May in each creek, sweet wells restoring spring!&mdash;</p>
+<p>To you, ye gods, belong the Merchant!&mdash;o'er</p>
+<p>The waves, his sails the wide world's goods explore;</p>
+<p>And, all the while, wherever waft the gales,</p>
+<p>The wide world's good sails with him as he sails!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>COLUMBUS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>Steer on, bold Sailor&mdash;Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,</p>
+<p>And hopeless at the helm may drop the weak and weary hand,</p>
+<p>YET EVER&mdash;EVER TO THE WEST, for there the coast must lie,</p>
+<p>And dim it dawns and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;</p>
+<p>Yea, trust the guiding God&mdash;and go along the floating grave,</p>
+<p>Though hid till now&mdash;yet now, behold the New World o'er the wave!</p>
+<p>With Genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,</p>
+<p>And ever what the One foretels the Other shall fulfil.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE ANTIQUE TO THE NORTHERN WANDERER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>And o'er the river hast thou past, and o'er the mighty sea,</p>
+<p>And o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me;</p>
+<p>To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows,</p>
+<p>And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes&mdash;</p>
+<p>Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here,</p>
+<p>But art thou nearer now to me&mdash;or I to thee more near?</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>What the Grecian arts created,</p>
+<p>May the victor Gaul, elated,</p>
+<p class="i1">Bear with banners to his strand.<a name="footnotetag45" id="footnotetag45"></a><a href="#footnote45"><sup>45</sup></a></p>
+<p>In museums many a row,</p>
+<p>May the conquering showman show</p>
+<p class="i1">To his startled Fatherland!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page313" id="page313" title="page313"></a>Mute to him, they crowd the halls,</p>
+<p>Ever on their pedestals</p>
+<p class="i1">Lifeless stand they!&mdash;He alone</p>
+<p>Who alone, the Muses seeing,</p>
+<p>Clasps&mdash;can warm them into being;</p>
+<p class="i1">The Muses to the Vandal&mdash;stone!</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<h3>THE POETRY OF LIFE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;Who would himself with shadows entertain,</p>
+<p>Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,</p>
+<p>Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?</p>
+<p>Though with my dream my heaven should be resign'd&mdash;</p>
+<p>Though the free-pinion'd soul that now can dwell</p>
+<p>In the large empire of the Possible,</p>
+<p>This work-day life with iron chains may bind,</p>
+<p>Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,</p>
+<p>And solemn duty to our acts decreed,</p>
+<p>Meets us thus tutor'd in the hour of need,</p>
+<p>With a more sober and submissive mind!</p>
+<p>How front Necessity&mdash;yet bid thy youth</p>
+<p>Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, Truth.&quot;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I;</p>
+<p>As from Experience&mdash;that sure port serene&mdash;</p>
+<p>Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,</p>
+<p>The summer glory withers from the scene,</p>
+<p>Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,</p>
+<p>The godlike images that seem'd so fair!</p>
+<p>Silent the playful Muse&mdash;the rosy Hours</p>
+<p>Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers</p>
+<p>Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair.</p>
+<p>Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre,</p>
+<p>Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;&mdash;</p>
+<p>The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire</p>
+<p>With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life.</p>
+<p>The world seems what it <i>is</i>&mdash;A Grave! and Love</p>
+<p>Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above,</p>
+<p>And <i>sees</i>!&mdash;He sees but images of clay</p>
+<p>Where he dream'd gods; and sighs&mdash;and glides away.</p>
+<p>The youngness of the Beautiful grows old,</p>
+<p>And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold;</p>
+<p>And in the crowd of joys&mdash;upon thy throne</p>
+<p>Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="bw329s3" id="bw329s3"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page314" id="page314" title="page314"></a>
+<h2>CALEB STUKELY.</h2>
+
+<h3>PART XII.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE PARSONAGE.</h3>
+
+<p>It was not without misgiving that
+I knocked modestly at the door of
+Mr Jehu Tomkins. For himself,
+there was no solidity in his moral
+composition, nothing to grapple or
+rely upon. He was a small weak
+man of no character at all, and but
+for his powerful wife and active partner,
+would have become the smallest
+of unknown quantities in the respectable
+parish that contained him. Upon
+his own weak shoulders he could not
+have sustained the burden of an establishment,
+and must inevitably have
+dwindled into the lightest of light
+porters, or the most aged of errand-boys.
+Nothing could have saved him
+from the operation of a law, as powerful
+and certain as that of gravitation,
+in virtue of which the soft and
+empty-headed of this world walk to
+the wall, and resign, without a murmur,
+their places to their betters. As
+for the deaconess, I have said already
+that the fact of her being a lady, and
+the possessor of a heart, constituted the
+only ground of hope that I could have
+in reference to her. This I felt to be
+insecure enough when I held the
+knocker in my hand, and remembered
+all at once the many little tales that I
+had heard, every one of which went
+far to prove that ladies may be ladies
+without the generous weakness of
+their sex,&mdash;and carry hearts about
+with them as easily as they carry bags.</p>
+
+<p>My first application was unsuccessful.
+The deacon was not at home.
+&quot;Mr Tomkins and his lady had gone
+<i>to hear</i> the Reverend Doctor Whitefroth,&quot;&mdash;a
+northern and eccentric
+light, now blazing for a time in the
+metropolis. It is a curious fact, and
+worthy to be recorded, that Mr Tomkins,
+and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist
+whom I had hitherto encountered,
+never professed to visit the
+house of prayer with any other object
+than that of <i>hearing</i>. It was never by
+any accident to worship or to pray.
+What, in truth was the vast but lowly
+looking building, into which hundreds
+crowded with the dapper deacon
+at their head, sabbath after sabbath&mdash;what
+but a temple sacred to
+vanity and excitement, eloquence and
+perspiration! Which one individual,
+taken at random from the concourse,
+was not ready to declare that his business
+there that day was &quot;to hear the
+dear good man,&quot; and nothing else? If
+you could lay bare&mdash;as, thank Heaven,
+you cannot&mdash;your fellow-creature's
+heart, whither would you behold stealing
+away the adoration that, in such
+a place, in such a time, is due to one
+alone&mdash;whither, if not to Mr Clayton?
+But let this pass.</p>
+
+<p>I paid a second visit to my friend,
+and gained admittance. It was about
+half-past eight o'clock in the evening,
+and the shop had been closed some
+twenty minutes before. I was ushered
+into a well-furnished room behind
+the shop, where sat the firm&mdash;Mrs
+Jehu and the junior partner. The
+latter looked into his lady's face, perceived
+a smile upon it, and then&mdash;but
+not till then, he offered me his hand,
+and welcomed me with much apparent
+warmth. This ceremony over, Mr
+Tomkins grew fidgety and uneasy,
+and betrayed a great anxiety to get
+up a conversation which he had not
+heart enough to set a going. Mrs
+Tomkins, a woman of the world,
+evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling,
+and in peace. I perceived immediately
+that I must state at once the
+object of my visit, and I proceeded to
+the task.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs Tomkins,&quot; I commenced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir?&quot; said that lady, and then a
+postman's knock brought us to a stop,
+and Jehu skipped across the room to
+listen at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's him, my dear Jemima,&quot; exclaimed
+the linen-draper, &quot;I know his
+knock,&quot; and then he skipped as quickly
+to his chair again.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the apartment was
+opened by a servant girl, who entered
+the room alone and approached her
+mistress with a card. Mrs Tomkins
+looked at it through her eye-glass,
+said &quot;she was most happy,&quot; and the
+servant then retired. The card was
+placed upon the table near me, and,
+as I believe, for my inspection. I
+took it up, and read the following
+<a class="pagenum" name="page315" id="page315" title="page315"></a>words, &quot;<i>Mr Stanislaus Levisohn</i>.&quot;
+They were engraven in the centre of
+the paper, and were surrounded by a
+circle of rays, which in its turn was
+enveloped in a circle of clouds. In
+the very corner of the card, and in
+very small characters, the words &quot;<i>general
+merchant</i>&quot; were written.</p>
+
+<p>There was a noise of shoe-cleaning
+outside the door for about five minutes,
+then the door was opened again by
+the domestic, and a remarkable gentleman
+walked very slowly in. He
+was a tall individual, with small cunning
+eyes, black eye-brows, and a
+beard. He was rather shabbily attired,
+and not washed with care. He
+had thick boorish hands, and he smelt
+unpleasantly of tobacco smoke; an
+affected grin at variance with every
+feature, was planted on his face, and
+sickened an unprejudiced observer at
+the very first gaze. His mode of uttering
+English betrayed him for a foreigner.
+He was a native of Poland.
+Before uttering a syllable, the interesting
+stranger walked to a corner of
+the room, turned himself to the wall,
+and muttered a few undistinguishable
+words. He then bowed lowly to the
+company, and took a chair, grinning
+all the while.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that a Polish move?&quot; asked
+Mr Tomkins.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It vos de coshtom mit de anshent
+tribes, my tear sare, vor alles tings, to
+recommend de family to de protection
+of de hevins. Vy not now mit all
+goot Christians?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not indeed?&quot; added Mrs
+Tomkins. &quot;May I offer you a glass of
+raisin wine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tank you. For de shtomack's
+sake&mdash;yase.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A glass was poured out. It was
+but decent to offer me another. I paid
+my compliments to the hostess and
+the gentlemen, and was about to drink
+it off, when the enlightened foreigner
+called upon me in a loud voice to desist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shtay, mein young friend&mdash;ve are
+not de heathen and de cannibal. It
+is our privilege to live in de Christian
+society mit de Christian lady. Ve
+most ask blessing&mdash;alvays&mdash;never forget&mdash;you
+excuse&mdash;vait tree minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not for me to protest against
+so pious a movement, albeit it presented
+itself somewhat inopportunely and
+out of place. Mr Levisohn covered
+his face with one hand, and murmured
+a few words. The last only reached
+me. It was &quot;Amen,&quot; and this was
+rather heaved up in a sigh, than articulately
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like the wine?&quot; asked
+Jehu, as if he thought it superfine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yase, I like moch&mdash;especially de
+sherry and de port.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jehu smiled, but made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Tomkins supposed that port
+and sherry were favourite beverages
+in Poland, but, for her part, she had
+found that nothing agreed so well with
+British stomachs as the native wines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! my lady,&quot; said the Pole, &quot;ve
+can give up very moch so long ve got
+British religions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very true, indeed,&quot; answered Mrs
+Tomkins. &quot;Pray, Mr Levisohn,
+what may be your opinion of the lost
+sheep? Do you think they will come
+into the fold during our time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before the gentleman replies, it may
+be proper to state on his behalf, that
+he had never given his questioner any
+reason to suppose that he was better
+informed on such mysterious subjects
+than herself. The history of his introduction
+into the family of the linen-draper
+is very short. He had been
+for some years connected with Mr
+Tomkins in the way of business,
+having supplied that gentleman with
+all the genuine foreign, but certainly
+English, perfumery, that was retailed
+with considerable profit in his over-nice
+and pious establishment. Mrs
+Tomkins, no less zealous in the cause
+of the church than that of her own
+shop, at length, and all on a sudden,
+resolved to set about his conversion,
+and to present him to the chapel as a
+brand plucked with her own hand from
+the burning. As a preliminary step,
+he was invited to supper, and treated
+with peculiar respect. The matter
+was gently touched upon, but discussion
+postponed until another occasion.
+Mr Levisohn being very shrewd, very
+needy, and enjoying no particular
+principles of morality and religion,
+perceived immediately the object of
+his hostess, met her more than half-way
+in her Christian purposes, and
+accepted her numerous invitations to
+tea and supper with the most affectionate
+readiness. Within two months
+he was received into the bosom of the
+church, and became as celebrated for
+the depth and intensity of his belief
+as for the earnestness and promptitude
+with which he attended the meetings
+<a class="pagenum" name="page316" id="page316" title="page316"></a>of the brethren, particularly those in
+which eating and drinking did not
+constitute the least important part of
+the proceedings. Being a foreigner,
+he was listened to with the deepest
+attention, very often indeed to his
+serious annoyance, for his ignorance
+was awful, and his assurance, great as
+it was, not always sufficient to get him
+clear of his difficulties. His foreign
+accent, however, worked wonders for
+him, and whenever too hard pressed,
+afforded him a secure and happy retreat.
+An unmeaning grin, and &quot;<i>me
+not pronounce</i>,&quot; had saved him from
+precipices, down which an Englishman,
+<i>c&aelig;teris paribus</i>, must unquestionably
+have been dashed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Vill dey come?&quot; said Mr Levisohn,
+in answer to the question. &quot;Yase,
+certainly, if dey like, I tink.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, sir, I fear you are a latitudinarian,&quot;
+said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope Hevin, my dear lady, vill
+forgive me for dat, and all my wickedness.
+I am a shinner, I shtink!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the converted gentleman,
+at the same moment that Mrs Jehu
+assured him that it would be a great
+thing if they were all as satisfied of
+their condition as he might be. &quot;Your
+strong convictions of your worthlessness
+is alone a proof,&quot; she added, &quot;of
+your accepted state.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My lady,&quot; continued the humble
+Stanislaus, &quot;I am rotten, I am a tief,
+a blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket,
+a housebreak, a sticker mit de knife.
+I vish somebody would call me names
+all de day long, because I forget sometime
+dat I am de nashty vurm of de
+creation. I tink I hire a boy to call
+me names, and make me not forget.
+Oh, my lady, I alvays remember those
+fine words you sing&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>'If I could read my title clear</p>
+<p class="i1">To manshions in de shkies,</p>
+<p>I say farevell to every fear,</p>
+<p class="i1">And vipe my veeping eyes.'&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;That is so conscientious of you.
+Pray, my dear sir, is there an Establishment
+in Poland? or have you Independent
+churches?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, my dear lady, we have noting
+at all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it possible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yase, it is possible&mdash;it is true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who could have thought it!
+What! nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Noting at all, my lady. Do not
+ask me again, I pray you. It is
+frightful to a goot Christian to talk
+dese tings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is your opinion of the Arminian
+doctrine, Mr Stanislaus?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean de doctrine?&quot; enquired
+Stanislaus, slowly, as though
+he found some difficulty in answering
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, my dear sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tink,&quot; said the gentleman, after
+some delay, &quot;it vould he very goot if
+were not for someting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear me!&quot; cried Mrs Jehu, &quot;that
+is so exactly my opinion!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Den dere is noting more to be
+said about dat,&quot; continued Stanislaus,
+interrupting her; &quot;and I hope you
+vill not ask dese deep questions, my
+dear lady, vich are not at all proper to
+be answered, and vich put me into de
+low spirits. Shall ve sing a hymn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By all means,&quot; exclaimed the hostess,
+who immediately made preparations
+for the ceremony. Hymn-books
+were introduced, and the servant-maid
+ordered up, and then a quartet was
+performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs Tomkins,
+her husband, and Betsy. The
+subject of the song was the courtship of
+Isaac. Two verses only have remained
+in my memory, and the manner
+in which they were given out by
+the fervent Stanislaus will never be
+forgotten.  They ran thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>&quot;Ven Abraham's servant to procure</p>
+<p class="i1">A vife for Isaac vent,</p>
+<p>He met Rebekah, tould his vish,</p>
+<p class="i1">Her parents gave conshent.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>'Shtay,' Satan, my old master, cries,</p>
+<p class="i1">'Or force shall thee detain.'</p>
+<p>'Hinder me not, I vill be gone,</p>
+<p class="i1">I vish to break my chain.'&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This being concluded, Mr Tomkins
+asked Mr Levisohn what he had to
+say in the business line, to which Mr
+Levisohn replied, &quot;Someting very
+goot, but should he not vait until after
+soppare?&quot; whereupon Mr Tomkins
+gave his lady a significant leer, and
+the latter retired, evidently to prepare
+the much desired repast. Then did
+little Jehu turn confidentially to Stanislaus,
+and ask him when he meant to
+deliver that ere <i>conac</i> that he had
+promised him so long ago.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ven Providence, my tear dikkon,
+paremits&mdash;I expect a case of goots at
+de cushtom-house every day; but my
+friend vot examins de marchandis,
+and vot saves me de duties ven I
+<a class="pagenum" name="page317" id="page317" title="page317"></a>makes it all right mit him, is vary ill,
+I am sorry for to say, and ve most
+vait, mit Christian patience, my dear
+sare, till he get well. You see
+dat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes; that's clear enough. Well,
+Stanny, I only hope that fellow won't
+die. I don't think you'd find it so easy
+to make it <i>all right</i> with any other
+chap; that's all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope he vill not die. Ve mosht
+pray dat he live, my dear dikkon. I
+tink it vill be vell if der goot Mr Clayton
+pray mit der church for him. You
+shall speak for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what have you done about
+the <i>Eau de Cologne</i>?&quot; continued Jehu
+Tomkins. &quot;Have you nailed the fellow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It vos specially about dis matter
+dat I vish to see you, my dear sare. I
+persvade der man to sell ten cases.
+He be very nearly vot you call in der
+mess. He valk into de Gazette next
+week. He shtarve now. I pity him.
+De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I
+give fifty shilling&mdash;two pound ten.
+He buy meat for de childs, and is
+tankful. I take ten shillings for my
+trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit
+vary little.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any good bills in the market,
+Stanny?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Stanislaus Levisohn winked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho&mdash;you don't say so,&quot; said the
+deacon. &quot;Have you got 'em with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After soppare, my dear sare,&quot;
+answered Stanislaus, who looked at
+me, and winked again significantly at
+Jehu.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Tomkins returned, accompanied
+by the vocal Betsy. The cloth
+was spread, and real silver forks, and
+fine cut tumblers, and blue plates with
+scripture patterns, speedily appeared.
+Then came a dish of fried sausages and
+parsley&mdash;then baked potatoes&mdash;then
+lamb chops. Then we all sat round
+the table, and then, against all order
+and propriety, Mrs Jehu grossly and
+publicly insulted her husband at his
+own board, by calling upon the enlightened
+foreigner to ask a blessing
+upon the meal.</p>
+
+<p>The company sat down; but scarcely
+were we seated before Stanislaus
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tank you, my tear goot Mrs
+Tomkins for dat shop mit der brown,
+ven it comes to my turn to be sarved.
+It look just der ting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Jehu served her guest immediately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I vill take a sossage, tear lady,
+also, if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a baked potato?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a baked potato? Yase.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was served.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I beg your pardon, Christian
+lady, have you got, perhaps, der littel
+pickel-chesnut and der crimson cabbage?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Tomkins, go down-stairs and
+get the pickles,&quot; said the mistress of
+the house, and Tomkins vanished like
+a mouse on tiptoe.</p>
+
+<p>Before he could return, Stanislaus
+had eaten more than half his chop,
+and discovered that, after all, &quot;it was
+<i>not</i> just the ting.&quot; Mrs Jehu entreated
+him to try another. He declined
+at first; but at length suffered
+himself to be persuaded. Four chops
+had graced the dish originally; the
+remaining two were divided equally
+between the lady and myself. I begged
+that my share might be left for
+the worthy host, but receiving a recommendation
+from his wife &quot;not to
+mind <i>him</i>,&quot; I said no more, but kept
+Mr Stanislaus Levisohn in countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope you'll find it to your liking,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; said our hostess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mishter vat?&quot; exclaimed the
+foreigner, looking quickly up. &quot;I
+tink I&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter, my dear sir?&quot;
+enquired the lady of the house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Noting, my tear friend, I tought
+der young gentleman vos a poor unconverted
+sinner dat I met a long time
+ago. Dat is all. Ve talk of someting
+else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Has the reader forgotten the dark-visaged
+individual, who at the examination
+of my lamented father before
+the Commissioners of Bankruptcy
+made his appearance in company
+with Mr Levy and the ready Ikey?
+Him I mean of the vivid imagination,
+who swore to facts which were no
+facts at all, and whom an unpoetic
+jury sentenced to vile imprisonment
+for wilful perjury? <i>There he sat</i>,
+transformed into a Pole, bearded and
+whiskered, and the hair of his head
+close clipped, but in every other regard
+the same as when the constable
+invited him to forsake a too prosaic
+and ungrateful world: and had Mr
+Levisohn been wise and guarded, the
+discovery would never have been
+made by me; for we had met but
+once before, then only for a short half
+hour, and under agitating circumstances.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page318" id="page318" title="page318"></a>But my curiosity and attention
+once roused by his exclamation, it
+was impossible to mistake my man.
+I fixed my eye upon him, and the
+harder he pulled at his chop, and the
+more he attempted to evade my gaze,
+the more satisfied was I that a villain
+and an impostor was seated amongst us.
+Thinking, absurdly enough, to do my
+host and hostess a lasting service, I
+determined without delay to unmask
+the pretended saint, and to secure his
+victims from the designs he purposed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Levisohn,&quot; I said immediately,
+&quot;you have told the truth&mdash;we
+have met before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevare, my tear friend, you mistake;
+nevare in my life, upon my vurd.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs Tomkins,&quot; I continued, rising,
+&quot;I should not be worthy of your
+hospitality if I did not at once make
+known to you the character of that
+man. He is a convicted criminal. I
+have myself known him to be guilty
+of the grossest practices.&quot; Mr Levisohn
+dropped his chop, turned his
+greasy face up, and then looked round
+the room, and endeavoured to appear
+unconcerned, innocent, and amazed
+all at once. At this moment Jehu entered
+the room with the pickles, and
+the face of the deaconess grew fearfully
+stern.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Were you ever in the Court of Bankruptcy,
+Mr Levisohn?&quot; I continued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have never been out of London,
+my good sare. You labour under
+de mistake.&mdash;I excuse you. Ah!&quot;
+he cried our suddenly, as if a new idea
+had struck him very hard; &quot;I see
+now vot it is. I explain. You take
+me for somebody else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not, sir. I accuse you publicly
+of having committed perjury of the
+most shameless kind, and I can prove
+you guilty of the charge. Do you
+know a person of the name of Levy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Stanislaus looked to the ceiling
+after the manner of individuals who
+desire, or who do not desire, as the
+case may be, to call a subject to remembrance.
+&quot;No,&quot; he answered,
+after a long pause; &quot;certainly not.
+I never hear dat name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beware of him, Mrs Tomkins,&quot;
+I continued, &quot;he is an impostor, a
+disgrace to mankind, and to the faith
+which he professes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean by that, you
+impertinent young man?&quot; said Mrs
+Tomkins, her blood rising to her
+face, herself rising from her chair.
+&quot;I should have thought that a man
+who had been so recently expelled
+from his church would have had more
+decency. A pretty person you must
+be, to bring a charge of this kind
+against so good a creature as that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, do not say dat,&quot; interposted
+Stanny; &quot;I am not goot. I am a
+brute beast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Tomkins,&quot; continued the
+lady, &quot;I don't know what object that
+person has in disturbing the peace of
+our family, or why he comes here at
+all to-night. He is a mischief-making,
+hardened young man, or he would
+never have come to what he has.
+Well, I'm sure&mdash;What will Satan put
+into his head next!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I vould vish you be not angry.
+Der young gentleman is, I dare say,
+vary goot at heart. He is labouring
+under de deloosions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Levisohn, pardon me, I am
+not. Proofs exist, and I can bring
+them to convict you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you hear that, Mr Tomkins.
+Were you ever insulted so before? Are
+you master in your own house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What shall I do?&quot; said Jehu,
+trembling with excitement at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do! What! Give him his hat,
+turn him out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my dear goot Christian friends,&quot;
+said Mr Levisohn, imploringly; &quot;de
+booels of der Christian growls ven
+he shees dese sights; vot is de goot
+of to fight? It is shtoopid. Let me
+be der peacemaker. Der yong man
+has been drink, perhaps. I forgive
+him from te bottom of my heart. If
+ve quarrel ve fight. If ve fight ve
+lose every ting.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>'So Samson, ven his hair vos lost,</p>
+<p>Met the Philistines to his cost,</p>
+<p>Shook his vain limbs in shad shurprise,</p>
+<p>Made feeble fight, and lost his eyes.'&quot;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr Tomkins,&quot; I exclaimed, &quot;I
+court inquiry, I can obtain proofs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We want none of your proofs,
+you backslider,&quot; cried the deaconess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madam, you&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get out of the house, ambassador
+of Satan! Mr Tomkins, will you tell
+him instantly to go?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go!&quot; squealed Tomkins from the
+door, not advancing an inch.</p>
+
+<p>I seized my hat, and left the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will be sorry for this, sir,&quot;
+said I; &quot;and you, madam&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't talk to me, you bad man.
+If you don't go this minute I'll spring
+the rattle and have up the watchmen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did not attempt to say another
+<a class="pagenum" name="page319" id="page319" title="page319"></a>word. I left the room, and hurried
+from the house. I had hardly shut
+the street door before it was violently
+opened again, and the head of Mr
+Levisohn made itself apparent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go home,&quot; exclaimed that gentleman,
+&quot;and pray to be shaved, you
+shtoopid ass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not many days after the
+enacting of this scene, that I entered
+upon my duties as the instructor of
+the infant children of my friend. It
+was useless to renew my application
+to the deacon, and I abandoned the
+idea. The youngest of my pupils was
+the lisping Billy. It was my honour
+to introduce him at the very porch of
+knowledge&mdash;to place him on the first
+step of learning's ladder&mdash;to make familiar
+to him the simple letters of his
+native tongue, in whose mysterious
+combinations the mighty souls of men
+appear and speak. The lesson of the
+alphabet was the first that I gave,
+and a heavy sadness depressed and
+humbled me when, as the child repeated
+wonderingly after me, letter
+by letter, I could not but feel deeply
+and acutely the miserable blighting
+of my youthful promises. How long
+was it ago&mdash;it seemed but yesterday,
+when the sun used to shine brightly
+into my own dear bed-room, and
+awake me with its first gush of light,
+telling my ready fancy that he came
+to rouse me from inaction, and to encourage
+me to my labours. Oh, happy
+labours! Beloved books! What joy
+I had amongst you! The house was
+silent&mdash;the city's streets tranquil as
+the breath of morning. I heard nothing
+but the glorious deeds ye spoke
+of, and saw only the worthies that
+were but dust, when centuries now
+passed were yet unborn, but whose
+immortal spirits are vouchsafed still
+to elevate man, and cheer him onward.
+How intense and sweet was
+our communion; and as I read and
+read on, how gratefully repose crept
+over me; how difficult it seemed to
+think unkindly of the world, or to believe
+in all the tales of human selfishness
+and cruelty with which the old
+will ever mock the ear and dull the
+heart of the confiding and the young.
+How willing I felt to love, and how
+gay a place was earth, with her constant
+sun, and overflowing lap, and
+her thousand joys, for man! And how
+intense was the fire of <i>hope</i> that burned
+within me&mdash;fed with new fuel every
+passing hour, and how abiding and
+how beautiful <i>the future</i>! THE FUTURE!
+and it was here&mdash;a nothing&mdash;a
+dream&mdash;a melancholy phantasm!</p>
+
+<p>There are seasons of adversity, in
+which the mind, plunged in despondency
+and gloom, is startled and distressed
+by pictures of a happier time,
+that travel far to fool and tantalize
+the suffering heart. I sat with the
+child, and gazing full upon him, beheld
+him not, but&mdash;a vision of my
+father's house. There sits the good
+old man, and at his side&mdash;ah, how seldom
+were they apart!&mdash;my mother.
+And there, too, is the clergyman, my
+first instructor. Every well-remembered
+piece of furniture is there. The
+chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated
+by me for its age, and for our long
+intimacy. I have known it since
+first I knew myself. The antique
+bookcase&mdash;the solid chest of drawers&mdash;the
+solemn sofa, all substantial as
+ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable
+and natural properties of
+the domestic parlour. My mother
+has her eyes upon me, and they are
+full of tears. My father and the minister
+are building up my fortunes,
+are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity
+an edifice formed of glittering
+words, incorporeal as the breath that
+rears it. And the feelings of that hour
+come back upon me. I glow with
+animation, confidence, and love. I
+have the strong delight that beats
+within the bosom of the boy who has
+the parents' trusty smile for ever on
+him. I dream of pouring happiness
+into those fond hearts&mdash;of growing up
+to be their prop and staff in their decline.
+I pierce into the future, and
+behold myself the esteemed and honoured
+amongst men&mdash;the patient,
+well-rewarded scholar&mdash;the cherished
+and the cherisher of the dear authors
+of my life&mdash;all brightness&mdash;all glory&mdash;all
+unsullied joy. The child touches
+my wet cheek, and asks me why I
+weep?&mdash;why?&mdash;why? He knows not
+of the early wreck that has annihilated
+the unhappy teacher's peace.</p>
+
+<p>We were still engaged upon our
+lesson, when John Thompson interrupted
+the proceeding, by entering
+the apartment in great haste, and
+placing in my hands a newspaper.
+&quot;He had been searching,&quot; he said,
+&quot;for one whole fortnight, to find a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page320" id="page320" title="page320"></a>situation that would suit me, and now
+he thought that he had hit upon it.
+There it was, 'a tutorer in a human
+family,' to teach the languages and
+the sciences. Apply from two to four.
+It's just three now. Send the youngster
+to his mother, and see after it,
+my friend. I wouldn't have you lose
+it for the world.&quot; I took the journal
+from his hands, and, as though placed
+there by the hand of the avenger to
+arouse deeper remorse, to draw still
+hotter blood from the lacerated heart,
+the following announcement, and nothing
+else, glared on the paper, and
+took possession of my sight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. After
+a contest more severe than any known
+for years, MR JOHN SMITHSON, <i>of
+Trinity College, Cambridge</i>, has been
+declared THE SENIOR WRANGLER of
+his year. Mr Smithson is, we understand,
+the son of a humble curate
+in Norfolk, whose principal support
+has been derived from the exertions
+of his son during his residence in the
+University. The honour could not
+have been conferred on a more
+deserving child of Alma Mater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A hundred recollections crowded
+on my brain. My heart was torn with
+anguish. The perseverance and the
+filial piety of Smithson, so opposite
+to my unsteadiness and unnatural disloyalty,
+confounded and unmanned
+me. I burst into tears before the faithful
+Thompson, and covered my face
+for very shame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter, lad?&quot; exclaimed
+the good fellow, pale with
+surprise, his eye trembling with honest
+feeling. &quot;Have I hurt you? Drat
+the paper! Don't think, Stukely, I
+wished to get rid of you. Don't think
+so hard of your old friend. I thought
+to help and do you service; I know
+you have the feelings of a gentleman
+about you, and I wouldn't wound 'em,
+God knows, for any thing. There,
+think no more about it. I am so rough
+a hand, I'm not fit to live with Christians.
+I mean no harm, believe me.
+Get rid of you, my boy! I only wish
+you'd say this is your home, and
+never leave me&mdash;that would make me
+happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson,&quot; I answered, through
+my tears, &quot;I am not deserving of
+your friendship. You have not offended
+me. You have never wronged
+me. You are all kindness and truth.
+I have had no real enemy but myself.
+Read that paper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the paragraph, and he
+read it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What of it?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson,&quot; listen to me; &quot;what
+do you say of such a son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can guess his father's feelings,&quot;
+said my friend. &quot;Earth's a heaven,
+Stukely, when father and child live
+together as God appointed them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But when a child breaks a parent's
+heart, Thompson&mdash;what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't talk about it, lad. I have
+got eleven of 'em, and that's a side of
+the picture that I can't look at with
+pleasure. I think the boys are good.
+They have gone on well as yet; but
+who can tell what a few years will
+do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or a few months, Thompson,&quot; I
+answered quickly, &quot;or a few days, or
+hours, when the will is fickle, principles
+unfixed, and the heart treacherous
+and false. That Smithson and I,
+Thompson, were fellow students. We
+left home together&mdash;we took up our
+abode in the University together&mdash;we
+were attached to the same college&mdash;taught
+by the same master&mdash;read from
+the same books. My feelings were
+as warm as his. My resolution to do
+well apparently as firm, my knowledge
+and attainments as extensive. If he
+was encouraged, and protected, and
+urged forward by the fond love of a
+devoted household&mdash;so was I. If parental
+blessings hallowed his entrance
+upon those pursuits which have ended
+so successfully for him&mdash;so did they
+mine. If he had motive for exertion,
+I had not less&mdash;we were equal in the
+race which we began together&mdash;look
+at us now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did it happen, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was honest and faithful to his
+purpose. I was not. He saw one object
+far in the distance before him,
+and looked neither to the right nor
+left, but dug his arduous way towards
+it. He craved not the false excitement
+of temporary applause, nor
+deemed the opinion of weak men essential
+to his design. He had a sacred
+duty to perform, which left him
+not the choice of action, and he performed
+it to the letter. He had a feeling
+conscience, and a reasoning heart,
+and the home of his youth, and the
+sister who had grown up with him,
+the father who had laboured, the mother
+<a class="pagenum" name="page321" id="page321" title="page321"></a>who had striven for him, visited
+him by night and by day&mdash;in his silent
+study, and in his lonely bed, comforting,
+animating, and supporting him
+by their delightful presence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what did you do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just the reverse of this. I had
+neither simplicity of aim, nor stability
+of affection. One slip from the path,
+and I hadn't energy to take the road
+again. One vicious inclination, and
+the virtuous resolves of years melted
+before it. The sneer of a fool could
+frighten me from rectitude&mdash;the smile
+of a girl render me indifferent to the
+pangs that tear a parent's heart.
+Look at us both. Look at him&mdash;the
+man whom I treated with contemptuous
+derision. What a return home
+for him&mdash;his mission accomplished&mdash;HIS
+DUTY DONE! Look at me, the outcast,
+the beggar, the despised&mdash;the
+author of a mother's death, a father's
+bankruptcy and ruin&mdash;with no excuse
+for misconduct, no promise for the
+future, no self-justification, and no
+hope of pardon beyond that afforded
+to the vilest criminal that comes repentant
+to the mercy throne of God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;but, sir&mdash;Stukely&mdash;don't
+take the thing to heart. You are
+young&mdash;look for'rads. Oh, I tell you,
+it's a blessed thing to be sorry for our
+faults, and to feel as if we wished to
+do better for the time to come. I'm
+an older man than you, and I bid you
+take comfort, and trust to God for
+better things, and better things will
+come, too. You are not so badly off
+now as you were this time twelvemonth.
+And you know I'll never
+leave you. Don't despond&mdash;don't give
+away. It's unnatural for a man to
+do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh,
+bless you, this is a life of suffering and
+sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't
+go mad to think of leaving all his
+young 'uns behind him, and every
+thing he loves, if he wasn't taught
+that there's a quieter place above,
+where all shall meet agin? You know
+me, my boy; I can't talk, but I want
+to comfort you and cheer you up&mdash;and
+so, give me your hand, old fellow, and
+say you won't think of all this any more,
+but try and forget it, and see about
+settling comfortably in life. What do
+you say to the advertisement? A tutorer
+in a human family, to teach the languages
+and the sciences. Come now,
+that's right; I'm glad to see you
+laugh. I suppose I don't give the
+right pronunciation to the words.
+Well, never mind; laugh at your old
+friend. He'd rather see you laugh
+at him than teaze your heart about
+your troubles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson would not be satisfied
+until I had read the advertisement,
+and given him my opinion of its merits.
+He would not suffer me to say another
+word about my past misfortunes, but
+insisted on my looking forward cheerfully,
+and like a man. The situation
+appeared to him just the thing for me;
+and after all, if I had wrangled as
+well as that 'ere Smithson&mdash;(though,
+at the same time, <i>wrangling</i> seemed a
+very aggravating word to put into
+young men's mouths at all)&mdash;perhaps
+I shouldn't have been half as
+happy as a quiet comfortable life
+would make me. &quot;I was cut out for
+a tutorer. He was sure of it. So
+he'd thank me to read the paper without
+another syllable.&quot; The advertisement,
+in truth, was promising. &quot;The
+advertiser, in London, desired to engage
+the services of a young gentleman,
+capable of teaching the ancient
+languages, and giving his pupils 'an
+introduction to the sciences.' The
+salary would be liberal, and the occupation
+with a humane family in the
+country, who would receive the tutor
+as one of themselves. References
+would be required and given.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;References would be required and
+given,&quot; I repeated, after having concluded
+the advertisement, and put the
+paper down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, that's the only thing!&quot; said
+Thompson, scratching his honest ear,
+like a man perplexed and driven to a
+corner. &quot;We haven't got no references
+to give. But I'll tell you what we've
+got though. We've got the papers
+of these freehold premises, and we've
+something like two thousand in the
+bank. I'll give 'em them, if you
+turns out a bad 'un. That I'll undertake
+to do, and shan't be frightened
+either. Now, you just go, and
+see if you can get it. Where do you
+apply?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait, Thompson. I must not
+suffer you&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you hear what I said, sir?
+where do you apply?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At X.Y.Z.&quot; said I, &quot;in Swallow
+street, Saint James's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, don't you lose a minute.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page322" id="page322" title="page322"></a>I shouldn't be surprised if the place is
+run down already. London's overstocked
+with tutorers and men of larning.
+You come along o' me, Billy,
+and don't you lose sight of this 'ere
+chance, my boy. If they wants a reference,
+tell 'em I'll be glad to wait
+upon 'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Three days had not elapsed after
+this conversation, before my services
+were accepted by X.Y.Z.&mdash;and I
+had engaged to travel into Devonshire
+to enter at once upon my duties, as
+teacher in the dwelling-house of the
+Reverend Walter Fairman. X.Y.Z.
+was a man of business; and, fortunately
+for me, had known my father well.
+He was satisfied with my connexion,
+and with the unbounded recommendation
+which Thompson gave with me.
+Mr Fairman was incumbent of one of
+the loveliest parishes in England, and
+the guardian and teacher of six boys.
+My salary was fifty pounds per annum,
+with board and lodging. The
+matter was settled in a few hours,
+and before I had time to consider, my
+place was taken in the coach, and a
+letter was dispatched to Mr Fairman,
+announcing my intended departure.
+Nothing could exceed the joy
+of Thompson at my success&mdash;nothing
+could be kinder and more anxious
+than his valuable advice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now,&quot; he said as we walked together
+from the coach-office, &quot;was I
+wrong in telling you that better things
+would turn up? Take care of yourself,
+and the best wrangler of the lot may
+be glad to change places with you. It
+isn't lots of larning, or lots of money,
+or lots of houses and coaches, that
+makes a man happy in this world.
+They never can do it; but they can do
+just the contrarery, and make him
+the miserablest wretch as crawls. <i>A
+contented mind</i> is 'the one thing
+needful.' Take what God gives
+gratefully, and do unto others as you
+would that they should do unto you.
+That's a maxim that my poor father
+was always giving me, and, I wish,
+when I take the young 'uns to church,
+that they could always hear it, for human
+natur needs it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The evening before my setting out
+was spent with Thompson's family. I
+had received a special invitation, and
+Thompson, with the labouring sons,
+were under an engagement to the
+mistress of the house, to leave the
+workshop at least an hour earlier than
+usual. Oh, it was a sight to move
+the heart of one more hardened than
+I can boast to be, to behold the affectionate
+party assembled to bid me
+farewell, and to do honour to our
+leave-taking. A little feast was prepared
+for the occasion, and my many
+friends were dressed, all in their Sunday
+clothes, befittingly. There was
+not one who had not something to
+give me for a token. Mary had worked
+me a purse; and Mary blushed
+whilst her mother betrayed her, and
+gave the little keepsake. Ellen thought
+a pincushion might be useful; and
+the knitter of the large establishment
+provided me with comforters.
+All the little fellows, down
+to Billy himself, had a separate gift,
+which each must offer with a kiss,
+and with a word or two expressive of
+his good wishes. All hoped I would
+come soon again, and Aleck more than
+hinted a request that I would postpone
+my departure to some indefinite
+period which he could not name.
+Poor tremulous heart! how it throbbed
+amongst them all, and how sad it
+felt to part from them! Love bound
+me to the happy room&mdash;the only love
+that connected the poor outcast with
+the wide cold world. This was the
+home of my affections&mdash;could I leave
+it&mdash;could I venture once more upon
+the boisterous waters of life without
+regret and apprehension?</p>
+
+<p>Thompson kindly offered to accompany
+me on the following morning to
+the inn from which I was destined to
+depart, but I would not hear of it.
+He was full of business; had little
+time to spare, and none to throw
+away upon me. I begged him not to
+think of it, and he acquiesced in my
+wishes. We were sitting together,
+and his wife and children had an hour
+or two previously retired to rest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Them's good children, ain't they,
+Stukely?&quot; enquired Thompson, after
+having made a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may well be proud of them,&quot;
+I answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It looked nice of 'em to make you
+a little present of something before
+you went. But it was quite right.
+That's just as it should be. I like
+that sort of thing, especially when a
+man understands the sperrit that a
+thing's given with. Now, some fellows
+would have been offended if any
+<a class="pagenum" name="page323" id="page323" title="page323"></a>thing had been offered 'em. How I
+do hate all that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I assure you, Thompson, I feel
+deeply their kind treatment of their
+friend. I shall never forget it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ain't offended, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, now, I am so happy to hear
+it, you can't think,&quot; continued Thompson,
+fumbling about his breeches
+pocket, and drawing from it at length
+something which he concealed in his
+fist. &quot;There, take that,&quot; he suddenly
+exclaimed; &quot;take it, my old fellow,
+and God bless you. It's no good
+trying to make a fuss about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I held a purse of money in my
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Thompson,&quot; I replied, &quot;I
+cannot accept it. Do not think me
+proud or ungrateful; but I have no
+right to take it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only twenty guineas, man,
+and I can afford it. Now look, Stukely,
+you are going to leave me. If you
+don't take it, you'll make me as
+wretched as the day is long. You
+are my friend, and my friend mustn't
+go amongst strangers without an independent
+spirit. If you have twenty
+guineas in your pocket, you needn't
+be worrying yourself about little things.
+You'll find plenty of ways to make the
+money useful. You shall pay me, if
+you like, when you grow rich, and we
+meets again; but take it now, and make
+John Thompson happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the lap of nature the troubled
+mind gets rest; and the wounds of
+the heart heal rapidly, once delivered
+there, safe from contact with the infectious
+world; and the bosom of the
+nursing mother is not more powerful
+or quick to lull the pain and still the
+sobs of her distressed ones. It is the
+sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to
+arrive at it is to secure shelter and to
+find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed,
+birthright and joy of angels,
+whither do those glimpses hover that
+we catch of thee in this tumultuous
+life, weak, faint, and transient though
+they be, melting the human soul with
+heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if
+not upon the everlasting hills, where
+the brown line divides the sky, or on
+the gentle sea, where sea and sky are
+one&mdash;a liquid cupola&mdash;or in the leafy
+woods and secret vales, where beauty
+lends her thrilling voice to silence?
+How often will the remembrance only
+of one bright spot&mdash;a vision of Paradise
+rising over the dull waste of my
+existence&mdash;send a glow of comfort to
+my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of
+repose which the harsh business of
+life cannot extinguish or disturb!
+And what a fair history comes with
+that shadowy recollection! How much
+of passionate condensed existence is
+involved in it, and how mysteriously,
+yet naturally connected with it, seem
+all the noblest feelings of my imperfect
+nature! The scene of beauty has
+become &quot;a joy for ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I recall a spring day&mdash;a sparkling
+day of the season of youth and promise&mdash;and
+a nook of earth, fit for the
+wild unshackled sun to skip along and
+brighten with his inconstant giddy
+light. Hope is everywhere; murmuring
+in the brooks, and smiling in
+the sky. Upon the bursting trees she
+sits; she nestles in the hedges. She
+fills the throat of mating birds, and
+bears the soaring lark nearer and
+nearer to the gate of Heaven. It is
+the first holiday of the year, and the
+universal heart is glad. Grief and
+apprehension cannot dwell in the human
+breast on such a day; and, for an
+hour, even <i>Self</i> is merged in the general
+joy. I reach my destination;
+and the regrets for the past, and the
+fear for the future, which have accompanied
+me through the long and
+anxious journey, fall from the oppressed
+spirit, and leave it buoyant,
+cheerful, free&mdash;free to delight itself
+in a land of enchantment, and to revel
+again in the unsubstantial glories of
+a youthful dream. I paint the Future
+in the colours that surround me, and
+I confide in her again.</p>
+
+<p>It was noon when we reached the
+headquarters of the straggling parish
+of Deerhurst&mdash;its chief village. We
+had travelled since the golden sunrise
+over noble earth, and amongst
+scenes scarcely less heavenly than the
+blue vault which smiled upon them.
+Now the horizon was bounded by a
+range of lofty hills linked to each
+other by gentle undulations, and bearing
+to their summits innumerable and
+giant trees; these, crowded together,
+and swayed by the brisk wind, presented
+to the eye the figure of a vast
+and supernatural sea, and made the
+intervening vale of loveliness a neglected
+blank. Then we emerged
+suddenly&mdash;yes, instantaneously&mdash;as
+<a class="pagenum" name="page324" id="page324" title="page324"></a>though designing nature, with purpose
+to surprize, had hid behind the jutting
+crag, beneath the rugged steep&mdash;upon
+a world of beauty; garden upon garden,
+sward upon sward, hamlet upon
+hamlet, far as the sight could reach,
+and purple shades of all beyond.
+Then, flashes of the broad ocean, like
+quick transitory bursts of light, started
+at intervals, washing the feet of a
+tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake,
+buried between the hills. Shorter
+and shorter become the intermissions,
+larger and larger grows the watery
+expanse, until, at length, the mighty
+element rolls unobstructed on, and
+earth, decked in her verdant leaves,
+her flowers and gems, is on the shore
+to greet her.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance to the village is by a
+swift, precipitous descent. On either
+side are piled rude stones, placed there
+by a subtle hand, and with a poet's
+aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe
+the traveller with thoughts of other
+times&mdash;of ruined castles, and of old
+terrace walks. Already have the
+stones fulfilled their purpose, and the
+ivy, the brier, and the saxifrage have
+found a home amongst them. At the
+foot of the declivity, standing like a
+watchful mother, is the church&mdash;the
+small, the unpretending, the venerable
+and lovely village church. You do
+not see a house till she is passed. Before
+a house was built about her, she
+was an aged church, and her favoured
+graves were rich in heavenly clay.
+The churchyard gate; and then at
+once, the limited and quiet village,
+nestling in a valley and shut out from
+the world: beautiful and self-sufficient.
+Hill upon hill behind, each greener
+than the last&mdash;hill upon hill before,
+all exclusion, and nothing but her
+own surpassing loveliness to console
+and cheer her solitude. And is it not
+enough? What if she know little of
+the sea beyond its voice, and nothing
+of external life&mdash;her crystal stream,
+her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden
+plots, her variegated flowers and
+massive foliage, her shady dells and
+scented lanes are joys enough for her
+small commonwealth. Thin curling
+smoke that rises like a spirit from
+the hidden bosom of one green hillock,
+proclaims the single house that
+has its seat upon the eminence. It is
+the parsonage&mdash;my future home.</p>
+
+<p>With a trembling heart I left the
+little inn, and took my silent way to
+the incumbent's house. There was
+no eye to follow me, the leafy street
+was tenantless, and seemed made over
+to the restless sun and dissolute winds
+to wanton through it as they pleased.
+As I ascended, the view enlarged&mdash;beauty
+became more beauteous, silence
+more profound. I reached the
+parsonage gate, and my heart yearned
+to tell how much I longed to live and
+die on this sequestered and most peaceful
+spot. The dwelling-house was
+primitive and low; its long and overhanging
+roof was thatched; its windows
+small and many. A myrtle,
+luxuriant as a vine, covered its entire
+front, and concealed the ancient brick
+and wood. A raised bank surrounded
+the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted
+to a lawn fringed with the earliest
+flowers of the year. I rang the
+loud bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl
+gave me admittance to the
+house. In a room of moderate size,
+furnished by a hand as old at least as
+the grandsires of the present occupants,
+and well supplied with books,
+sat the incumbent. He was a man of
+fifty years of age or more, tall and
+gentlemanly in demeanour. His head
+was partly bald, and what remained of
+his hair was grey almost to whiteness.
+He had a noble forehead, a marked
+brow, and a cold grey eye. His
+mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual
+deep reflection, and the expression of
+every other feature tended to seriousness.
+The first impression was unfavourable.
+A youth, who was reading
+with the minister when I entered
+the apartment, was dismissed with a
+simple inclination of the head, and the
+Rev. Walter Fairman then pointed to
+a seat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have had a tedious journey,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; began the incumbent,
+&quot;and you are fatigued, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a glorious spot this is, sir!&quot;
+I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, it is pretty,&quot; answered Mr
+Fairman, very coldly as I thought.
+&quot;Are you hungry, Mr Stukely? We
+dine early; but pray take refreshment
+if you need it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I declined respectfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you bring letters from my
+agent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a parcel in my trunk, sir,
+which will be here immediately.
+What magnificent trees!&quot; I exclaimed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page325" id="page325" title="page325"></a>again, my eyes riveted upon a stately
+cluster, which were about a hundred
+yards distant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you been accustomed to
+tuition?&quot; asked Mr Fairman, taking
+no notice of my remark.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have not, sir, but I am sure
+that I shall be delighted with the
+occupation. I have always thought
+so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must not be too sanguine.
+Nothing requires more delicate handling
+than the mind of youth. In no
+business is experience, great discernment
+and tact, so much needed as in
+that of instruction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir, I am aware of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; answered Mr Fairman
+quietly. &quot;How old are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told my age, and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, well,&quot; said the incumbent,
+&quot;I have no doubt we shall do. You
+are a Cambridge man, Mr Graham
+writes me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was only a year, sir, at the university.
+Circumstances prevented a
+longer residence. I believe I mentioned
+the fact to Mr Graham.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes, he told me so. You
+shall see the boys this afternoon. They
+are fine-hearted lads, and much may
+be done with them. There are six.
+Two of them are pretty well advanced.
+They read Euripides and
+Horace. Is Euripides a favourite of
+yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is tender, plaintive, and passionate,&quot;
+I answered; &quot;but perhaps I
+may be pardoned if I venture to prefer
+the vigour and majesty of the sterner
+tragedian.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean you like &AElig;schylus
+better. Do you write poetry, Mr
+Stukely? Not Latin verses, but English
+poetry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I am glad of that. It
+struck me that you did. Will you
+really take no refreshment? Are you
+not fatigued?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the least, sir. This lovely
+prospect, for one who has seen so little
+of nature as I have, is refreshment
+enough for the present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah,&quot; said Mr Fairman, sighing
+faintly, &quot;you will get accustomed to
+it. There is something in the prospect,
+but more in your own mind.
+Some of our poor fellows would be
+easily served and satisfied, if we could
+feed them on the prospect. But if
+you are not tired you shall see more
+of it if you will. I have to go down
+to the village. We have an hour
+till dinner-time. Will you accompany
+me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With pleasure, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well.&quot; Mr Fairman then rang
+the bell, and the servant girl came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where's Miss Ellen, Mary?&quot;
+asked the incumbent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has been in the village since
+breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word
+that she was ill, and Miss took her the
+rice and sago that Dr Mayhew ordered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Warden been this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Foolish fellow. I'll call on him.
+Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman
+comes, give him that bottle of port
+wine; but tell him not to touch a drop
+of it himself. It is for his sick child,
+and it is committing robbery to take
+it. Let him have the blanket also
+that was looked out for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's gone, sir. Miss sent it yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well. There is nothing
+more. Now, Mr Stukely, we will go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have said already that the first
+opinion which I formed of the disposition
+of Mr Fairman was not a flattering
+one. Before he spoke a word,
+I felt disappointed and depressed.
+My impression after our short conversation
+was worse than the first.
+The natural effect of the scene
+in which I suddenly found myself,
+had been to prepare my ever too
+forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm
+and poetic temperament. Mr
+Fairman was many degrees removed
+from warmth. He spoke to me in
+a sharp tone of voice, and sometimes,
+I suspected, with the intention
+of mocking me. His <i>manner</i>, when
+he addressed the servant-girl, was not
+more pleasing. When I followed him
+from the room, I regretted the haste
+with which I had accepted my appointment;
+but a moment afterwards
+I entered into fairyland again, and
+the passing shadow left me grateful
+to Providence for so much real enjoyment.
+We descended the hill,
+and for a time, in silence, Mr Fairman
+was evidently engaged in deep
+thought, and I had no wish to disturb
+him. Every now and then we lighted
+upon a view of especial beauty, and I
+was on the point of expressing my unbounded
+<a class="pagenum" name="page326" id="page326" title="page326"></a>admiration, when one look at
+my cool and matter-of-fact companion
+at once annoyed and stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Mr Fairman at length,
+still musing. &quot;It is very difficult&mdash;very
+difficult to manage the poor. I
+wonder if they are grateful at heart.
+What do you think, Mr Stukely?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have nothing to say of the poor,
+sir, but praise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and
+smiled unpleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the scenery, I suppose. That
+will make you praise every thing for
+the next day or so. It will not do,
+though. We must walk on our feet,
+and be prosaic in this world. The
+poor are not as poets paint them, nor
+is there so much happiness in a hovel
+as they would lead you to expect. The
+poets are like you&mdash;they have nothing
+to say but praise. Ah, me! they draw
+largely on their imaginations.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not, sir, in this instance,&quot;
+I answered, somewhat nettled. &quot;My
+most valued friends are in the humblest
+ranks of life. I am proud to say
+so. I am not prepared to add, that
+the most generous of men are the most
+needy, although it has been my lot to
+meet with sympathy and succour at
+the hands of those who were much in
+want of both themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe you, Mr Stukely,&quot; answered
+the incumbent in a more feeling
+tone. &quot;I am not fond of theories;
+yet that's a theory with which I would
+willingly pass through life; but it will
+not answer. It is knocked on the head
+every hour of the day. Perhaps it is
+our own fault. We do not know how
+to reach the hearts, and educate the
+feelings of the ignorant and helpless.
+Just step in here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were standing before a hut at
+the base of the hill. It was a low
+dirty-looking place, all roof, with a
+neglected garden surrounding it. One
+window was in the cob-wall. It had
+been fixed there originally, doubtless
+with the object of affording light to
+the inmates; but light, not being essential
+to the comfort or happiness of the
+present tenants, was in a great measure
+excluded by a number of small
+rags which occupied the place of the
+diamond panes that had departed
+many months before. A child, ill-clad,
+in fragments of clothes, with
+long and dirty hair, unclean face, and
+naked feet, cried at the door, and loud
+talking was heard within. Mr Fairman
+knocked with his knuckle before he
+entered, and a gruff voice desired him to
+&quot;come in.&quot; A stout fellow, with a
+surly countenance and unshaven beard,
+was sitting over an apology for a fire,
+and a female of the same age and condition
+was near him. She bore an
+unhappy infant in her arms, whose
+melancholy peakish face, not twelve-months
+old, looked already conscious
+of prevailing misery. There was no
+flooring to the room, which contained
+no one perfect or complete article of
+furniture, but symptoms of many,
+from the blanketless bed down to the
+solitary coverless saucepan. Need I
+add, that the man who sat there, the
+degraded father of the house, had his
+measure of liquor before him, and
+that the means of purchasing it were
+never wanting, however impudently
+charity might be called upon to supply
+the starving family with bread?</p>
+
+<p>The man did not rise upon our entrance.
+He changed colour very
+slightly, and looked more ignorantly
+surly, or tried to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Jacob Warden,&quot; said the
+incumbent, &quot;you are determined to
+brave it out, I see.&quot; The fellow did
+not answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I told you yesterday that
+your idleness and bad habits were
+bringing you to ruin, you answered&mdash;<i>I
+was a liar</i>. I then said, that when
+you were sorry for having uttered
+that expression, you might come to
+the parsonage and tell me so. You
+have not been yet&mdash;I am grieved to
+say it. What have I ever done to you,
+Jacob Warden, that you should behave
+so wickedly? I do not wish you
+to humble yourself to me, but I should
+have been glad to see you do your
+duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I should
+give you up, and see you no more, for
+I fear you are a hardened man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He hasn't had no work for a
+month,&quot; said the wife, in a tone of upbraiding,
+as if the minister had been
+the wilful cause of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And whose fault is that, Mrs
+Warden? There is work enough for
+sober and honest men in the parish.
+Why was your husband turned away
+from the Squire's?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, all along of them spoons.
+They never could prove it agin him,
+that's one thing&mdash;though they tried it
+hard enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page327" id="page327" title="page327"></a>&quot;Come, come, Mrs Warden, if
+you love that man, take the right
+way to show it. Think of your children.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; if I didn't&mdash;who would, I
+should like to know? The poor are
+trodden under foot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor
+are taken care of, if they are deserving.
+God loves the poor, and commands
+us all to love them. Give me
+your Bible?&quot; The woman hesitated a
+minute, and then answered&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind the Bible, that won't
+get us bread.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me your Bible, Mrs Warden.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have'nt got it. What's the
+use of keeping a Bible in the house for
+children as can't read, when they are
+crying for summat to eat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have sold it, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We got a shilling on it&mdash;that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever applied to us for
+food, and has it been denied you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I don't know. The servant
+always looks grumpy at us when we
+come a-begging, and seems to begrudge
+us every mouthful. It's all very well
+to live on other persons' leavings. I
+dare say you don't give us what you
+could eat yourselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We give the best we can afford,
+Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with
+no such feeling as you suppose. How
+is the child? Is it better?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, no thanks to Doctor Mayhew
+either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he not call, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Call! Yes, but he made me tramp
+to his house for the physic, and when
+he passed the cottage the other day, I
+called after him; but devil a bit would
+he come back. We might have died
+first, of course: he knows, he isn't paid,
+and what does he care?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is very wrong of you to talk so.
+You are well aware that he was hurrying
+to a case of urgency, and could
+not be detained. He visited you upon
+the following day, and told you so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes, the following day!
+What's that to do with it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Woman&quot; exclaimed Mr Fairman,
+solemnly, &quot;my heart bleeds for those
+poor children. What will become of
+them with such an example before
+their eyes? I can say no more to
+you than I have repeated a hundred
+times before. I would make you
+happy in this world if I could; I
+would save you. You forbid me. I
+would be your true friend, and you
+look upon me as an enemy. Heaven,
+I trust, will melt your heart! What
+is that child screaming for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! she hasn't had a blessed
+thing to-day. We had nothing for her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman took some biscuits from
+his pockets, and placed them on the
+table. &quot;Let the girl come in, and
+eat,&quot; said he. &quot;I shall send you some
+meat from the village. Warden, I
+cannot tell you how deeply I feel
+your wickedness. I did expect you to
+come to the parsonage and say you
+were sorry. It would have looked
+well, and I should have liked it. You
+put it out of my power to help you.
+It is most distressing to see you both
+going headlong to destruction. May
+you live to repent! I shall see you
+again this evening, and I will speak
+to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely,
+our time is getting short.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The incumbent spoke rapidly, and
+seemed affected. I looked at him, and
+could hardly believe him to be the
+cold and unimpassioned man that I
+had at first imagined him.</p>
+
+<p>We pursued our way towards the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There, sir,&quot; said the minister in a
+quick tone of voice, &quot;what is the
+beautiful prospect, and what are the
+noble trees, to the heart of that man?
+What have they to do at all with
+man's morality? Had those people
+never seen a shrub or flower, could
+they have been more impenetrable,
+more insolent and suspicious, or
+steeped in vice much deeper? That
+man wants only opportunity, a large
+sphere of action, and the variety of
+crime and motive that are to be found
+amongst congregated masses of mankind,
+to become a monster. His passions
+and his vices are as wilful and
+as strong as those of any man born
+and bred in the sinks of a great city.
+They have fewer outlets, less capability
+of mischief&mdash;and there is the difference.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I ventured no remark, and the incumbent,
+after a short pause, continued
+in a milder strain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I may be, after all, weak and inefficient.
+Doubtless great delicacy and
+caution are required. Heavenly
+truths are not to be administered to
+these as to the refined and willing.
+The land must be ploughed, or it is
+useless to sow the seed. Am I not
+perhaps, an unskilful labourer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page328" id="page328" title="page328"></a>Mr Fairman stopped at the first
+house in the village&mdash;the prettiest of
+the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages
+before alluded to. Here he
+tapped softly, and a gentle foot that
+seemed to know the visitor hastened
+to admit him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Mary,&quot; said the minister,
+glancing round the room&mdash;a clean
+and happy-looking room it was&mdash;&quot;where's
+Michael?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is gone, sir, as you bade him,
+to make it up with Cousin Willett.
+He couldn't rest easy, sir, since you
+told him that it was no use coming to
+church so long as he bore malice. He
+won't be long, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his
+grey eye might be, it did not seem so
+steady now.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary, that is good of him; tell
+him his minister is pleased. How is
+work with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has enough to do, to carry
+him to the month's end, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then at the month's end, Mary,
+let him come to the parsonage. I
+have something for him there. But
+we can wait till then. Have you seen
+the itinerary preacher since?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not his time, sir. He
+didn't promise to come till Monday
+week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do neither you nor Michael speak
+with him, nor listen to his public
+preachings. I mean, regard him not
+as one having authority. I speak solemnly,
+and with a view to your eternal
+peace. Do not forget.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every house was visited, and in all,
+opportunity was found for the exercise
+of the benevolent feelings by
+which the incumbent was manifestly
+actuated. He lost no occasion of affording
+his flock sound instruction and
+good advice. It could not be doubted
+for an instant that their real welfare,
+temporal and everlasting, lay
+deeply in his heart. I was struck by
+one distinguishing feature in his mode
+of dealing with his people; it was so
+opposed to the doctrine and practice
+of Mr Clayton, and of those who were
+connected with him. With the latter,
+a certain degree of physical fervour,
+and a conventional peculiarity
+of expression, were insisted upon and
+accepted as evidences of grace and renewed
+life. With Mr Fairman, neither
+acquired heat, nor the more easily
+acquired jargon of a clique, were
+taken into account. He rather repressed
+than encouraged their existence;
+but he was desirous, and even
+eager, to establish rectitude of conduct
+and purity of feeling in the disciples
+around him: these were to him
+tangible witnesses of the operation of
+that celestial Spirit before whose light
+the mists of simulation and deceit fade
+unresistingly away. I could not help
+remarking, however, that in every
+cottage the same injunction was given
+in respect of the itinerant; the same
+solemnity of manner accompanied the
+command; the same importance was
+attached to its obedience. There
+seemed to me, fresh from the hands
+of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry
+and uncharitableness in all this. I
+did not hint at this effect upon my
+own mind, nor did I inquire into the
+motives of the minister. I was not
+pleased; but I said nothing. As if
+Mr Fairman read my very thoughts,
+he addressed me on the subject almost
+before the door of the last cottage was
+closed upon us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Bigoted</i> and <i>narrow-minded,</i> are
+the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the
+extremely liberal would characterize
+the line of conduct which I am compelled
+by duty to pursue. I cannot
+be frightened by harsh terms. I am
+the pastor of these people, and must
+decide and act for them. I am their
+shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor
+and ignorant, and unripe in judgment,
+and easily deceived by the shows and
+counterfeits of truth as the ignorant
+are, is it for me to hand them over to
+perplexity and risk? They are simple
+believers, and are contented. They
+worship God, and are at peace. They
+know their lot, and do not murmur at
+it. Is it right that they should be
+disturbed with the religious differences
+and theological subtleties which
+have already divided into innumerable
+sects the universal family of Christians
+whom God made one? Is it fair
+or merciful to whisper into their ears
+the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction,
+envy, and complaining, to which the
+uninformed of all classes but too eagerly
+listen? I have ever found the
+religious and the political propagandist
+united in the same individual.
+The man who proposes to the simple
+to improve his creed, is ready
+to point out the way to better his condition.
+He succeeds in rendering
+him unhappy in both, and there he
+leaves him. So would this man, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page329" id="page329" title="page329"></a>I would rather die for my people,
+than tamely give them over to their
+misery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A tall, stout, weather-beaten man,
+in the coarse dress of a fisherman, descending
+the hill, intercepted our way.
+It was the man Cuthbert, already
+mentioned by Mr Fairman. He
+touched his southwester to the incumbent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is the boy, Cuthbert?&quot; asked
+the minister, stopping at the same
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All but well, sir. Doctor Mayhew
+don't mean to come again. It's
+all along of them nourishments that
+Miss Ellen sent us down. The Doctor
+says he must have died without
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Cuthbert, I trust that we
+shall find you grateful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Grateful, sir!&quot; exclaimed the
+man. &quot;If ever I forget what you
+have done for that poor child, I hope
+the breath&mdash;&mdash;&quot; The brawny fisherman
+could say no more. His eyes
+filled suddenly with tears, and he held
+down his head, ashamed of them. He
+had no cause to be so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be honest and industrious, Cuthbert;
+give that boy a good example.
+Teach him to love his God, and his
+neighbour as himself. That will be
+gratitude enough, and more than pay
+Miss Ellen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll try to do it, sir. God bless you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We said little till we reached the
+parsonage again; but before I re-entered
+its gate the Reverend Walter
+Fairman had risen in my esteem, and
+ceased to be considered a cold and
+unfeeling man.</p>
+
+<p>We dined; the party consisting of
+the incumbent, the six students, and
+myself. The daughter, the only
+daughter and child of Mr Fairman,
+who was himself a widower, had not
+returned from the cottage to which
+she had been called in the morning.
+It was necessary that a female should
+be in constant attendance upon the
+aged invalid; a messenger had been
+despatched to the neighbouring village
+for an experienced nurse; and
+until her arrival Miss Fairman would
+permit no one but herself to undertake
+the duties of the sick chamber.
+It was on this account that we were
+deprived of the pleasure of her society,
+for her accustomed seat was at the
+head of her father's table. I was
+pleased with the pupils. They were
+affable and well-bred. They treated
+the incumbent with marked respect,
+and behaved towards their new teacher
+with the generous kindness and freedom
+of true young gentlemen. The
+two eldest boys might be fifteen years
+of age. The remaining four could
+not have reached their thirteenth year.
+In the afternoon I had the scholars to
+myself. The incumbent retired to his
+library, and left us to pass our first
+day in removing the restraint that was
+the natural accompaniment of our different
+positions, and in securing our
+intimacy. I talked of the scenery, and
+found willing listeners. They understood
+me better than their master, for
+they were worshippers themselves.
+They promised to show me lovelier
+spots than any I had met with yet; sacred
+corners, known only to themselves,
+down by the sea, where the arbute
+and laurustinus grew like trees, and
+children of the ocean. Then there were
+villages near, more beautiful even than
+their own; one that lay in the lap of a
+large hill, with the sea creeping round,
+or rolling at its feet like thunder,
+sometimes. What lanes, too, Miss
+Fairman knew of! She would take
+me into places worth the looking at;
+and oh, what drawings she had made
+from them! Their sisters had bought
+drawings, and paid very dearly for
+them too, that were not half so finely
+done! They would ask her to show
+me her portfolio, and she would do it
+directly, for she was the kindest creature
+living. It was not the worst
+trait in the disposition of these boys,
+that, whatever might be the subject of
+conversation, or from whatever point
+we might start in our discourse, they
+found pleasure in making all things
+bear towards the honour and renown
+of their young mistress. The scenery
+was nothing without Miss Fairman
+and her sketches. The house was
+dull without her, and the singing in
+the church, if she were ill and absent,
+was as different as could be. There
+were the sweetest birds that could be,
+heard warbling in the high trees that
+lined the narrow roads; but at Miss
+Fairman's window there was a nightingale
+that beat them all. The day
+wore on, and I did not see the general
+favourite. It was dusk when she
+reached the parsonage, and then she
+retired immediately to rest, tired from
+the labours of the day. The friend
+of the family, Doctor Mayhew, had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page330" id="page330" title="page330"></a>accompanied Miss Fairman home;
+he remained with the incumbent, and
+I continued with my young companions
+until their bedtime. They departed,
+leaving me their books, and
+then I took a survey of the work that
+was before me. My duties were to
+commence on the following day, and
+our first subject was the tragedy of
+<i>Hecuba</i>. How very grateful did I
+feel for the sound instruction which I
+had received in early life from my revered
+pains-taking tutor, for the solid
+groundwork that he had established,
+and for the rational mode of tuition
+which he had from the first adopted.
+From the moment that he undertook
+to cultivate and inform the youthful
+intellect, this became itself an active
+instrument in the attainment of
+knowledge&mdash;not, as is so often the
+case, the mere idle depositary of encumbering
+<i>words</i>. It was little that
+he required to be gained by rote, for
+he regarded all acquisitions as useless
+in which the understanding had not
+the chiefest share. He was pleased
+to communicate facts, and anxious to
+discover, from examination, that the
+principles which they contained had
+been accurately seen and understood.
+Then no labour and perseverance on
+his part were deemed too great for
+his pupil, and the business of his life
+became his first pleasure. In the
+study of Greek, for which at an early
+age I evinced great aptitude, I learnt
+the structure of the language and its
+laws from the keen observations of
+my master, whose rules were drawn
+from the classic work before us&mdash;rather
+than from grammars. To this
+hour I retain the information thus
+obtained, and at no period of my life
+have I ever had greater cause for
+thankfulness, than when, after many
+months of idleness and neglect, with a
+view to purchase bread I opened, not
+without anxiety, my book again, and
+found that time had not impaired
+my knowledge, and that light shone
+brightly on the pages, as it did of old.
+Towards the close of the evening, I
+was invited to the study of Mr Fairman.
+Doctor Mayhew was still with
+him, and I was introduced to the physician
+as the teacher newly arrived
+from London. The doctor was a
+stout good-humoured gentleman of
+the middle height, with a cheerful
+and healthy-looking countenance.
+He was, in truth, a jovial man, as
+well as a great snuff-taker. The incumbent
+offered me a chair, and placed
+a decanter of wine before me. His
+own glass of port was untouched,
+and he looked serious and dejected.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, how does London
+look?&quot; enquired the doctor, &quot;are
+the folks as mad as they used to be?
+What new invention is the rage now?
+What bubble is going to burst? What
+lord committed forgery last? Who
+was the last woman murdered before
+you started?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I confessed my inability to answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, never mind. There isn't
+much lost. I am almost ashamed of
+old England, that's the truth on't. I
+have given over reading the newspapers,
+for they are about as full of
+horrors as Miss What's-her-name's
+tales of the Infernals. What an age
+this is! all crime and fanaticism!
+Everyman and everything is on the
+rush. Come, Fairman, take your wine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Fairman sat gazing on the fire,
+quietly, and took no notice of the request.
+&quot;People's heads,&quot; continued
+the medical gentleman, &quot;seem
+turned topsy-turvy. Dear me, how
+different it was in my time! What
+men are about, I can't think. The
+very last newspaper I read had an
+advertisement that I should as soon
+have expected to see there when my
+father was alive, as a ship sailing
+along this coast keel upwards. You
+saw it, Fairman. It was just under
+the Everlasting Life Pill advertisement;
+and announced that the Reverend
+Mr Somebody would preach
+on the Sunday following, at some conventicle,
+when the public were invited
+to listen to him&mdash;and that the doors
+would be opened half an hour earlier
+than usual to prevent squeezing.
+That's modern religion, and it looks
+as much like ancient play-acting as
+two peas. Where will these marching
+days of improvement bring us to
+at last?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me, Mayhew,&quot; said Mr
+Fairman, &quot;does it not surprise you
+that a girl of her age should be so
+easily fatigued?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear friend, that makes the
+sixth time of asking. Let us hope
+that it will be the last. I don't know
+what you mean by '<i>so easily</i>' fatigued.
+The poor girl has been in the village
+all day, fomenting and poulticing old
+Mrs Barnes, and if it had been any
+girl but herself, she would have been
+tired out long before. Make your
+mind easy. I have sent the naughty
+puss to bed, and she'll be as fresh as a
+rose in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page331" id="page331" title="page331"></a>&quot;She must keep her exertions within
+proper bounds,&quot; continued the incumbent.
+&quot;I am sure she has not
+strength enough to carry out her
+good intentions. I have watched her
+narrowly, and cannot be mistaken.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do wrong, then, Fairman.
+Anxious watching creates fear, without
+the shadow of an excuse for it.
+When we have anything like a bad
+symptom, it is time to get uneasy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but what do you call a bad
+symptom, Doctor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I call your worrying yourself
+into fidgets, and teazing me into
+an ill temper, a shocking symptom of
+bad behaviour. If it continue, you
+must take a doze. Come, my friend,
+let me prescribe that glass of good
+old port. It does credit to the cloth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seriously, Mayhew, have you
+never noticed the short, hacking cough
+that sometimes troubles her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I noticed it last January for
+the space of one week, when there
+was not a person within ten miles of
+you who was not either hacking, as
+you call it, or blowing his nose from
+morning till night. The dear child
+had a cold, and so had you, and I, and
+everybody else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that sudden flush, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you'll be complaining of the
+bloom on the peach next! That's
+health, and nothing else, take my
+word for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am, perhaps, morbidly apprehensive;
+but I cannot forget her poor
+mother. You attended her, Mayhew,
+and you know how suddenly that
+came upon us. Poor Ellen! what
+should I do without her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fairman, join me in wishing success
+to our young friend here. Mr
+Stukely, here's your good health; and
+success and happiness attend you.
+You'll find little society here; but it
+is of the right sort, I can tell you.
+You must make yourself at home.&quot;
+The minister became more cheerful,
+and an hour passed in pleasant conversation.
+At ten o'clock, the horse
+of Doctor Mayhew was brought to the
+gate, and the gentleman departed in
+great good-humour. Almost immediately
+afterwards, the incumbent
+himself conducted me to my sleeping
+apartment, and I was not loth to get
+my rest. I fell asleep with the beautiful
+village floating before my weary
+eyes, and the first day of my residence
+at the parsonage closed peacefully
+upon me.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the breakfast table on the
+succeeding morning that I beheld the
+daughter of the incumbent, the favourite
+and companion of my pupils, and
+mistress of the house&mdash;a maiden in
+her twentieth year. She was simply
+and artlessly attired, gentle and retiring
+in demeanour, and femininely
+sweet rather than beautiful in expression.
+Her figure was slender, her
+voice soft and musical; her hair light
+brown, and worn plain across a forehead
+white as marble. The eye-brows
+which arched the small, rich, hazel
+eyes were delicately drawn, and the
+slightly aquiline nose might have
+formed a study for an artist. With
+the exception, however, of this last-named
+feature, there was little in the
+individual lineaments of the face to
+surprise or rivet the observer. Extreme
+simplicity, and perfect innocence&mdash;these
+were stamped upon the
+countenance, and were its charm. It
+was a strange feeling that possessed
+me when I first gazed upon her through
+the chaste atmosphere that dwelt
+around her. It was degradation deep
+and unaffected&mdash;a sense of shame and
+undeservedness. I remembered with
+self-abhorrence the relation that had
+existed between the unhappy Emma
+and myself, and the enormity and
+disgrace of my offence never looked
+so great as now, and here&mdash;in the
+bright presence of unconscious purity.
+She reassured and welcomed me with
+a natural smile, and pursued her occupation
+with quiet cheerfulness and
+unconstraint. I did not wonder that
+her father loved her, and entertained
+the thought of losing her with fear;
+for, young and gentle as she was, she
+evinced wisdom and age in her deep
+sense of duty, and in the government
+of her happy home. Method and
+order waited on her doings, and sweetness
+and tranquillity&mdash;the ease and
+dignity of a matron elevating and
+upholding the maiden's native modesty.
+And did she not love her sire
+as ardently? Yes, if her virgin soul
+spoke faithfully in every movement of
+her guileless face. Yes, if there be
+truth in tones that strike the heart to
+thrill it&mdash;in thoughts that write their
+meaning in the watchful eye, in words
+that issue straight from the fount of
+love, in acts that do not bear one
+shade of selfish purpose. It was not
+a labour of time to learn that the existence
+of the child, her peace and
+happiness, were merged in those of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page332" id="page332" title="page332"></a>the fond parent. He was every thing
+to her, as she to him. She had no
+brother&mdash;he no wife: these natural
+channels of affection cut away, the
+stream was strong and deep that flowed
+into each other's hearts. My first
+interview with the young lady was
+necessarily limited. I would gladly
+have prolonged it. The morning was
+passed with my pupils, and my mind
+stole often from the work before me
+to dwell upon the face and form of
+her, whom, as a sister, I could have
+doated on and cherished. How happy
+I should have been, I deemed, if I
+had been so blessed. Useless reflection!
+and yet pleased was I to dwell
+upon it, and to welcome its return, as
+often as it recurred. At dinner we
+met again. To be admitted into her
+presence seemed the reward for my
+morning toil&mdash;a privilege rather than
+a right. What labour was too great
+for the advantage of such moments?&mdash;moments
+indeed they were, and
+less&mdash;flashes of time, that were not
+here before they had disappeared.
+We exchanged but few words. I was
+still oppressed with the conviction of
+my own unworthiness, and wondered
+if she could read in my burning face
+the history of shame. How she must
+avoid and despise me, thought I, when
+she has discovered all, and how bold
+and wicked it was to darken the light
+in which she lived with the guilt that
+was a part of me! Not the less did I
+experience this when she spoke to me
+with kindness and unreserve. The
+feeling grew in strength. I was conscious
+of deceit and fraud, and could
+not shake the knowledge off. I was
+taking mean advantage of her confidence,
+assuming a character to which
+I had no claim, and listening to the
+accents of innocence and virtue with
+the equanimity of one good and spotless
+as herself. In the afternoon the
+young students resumed their work.
+When it was over, we strolled amongst
+the hills; and, at the close of a delightful
+walk, found ourselves in the
+enchanting village. Here we encountered
+Miss Fairman and the incumbent,
+and we returned home in company.
+In one short hour we reached
+it. How many hours have passed
+since <i>that</i> was ravished from the hand
+of Time, and registered in the tenacious
+memory! Years have floated
+by, and silently have dropped into the
+boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted;
+and these few minutes&mdash;sacred relics&mdash;live
+and linger in the world, in
+mercy it may be, to lighten up my
+lonely hearth, or save the whitened
+head from drooping. The spirit of
+one golden hour shall hover through
+a life, and shed glory where he falls.
+What are the unfruitful, unremembered
+years that rush along, frightening
+mortality with their fatal speed&mdash;an
+instant in eternity! What are the
+moments loaded with passion, intense,
+and never-dying&mdash;years, ages upon
+earth! Away with the divisions of
+time, whilst one short breath&mdash;the
+smallest particle or measure of duration,
+shall outweigh ages. Breathless
+and silent is the dewy eve. Trailing
+a host of glittering clouds behind him,
+the sun stalks down, and leaves the
+emerald hills in deeper green. The
+lambs are skipping on the path&mdash;the
+shepherd as loth to lead them home
+as they to go. The labourer has done
+his work, and whistles his way back.
+The minister has much of good and
+wise to say to his young family. They
+hear the business of the day; their
+guardian draws the moral, and bids
+them think it over. Upon my arm I
+bear his child, the fairest object of the
+twilight group. She tells me histories
+of this charmed spot, and the good
+old tales that are as old as the gray
+church beneath us: she smiles, and
+speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant
+of the tearful eye and throbbing
+heart beside her, that overflow
+with new-found bliss, and cannot bear
+their weight of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Another day of natural gladness&mdash;and
+then the Sabbath; this not less
+cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding.
+The sun shone fair upon the
+ancient church, and made its venerable
+gray stones sparkle and look young
+again. The dark-green ivy that for
+many a year has clung there, looked
+no longer sad and sombre, but gay
+and lively as the newest of the new-born
+leaves that smiled on every tree.
+The inhabitants of the secluded village
+were already a-foot when we
+proceeded from the parsonage, and
+men and women from adjacent villages
+were on the road to join them.
+The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly,
+and sanctified the vale; for its sound
+strikes deeply ever on the broad ear
+of nature. Willows and yew-trees
+shelter the graves of the departed villagers,
+and the living wend their way
+<a class="pagenum" name="page333" id="page333" title="page333"></a>beneath them, subdued to seriousness,
+it may be, by the breathless voice that
+dwells in every well-remembered
+mound. There is not one who does
+not carry on his brow the thoughts
+that best become it now. All are well
+dressed, all look cleanly and contented.
+The children are with their parents,
+their natural and best instructors.
+Whom should they love so
+well? To whom is honour due if not
+to them? The village owns no school
+to disannul the tie of blood, to warp
+and weaken the affection that holds
+them well together.</p>
+
+<p>All was quietness and decorum in
+the house of prayer. Every earnest
+eye was fixed, not upon Mr Fairman,
+but on the book from which the people
+prayed, in which they found their
+own good thoughts portrayed, their
+pious wishes told, their sorrow and
+repentance in clearest form described.
+Every humble penitent was on his
+knees. With one voice, loud and
+heartfelt, came the responses which
+spoke the people's acquiescence in all
+the pastor urged and prayed on their
+behalf. The worship over, Mr Fairman
+addressed his congregation, selecting
+his subject from the lesson of
+the day, and fitting his words to the
+capacities of those who listened. Let
+me particularly note, that whilst the
+incumbent pointed distinctly to the
+cross as the only ground of a sinner's
+hope, he insisted upon good works as
+the necessary and essential accompaniment
+of his faith. &quot;Do not tell me,
+my dear friends,&quot; he said, at the conclusion
+of his address&mdash;&quot;do not tell
+me that you believe, if your daily life
+is unworthy a believer. I will not
+trust you. What is your belief, if
+your heart is busy in contrivances to
+overreach your neighbour? What is
+it, if your mind is filled with envy,
+malice, hatred, and revenge? What
+if you are given over to disgraceful
+lusts&mdash;to drunkenness and debauchery?
+What if you are ashamed to speak the
+truth, and are willing to become a
+liar? I tell you, and I have warrant
+for what I say, that your conduct one
+towards another must be straightforward,
+honest, generous, kind, and affectionate,
+or you cannot be in a safe
+and happy state. You owe it to yourselves
+to be so; for if you are poor
+and labouring men, you have an immortal
+soul within you, and it is your
+greatest ornament. It is that which
+gives the meanest of us a dignity that
+no earthly honours can supply; a dignity
+that it becomes the first and last
+of us by every means to cherish and
+support. Is it not, my friends, degrading,
+fearful to know that we bear
+about with us the very image of our
+God, and that we are acting worse
+than the very brutes of the field? Do
+yourselves justice. Be pure&mdash;pure in
+mind and body. Be honest, in word
+and deed. Be loving to one another.
+Crush every wish to do evil, or to
+speak harshly; be brothers, and feel
+that you are working out the wishes
+of a benevolent and loving Father,
+who has created you for love, and
+smiles upon you when you do his bidding.&quot;
+There was more to this effect,
+but nothing need be added to explain
+the scope and tendency of his discourse.
+His congregation could not mistake
+his meaning; they could not fail to
+profit by it, if reason was not proof
+against the soundest argument. As
+quietly as, and, if it be possible, more
+seriously than, they entered the church,
+did the small band of worshippers, at
+the close of the service, retire from it.
+Could it be my fancy, or did the wife
+in truth cling closer to her husband&mdash;the
+father clasp his little boy more
+firmly in his hand? Did neighbour
+nod to neighbour more eagerly as they
+parted at the churchyard gate&mdash;did
+every look and movement of the many
+groups bespeak a spirit touched, a
+mind reproved? I may not say so,
+for my own heart was melted by the
+scene, and might mislead my judgment.
+There was a second service in
+the afternoon. This concluded, we
+walked to the sea-beach. In the evening
+Mr Fairman related a connected
+history from the Old Testament,
+whilst the pupils tracked his progress
+on their maps, and the narrative became
+a living thing in their remembrances.
+Serious conversation then
+succeeded; to this a simple prayer,
+and the day closed, sweetly and calmly,
+as a day might close in Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>The events of the following month
+partook of the character of those already
+glanced at. The minister was
+unremitting in his attendance upon
+his parishioners, and no day passed
+during which something had not been
+accomplished for their spiritual improvement
+or worldly comfort. His
+loving daughter was a handmaid at
+his side, ministering with him, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page334" id="page334" title="page334"></a>shedding sunshine where she came.
+The villagers were frugal and industrious;
+and seemed, for the most part,
+sensible of their incumbent's untiring
+efforts. Improvement appeared even
+in the cottage of the desperate Warden.
+Mr Fairman obtained employment for
+him. For a fortnight he had attended
+to it, and no complaint had reached
+the parsonage of misbehaviour. His
+wife had learned to bear her imagined
+wrongs in silence, and could even
+submit to a visit from her best friend
+without insulting him for the condescension.
+My own days passed
+smoothly on. My occupation grew
+every day more pleasing, and the results
+of my endeavours as gratifying
+as I could wish them. My pupils were
+attached to me, and I beheld them improving
+gradually and securely under
+their instruction. Mr Fairman, who,
+for a week together, had witnessed the
+course of my tuition, and watched it
+narrowly, was pleased to express his
+approbation in the warmest terms.
+Much of the coldness with which I
+thought he had at first encountered
+me disappeared, and his manner grew
+daily more friendly and confiding. His
+treatment was most generous. He
+received me into the bosom of his
+family as a son, and strove to render
+his fair habitation my genuine and natural
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Another month passed by, and the
+colour and tone of my existence had
+suffered a momentous change. In the
+acquirement of a fearful joy, I had
+lost all joy. In rendering every moment
+of my life blissful and ecstatic,
+I had robbed myself of all felicity. A
+few weeks before, and my state of
+being had realized a serenity that defied
+all causes of perturbation and disquiet.
+Now it was a sea of agitation
+and disorder; and a breath, a nothing
+had brought the restless waves upon
+the quiet surface. Through the kindness
+of Mr Fairman, my evenings had
+been almost invariably passed in the society
+of himself and his daughter. The
+lads were early risers, and retired, on
+that account, at a very early hour to
+rest. Upon their dismission, I had
+been requested to join the company in
+the drawing-room. This company included
+sometimes Doctor Mayhew,
+the neighbouring squire, or a chance
+visitor, but consisted oftenest only of
+the incumbent and his daughter.
+Aware of the friendly motive which
+suggested the request, I obeyed it with
+alacrity. On these occasions, Miss
+Fairman used her pencil, whilst I read
+aloud; or she would ply her needle,
+and soothe at intervals her father's
+ear with strains of music, which he, for
+many reasons, loved to hear. Once or
+twice the incumbent had been called
+away, and his child and I were left
+together. I had no reason to be silent
+whilst the good minister was present,
+yet I found that I could speak more
+confidently and better when he was
+absent. We conversed with freedom
+and unrestraint. I found the maiden's
+mind well stored&mdash;her voice was not
+more sweet than was her understanding
+clear and cloudless. Books had
+been her joy, which, in the season of
+suffering, had been my consolation.
+They were a common source of pleasure.
+She spoke of them with feeling,
+and I could understand her. I regarded
+her with deep unfeigned respect; but,
+the evening over, I took my leave, as
+I had come&mdash;in peace. Miss Fairman
+left the parsonage to pay a two-days'
+visit at a house in the vicinity. Until
+the evening of the first day I was not
+sensible of her absence. It was then,
+and at the customary hour of our reunion,
+that, for the first time, I experienced,
+with alarm, a sense of loneliness
+and desertion&mdash;that I became tremblingly
+conscious of the secret growth
+of an affection that had waited only
+for the time and circumstance to make
+its presence and its power known and
+dreaded. In the daily enjoyment of
+her society, I had not estimated its
+influence and value. Once denied it,
+and I dared not acknowledge to myself
+how precious it had become, how
+silently and fatally it had wrought
+upon my heart. The impropriety and
+folly of self-indulgence were at once
+apparent&mdash;yes, the vanity and wickedness&mdash;and,
+startled by what looked
+like guilt, I determined manfully to
+rise superior to temptation. I took
+refuge in my books; they lacked their
+usual interest, were ineffectual in reducing
+the ruffled mind to order. I
+rose and paced my room, but I could
+not escape from agitating thought. I
+sought the minister in his study, and
+hoped to bring myself to calm and
+reason by dwelling seriously on the
+business of the day&mdash;with him, the
+father of the lady, and <i>my master</i>. He
+was not there. He had left the parsonage
+with Doctor Mayhew an hour
+<a class="pagenum" name="page335" id="page335" title="page335"></a>before. I walked into the open air
+restless and unhappy, relying on the
+freshness and repose of night to be
+subdued and comforted. It was a
+night to soften anger&mdash;to conquer
+envy&mdash;to destroy revenge&mdash;beautiful
+and bright. The hills were bathed in
+liquid silvery light, and on their heights,
+and in the vale, on all around, lay
+passion slumbering. What could I
+find on such a night, but favour and
+incitement, support and confirmation,
+flattery and delusion? Every object
+ministered to the imagination, and
+love had given that wings. I trembled
+as I pursued my road, and fuel found
+its unobstructed way rapidly to the
+flame within. Self-absorbed, I wandered
+on. I did not choose my path.
+I believed I did not, and I stopped at
+length&mdash;before the house that held
+her. I gazed upon it with reverence
+and love. One room was lighted up.
+Shadows flitted across the curtained
+window, and my heart throbbed sensibly
+when, amongst them, I imagined
+I could trace her form. I was borne
+down by a conviction of wrong and
+culpability, but I could not move, or
+for a moment draw away my look. It
+was a strange assurance that I felt&mdash;but
+I did feel it, strongly and
+emphatically&mdash;that I should see her palpably
+before I left the place. I waited for
+that sight in certain expectation, and
+it came. A light was carried from
+the room. Diminished illumination
+there, and sudden brightness against a
+previously darkened casement, made
+this evident. The light ascended&mdash;another
+casement higher than the last
+was, in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed
+her figure. She approached
+the window, and, for an instant&mdash;oh
+how brief!&mdash;looked into the heavenly
+night. My poor heart sickened with
+delight, and I strained my eyes long
+after all was blank and dark again.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight, and the employments of
+day, if they did not remove, weakened
+the turbulence of the preceding
+night. The more I found my passion
+acquiring mastery, with greater
+vigour I renewed my work, and with
+more determination I pursued the
+objects that were most likely to fight
+and overcome it. I laboured with the
+youths for a longer period. I undertook
+to prepare a composition for the
+following day which I knew must take
+much thought and many hours in
+working out. I armed myself at all
+points&mdash;but the evening came and
+found me once more conscious of
+a void that left me prostrate. Mr
+Fairman was again absent from home.
+I could not rest in it, and I too sallied
+forth, but this time, to the village. I
+would not deliberately offer violence
+to my conscience, and I shrunk from
+a premeditated visit to the distant
+house. My own acquaintances in
+the village were not many, or of long
+standing, but there were some half
+dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent's
+daughter. To one of these
+I bent my steps, with no other purpose
+than that of baffling time that
+hung upon me painfully and heavily
+at home. For a few minutes I spoke
+with the aged female of the house on
+general topics; then a passing observation&mdash;in
+spite of me&mdash;escaped my
+lips in reference to Miss Ellen. The
+villager took up the theme and expatiated
+widely. There was no end to
+what she had to say of good and kind
+for the dear lady. I could have hugged
+her for her praise. Prudence bade
+me forsake the dangerous ground, and
+so I did, to return again with tenfold
+curiosity and zest. I asked a hundred
+questions, each one revealing more
+interest and ardour than the last, and
+involving me in deeper peril. It was
+at length accomplished. My companion
+hesitated suddenly in a discourse,
+then stopped, and looked me in the
+face, smiling cunningly. &quot;I tell you
+what, sir,&quot; she exclaimed at last, and
+loudly, &quot;you are over head and ears
+in love, and that's the truth on't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush, good woman,&quot; I replied,
+blushing to the forehead, and hastening
+to shut an open door. &quot;Don't
+speak so loud. You mistake, it is no
+such thing. I shall be angry if you
+say so&mdash;very angry. What can you
+mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just what I say, sir. Why, do
+you know how old I am? Seventy-three.
+I think I ought to tell, and
+where's the harm of it? Who couldn't
+love the sweetest lady in the parish&mdash;bless
+her young feeling heart!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell you&mdash;you mistake&mdash;you are
+to blame. I command you not to repeat
+this to a living soul. If it should
+come to the incumbent's ears&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust me for that, sir. I'm no
+blab. He shan't be wiser for such as
+me. But do you mean to tell me, sir,
+with that red face of your'n, you
+haven't lost your heart&mdash;leave alone
+<a class="pagenum" name="page336" id="page336" title="page336"></a>your trembling? ah, well, I hopes
+you'll both be happy, anyhow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I endeavoured to remonstrate, but
+the old woman only laughed and shook
+her aged head. I left her, grieved
+and apprehensive. My secret thoughts
+had been discovered. How soon
+might they be carried to the confiding
+minister and his unsuspecting daughter!
+What would they think of me!
+It was a day of anxiety and trouble,
+that on which Miss Fairman returned
+to the parsonage. I received my
+usual invitation; but I was indisposed,
+and did not go. I resolved to see her
+only during meals, and when it was
+impossible to avoid her. I would not
+seek her presence. Foolish effort!
+It had been better to pass hours in
+her sight, for previous separation made
+union more intense, and the passionate
+enjoyment of a fleeting instant
+was hoarded up, and became nourishment
+for the livelong day.</p>
+
+<p>It was a soft rich afternoon in
+June, and chance made me the companion
+of Miss Fairman. We were
+alone: I had encountered her at a distance
+of about a mile from the parsonage,
+on the sea-shore, whither I had
+walked distressed in spirit, and grateful
+for the privilege of listening in gloomy
+quietude to the soothing sounds of
+nature&mdash;medicinal ever. The lady
+was at my side almost before I was
+aware of her approach. My heart
+throbbed whilst she smiled upon me,
+sweetly as she smiled on all. Her
+deep hazel eye was moist. Could it
+be from weeping?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What has happened, Miss Fairman?&quot;
+I asked immediately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do I betray my weakness, then?&quot;
+she answered. &quot;I am sorry for it;
+for dear papa tells all the villagers
+that no wise man weeps&mdash;and no wise
+woman either, I suppose. But I cannot
+help it. We are but a small family
+in the village, and it makes me
+very sad to miss the old faces one after
+another, and to see old friends dropping
+and dropping into the silent
+grave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke the church-bell tolled,
+and she turned pale, and ceased. I
+offered her my arm, and we walked
+on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom do you mourn, Miss
+Fairman?&quot; I asked at length.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dear good friend&mdash;my best and
+oldest. When poor mamma was
+dying, she made me over to her care.
+She was her nurse, and was mine for
+years. It is very wrong of me to weep
+for her. She was good and pious,
+and is blest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The church-bell tolled again, and
+my companion shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I cannot listen to that bell,&quot;
+she said. &quot;I wish papa would do
+away with it. What a withering
+sound it has! I heard it first when it
+was tolling for my dear mother. It
+fell upon my heart like iron then, and
+it falls so now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot say that I dislike the
+melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its
+messenger should not be gay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the soul that sees and hears.
+Beauty and music are created quickly
+if the heart be joyful. So my book says,
+and it is true. You have had no cause
+to think that bell a hideous thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet I have suffered youth's severest
+loss. I have lost a mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You speak the truth. Yes, I have
+a kind father left me&mdash;and you&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am an orphan, friendless and
+deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman,
+you may be spared my fate for years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not friendless or deserted either,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; answered the young
+lady kindly; &quot;papa does not deserve,
+I am sure, that you should speak so
+harshly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did
+not mean to say that. He has been
+most generous to me&mdash;kinder than I
+deserve. But I have borne much,
+and still must bear. The fatherless
+and motherless is in the world alone.
+He needs no greater punishment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must not talk so. Papa will,
+I am sure, be a father to you, as he is
+to all who need one. You do not
+know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is
+overflowing with tenderness and charity.
+You cannot judge him by his
+manner. He has had his share of sorrow
+and misfortune; and death has
+been at his door oftener than once.
+Friends have been unfaithful and men
+have been ungrateful; but trial and
+suffering have not hardened him. You
+have seen him amongst the poor, but
+you have not seen him as I have; nor
+have I beheld him as his Maker has,
+in the secret workings of his spirit,
+which is pure and good, believe me.
+He has received injury like a child,
+and dealt mercy and love with the liberality
+of an angel. Trust my father,
+Mr Stukely.&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The maiden spoke quickly and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page337" id="page337" title="page337"></a>passionately, and her neck and face
+crimsoned with animation. I quivered,
+for her tones communicated fire&mdash;but
+my line of conduct was marked,
+and it shone clear in spite of the clouds
+of emotion which strove to envelope
+and conceal it&mdash;as they did too soon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would trust him, Miss Fairman,
+and I do,&quot; I answered with a faltering
+tongue. &quot;I appreciate his character
+and I revere him. I could have made
+my home with him. I prayed that I
+might do so. Heaven seemed to have
+directed my steps to this blissful spot,
+and to have pointed out at length a
+resting place for my tired feet. I have
+been most happy here&mdash;too happy&mdash;I
+have proved ungrateful, and I know
+how rashly I have forfeited this and
+every thing. I cannot live here. This
+is no home for me. I will go into the
+world again&mdash;cast myself upon it&mdash;do
+any thing. I could be a labourer
+on the highways, and be contented
+if I could see that I had done my duty,
+and behaved with honour. Believe
+me, Miss Fairman, I have not deliberately
+indulged&mdash;I have struggled,
+fought, and battled, till my brain has
+tottered. I am wretched and forlorn&mdash;but
+I will leave you&mdash;to-morrow&mdash;would
+that I had never come&mdash;&mdash;.&quot;
+I could say no more. My full heart
+spoke its agony in tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What has occurred? What afflicts
+you? You alarm me, Mr Stukely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had sternly determined to permit
+no one look to give expression to the
+feeling which consumed me, to obstruct
+by force the passage of the remotest
+hint that should struggle to
+betray me; but as the maiden looked
+full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance
+of me, and against all opposition,
+the tell-tale passion rising from
+my soul, and creeping to my eye. It
+would not be held back. In an instant,
+with one treacherous glance, all
+was spoken and revealed.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>By that dejected city, Arno runs,</p>
+<p>Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.</p>
+<p>There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes</p>
+<p>Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.</p>
+<p>And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring</p>
+<p>Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing</p>
+<p>Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,</p>
+<p>And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,</p>
+<p>Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest</p>
+<p>My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:</p>
+<p>For many griefs had wounded it, and more</p>
+<p>Thy little hands could lighten were in store.</p>
+<p>But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow</p>
+<p>Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.</p>
+<p>What then the bliss to see again thy face,</p>
+<p>And all that Rumour has announced of grace!</p>
+<p>I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.</p>
+<p>O! could I sleep to wake again in May.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="bw329s4" id="bw329s4"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page338" id="page338" title="page338"></a>
+<h2>IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</h2>
+
+<h3>SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice of
+antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into their
+studies or their society.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;They should rather those than others. The young <i>must</i> cease
+to be young, and the unlearned <i>may</i> cease to be unlearned. According to the
+letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth against you. In the seclusion
+of a college life, you appear to have studied with much assiduity and advantage,
+and to have pursued no other courses than the paths of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Do you approve of the pursuit?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Who does not?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the game,
+inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough.
+May I ask you another question?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Certainly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
+to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek information
+from you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
+truth and happiness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from civil
+and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful persecute, where the
+rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at seeing it) despise us, rejecting
+our counsel and spurning our consolation, what valuable truth do they
+enable us to discover, or what rational happiness to expect? To say that
+wisdom leads to truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such
+is truth. Nonsense is better than falsehood; and we come to that.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;How?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to happiness&mdash;I
+mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that
+the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we are,
+standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here
+we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not
+suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth&mdash;whether a
+Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me a man who
+has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet, the malversation
+of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has not been stoned, or
+hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to poverty. The chain
+of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily
+in its rusty links. Who then, unless for others, would be a darer of wisdom?
+And yet, how full of it is even the inanimate world? We may gather it out
+of stones and straws. Much lies within the reach of all: little has been
+collected by the wisest of the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power!
+ye carry your own scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet
+ye crouch for more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will
+punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust
+where the Old Serpent went before you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic and
+strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the power
+of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort, independence,
+freedom, to all men capable of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;The idea is, truly, no humble one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The
+power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my
+aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine work of
+creating the capacity.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page339" id="page339" title="page339"></a><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Childish! childish!&mdash;Men have cravings enow already; give
+them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be contented
+in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place us; and let us render
+ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power, without idle aspirations
+after impracticable good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of your
+intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small and how
+vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Is this to me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could
+not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and travels.
+I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;You sought celebrity.&mdash;I blame not that. The thick air of multitudes
+may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of solitudes
+is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping of hands; others
+fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us come to the point. Imperial
+courts! What do they know of letters? What letters do they countenance&mdash;do
+they tolerate?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Plays.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Playthings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Travels.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along which
+their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke of your
+rammers. When will ye lay them by?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;We are not such drudges.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can
+call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich possessions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;None; not the highest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost yet,
+although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow them up.
+But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force. The promise
+of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude. The wise know
+that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that she never can
+bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both; in the dazzle of
+arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never more agitated than in
+the midst of peace.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing that
+could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that lightening
+which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our homes.
+Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and where no perfect
+love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir, at the celebrity and
+the distinctions you have obtained?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them, quite
+satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age&mdash;neither in difficult nor
+in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself the tutor or the
+guardian of mankind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and gratefully.
+You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the travels; but,
+pardon my question, who called you to the courts of princes in strange
+countries?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;They themselves.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;They have no more right to take you away from your country,
+than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to the
+land that bore you, and were not at liberty&mdash;(if right and liberty are one, and
+unless they are, they are good for nothing)&mdash;you were not at liberty, I repeat
+it, to enter into the service of an alien.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
+freedom are these!</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the servants
+<a class="pagenum" name="page340" id="page340" title="page340"></a>of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in his ear that
+he may go away, that he may work in another country, that he may ask to be
+fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and tasks are given for his
+hands to execute. Being a German, you voluntarily placed yourself in a
+position where you might eventually be coerced to act against Germans.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I would not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Perhaps you think so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Sir, I know my duty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the will
+is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you left the
+ranks of your fellow-citizens&mdash;already have you taken the enlisting money and
+marched away.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
+polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak rather
+the language of books than of men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect than
+ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men. I was
+wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the productions
+of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the continuity of
+sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to maintain it, even in
+words, to the end of their lives. You are aware that I am speaking now of
+political ethics. This is the worst I can think of the matter, and bad enough
+is this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our
+circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our patriotism,
+not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical mind should
+consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so minutely into it
+as to see the lines that divide nations and governments; much less should it
+act the part of a busy shrew, and take pleasure in giving loose to the tongue,
+at finding things a little out of place.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is better
+with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this indistinctness in the
+moral and political line begets indifference. He who does not keep his own
+country more closely in view than any other, soon mixes land with sea, and
+sea with air, and loses sight of every thing, at least, for which he was placed
+in contact with his fellow men. Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest:
+Let usages and familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us
+confederate for security and peace with all the people round, particularly
+with people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to
+those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others: but
+to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We irrigate the
+ground in our gardens: the public road may require the water equally: yet
+we give it rather to our borders; and first to those that lie against the house!
+God himself did not fill the world at once with happy creatures: he enlivened
+one small portion of it with them, and began with single affections, as well as
+pure and unmixt. We must have an object and an aim, or our strength, if
+any strength belongs to us, will be useless.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at
+all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old enough to
+have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no means deficient
+in the relations I bear to society.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds
+can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover against
+the rain and the wind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with large
+drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my dear
+young man! and less enthusiastic.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by force.
+Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must love them
+more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all, profess a
+parity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page341" id="page341" title="page341"></a><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and
+kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily
+bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their ears were calked
+and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died sadly!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of
+authority, your voice is gentle&mdash;almost plaintive.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require
+it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each other for
+many years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;What! should I have asked you such a question as the last, after
+long knowing you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>, (<i>aside</i>.)&mdash;This resembles insanity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick apprehensions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I really beg your pardon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness
+could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them grievously;
+a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again and again
+I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten them to pillar
+and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the remains of respect for you, in
+your domestic state, I should never have held with you this conversation.
+Germany is Germany: she ought to have nothing political in common with
+what is not Germany. Her freedom and security now demand that she celebrate
+the communion of the faithful. Our country is the only one in all the
+explored regions on earth that never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia
+boast it falsely; France falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of
+Darius fell and crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and
+Rome was buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not.
+Britain, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the
+most literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those
+laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we surrender
+them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled cities, and
+enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one
+another's sword, and command us to thank God for the victories that enslave
+us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we hold, on
+the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed are those who lie under them!
+blessed are also those who remember what they were, and call upon their
+names in the holiness of love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you. There
+is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great, for
+instance, in our disunion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny princes
+were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns from the
+very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and spoons. A cunning
+traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured them, and slept upon
+their feathers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of our
+country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to us. We
+may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages of every
+capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
+and hirelings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival us
+in poetry, or in any works of imagination.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with England
+and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on our inferiority
+in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than they? Our mothers
+are like their mothers; our children are like their children; our limbs are as
+strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our desire of improvement in the arts
+<a class="pagenum" name="page342" id="page342" title="page342"></a>and sciences is neither less vivid and generous, nor less temperate and well-directed.
+The Greeks were under disadvantages which never bore in any
+degree on us; yet they rose through them vigorously and erectly. They
+were Asiatic in what ought to be the finer part of the affections; their women
+were veiled and secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave,
+never sat by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated
+in the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
+poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the future;
+and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush we not at our
+degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure at finding, in
+the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms ultimately mingled,
+although the character of the governors, and perhaps of the governed, is congenial
+to few. What delight, then, must overflow on Europe, from seeing
+the mother of her noblest nation rear again her venerable head, and bless all
+her children for the first time united!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I am bound to oppose such a project.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Say not so: in God's name, say not so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and rebellion,
+and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if possible.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt.</i>&mdash;Bound! I must then release you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;How should you, young gentleman, release me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again:
+think better: spare me!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I will not betray you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me
+can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has been
+done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper;
+here is your ink.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;Do you imagine me an informer?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood, the
+necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good men
+thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the bad. I must
+go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to think of losing you!
+Be my friend!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I would be.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>.&mdash;Be a German!</p>
+
+<p><i>Kotzebue</i>.&mdash;I am.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sandt</i>, (<i>having gone out</i>.)&mdash;Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is kindly.
+I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of the privilege
+to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I lived of old.
+Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls: I will enter the
+door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people together, and hold
+them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim follows willingly.
+(<i>Enters again</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Turn! die! (<i>strikes</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish
+with one guilty! and writhe longer!</p>
+
+<p>Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left
+me. In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have
+sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals dishonour,
+commiseration covers it.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s5" id="bw329s5"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page343" id="page343" title="page343"></a>
+<h2>THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.</h2>
+
+<h3>A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.</h3>
+
+<p>When the Empecinado, after escaping
+from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined
+his band, and again repaired to the
+favourite skirmishing ground on the
+banks of the Duero, he found the state
+of affairs in Old Castile becoming
+daily less favourable for his operations.
+The French overran the greater
+part of the province, and visited
+with severe punishment any disobedience
+of their orders; so that the
+peasantry no longer dared to assist
+the guerillas as they had previously
+done. Many of the villages on the
+Duero had become <i>afrancesados</i>, not,
+it is true, through love, but through
+dread of the invaders, and in the hope
+of preserving themselves from pillage
+and oppression. However much the
+people in their hearts might wish success
+to men like the Empecinado, the
+guerillas were too few and too feeble
+to afford protection to those who, by
+giving them assistance or information,
+would incur the displeasure of the
+French. The clergy were the only
+class that, almost without an exception,
+remained stanch to the cause
+of Spanish independence, and their
+purses and refectories were ever open
+to those who took up arms in its defence.</p>
+
+<p>Noways deterred by this unfavourable
+aspect of affairs, the Empecinado
+resolved to carry on the war in Old
+Castile, even though unaided and alone.
+He established his bivouac in the pine-woods
+of Coca, and sent out spies towards
+Somosierra and Burgos, to get
+information of some convoy of which
+the capture might yield both honour
+and profit.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the second morning after
+the departure of the spies, and a few
+minutes before daybreak, that the
+little camp was aroused by a shot from
+a sentry, placed on the skirt of the
+wood. In an instant every man was
+on his feet. It was the Empecinado's
+custom, when outlying in this manner,
+to make one-half his band sleep fully
+armed and equipped, with their horses
+saddled and bridled beside them; and
+a fortunate precaution it was in this
+instance. Scarcely had the men time
+to untether and spring upon their
+horses, when the sentry galloped
+headlong into the camp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Los Franceses! Los Franceses</i>!&quot;
+exclaimed he, breathless with speed.</p>
+
+<p>One of the Empecinado's first qualities
+was his presence of mind, which
+never deserted him even in the most
+critical situations. Instantly forming
+up that moiety of his men which was
+already in the saddle, he left a detachment
+in front of those who were hastily
+saddling and arming, and with the remainder
+retired a little to the left of
+the open ground on which the bivouac
+was established. Almost before he
+had completed this arrangement, the
+jingling of arms and clattering of
+horses' feet were heard, and a squadron
+of French cavalry galloped
+down the glade. The Empecinado
+gave the word to charge, and as
+Fuentes at the head of one party advanced
+to meet them, he himself attacked
+them in flank. The French,
+not having anticipated much opposition
+from a foe whom they had expected
+to find sleeping, were somewhat
+surprized at the fierce resistance
+they met. A hard fight took place,
+rendered still more confused by the
+darkness, or rather by a faint grey
+light, which was just beginning to appear,
+and gave a shadowy indistinctness
+to surrounding objects. The
+Spaniards were inferior in number to
+their opponents, and it was beginning
+to go hard with them, when the remainder
+of the guerillas, now armed
+and mounted, came up to their assistance.
+On perceiving this accession
+to their adversaries' force, the French
+thought they had been led into an
+ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable
+order to the edge of the wood, at last
+fairly turned tail and ran for it, leaving
+several killed and wounded on the
+ground, and were pursued for some distance
+by the guerillas, who, however,
+only succeeded in making one prisoner.
+This was a young man in the dress of
+a peasant, who being badly mounted,
+was easily overtaken. On being
+brought before the Empecinado, the
+latter with no small surprize recognized
+<a class="pagenum" name="page344" id="page344" title="page344"></a>a native of Aranda, named Pedro
+Gutierrez, who was one of the
+emissaries he had sent out two days
+previously to get information concerning
+the movements of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>With pale cheek and faltering
+voice, the prisoner answered the Empecinado's
+interrogatories. It appears
+that he had been detected as a spy by
+the French, who had given him his
+choice between a halter and the betrayal
+of his countrymen and employers.
+With the fear of death before
+his eyes, he had consented to turn
+traitor.</p>
+
+<p>The deepest silence prevailed among
+the guerillas during his narrative, and
+remained unbroken for a full minute
+after he had concluded. The Empecinado's
+brow was black as thunder,
+and his features assumed an expression
+which the trembling wretch well
+knew how to interpret.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Que podia hacer, se&ntilde;ores</i>?&quot; said
+the culprit, casting an appealing, imploring
+glance around him. &quot;The
+rope was round my neck; I have an
+aged father and am his only support.
+Life is very sweet. What could I
+do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Die</i>!&quot; replied the Empecinado,
+in his deep stern voice&mdash;&quot;Die like a
+man <i>then</i>, instead of dying like a dog
+<i>now</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned his back upon him, and
+ten minutes later, the body of the unfortunate
+spy was dangling from the
+branches of a neighbouring tree, and
+the guerillas marched off to seek another
+and a safer bivouac.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this incident the
+other spies returned, and after receiving
+their report, and consulting with
+his lieutenant, Mariano Fuentes, the
+Empecinado broke up the little camp,
+and led his band in the direction of
+the <i>camino r&eacute;al</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Along that part of the high-road,
+from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which
+winds through the mountain range of
+Onrubias, an escort of fifty French
+dragoons was marching, about an hour
+before dusk, on an evening of early
+spring. Two carriages, and three or
+four heavily-laden carts, each drawn
+by half-a-dozen mules, composed the
+whole of the convoy; the value of
+which, however, might be deemed
+considerable, judging from the strength
+of the escort, and the precautions observed
+by the officer in command to
+avoid a surprise&mdash;precautions which
+were not of much avail; for, on reaching
+a spot where the road widened
+considerably, and was traversed by a
+broad ravine, the party was suddenly
+charged on either flank by double their
+number of guerillas. The dragoons
+made a gallant resistance, but it was
+a short one, for they had no room or
+time to form in any order, and were
+far overmatched in the hand-to-hand
+contest that ensued. With the very
+first who fled went a gentleman in
+civilian's garb, who sprang out of the
+most elegant of the two carriages, and
+mounting a fine Andalusian horse led
+by a groom, was off like the wind,
+disregarding the shrieks of his travelling
+companion, a female two or three-and-twenty
+years old, of great beauty,
+and very richly attired. The cries
+and alarm of the lady thus deserted
+were redoubled, when an instant later
+a guerilla of fierce aspect presented
+himself at the carriage-door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have no fear, se&ntilde;ora,&quot; said the
+Empecinado, &quot;you are in the hands
+of honourable men, and no harm shall
+be done you.&quot; And having by suchlike
+assurances succeeded in calming
+her terrors, he obtained from her
+some information as to the contents
+of the carts and carriages, as well as
+regarding herself and her late companion.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had abandoned her,
+and consulted his own safety by flying
+with the escort, was her husband,
+Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond
+merchant to the late King
+Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the
+unsettled state of things in Spain, he
+was hastening to take refuge in France,
+with his handsome wife and his great
+wealth&mdash;of the latter of which no inconsiderable
+portion was contained in
+the carriage, in the shape of caskets
+of jewellery, diamonds, and other
+valuables.</p>
+
+<p>Repairing to the neighbouring
+mountains, the guerillas proceeded to
+examine their booty, which the Empecinado
+permitted them to divide
+among themselves, with the exception
+of the carriage and its contents, including
+the lady, which he reserved
+for his own share.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day came letters
+from the French military governor of
+Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur
+Barbot, who had taken refuge in that
+town, and offered a large sum as ransom
+for his wife. To this application
+<a class="pagenum" name="page345" id="page345" title="page345"></a>the Empecinado did not vouchsafe
+any answer, but marched off to his
+native village of Castrillo, taking with
+him jewels, carriage, and lady. The
+latter he established in the house of
+his brother Manuel, recommending
+her to the care of his sister-in-law,
+and commanding that she should be
+treated with all possible respect, and
+her wishes attended to on every point.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado's exultation at
+the success of his enterprize was great,
+but he little foresaw all the danger
+and trouble that his rich capture was
+hereafter to occasion him. He had
+become violently enamoured of his fair
+prisoner, and in order to have leisure
+to pay his court to her, he sent off his
+partida on a distant expedition under
+the command of Fuentes, and himself
+remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost
+to find favour in the eyes of the
+beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then
+in the prime of life, a remarkably
+handsome man, and notwithstanding
+that the French affected to treat him
+as a brigand, his courage and patriotism
+were admitted by the unprejudiced
+among all parties, and his bold
+and successful deeds had already
+procured him a degree of renown that
+was an additional recommendation of
+him to the fair sex. It may not,
+therefore, be deemed very surprising
+that, after the first few days of her
+captivity were passed, and she had
+become a little used to the novelty of
+her position, the lady began to consider
+the Empecinado with some
+degree of favour, and seemed not altogether
+disposed to be inconsolable in
+her widowhood. He on his part spared
+no pains to please her. His very nature
+seemed changed by the violence
+of his new passion; and so great was
+the metamorphosis that his best friends
+scarcely recognized him for the same
+man. He seemed totally to have forgotten
+the career to which he had devoted
+himself, and the hatred and
+war of extermination he had vowed
+against the French. The restless activity
+and spirit of enterprize which
+formed such distinguishing traits in
+his character, were completely lulled
+to sleep by the charms of the fair
+Barbot. Nor was the change in his
+external appearance less striking.
+Aware that the rude manners and
+attire of a guerilla were not likely to
+please the fastidious taste of a town-bred
+dame, he hastened to discard
+them. His rough bushy beard and
+mustaches were carefully trimmed
+and adjusted by the most expert barber
+of the neighbourhood; his
+sheepskin jacket, heavy boots, and jingling
+double-roweled spurs thrown aside,
+and in their place he assumed the national
+garb, so well adapted to show
+off a handsome person, and which,
+although now almost disused throughout
+Spain, far surpasses in elegance the
+prevailing costumes of the nineteenth
+century: a short light jacket of black
+velvet, and waistcoat of the richest
+silk, both profusely decorated with
+gold filigree buttons; purple velvet
+breeches fastened at the knee with
+bunches of ribands; silk stockings,
+and falling boots of chamois leather,
+by the most expert maker in Cordova;
+a crimson silk sash round his waist,
+and round his neck a silk handkerchief,
+of which the ends were drawn
+through a magnificent jewelled ring.
+A green velvet cap, ornamented with
+sables and silver, and an ample cloak
+trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of
+a commandant of French gendarmes,
+completed this picturesque costume.</p>
+
+<p>Thus attired, and mounted on a
+splendid horse, the Empecinado escorted
+the object of his new flame to
+all the f&ecirc;tes and merry-makings of the
+surrounding country. Not a <i>romeria</i>
+in the neighbouring villages, not a
+fair or a bull-fight in all the valley of
+the Duero, but were graced by the
+presence of Martin Diez and his dulcinea,
+whose fine horse and gallant
+equipment, but more especially the
+beauty of the rider, inspired universal
+admiration. As might be expected,
+many of those who had known the
+Empecinado a poor vine-dresser, became
+envious of his good fortune,
+and others who envied him not, were
+indignant at seeing him waste his
+time in such degrading effeminacy,
+instead of following up the career
+which he had so nobly begun. There
+was much murmuring, therefore, to
+which, however, he gave little heed;
+and several weeks had passed in the
+manner above described, when an incident
+occurred to rouse him from the
+sort of lethargy in which he was sunk.</p>
+
+<p>A despatch reached him from the
+Captain-General, Don Gregorio Cuesta,
+requiring his immediate presence
+at Ciudad Rodrigo, there to receive
+directions concerning the execution
+of a service of the greatest importance,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page346" id="page346" title="page346"></a>and which was to be intrusted
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>This order had its origin in circumstances
+of which the Empecinado was
+totally ignorant. The jeweller Barbot,
+finding that neither large offers
+nor threats of punishment had any
+effect upon the Empecinado, who persisted
+in keeping his wife prisoner,
+made interest with the Duke of Infantado,
+then general of one of the
+Spanish armies, and besought him to
+exert his influence in favour of the
+captive lady, and to have her restored
+to her friends. The duke, who was
+a very important personage at the
+court of Charles the Fourth, and the
+favourite of Ferdinand the Seventh
+at the beginning of his reign, entertained
+a particular friendship for Barbot;
+and, if the <i>chronique scandaleuse</i>
+of Madrid might be believed, a still
+more particular one for his wife. He
+immediately wrote to General Cuesta,
+desiring that the lady might be sent
+back to her husband without delay, as
+well as all the jewels and other spoil
+that had been seized by the Empecinado.</p>
+
+<p>With much difficulty did the guerilla
+make up his mind to abandon
+the inglorious position, and to go
+where duty called him. Strongly
+recommending his captive to his brother
+and sister-in-law, he set out for
+Ciudad Rodrigo, escorted by a sergeant
+and ten men of his partida.
+They had not proceeded half a mile
+from Castrillo, when, from behind a
+hedge bordering the road, a shot was
+fired, and the bullet slightly wounded
+the Empecinado's charger. Two of
+the escort pushed their horses through
+the hedge, and immediately returned,
+dragging between them a grey-haired
+old man, seventy years of age, who
+clutched in his wrinkled fingers a
+rusty carbine that had just been discharged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is surely mad!&quot; exclaimed
+the Empecinado, gazing in astonishment
+at the venerable assassin. &quot;<i>Dime,
+viejo</i>; do you know me? And why do
+you seek my life?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Si, si, te conozes</i>. You are the
+Empecinado&mdash;the bloody Empecinado.
+Give me back my Pedro,
+whom you murdered. <i>Ay di me!
+mi Pedrillo, te han matado!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the old man's frame quivered
+with rage, as he glared on the Empecinado
+with an expression of unutterable
+hate.</p>
+
+<p>One of the guerillas stepped forward&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis old Gutierrez, the father of
+Pedro, who was hung in the Pi&ntilde;ares
+de Coca, for betraying us to the
+French.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Throw his carbine into yonder
+pool, and leave the poor wretch,&quot; said
+the Empecinado; &quot;his son deserved
+the death he met.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He missed his aim to-day, but he
+may point truer another time,&quot; said
+one of the men, half drawing a pistol
+from his holster.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Harm him not!&quot; said the Empecinado
+sternly, and the party rode on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Maldito seas</i>!&quot; screamed the old
+man, casting himself in the dust of
+the road, in a paroxysm of impotent
+fury. &quot;<i>Maldito! Maldito! Ay de
+mi! mi Pedrillo!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And his curses and lamentations
+continued till the guerillas were out
+of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at Ciudad Rodrigo, the
+Empecinado went immediately to General
+Cuesta, who, although he did
+not receive him unkindly, could not
+but blame him greatly for the enormous
+crime he had committed in carrying
+off a lady who was distinguished
+by so mighty a personage as the Duke
+of Infantado. He told him it was absolutely
+necessary to devise some plan
+by which the Duke's anger might be
+appeased. Murat also had sent a message
+to the central junta, saying, that
+if satisfaction were not given, he
+would send troops to lay waste the
+whole district of Penafiel, in which
+Castrillo was situated; and it was
+probable, that if he had not done so
+already, it was because a large portion
+of the inhabitants of that district were
+believed to be well affected to the
+French. Without exactly telling him
+what he must do, the old general gave
+him a despatch for the <i>corregidor</i> of
+Penafiel, and desired him to present
+himself before that functionary, and
+concert with him the measures to be
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado took his leave,
+and was quitting the governor's palace
+when he overtook at the door an
+<i>avogado</i>, who was a countryman of
+his, and whom he had left at Castrillo
+when he set out from that place. The
+sight of this man was a ray of light to
+the Empecinado, who immediately suspected
+that his enemies were intriguing
+against him. He proposed to the
+lawyer that they should walk
+<a class="pagenum" name="page347" id="page347" title="page347"></a>to the inn, to which the latter consented.
+They had to traverse a lonely
+place, known by the name of San
+Francisco's Meadow, and on arriving
+there, behind the shelter of some walls,
+the Empecinado seized the advocate
+by the collar, and swore he would
+strangle him if he did not instantly
+confess what business had brought
+him to Ciudad Rodrigo, as well as all
+the plans or plots against the Empecinado
+to which he might be privy.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer, who had known Diez
+from his childhood, and was fully
+aware of his desperate character and
+of his own peril, trembled for his life,
+and besought him earnestly to use no
+violence, for that he was willing to
+tell all he knew. Thereupon the Empecinado
+loosened his grasp, which
+had wellnigh throttled the poor avogado,
+and cocking a pistol, as a sort
+of warning to the other to tell the
+truth, bade him sit down beside him
+and proceed with his narrative.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer informed him that the
+<i>ayuntamiento</i> or corporation of Castrillo,
+and those of all the towns and
+villages of the district, found themselves
+in great trouble on account of
+the convoy he had intercepted, and
+more particularly of the lady whom
+he kept prisoner, and whose friends it
+appeared were persons of much influence
+with both contending parties, for
+that the junta and the French had
+alike demanded her liberty; and while
+the latter were about to send troops
+to put the whole country to fire and
+sword, the former, as well as the Spanish
+generals, had refused to afford
+them any protection against the consequences
+of her detention, and accused
+the ayuntamiento and the priests
+of encouraging the Empecinado to
+hold her in captivity. He himself
+had been sent to Ciudad Rodrigo to
+beg General Cuesta's advice, and the
+general had declared himself unable
+to assist them, but recommended them
+to restore the lady and treasure, if they
+did not wish the French to lay waste
+the country, and take by force the
+bone of contention.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado, suspecting that
+General Cuesta had not used all due
+frankness with him in this matter,
+handed to the lawyer the letter that
+had been given him for the corregidor
+of Penafiel, and compelled him, much
+against his will, to open and read it.
+Its contents coincided with what the
+avogado had told him; the general
+advising the corregidor to use every
+means to compromise the matter, rather
+than wait till the French should
+do themselves justice by the strong
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving that, from various motives,
+every body was against him in
+this matter, the Empecinado bethought
+himself how he should get out of the
+scrape.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As an old friend and countryman,
+and more especially as a lawyer,&quot;
+said he to the avogado, &quot;you are the
+most fitting man to give me advice in
+this difficulty. Tell me, then, what I
+ought to do, in order that our native
+town, which is innocent in the matter,
+should suffer no prejudice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You speak now like a sensible
+man,&quot; replied the other, &quot;and as a
+friend will I advise you. Let us immediately
+set off to Penafiel, deliver
+the general's letter to the corregidor,
+and take him with us to Castrillo.
+There, for form's sake, an examination
+of your conduct in the affair can
+take place. You shall give up the
+jewels, the carriage, and the lady, and
+set off immediately to join your partida.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the greater part of that I willingly
+agree,&quot; said the Empecinado.
+&quot;The jewels are buried in the cellar,
+and the carriage is in the stable.
+Take both when you list. But as to
+the lady, before I give her up, I will
+give up my own soul. She is my
+property; I took her in fair fight,
+and at the risk of my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will think better of it before
+we get to Castrillo,&quot; replied the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado shook his head,
+but led the way to the inn, where they
+took horse, and the next day reached
+Penafiel, whence they set out the following
+morning for Castrillo, which is
+a couple of leagues further, accompanied
+by the corregidor, his secretary,
+and two alguazils. The Empecinado
+was induced to leave his escort at
+Penafiel, in order that the sort of <i>pro
+form&acirc;</i> investigation which was to be
+gone through might not appear to have
+taken place under circumstances of
+intimidation. The avogado started a
+couple of hours earlier than the rest
+of the party, to have things in readiness,
+so that the proceedings might be
+got through as rapidly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>It was about eight o'clock on a fine
+summer's morning that the Empecinado
+<a class="pagenum" name="page348" id="page348" title="page348"></a>and his companions reached Castrillo.
+As they entered the town, an
+old mendicant, who was lying curled
+up like a dog in the sunshine under
+the porch of a house, lifted his head
+at the noise of the horses. As his
+eyes rested upon Diez, he made a
+bound forward with an agility extraordinary
+in one of his years, and fell
+almost under the feet of the Empecinado's
+horse, making the startled animal
+spring aside with a violence and
+suddenness sufficient to unhorse many
+a less practised rider than the one who
+bestrode him. The Empecinado lifted
+his whip in anger, but the old man,
+who had risen to his feet, showed no
+sign of fear, and as he stood in the
+middle of the road, and immediately
+in the path of the Empecinado, the
+latter recognized the wild features and
+long grey hair of old Gutierrez.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Maldito seas</i>!&quot; cried the old man,
+extending his arms towards the guerilla.
+&quot;Murderer! the hour of vengeance
+is nigh. I saw it in my dreams.
+My Pedrillo showed me his assassin
+trampled under the feet of horses.
+<i>Asesino! Venga la hora de tu
+muerte!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the old man, who was half
+crazed by his misfortunes, relapsed
+into an incoherent strain of lamentations
+for his son, and curses upon him
+whom he called his murderer.</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado, who, on recognizing
+old Gutierrez, had lowered his
+riding-whip, and listened unmoved to
+his curses and predictions, rode forward,
+explaining as he went, to the
+astonished corregidor, the scene that
+had just occurred. A little further on
+he separated from his companions,
+giving them rendezvous at ten o'clock
+at the house of the ayuntamiento.
+Proceeding to his brother's dwelling,
+he paid a visit to Madame Barbot,
+breakfasted with her, and then prepared
+to keep his appointment. He
+placed a brace of pistols and a poniard
+in his belt, and taking a loaded <i>trabuco</i>
+or blunderbuss, in his hand,
+wrapped himself in his cloak so as to
+conceal his weapons, and repaired to
+the town-hall.</p>
+
+<p>He found the tribunal already installed,
+and every thing in readiness.
+Saluting the corregidor, he began pacing
+up and down the room without
+taking off his cloak. The corregidor
+repeatedly urged him to be seated, but
+he refused, and continued his walk,
+replying to the questions that were
+put to him, his answers to which were
+duly written down. About a quarter of
+an hour had passed in this manner, when
+a noise of feet and talking was heard
+in the street, and the Empecinado, as
+he passed one of the windows that
+looked out upon the <i>plaza</i>, saw, with
+no very comfortable feelings, that a
+number of armed peasants were entering
+the town hall. He perceived
+that he was betrayed, but his presence
+of mind stood his friend, and with his
+usual promptitude, he in a moment
+decided how he should act. Without
+allowing it to appear that he had any
+suspicion of what was going on, he
+walked to the door of the audience
+chamber, and before any one could interfere,
+shut and locked it. Then
+stepping up to the corregidor, he
+threw off his cloak, and presented his
+trabuco at the magistrate's head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Se&ntilde;or Corregidor,&quot; said he, &quot;this
+is not our agreement, but a base act
+of treachery. Commend yourself to
+God, for you are about to die.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The corregidor was so dreadfully
+terrified at these words, and at the
+menacing action of the Empecinado,
+that he swooned away, and fell down
+under the table&mdash;the escribano fled
+into an adjoining chamber, and concealed
+himself under a bed&mdash;while the
+alguazils, trembling with fear, threw
+themselves upon their knees, and petitioned
+for mercy. The Empecinado,
+finding himself with so little trouble
+master of the field of battle, took possession
+of the papers that were lying
+upon the table, and, unlocking the
+door, proceeded to the principal staircase,
+which he found occupied by
+inhabitants of the town, armed with
+muskets and fowling-pieces. Placing
+his blunderbuss under his arm, with
+his hand upon the trigger, &quot;Make
+way!&quot; cried he; &quot;the first who
+moves a finger may reckon upon the
+contents of my trabuco.&quot; His menace
+and resolute character produced the
+desired effect; a passage was opened,
+and he left the house in triumph. On
+reaching the street, however, he found
+a great crowd of men, women, and
+even children, assembled, who occupied
+the plaza and all the adjacent
+streets, and received him with loud
+cries of &quot;Death to the Empecinado!
+<i>Muera el ladron y mal Cristiano</i>!&quot;
+The armed men whom he had left in
+the town-house fired several shots at
+<a class="pagenum" name="page349" id="page349" title="page349"></a>him from the windows, but nobody
+dared to lay hands upon him, as he
+marched slowly and steadily through
+the crowd, trabuco in hand, and casting
+glances on either side that made
+those upon whom they fell shrink involuntarily
+backwards.</p>
+
+<p>On the low roof of one of the houses
+of the plaza, that formed the angle
+of the Calle de la Cruz, or street of the
+cross, old Gutierrez had taken his station.
+With the fire of insanity in his
+bloodshot eyes, and a grin of exultation
+upon his wasted features, he witnessed
+the persecution of the Empecinado,
+and while his ears drank in the
+yells and hootings of the multitude,
+he added his shrill cracked voice to
+the uproar. When the shots were
+fired from the town-hall, he bounded
+and capered upon the platform, clapping
+his meagre fingers together in
+ecstasy; but as the Empecinado got
+further from the house, and the firing
+was discontinued, an expression of
+anxiety replaced the look of triumph
+that had lighted up the old maniac's
+face. Diez still moved on unhurt,
+and was now within a few paces of
+the house on which Gutierrez had
+perched himself. The old man's uneasiness
+increased. &quot;Va a escapar!&quot;
+muttered he to himself; &quot;they will
+let him escape. Oh, if I had a gun,
+my Pedrillo would soon be avenged!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Empecinado was passing under
+the house. A sudden thought struck
+Gutierrez. Stamping with his foot,
+he broke two or three of the tiles on
+which he was standing, and snatching
+up a large heavy fragment, he leaned
+over the edge of the roof to get a full
+view of the Empecinado, who was at
+that moment leaving the plaza and
+entering the Calle de la Cruz. In
+five seconds more he would be out of
+sight. As it was, it was only by leaning
+very far forward that Gutierrez
+could see him, walking calmly along,
+and keeping at bay the angry but
+cowardly mob that yelped at his heels,
+like a parcel of village curs pursuing
+a bloodhound, whose look alone prevents
+their too near approach.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing his left arm round a
+chimney, the old man swung himself
+forward, and with all the force that
+he possessed, hurled the tile at the
+object of his hate. The missile struck
+the Empecinado upon the temple, and
+he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Viva</i>!&quot; screamed Gutierrez; but
+a cry of agony followed the shout of
+exultation. The chimney by which
+the old man supported himself was
+loose and crumbling, and totally unfit
+to bear his weight as he hung on by
+it, and leaned forward to gloat over
+his vengeance. It tottered for a moment,
+and then fell with a crash into
+the street. The height was not great,
+but the pavement was sharp and uneven;
+the old man pitched upon his
+head, and when lifted up was already
+a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>When the mob saw the Empecinado
+fall, they threw themselves upon him
+with as much ferocity as they had
+previously shown cowardice, and beat
+and ill-treated him in every possible
+manner. Not satisfied with that, they
+bound him hand and foot, and pushed
+him through a cellar window, throwing
+after him stones, and every thing
+they could find lying about the street.
+At last, wearied by their own brutality,
+they left him for dead, and he
+remained in that state till nightfall,
+when the corregidor and the ayuntamiento
+proceeded to inspect his body,
+in order to certify his death, and have
+him buried. When he was brought
+out of the cellar, however, they perceived
+he still breathed, and sent for
+a surgeon, and also for a priest to administer
+the last sacraments. They
+then carried him upon a ladder to the
+<i>posito</i>, or public granary, a strong
+building, where they considered he
+would be in safety, and put him to
+bed, bathed in blood and covered with
+wounds and bruises.</p>
+
+<p>The corregidor, fearing that the
+news of the riot, and of the death of
+the Empecinado, would reach Penafiel,
+and that the escort which had been
+left there, and the many partizans that
+Diez had in that town, would come
+over to Castrillo to avenge his death,
+persuaded one of the cur&eacute;s or parish
+priests of the latter place, to go over to
+Penafiel in all haste, and, counterfeiting
+great alarm, to spread the report
+that the French had entered Castrillo,
+seized the Empecinado, and carried
+him off to Aranda. This was accordingly
+done; and the Empecinado's escort
+being made aware of the vicinity
+of the French and the risk they ran,
+immediately mounted their horses and
+marched to join Mariano Fuentes, accompanied
+by upwards of fifty young
+men, all partizans of the Empecinado,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page350" id="page350" title="page350"></a>and eager to revenge him. This matter
+being arranged, the corregidor had
+the jewels that were buried in the
+cellar of Manuel Diez dug up, and
+having taken possession of them, and
+installed Madame Barbot with all due
+attention in one of the principal houses
+of the town, he forwarded a report to
+General Cuesta of all that had occurred.
+The general immediately sent
+an escort to conduct the lady and the
+treasure to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ordered
+that as soon as the Empecinado
+was in a state to be moved, he should
+also be sent under a strong guard to
+that city.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the Empecinado's vigorous
+constitution triumphed over the
+injuries he had received, and he was
+getting so rapidly better, that for his
+safer custody the corregidor thought
+it necessary to have him heavily ironed.
+Deeming it impossible he should escape,
+and there being no troops in the
+village, no sentry was placed over him,
+so that at night his friends were able
+to hold discourse with him through the
+grating of one of the windows of the
+posito. In this manner he contrived
+to send a message to his brother
+Manuel, who, having also got into
+trouble on account of Madame Barbot's
+detention, had been compelled to
+take refuge in the mountains of Bilbuena,
+three leagues from Castrillo.
+Manuel took advantage of a dark night
+to steal into the town in disguise, and
+to speak with the Empecinado. He
+informed him that the superior of the
+Bernardine Monastery, in the Sierra
+de Balbuena, had been advised that it
+was the intention of the Empecinado's
+enemies to deliver him over to the
+French, in order that they might shoot
+him. The Empecinado replied, that
+he strongly suspected there was some
+such plot in agitation, and desired his
+brother to seek out Mariano Fuentes,
+and order him to march his band into
+the neighbourhood of Castrillo, and
+that on their arrival he would send
+them word what to do.</p>
+
+<p>Eight days elapsed, and the Empecinado
+was now completely cured
+of his wounds, so that he was in much
+apprehension lest he should be sent off
+to Ciudad Rodrio before the arrival
+of Fuentes. On the eighth night,
+however, his brother came to the window,
+and informed him that the partida
+was in the neighbourhood, and
+only waited his orders to march upon
+Castrillo, rescue him, and revenge the
+treatment he had received. This the
+Empecinado strongly enjoined them
+not to do, but desired his brother to
+come to his prison door at two o'clock
+the next morning with a led horse, and
+that he had the means to set himself
+at liberty. Manuel Diez did as he was
+ordered, wondering, however, in what
+manner the Empecinado intended to
+get out of the posito, which was a
+solidly constructed edifice with a massive
+door and grated windows. But
+the next night, when the guerilla heard
+the horses approaching his prison, he
+seized the door by an iron bar that
+traversed it on the inner side, and,
+exerting his prodigious strength, tore
+it off the hinges as though it had been
+of pasteboard. His feet being fastened
+together by a chain, he was compelled
+to sit sideways upon the saddle; but
+so elated was he to find himself once
+more at liberty that he pushed his
+horse into a gallop, and with his fetters
+clanking as he went, dashed
+through the streets of Castrillo, to the
+astonishment and consternation of the
+inhabitants, who knew not what devil's
+dance was going on in their usually
+quiet town.</p>
+
+<p>At Olmos, a village a quarter of
+a league from Castrillo, the fugitives
+halted, and roused a smith, who
+knocked off the Empecinado's irons.
+After a short rest at the house of an
+approved friend they remounted their
+horses, and a little after daybreak
+reached the place where Fuentes had
+taken up his bivouac. The Empecinado
+was received with great rejoicing,
+and immediately resumed the
+command. He passed a review of his
+band, and found it consisted of two
+hundred and twenty men, all well
+mounted and armed.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the alarm of the inhabitants
+of Castrillo when they found the
+prison broken open and the prisoner
+gone; and their terror was increased
+a hundred-fold, when a few hours
+later news was brought that the Empecinado
+was marching towards the
+town at the head of a strong body of
+cavalry. Some concealed themselves
+in cellars and suchlike hiding-places,
+others left the town and fled to the
+neighbouring woods; but the majority,
+despairing of escape by human means
+from the terrible anger of the Empecinado,
+shut themselves up in their
+houses, closed the doors and windows,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page351" id="page351" title="page351"></a>and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance
+from the impending evil. Never
+had there been seen in Castrillo such
+a counting of rosaries and beating of
+breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling
+of aves and paters, as upon that
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>At noon the Empecinado entered
+the town at the head of his band,
+trumpets sounding, and the men firing
+their pistols and carbines into the air,
+in sign of joy at having recovered
+their leader. Forming up the partida
+in the market-place, the Empecinado
+sent for the corregidor and other
+authorities, who presented themselves
+before him pale and trembling, and
+fully believing they had not five minutes
+to live.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fear nothing!&quot; said the Empecinado,
+observing their terror. &quot;It
+is certain I have met foul treatment
+at your hands; and it was the harder
+to bear coming from my own countrymen
+and townsfolk. But you have
+been misled, and will one day repent
+your conduct. I have forgotten your
+ill usage, and only remember the
+poverty of my native town, and the
+misery in which this war has plunged
+many of its inhabitants.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he delivered to the alcalde
+and the parish priests a hundred
+ounces of gold for the relief of the
+poor and support of the hospital, and
+ten more to be spent in a <i>novillada</i>, or
+bull-bait and festival for the whole
+town. Cutting short their thanks
+and excuses, he left Castrillo and
+marched to the village of Sacramenia,
+where he quartered his men, and, accompanied
+by Mariano Fuentes, went
+to pay a visit to a neighbouring monastery.
+The monks received him
+with open arms and a hearty welcome,
+hailing him as the main prop
+of the cause of independence in Old
+Castile. They sat down to dinner in
+the refectory; and the conversation
+turning upon the state of the country,
+the Empecinado expressed his unwillingness
+to carry on the war in that
+province, on account of the little confidence
+he could place in the inhabitants,
+so many of whom had become
+<i>afrancesados</i>; and as a proof of this,
+he related all that had occurred to him
+at Castrillo. Upon hearing this the
+abbot, who was a man distinguished
+for his talents and patriotism, recommended
+Diez to lead his band to New
+Castile, where he would not have to
+encounter the persecutions of those
+who, having known him poor and insignificant,
+envied him his good fortune,
+and sought to throw obstacles in
+his path. He offered to get him letters
+from the general of the order of
+San Bernardo to the superiors of the
+various monasteries, in order that he
+might receive such assistance and
+support as they could give, and he
+might chance to require.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one is a prophet in his own
+country,&quot; said the good father; &quot;Mahomet
+in his native town of Medina
+met with the same ill-treatment that
+you, Martin Diez, have encountered
+in the place of your birth. Abandon,
+then, a province which does not recognize
+your value, and go where your
+reputation has already preceded you,
+to defend the holy cause of Spain and
+of religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Struck by the justice of this reasoning,
+the Empecinado resolved to
+change the scene of his operations,
+and the next morning marched his
+squadron in the direction of New
+Castile.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s6" id="bw329s6"></a>
+<h2><a class="pagenum" name="page352" id="page352" title="page352"></a>THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME.</h3>
+
+<p>After Jack and Martin parted company,
+you may remember that Jack,
+who had turned his face northward,
+got into high favour with the landlord
+of the North Farm Estate, who, being
+mightily edified with his discourses
+and sanctimonious demeanour, and
+not aware of his having been mad
+before, or being, perchance, just
+as mad himself&mdash;took him in, made
+much of him, gave him a cottage
+upon his manor to live in, and built
+him a tabernacle in which he might
+hold forth when the spirit moved him.
+In process of time, however, it happened
+that North Farm and the Albion
+Estates came into the possession of one
+proprietor, Esquire Bull, in whose
+house Martin had always been retained
+as domestic chaplain&mdash;at least,
+ever since that desperate scuffle with
+Lord Peter and his crew, when he
+tried to land some Spanish smugglers
+on the coast, for the purpose of carrying
+off Martin, and establishing himself
+in Squire Bull's house in his stead.
+Squire Bull, who was a man of his
+word, and wished to leave all things
+on North Farm as he found them,
+Jack and his tabernacle included, undertook
+at once to pay him a reasonable
+salary, with the free use of his
+house and tabernacle to him and his
+heirs for ever. But knowing that on
+a previous occasion, (which you may
+recollect,<a name="footnotetag46" id="footnotetag46"></a><a href="#footnote46"><sup>46</sup></a>) Jack's melancholy had gone
+so far that he had hanged himself,
+though he was cut down just before
+giving up the ghost, and by dint of
+bloodletting and galvanism, had been
+revived; and also that, notwithstanding
+his periodical fits and hallucinations,
+he could beat even Peter himself,
+who had been his instructor, for
+cunning and casuistry, he took care that,
+before Jack was allowed to take possession
+under his new lease, every thing
+should be made square between them.
+So he had the terms of their indenture
+all written out on parchment, signed,
+sealed, and delivered before witnesses,
+and even got a private Act of Parliament
+carried through, for the purpose
+of making every thing between them
+more secure. And well it was for the
+Squire that he bethought himself of his
+precaution in time, as you will afterwards
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>This union of the two entailed
+properties in the Bull family, brought
+Jack and Martin a good deal more
+into one anothers' company than they
+had formerly been; and 'twas clear,
+that Jack, who had now got somewhat
+ashamed of his threadbare raiment,
+and tired of his spare oatmeal diet,
+was mightily struck with the dignified
+air and comfortable look of Martin,
+and grudged him the frequency with
+which he was invited to Squire Bull's
+table. By degrees, he began to conform
+his own uncouth manner to an
+imitation of his. He wore a better
+coat, which he no longer rubbed
+against the wall to take the gloss from
+off it; he ceased to interlard all his
+ordinary speech with texts of Scripture;
+his snuffle abated audibly; he
+gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody,
+and lost, in a great measure,
+his aversion to Christmas tarts and
+plum-pudding. After a time, he might
+even be seen with a fishing-rod over
+his shoulder; then he contrived sundry
+improvements in gun-locks and double-barrels,
+for which he took out a patent,
+and in fact did not entirely escape the
+suspicion of being a poacher. He
+held assemblies in his house, where at
+times he allowed a little singing; nay,
+on one occasion, a son of his&mdash;for he
+had now a large family&mdash;was found
+accompanying a psalm-tune upon the
+(barrel) organ, and it was rumoured
+about the house, that Jack, though he
+thought it prudent to disclaim this
+overture, had no great objection to
+it. Be that as it may, it is certain,
+that instead of his old peaked hat and
+band, Jack latterly took to wearing
+broad-brimmed beavers, which he was
+seen trying to mould into a spout-like
+shape, much resembling a shovel. And
+so far had the transformation gone, that
+the Vicar of Fudley, meeting him one
+evening walking to an assembly arrayed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page353" id="page353" title="page353"></a>in a court coat, with this extraordinary
+hat upon his head, and a pair
+of silver buckles in his shoes, pulled
+off his hat to him at a little distance,
+mistaking him for a near relation of
+Martin, if not for Martin himself.</p>
+
+<p>There was no great harm you will
+think in all these whims, and for my
+own part, I believe that Jack was never
+so honest a fellow as he was during this
+time, when he was profiting by Martin's
+example. He kept his own place,
+ruling his family in a quiet and orderly
+way, without disturbing the peace of
+his neighbours: and seemed to have
+forgotten his old tricks of setting people
+by the ears, and picking quarrels with
+constables and justices of the peace.
+Howbeit, those who knew him longest
+and best, always said that this was too
+good to last: that with him these intervals
+of sobriety and moderation
+were always the prelude to a violent
+access of his peculiar malady, and
+that by-and-bye he would break out
+again, and that there would be the
+devil to pay, and no pitch hot.</p>
+
+<p>It so happened that Squire Bull had
+a good many small village schools on
+his Estate of North Farm, to which the
+former proprietors had always been in
+the custom of appointing the ushers
+themselves; and much to Jack's annoyance,
+when Squire Bull succeeded, the
+latter had taken care in his bargain with
+him, to keep the right of appointment
+to these in his own hand. But, at the
+same time, he told Jack fairly, that as
+he had no wish to dabble in Latin,
+Greek, or school learning himself, he
+left him at full liberty to say whether
+those whom he appointed were fit for
+the situation or not&mdash;so that if they
+turned out to be ignoramuses, deboshed
+fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack
+had only to say so on good grounds,
+and they were forthwith sent adrift.
+Matters went on for a time very
+smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was
+even said that Jack was inclined to
+carry his complaisance rather far, and
+after a time seldom troubled himself
+much about the usher's qualifications,
+provided his credentials were all right.
+He might ask the young fellow, who
+presented John's commission, perhaps,
+what was the first letter of the
+Greek alphabet? what was Latin for
+beef and greens? or where Moses was
+when the candle was blown out?&mdash;but
+if the candidate answered these questions
+correctly, and if there were no
+scandal or <i>fama clamosa</i> against him,
+as Jack in his peculiar jargon expressed
+it, he generally shook hands with him
+at once, put the key of the schoolhouse
+in his hand, and told him civilly
+to walk up-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was, however, that in
+this respect Jack had little reason to
+complain; for though the Squire, in the
+outset, may not have been very particular
+as to his choice, and it was said
+once or twice gave an ushership to an
+old exciseman, on account of his skill
+in mensuration of fluids, he had latterly
+become very particular, and
+would not hear of settling any body
+as schoolmaster on North Farm,
+who did not come to him with an
+excellent character, certified by two
+or three respectable householders at
+least. But, strangely enough, it was
+observed that just in proportion as the
+Squire became more considerate, Jack
+became more arrogant, pestilent, and
+troublesome. Now-a-days he was always
+discovering some objection to the
+Squire's appointments: one usher, it
+seemed, spoke too low, another too loud,
+one used an ear-trumpet, another a pair
+of grass-green spectacles; one had
+no sufficient gifts for flogging; another
+flogged either too high or too
+low&mdash;(for Jack was like the deserter,
+there was no pleasing him as to the
+mode of conducting the operation;)
+and, finally, another was rejected because
+he was unacquainted with the
+vernacular of Ossian&mdash;to the great
+injury and damage, as was alleged, of
+two Highland chairmen, who at an
+advanced period of life were completing
+their education in the school in
+question. At first Squire Bull, honest
+gentleman, had given in to these
+strange humours on the part of Jack,
+believing that this new-born zeal on
+his part was in the main conscientious,
+though he could not help thinking it
+at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous.
+He had even gone so far,
+occasionally, as to send Jack a list of
+those to whom he proposed giving
+the usherships, accompanied with a
+polite note, in some such terms as
+these, &quot;Squire Bull presents his respects,
+and begs his good friend Jack
+will read over the enclosed list, and
+take the trouble of choosing for himself;&quot;
+a request with which Jack was
+always ready to comply. And, further,
+as Jack had always a great hankering
+after little-goes and penny subscriptions
+<a class="pagenum" name="page354" id="page354" title="page354"></a>of every kind, and was eternally
+trumpeting forth some new nostrum
+or <i>scheme</i> of this kind, as he used to
+call it, the Squire had been prevailed
+upon to purchase from him a good
+many tickets for these schemes from
+time to time, for which he always
+paid in hard cash, though I have never
+heard that any of them turned up
+prizes, except it may have been to
+Jack himself.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, as we have said, grew bolder
+as the Squire became more complying,
+thinking that, in the matter of
+these appointments, as he had once
+got his hand in, it would be his own
+fault if he could not contrive to
+wriggle in his whole body. It so happened,
+too, that just about the very
+time that one of John's usherships became
+vacant, one of those atrabilious
+and hypochondriac fits came over Jack,
+with which, as we have said, he was periodically
+afflicted, and which, though
+they certainly unsettled his brain a
+little, only served, as in the case of
+other lunatics, to render him, during
+the paroxysm, more cunning, inventive,
+and mischievous. After
+moving about in a moping way for
+a day or two&mdash;mumbling in corners,
+and pretending to fall on his knees,
+in his old fashion, in the midst of
+the street, he suddenly got up, flung
+his broad-brimmed beaver into the
+kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt,
+so as to expose his large ears as
+of old, ran home, pulled his rusty
+black doublet out of the chest where it
+had lain for years, squeezing it on as
+he best could&mdash;for he had got somewhat
+corpulent in the mean time&mdash;and
+thus transfigured, he set out to consult
+the village attorney, with whom
+it was observed he remained closeted
+for several hours, turning over Burns'
+Justice, and perusing an office-copy
+of his indenture with the Squire&mdash;a
+planetary conjunction from which
+those who were astrologically given
+boded no good.</p>
+
+<p>What passed between these worthies
+on this occasion&mdash;whether the
+attorney really persuaded Jack that,
+if he set about it, he would undertake
+to find him a flaw in his contract with
+Squire Bull, which would enable him
+to take the matter of the usherships
+into his own hand, and to do as he
+pleased; or whether Jack&mdash;as he
+seemed afterwards to admit in private&mdash;believed
+nothing of what the attorney
+told him, but was resolved to take
+advantage of the Squire's good-nature,
+and to run all risks as to the result, 'tis
+hard to say. Certain it was, however,
+that Jack posted down at once from
+the attorney's chamber to the village
+school, which happened to be then
+vacant, and gathering the elder boys
+about him, he told them he had reason
+to believe the Squire was about to
+send them another usher, very different
+from the last, who was a mortal
+enemy to marbles, pitch-and-toss,
+chuck-farthing, ginger-bread, and
+half holydays; with a corresponding
+liking to long tasks and short commons;
+that the use of the cane would
+be regularly taught, along with that of
+the globes, accompanied with cuts and
+other practical demonstrations; that
+the only chance of escaping this visitation
+was to take a bold line, and
+show face to the usher at once, since
+otherwise the chance was, that at no
+distant period they might be obliged
+to do the very reverse.</p>
+
+<p>Jack further reasoned the matter with
+the boys learnedly, somewhat in this
+fashion&mdash;&quot;That as no one could have
+so strong an interest in the matter, so
+no one could be so good a judge of
+the qualifications of the schoolmaster
+as the schoolboy; that the close and
+intimate relation between these parties
+was of the nature of a mutual contract,
+in the formation of which both had an
+equal right to be consulted; so that,
+without mutual consent, or, as it
+were, a harmonious call by the boys,
+there could be no valid ushership, but
+a mere usurpation of the power of the
+tawse, and unwarrantable administration
+of the birchen twig; that, further,
+this latter power involved a
+fundamental feature, in which they
+could not but feel they had all a deep
+interest&mdash;and which, he might say,
+lay at the bottom of the whole question;
+that he himself perfectly remembered
+that, in former days, the schoolboys
+had always exercised this privilege,
+which he held to be equally
+salutary and constitutional; and that
+he would, at his leisure, show them a
+private memorandum-book of his own,
+in which, though he had hitherto said
+nothing about it, he had found an entry
+to that effect made some thirty years
+before. In short, he told them, if
+they did not wish to be rode over
+rough-shod, they must stand up boldly
+for themselves, and try to get all the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page355" id="page355" title="page355"></a>schools in the neighbourhood to join
+them, if necessary, in a regular barring-out,
+or general procession, in
+which they were to appear with flags
+and banners, bearing such inscriptions
+as the following: &quot;<i>Pro aris et focis</i>&quot;&mdash;&quot;Liberty
+is like the air we breathe,&quot;
+&amp;c. &amp;c., and, lastly, in large gilt
+capitals&mdash;&quot;<i>No usher to be intruded into
+any school contrary to the will of the
+scholars in schoolroom assembled</i>.&quot; And,
+in short, that this process was to be
+repeated until they succeeded in getting
+quit of Squire Bull's usher, and
+getting an usher who would flog them
+with all the forbearance and reserve
+with which Sancho chastised his own
+flesh while engaged in the process of
+disenchanting Dulcinea del Toboso.
+At the same time, with that cunning
+which was natural to him, Jack took
+care to let the scholars know that
+<i>his</i> name was not to be mentioned in
+the transaction; and that, if they
+were asked any questions, they must
+be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for
+that matter, that they objected to
+John's usher from no personal dislike
+to the man himself, and without having
+received fee or reward, in the shape of
+apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar,
+or sweetmeats whatever&mdash;or
+sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or
+other current coin of the realm.</p>
+
+<p>It will be readily imagined that this
+oration of Jack, pronounced as it was
+with some of his old unction, and accompanied
+with that miraculous and
+subtle twist of the tongue which
+we have described in a former chapter,<a name="footnotetag47" id="footnotetag47"></a><a href="#footnote47"><sup>47</sup></a>
+produced exactly the effect upon
+his audience which might be expected.
+The boys were delighted&mdash;tossed up
+their caps&mdash;gave Jack three cheers,
+and told him if he stood by them they
+would stand by him, and that they
+were much mistaken if they did not
+contrive to make the schoolhouse too
+hot for any usher whom Squire Bull
+might think fit to send them.</p>
+
+<p>It happened not long after, as Jack
+had anticipated, that one morning a
+young man called upon with a letter
+from the Squire, intimating that he
+had named him to the vacant ushership;
+and requesting Jack to examine
+into his qualifications as usual. Jack
+begged him to be seated, and (having
+privately sent a message to the schoolboys)
+continued to entertain him with
+enquiries as to John's health and the
+state of the weather, till he heard, by
+the noise in the court, that the boys
+had arrived. In they marched accordingly,
+armed with horn-books,
+primers, slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales,
+and copy-books, taking up their station
+near the writing-desk. The young
+usher-elect, though he thought this a
+whimsical exhibition, supposed that
+the urchins had been brought there
+only to do honour to his examination,
+and accordingly begged Jack, as he
+was in a hurry, to proceed. &quot;Fair and
+softly, young man,&quot; said Jack, in his
+blandest tones; &quot;we must first see what
+these intelligent young gentlemen
+have got to say to that. Tom, my
+fine fellow, here is a gentleman sent
+by Squire Bull to be your usher.
+What do you say to him?&quot; &quot;I don't
+like him,&quot; said Tom. &quot;May I venture
+to ask why?&quot; said the usher,
+putting in a word. &quot;Don't like him,&quot;
+repeated Tom. &quot;Don't like him neither,&quot;
+said Dick. &quot;And no mistake,&quot;
+added Peter, with a grin, which immediately
+circulated round the school.
+&quot;It is quite impossible,&quot; said Jack,
+&quot;under existing circumstances, that the
+matter can proceed any further; it is
+plain the school can never be edified
+by such an usher. But, stop, that
+there may be no misconception on the
+subject. Here you, Smith&mdash;do you
+really mean to say, on soul and conscience,
+you don't think this respectable
+gentleman can do you any good?&quot;
+Of course, Smith stated that his mind
+was quite made up on the subject.
+&quot;Come here, Jenkins,&quot; said Jack,
+beckoning to another boy; &quot;tell the
+truth now&mdash;honour bright, remember.
+Has any body given or promised you
+any apples, parliament, or other
+sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to
+vote against the usher?&quot; Jenkins,
+who had just wiped his lips of the last
+remains of a gingerbread cake, which
+somehow or other had dropped into
+his pocket by accident, protested, on
+his honour, that he was quite above
+such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated
+purely by a conscientious zeal for
+the cause of flogging all over the
+world. &quot;The scruples of these intelligent
+and ingenuous youths,&quot; said
+John, turning to the usher, &quot;must,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page356" id="page356" title="page356"></a>in conscience, receive effect; the law,
+as laid down in my copy of Squire
+Bull's own contract, is this&mdash;'That
+noe ushere be yntruded intoe anie
+schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys
+in schoole-roome assembled.'
+So, with your permission, we will adjourn
+the consideration of the case
+till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas,
+if that be more convenient.&quot; And,
+so saying, he left John's letter lying on
+the table, and shut the schoolroom
+door in the face of the astonished usher.</p>
+
+<p>Squire Bull, as may be imagined,
+was not a little astonished and mortified
+at hearing from the usher, who
+returned looking foolish and chop-fallen,
+of this outbreak on the part of
+Jack, for whom he had really begun
+to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness;
+but knowing of old his fantastical
+and melancholic turn, he attributed
+this sally rather to the state of his
+bowels, which at all times he exceedingly
+neglected, and which, being
+puffed up with flatulency and indigestion
+to an extraordinary degree, not
+unfrequently acted upon his brain&mdash;generating
+therein strange conceits
+and dangerous hallucinations&mdash;than
+to any settled intention on Jack's part
+to pick a quarrel with him or evade
+performance of the conditions of their
+indenture, so long as he was not under
+the influence of hypochondria. And
+having this notion as to Jack's motives,
+and knowing nothing of the
+private confab at the village lawyer's,
+he could not help believing that, by a
+brisk course of purgatives and an antiphlogistic
+treatment&mdash;and without
+resorting to a strait-waistcoat, which
+many who knew Jack's pranks at once
+recommended him to adopt&mdash;he might
+be cured of those acrid and intoxicating
+vapours, which, ascending into
+the brain, led him into such extravagant
+vagaries. &quot;I'faith,&quot; said the
+Squire, &quot;since the poor man has
+taken this mad fancy into his head
+as to the terms of his bargain, the
+best way to restore him to his senses
+is to bring the matter, as he himself
+seemed to desire it, before the Justices
+of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred
+to one but he will have come
+to his senses long before they have
+come to a decision; at all events,
+unless he is madder than I take him
+to be, when he finds how plain the
+terms of the indenture are, he will
+surely submit with a good grace.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So thought the Squire; and, accordingly,
+by his direction, the usher-elect
+brought his case before the Justices at
+their next sittings, who forthwith summoned
+Jack before them to know why
+he refused performance of his contract
+with the Squire. Jack came on the
+day appointed, attended by the attorney&mdash;though
+for that matter he might
+have safely left him behind, being
+fully as much master of all equivocation
+or chicanery as if he had never
+handled anything but quills and quirks
+from his youth upward. This, indeed,
+was probably the effect of his old
+training in Peter's family, for whose
+hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical
+casuistries, notwithstanding his
+dislike to the man himself, he had a
+certain admiration, founded on a secret
+affinity of nature. Indeed it was
+wonderful to observe how, with all
+Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended,
+he took after him in so many
+points&mdash;insomuch that at times, their
+look, voice, manner, and way of thinking,
+were so closely alike, that those
+who knew them best might very well
+have mistaken them for each other.
+The usher having produced the Squire's
+copy of the indenture, pointed out the
+clause by which Jack became bound
+to examine and admit to the schools
+on North Farm any qualified usher
+whom the Squire might send&mdash;as the
+condition on which he was to retain
+his right to the tabernacle and his
+own mansion upon the Farm&mdash;at the
+same time showing Jack's seal and
+signature at the bottom of the deed.
+Jack, being called upon by the justices
+to show cause, pulled out of his
+pocket an old memorandum-book&mdash;very
+greasy, musty, and ill-flavoured&mdash;and
+which, from the quantity of dust
+and cobwebs with which it was overlaid,
+had obviously been lying on the
+shelf for half a century at least. This
+he placed in the hands of his friend
+Snacks the attorney, pointing out to
+him a page or two which he had
+marked with his thumb nail, as appropriate
+to the matter in hand. And
+there, to be sure, was to be found,
+among a quantity of other nostrums,
+recipes, cooking receipts, prescriptions,
+and omnium-gatherums of all
+kinds, an entry to this effect:&mdash;&quot;That
+no ushere be yntruded intoe anie
+schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys
+in schoole-roome assembled.&quot;
+Whereupon the attorney maintained,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page357" id="page357" title="page357"></a>that, as this memorandum-book of
+Jack's was plainly of older date than
+the indenture, and had evidently been
+seen by the Squire at or prior to the
+time of signing, as appeared from some
+of the entries which it contained being
+incorporated in the deed, it must
+be presumed, that its whole contents,
+though not to be found in the
+indenture <i>per expressum</i>, or <i>totidem
+verbis</i>, were yet included therein <i>implicitly</i>,
+or in a latent form, inasmuch
+as they were not <i>per expressum</i> excluded
+therefrom;&mdash;this being, as you
+will recollect, precisely the argument
+which Jack had borrowed from Peter,
+when the latter construed their father's
+will in the question as to the
+lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots;
+and very much of the same
+kind with that celebrated thesis which
+Peter afterwards maintained in the
+matter of the brown loaf. And though
+he was obliged to admit (what indeed
+from the very look of the book he
+could not well dispute) that no such
+rule had ever been known or acted
+upon&mdash;and on the contrary that Jack,
+until this last occasion, had always
+admitted the Squire's ushers without
+objection whatsoever; yet he contended
+vehemently, that now that his
+conscience was awakened on the subject,
+the past must be laid out of view;
+and that the old memorandum-book,
+as part and parcel of the indenture
+itself, must receive effect; and farther,
+that whether he, Jack, was right
+or wrong in this matter, the Justices
+had no right to interfere with them.</p>
+
+<p>But the Justices, on looking into this
+antiquated document, found that, besides
+this notandum, the memorandum-book
+contained a number of other entries
+of a very extraordinary kind&mdash;such,
+for instance, as that Martin was
+no better than he should be, and ought
+to be put down speedily: that Squire
+Bull had no more right to nominate
+ushers than he had to be Khan of Tartary:
+that that right belonged exclusively
+to Jack himself, or to the schoolboys
+under Jack's control and direction:
+that Jack was to have the sole
+right of laying down rules for his own
+government, and of enforcing them
+against himself by the necessary compulsitors,
+if the case should arise; thus,
+that Jack should have full powers to
+censure, fine, punish, flog, flay, banish,
+imprison, or set himself in the stocks
+as often as he should think fit; but
+that whether Jack did right or wrong,
+in any given case, Jack was himself
+to be the sole judge, and neither
+Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of
+the Peace was to have one word to
+say to him or his proceedings in the
+matter: on the contrary, that any
+such interference on their part, was
+to be regarded as a high grievance
+and misdemeanour on their part, for
+which Jack was to be entitled at the
+least to read them a lecture from the
+writing-desk, and shut the schoolroom
+door in their own or their children's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>There were many other whimsical
+and extravagant things contained in
+this private note-book, so much so,
+that it was evident no man in his senses
+could ever have intended to make them
+part of his bargain with Jack. But
+the matter was put beyond a doubt
+by the usher producing the original
+draft of the indenture, on which some
+of these crotchets, including this fancy
+about the right of the schoolboys to
+reject the usher if they did not like
+him, had been <i>interlined</i> in Jack's
+hand: but all of which the Squire, on
+revising the deed, had scored out with
+his own pen, adding in the margin,
+opposite to the very passage, the
+words, in italics&mdash;&quot;<i>See him damned
+first.&mdash;J.B.</i>&quot; And as it could not
+be disputed that Jack and the Squire
+ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting
+all this nonsense&mdash;the Justices had
+no hesitation in holding, that Jack's
+private memorandum-book, even if he
+had always carried it in his breeches
+pocket, and quoted it on all occasions,
+instead of leaving it&mdash;as it was plain
+he had done&mdash;for many a long year, in
+some forgotten corner of his trunk
+or lumber-room, could no more affect
+the construction of the indenture
+between himself and Squire, or
+afford him any defence against performance
+of his part of that indenture, than
+if he had founded on the statutes of
+Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug,
+Fee-Faw-Fum, or any other
+Emperor of China for the time being.
+And so, after hearing very deliberately
+all that the attorney for Jack had to
+say to the contrary, they decided that
+Jack must forthwith proceed to examine
+the usher, and give him possession,
+if qualified, of the schoolhouse
+and other appurtenances; or
+else make up his mind to a thundering
+action of damages if he did not.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page358" id="page358" title="page358"></a>The Justices thought that Jack, on
+hearing the case fairly stated, and
+their opinion given against him, with
+a long string of cases in point, would
+yield, and give the usher possession
+in the usual way; but no: no sooner
+was the sentence written out than Jack
+entered an appeal to the Quarter-sessions.
+There the whole matter was
+heard over again, at great length, before
+a full bench; but after Jack and
+his attorney had spoken till they were
+tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a
+moment's hesitation, confirmed the
+sentence of the Justices, with costs.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, who had blustered exceedingly
+as to his chances of bamboozling
+the Quarter-sessions, and quashing
+the sentence of the Justices, looked
+certainly not a little discomfited at the
+result of his appeal. For some days
+after, he was observed to walk about
+looking gloomy and disheartened, and
+was heard to say to some of his family,
+that he began to think matters had
+really gone too far between him and
+his good friend the Squire, to whom
+he owed his bread; that, on second
+thoughts, he would give up the point
+about intruding ushers on the schools,
+and see whether the Squire might not
+be prevailed on to arrange matters on
+an amicable footing; and that he
+would take an opportunity, the next
+time he had an assembly at his house,
+of consulting his friends on the subject.
+And had Jack stuck to this resolution,
+there is little doubt that, by
+some device or other, he would have
+gained all he wanted; for the Squire,
+being an easy, good-natured man, and
+wishing really to do his duty in the
+matter of the ushership, would probably,
+if Jack had yielded in this instance
+with a good grace, have probably
+allowed him in the end to have
+things very much his own way. But
+to the surprise of everybody, the next
+time Jack had a party of friends with
+him, he rose up, and putting on that
+peculiarly sanctimonious expression
+which his countenance generally assumed
+when he had a mind to confuse
+and mystify his auditors by a string
+of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations,
+made a long, unintelligible, and inconsistent
+harangue, the drift of which
+no one could well understand, except
+that it bore that &quot;both the Justices and
+the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses
+who could not understand
+a word of Jack's contract, and knew
+nothing of black-letter whatever; but
+that, nevertheless, as they had decided
+against him, he, as a loyal subject,
+must and would submit;&mdash;not, however,
+that he had the least idea of taking
+the Squire's usher, or any other usher
+whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the
+schoolboys' wishes; <i>that</i>, he begged to
+say, he would never hear of:&mdash;still he
+would obey the law by laying no claim
+himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering
+with the usher's drawing it; and
+yet that he could not exactly answer for
+others not doing so;&quot;&mdash;Jack knowing
+all the time, that, claim as he might,
+he himself had no more right to the salary
+than to the throne of the Celestial
+Empire; while, on the other hand, by
+locking up the schoolroom, and keeping
+the key in his pocket, he had rendered
+it impossible for the poor wight
+of an usher to recover one penny of it&mdash;the
+legal condition of his doing so being
+his actual possession of the schoolhouse
+itself, of which Jack, by this last man&oelig;uvre,
+had contrived to deprive him.
+But, as if to finish the matter, and to
+prove the knavish spirit in which this
+protestation was made, he instantly
+got a <i>private</i> friend and relative of his
+own, with whom the whole scheme
+had been arranged beforehand, to
+come forward and bring an action on
+the case, in which the latter claimed
+the whole fund which would have belonged
+to the unlucky usher&mdash;in terms,
+as he said, of some old arrangement
+made by the Squire's predecessor as to
+school-salaries during vacancy; to be
+applied, as the writ very coolly stated
+it, &quot;for behoof of Jack's destitute widow,
+in the event of his decease, and
+of his numerous and indigent family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Many of Jack's own family, who
+were present on this occasion, remonstrated
+with him on the subject, foreseeing
+that if he went on as he had
+begun and threatened to proceed, he
+must soon come to a rupture with the
+Squire, which could end in nothing
+else than his being turned out of house
+and hall, and thrown adrift upon the
+wide world, without a penny in his
+pocket. But the majority&mdash;who were
+puffed up with more than Jack's own
+madness and had a notion that by
+sheer boldness and bullying on their
+part, the Squire would, after a time,
+be sure to give way, encouraged Jack
+to go on at all hazards, and not to retract
+a hair's breadth in his demands.
+And Jack, who had now become mischievously
+<a class="pagenum" name="page359" id="page359" title="page359"></a>crazed on the subject, and
+began to be as arrogant and conceited
+of his own power and authority, as
+ever my Lord Peter had been in his
+proudest and most pestilential days,
+was not slow to follow their advice.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas of no consequence that a
+friend of the Squire's, who had known
+Jack long, and had really a great kindness
+towards him, tried to bring about
+an arrangement between him and the
+Squire upon very handsome terms.
+He had a meeting with Jack;&mdash;at
+which he talked the matter over in a
+friendly way&mdash;telling him that though
+the Squire must reserve in his own
+hands the nomination of his own ushers,
+he had always been perfectly willing
+to listen to reason in any objections
+that might be taken to them;
+only some reason he must have, were
+it only that Jack could not abide
+the sight of a red-nosed usher:&mdash;let
+that reason, such as it was, be put on
+paper, and he would consider of it;
+and if, from any peculiar idiosyncracy
+in Jack's temperament and constitution,
+he found that his antipathy to
+red noses was unsuperable, probably
+he would not insist on filling up the
+vacancy with a nose of that colour.
+Jack, who was always more rational
+when alone than when he had got the
+attorney and the more frantic members
+of his family at his elbow, acknowledged,
+as he well might, that all
+this seemed very reasonable; and that
+he really thought that on these terms
+the Squire and he would have little
+difficulty in coming to an agreement.
+So they parted, leaving the Squire's
+friend under the impression that all
+was right, and that he had only to get
+an agreement to that effect drawn out,
+signed and sealed by the parties.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, however, he received
+a letter by the penny-post, written no
+doubt in Jack's hand, but obviously
+dictated by the attorney, in these
+terms:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Honoured Sir&mdash;Lest there should
+be any misconception between us as
+to our yesterday's conversation, I
+have put into writing the substance
+of what was agreed on between us,
+which I understand to be this: that
+there shall be no let or impediment to
+the Squire's full and absolute right of
+naming an usher in all cases of vacancy;
+that I shall have an equally
+full right to object to the said usher
+for any reasons that may be satisfactory
+to myself, and thereupon to exclude
+him from the school; leaving it
+to the Squire, if he pleases, to send
+another, whom I shall have the right
+of handling in the same fashion, with
+this further proviso, that if the Squire
+does not fill up the office to my satisfaction
+within half-a-year, I shall
+be entitled to take the appointment
+into my own hands. I need hardly
+add that no Justices of the Peace are to
+take cognizance of anything done by
+me in the matter, be it good, bad, or
+indifferent. Hoping that this statement
+of our mutual views will be
+found correct and satisfactory&mdash;I remain,
+your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;JACK.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The moment the Squire's friend
+perused this missive, he saw plainly
+that all hope of bringing Jack to his
+senses was at an end; and that under
+the advice of evil counsellors, lunatic
+friends, and lewd fellows of the baser
+sort, Jack would shortly bring himself
+and his family to utter ruin.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as might be expected, Jack's
+disorder, which had hitherto been comparatively
+of the calm and melancholy
+kind, broke out into the most violent and
+phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes
+raved incoherently, for hours together,
+against the Squire; often, in the midst
+of his speeches, he was assailed with
+epileptic fits, during which he displayed
+the strangest contortions and
+most laughable gestures; he threw entirely
+aside the decent coat he had
+worn for some time back, and habitually
+attired himself in the old and
+threadbare raiment, which he had worn
+after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously
+sent to the right-about
+by Lord Peter, and even ran about
+the streets with his band tied round
+his peaked beaver, bearing thereon
+the motto&mdash;&quot;<i>Nemo me impune lacessit</i>.&quot;
+If his madness had only
+led him to make a spectacle and laughing-stock
+of himself, by these wild
+vagaries and mountebank exhibitions,
+all had been well, but this did not satisfy
+Jack; his old disposition for a
+riot had returned, and a riot, right or
+wrong, he was determined to have.
+So he set to work to frighten the
+women of the village with stories, as
+to the monsters whom the Squire would
+send among them as ushers, who
+would do nothing but teach their
+<a class="pagenum" name="page360" id="page360" title="page360"></a>children drinking, chuck-farthing, and
+cock-fighting; to the schoolboys
+themselves, talked of the length,
+breadth, and thickness, of the usher's
+birch, which he assured them was
+dipped in vinegar every evening, in
+order to afford a more agreeable stimulus
+to the part affected; he plied
+them with halfpence and strong beer;
+exhorted them to insurrections and
+barrings-out; taught them how to
+mock at any usher who would not submit
+to be Jack's humble servant; and
+by gibes and scurril ballads, which he
+would publish in the newspapers, try to
+make his life a burden to him. He also
+instructed them how best to stick darts
+into his wig, cover his back with
+spittle, fill his pockets with crackers,
+burn assaf&oelig;tida in the fire, extinguish
+the candles with fulminating
+powder, or blow up the writing-desk
+by a train of combustibles. Above
+all, he counselled the urchins to stand
+firm the next time that John sent an
+usher down to that quarter, and vehemently
+to protest for the doctrine of
+election as to their own usher, and reprobation
+as to the Squire's; assuring
+them, that provided they took his advice,
+and followed the plan which he would
+afterwards impart to them in confidence
+at the proper time, he could almost
+take it upon himself to say, that
+in a short time, no tyrannical usher,
+or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should
+venture to show his face, with or without
+tawse or ferule, within the boundaries
+of North Farm.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before an opportunity
+offered of putting these precious
+schemes in practice; for shortly afterwards,
+the old usher of a school on the
+northermost boundary of the North
+Farm estates having died, the ushership
+became vacant, and John, as usual,
+appointed a successor in his room.
+Being warned this time by what had
+taken place on the last occasion, the
+Squire took care to apply beforehand
+to the Justices of the Peace&mdash;got
+a peremptory <i>mandamus</i> from them,
+directing Jack to proceed forthwith,
+and, after the usual trials, to put the
+usher in possession of the schoolhouse
+by legal form, and without re-regard
+to any protest or interruption
+from any or all of the schoolboys
+put together. So down the usher
+proceeded, accompanied by a posse
+of constables and policemen of various
+divisions, till they arrived at the
+schoolhouse, which lay adjacent to
+the churchyard, and then demanded
+admittance. It happened that in this
+quarter resided some of Jack's family,
+who, as we have already mentioned,
+differed from him entirely, thinking him
+totally wrong in the contest with the
+Squire and being completely satisfied
+that all his glosses upon his contract
+were either miserable quibbles or mere
+hallucinations, and that it was his duty,
+so long as he ate John's bread, and
+slept under John's roof, to perform
+fairly the obligations he had come
+under:&mdash;and so, on reading the Justices'
+warrant, which required them,
+on pain of being set in the stocks, and
+forfeiture of two shillings and sixpence
+of penalty, besides costs, to give immediate
+possession to the Squire's
+usher, they at once resolved to obey,
+called for the key of the schoolhouse,
+and proceeded to the door,
+accompanied by the usher and the authorities,
+for the purpose of complying
+with the warrant and admitting the
+usher as in times past. But on arriving
+there, never was there witnessed
+such a scene of confusion. The
+churchyard was crowded with ragamuffins
+of every kind, from all the neighbouring
+parishes; scarcely was there
+a sot or deboshed fellow within the
+district who had not either come himself
+or found a substitute; gipsies, beggarwomen,
+and thimbleriggers were
+thick as blackberries; while Jack himself&mdash;who,
+upon hearing of what was
+going forward, had come down by the
+night coach with all expedition&mdash;was
+standing on a tombstone near the doorway,
+and holding forth to the whole bevy
+of rascals whom he had assembled about
+him. It was evident from his tones and
+gestures that Jack had been exciting
+the mob in every possible way; but as
+the justices and the constables drew
+near, he changed the form of his
+countenance, pulled a psalm-book out
+of his pocket, and, with much sanctity
+and appearance of calmness, gave out
+the tune; in which the miscellaneous
+assemblage around him joined, with
+similar unction and devotion. When
+the procession reached the door, they
+found the whole inside of the schoolhouse
+already packed with urchins
+and blackguards of all kinds, who,
+having previously gained admission
+by the window, had forcibly barricaded
+the door against the constables,
+being assisted in the defence thereof
+<a class="pagenum" name="page361" id="page361" title="page361"></a>by the mob without, who formed a
+double line, and kept hustling the poor
+usher and the constables from side to
+side, helping themselves to a purse or
+two in passing, and calling out at the
+same time, &quot;take care of pickpockets&quot;&mdash;occasionally
+amusing themselves also
+by playfully smashing the beaver of
+some of the justices of the peace over
+their face, to the tune of &quot;all round
+my hat,&quot; sung in chorus, on the Mainzerian
+system, amidst peals of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Jack was skipping up
+and down upon the tombstone, calling
+out to his myrmidons&mdash;&quot;Good
+friends! Sweet friends! Let me not
+stir your spirits up to mutiny. Though
+that cairn of granite stones lies very
+handy and inviting, I pray you refrain
+from it. Touch it not. I humbly
+entreat my friend with the dirty shirt
+not to break the sconce of the respectable
+gentleman whom I have in
+my eye, with that shillelah of his&mdash;though
+I must admit that he is labouring
+under strong and just provocation.&quot;
+&quot;For mercy's sake, my dear sir!&quot;
+he would exclaim to a third&mdash;&quot;don't
+push my respected friend the justice
+into yonder puddle&mdash;the one which
+lies so convenient on your right hand
+there; though, to be sure, the ground
+<i>is</i> slippery, and the thing <i>might</i> happen,
+in a manner without any one's
+being able to prevent it.&quot; And so
+on he went, taking care to say nothing
+for which the justices could afterwards
+venture to commit him to
+Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring up
+the rabble to the utmost, by nods,
+looks, winks, and covert speeches, intended
+to convey exactly the opposite
+meaning from what the words bore.</p>
+
+<p>At last by main force, and after a
+hard scuffle, the constables contrived
+to force the schoolhouse door open,
+and so to make way for the justices,
+the usher, and those of Jack's family
+who, as we have seen already, had
+made up their minds to give the usher
+possession, to enter. But having entered,
+the confusion and bedevilment
+was ten times worse than even in the
+churchyard itself. The benches were
+lined with a pack of overgrown rascals
+in corduroy vestments, and with
+leather at the knees, from all the
+neighbouring villages; in a gallery
+at one end sat a Scotch bagpiper,
+flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant
+performer on the hurdygurdy,
+accompanied by his monkey&mdash;who in
+the course of his circuit through the
+village, had that morning received a
+special retainer, in the shape of half a
+quartern of gin, for the occasion; while
+in the usher's chair were ensconced
+two urchins of about fourteen years
+of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all
+fours, and drinking purl, with their
+legs diffused in a picturesque attitude
+along the writing-desk. One of the
+justices tried to command silence&mdash;till
+the Squire's commission to the
+usher should be read; but no sooner
+had he opened his mouth than the
+whole multitude burst forth as if the
+confusion of tongues had taken place
+for the first time; twenty spoke together,
+ten whistled, as many more
+sang psalms and obscene songs alternately;
+the bagpiper droned his
+worst; the fiddler uttered notes that
+made the hair of those who heard
+them stand on end; while the hurdygurdy
+man did his utmost to grind
+down both his companions, in which
+task he was ably assisted by the grinning
+and chattering of the honourable
+and four-footed gentleman on his
+left. Meantime stones, tiles, and
+rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments
+of slates, rulers, and desks, were circulating
+through the schoolhouse in
+all directions, in the most agreeable
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>One of the justices tried to speak,
+but even from the first it was all
+dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded
+through two sentences, when
+his oration was extinguished as suddenly
+and by the same means as the
+conflagration of the Royal Palace at
+Lilliput. After many attempts to
+obtain a hearing, it became obvious
+that all chance of doing so in the
+schoolhouse was at an end; and so
+the usher, the justices, and the rest,
+adjourned to the next ale-house, where
+they had the usher's commission
+quietly read over in presence of the
+landlord and the waiter, and handed
+him over the keys of the house before
+the same witnesses; of all which, and
+of their previous deforcement by a
+mob of rapscallions, they took care to
+have an instrument regularly drawn
+out by a notary-public. Thereafter
+they ordered a rump and dozen, being
+confident that as the day was bitterly
+cold, and the snow some feet deep
+upon the ground, the courage of the
+rioters would be cooled before they
+<a class="pagenum" name="page362" id="page362" title="page362"></a>had finished dinner; and so it was,
+for towards evening, the temperature
+having descended considerably beneath
+the freezing point, the mob, who had
+now exhausted their beer and gin, and
+who saw that there was no more fun
+to be expected for the day, began
+to disperse each man to his home, so
+that before nightfall the coast was
+clear; on which the justices, with the
+<i>posse comitatus</i>, escorted the usher to
+the schoolhouse, opened the door,
+put him formally in possession, and,
+wishing him much good of his new
+appointment, departed.</p>
+
+<p>But how did Jack, you will ask, bear
+this rebuff on the part of his own kin?
+Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he
+became furious, and seemed to have
+lost all natural feelings towards his
+own flesh and blood. He summoned
+such of his family as had given admission
+to the usher before him, called a
+sort of court-martial of the rest of his
+relations to enquire into their conduct;
+and, notwithstanding the
+accused protested that they had the highest
+respect and regard for Jack,
+were his humble servants to command
+in all ordinary matters, and only
+acted in this instance in obedience
+to the justices' warrant, (the which, if
+they had disobeyed, they were certain
+to have been at that moment cooling
+their heels in the stocks,) Jack, who
+was probably worked up to a kind of
+frenzy by his more violent of his
+inmates, kicked them out of the room,
+and sent a set of his myrmidons after
+them, with instructions to tear their
+coats off their backs, strip them of
+their wigs and small-clothes, and turn
+them into the street. Against this the
+unlucky wights appealed to the justices
+for protection, who, to be sure,
+sent down some policemen, who beat
+off the mob, and enabled them to make
+their doors fast against Jack and his
+emissaries. But beyond that they
+could give them little assistance; for
+though Jack and his abettors could
+not actually venture upon a trespass
+by forcing their way within doors,
+they contrived to render the very
+existence of all who were not of their
+way of thinking miserable. If it was
+an usher who, in spite of all their
+efforts to exclude him, had fairly got
+admittance into the schoolhouse, they
+set up a sentry-box at his very door,
+in which a rival usher held forth on
+Cocker and the alphabet; they drew
+off a few stray boys from the village
+school, and this detachment, recruited
+and reinforced by all the idlers of
+the neighbourhood, to whom mischief
+was sport, was studiously instructed
+to keep up a perpetual whistling,
+hooting, howling, hissing, and
+imitations of the crowing of a cock, so
+as to render it impossible for the usher
+and boys within the school to hear or
+profit by one word that was said. If
+the scholars within were told to say
+A, the blackguards without were bellowing
+B; or if the usher asked how
+many three times three made, the
+answer from the outside would be
+&quot;ten,&quot; or else that &quot;it depended upon
+circumstances.&quot; Every week some
+ribald and libellous paragraph would
+appear in the county newspaper, headed
+&quot;Advertisement,&quot; in such terms
+as the following:&mdash;&quot;We have just
+learned from the best authority, that
+the usher of a school not a hundred
+miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately
+been detected in various acts of forgery,
+petty larceny, sedition, high
+treason, burglary, &amp;c. &amp;c. If this
+report be not officially contradicted
+by the said usher within a fortnight,
+by advertisement, duly inserted and
+paid for in this newspaper, we shall
+hold the same to be true.&quot; Or
+sometimes more mysteriously thus:&mdash;&quot;Delicacy
+forbids us to allude to
+the shocking reports which are current
+respecting the usher of Mullaglass.
+Christian charity would lead
+us to hope they were unfounded, but
+Christian verity compels us to state
+that we believe every word of them.&quot;
+And though Jack and his editor sometimes
+overshot their mark, and got
+soused in damages at the instance of
+those whom they had libelled, yet
+Jack, who found that it answered his
+ends, persevered, and so kept the
+whole neighbourhood in hot water.</p>
+
+<p>You would not believe me were I
+to tell you of half the tyrannical and
+preposterous pranks which he performed
+about this period; but some of
+them I can't help noticing. He had
+picked up some subscriptions, for
+instance, from charitable folks in the
+neighbourhood, to build a school upon
+a remote corner of North Farm, where
+not a single boy had learned his alphabet
+within the memory of man; and
+what, think ye, does he do with the
+money, but insists on clapping down
+the new school exactly opposite the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page363" id="page363" title="page363"></a>old school in the village, merely to
+spite the poor usher, against whom he
+had taken a dislike&mdash;though there was
+no more need to build a school there
+than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle.
+Again, having ascertained
+that one of his servants had been seen
+shaking hands with some of Jack's
+family with whom he had quarrelled
+as above mentioned, he refused to give
+him a character, though the poor fellow
+was only thinking of taking service
+somewhere in the plantations.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts,
+however, it sometimes happened that
+when an usher was appointed he could
+not get up a sufficient cabal against
+him, and that even the schoolboys,
+knowing something of the man before,
+had no objection to him. In such
+cases Jack resorted to various schemes
+in order to cast the candidate upon his
+examinations. Sometimes he would
+shut him up in a small closet, telling him
+he must answer a hundred and fifty
+questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry,
+within as many minutes, and
+that he would be allowed the assistance
+of Johnson's Dictionary, and the <i>Gradus
+ad Parnassum</i>, for the purpose. At
+other tines he would ask the candidate,
+with a bland smile, what was his
+opinion of things in general, and of
+the dispute between him (Jack) and
+the Squire in particular; and if that
+question was not answered to his satisfaction,
+he remitted him to his studies.
+When no objection could be made to
+the man's parts, Jack would say that
+he had scruples of conscience, because
+he doubted whether his commission
+had been fairly come by, or whether
+he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound
+note to obtain it. At last
+he did not even take the trouble of
+going through this farce, but would
+at once, if he disliked the look of the
+man's face, tell him he was busy at
+the moment;&mdash;that he might lay the
+Squire's letter on the table, and call
+again that day six months for an answer.
+He no longer pretended, in fact, to any
+fairness or justice in his dealings;
+for though those who sided with him
+might be guilty of all the offences in
+the calendar, Jack continued to wink
+so hard, and shut his ears so close, as
+not to see or hear of them; while as
+to the unhappy wights who differed
+from him, he had the eyes of Argus
+and the ear of Dionysius, and the tender
+mercies of a Spanish inquisitor,
+discovering <i>scandalum magnatum</i> and
+high treason in ballads which they had
+written twenty years before, and in
+which Jack, though he received a presentation
+copy at the time, had never
+pretended, up to that moment, to detect
+the least harm.</p>
+
+<p>The last of these freaks which I
+shall here mention took place on this
+wise. Jack had never been accustomed
+to invite any one to his assemblies
+but the ushers who had been appointed
+by the Squire, and it was always
+understood that they alone had a
+vote in all vestry matters. But when
+John quarrelled with his family, as above
+mentioned, and a large part of the
+oldest and most respectable of his relatives
+drew off from him, it occurred
+to Jack that he could bring in a set
+of new auxiliaries, upon whose vote
+he could count in all his family squabbles,
+or his deputes, with Squire Bull;
+and the following was the device he
+fell upon for that end.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there upon North Farm,
+where the village schools were crowded,
+little temporary schoolhouses had
+been run up, where one or two of
+the monitors were accustomed to
+teach such of the children as could
+not be accommodated in the larger
+school. But these assistants had always
+been a little looked down upon,
+and had never been allowed a seat at
+Jack's board. Now, however, he began
+to change his tone towards them,
+and to court and flatter them on all
+occasions. One fine morning he suddenly
+made his appearance on the village
+green, followed by some of his
+hangers on, bearing a theodolite,
+chains, measuring rods, sextants, compasses,
+and other instruments of land-surveying.
+Jack set up his theodolite,
+took his observations, began noting
+measurements, and laying down the
+bases of triangles in all directions, then,
+having summed up his calculations
+with much gravity, gave directions to
+those about him to line off with stakes
+and ropes the space which he pointed
+out to them, and which in fact enclosed
+nearly half the village. In the course
+of these operations, the usher, who had
+witnessed these mathematical proceedings
+of Jack from the window, but could
+not comprehend what the man would
+be at, sallied forth, and accosting
+Jack, asked him what he meant by
+these strange lines of circumvallation.
+&quot;Why,&quot; answered Jack, &quot;I have
+<a class="pagenum" name="page364" id="page364" title="page364"></a>been thinking for some time past of
+relieving you of part of your heavy
+duties, and dividing the parish-school
+between you and your assistant; so in
+future you will confine yourself to the
+space outside the ropes, and leave all
+within the inclosure to him.&quot; It was
+in vain that the usher protested he
+was quite equal to the duty; that the
+boys liked him, and disliked his assistant;
+that if the village was thus
+divided, the assistant would be put
+upon a level with him, and have a
+vote in the vestry, to which he had
+no more right than to a seat in the
+House of Commons. Jack was not
+to be moved from his purpose, but
+gave orders to have a similar apportionment
+made in most of the neighbouring
+villages, and then inviting the
+assistants to a party at his house, he
+had them sworn in as vestrymen,
+telling them, that in future they
+had the same right to a seat at his
+board as the best of John's ushers
+had. Here again, however, he found
+he had run his head against a wall,
+and that he was not the mighty personage
+he took himself for; for, on a
+complaint to the justices of the peace,
+a dozen special constables were sent
+down, who tore up the posts, removed
+the ropes, and demolished all Jack's
+inclosures in a trice.</p>
+
+<p>These frequent defeats rendered
+Jack nearly frantic. He now began
+to quarrel even with his best friends,
+not a few of whom, though they had
+gone with him a certain length, now
+left his house, and told him plainly
+they would never set foot in it again.
+He burst forth into loud invectives
+against Martin, who had always been
+a good friend to his penny subscriptions,
+and more than once had come
+to his assistance when Jack was hard
+pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster,
+between whom and Jack
+there had long been a bloody feud.
+Jack now denounced Martin in set
+terms; accused him of being in the
+pay of Peter, with whom he said he had
+been holding secret conferences of late
+at the Cross-Keys; and of setting the
+Squire's mind against him (Jack)&mdash;whereas
+poor Martin, till provoked by
+Jack's abuse to defend himself, had
+never said an unkind word against
+him. Finding, however, that, with
+all his efforts, he did not make much
+way with the men, Jack directed his
+battery chiefly against the women,
+who were easily caught by his sanctimonious
+air, and knowing nothing
+earthly of the subject, took for gospel
+all that Jack chose to tell them.
+He held love-feasts in his house up
+to a late hour, at which he generally
+harangued on the subject of the persecutions
+which he endured. He vowed
+the justices were all in a conspiracy
+against him; that they were
+constantly intruding into his grounds,
+notwithstanding his warnings that
+spring-guns were set in the premises;
+that on one occasion a tall fellow of a
+sheriff's officer had made his way into his
+house and served him with a writ of <i>fieri
+facias</i> even in the midst of one of his assemblies,
+a disgrace he never could get
+over; that he could not walk ten yards
+in any direction, or saunter for an instant
+at the corner of a street, without
+being ordered by a policeman to move
+on; in short, that he lived in perpetual
+terror and anxiety&mdash;and all this because
+he had done his best to save
+them and their children from the awful
+scourge of deboshed and despotical
+ushers. At the conclusion of these
+meetings he invariably handed round
+his hat, into which the silly women dropped
+a good many shillings, which Jack
+assured them would be applied for the
+public benefit, meaning thereby his
+own private advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, however, with all his craze,
+was too knowing not to see that the
+women, beyond advancing him a few
+shillings at a time, would do little
+for his cause so far as any terms with
+Squire Bull was concerned; so, with
+the view of making a last attack upon
+the Squire, and driving him into terms,
+he began to look about for assistance
+among those with whom he had previously
+been at loggerheads. It cost him
+some qualms before he could so far abase
+his stomach as to do so; but at last he
+ventured to address a long and pitiful
+letter to Hugh, in which he set forth
+all his disputes with John, and dwelt
+much on his scruples of conscience;
+begged him to forget old quarrels, and
+put down his name to a Round Robin,
+which he was about to address to the
+Squire in his own behalf. To this
+epistle Hugh answered as follows:&mdash;&quot;Dearly
+beloved,&mdash;my bowels are
+grieved for your condition, but I see
+only one cure for your scruples of conscience.
+Strip off the Squire's livery,
+and give up your place, as I did, and
+your peace of mind will be restored
+<a class="pagenum" name="page365" id="page365" title="page365"></a>to you. In the mean time, I do not
+see very well why I should help you
+to pocket the Squire's wages, and do
+nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit
+of meekness and forgiveness&mdash;HUGH.&quot;
+After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily
+believe, saw there was little hope of
+assistance from that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>As a last resource, he called a
+general meeting of his friends, at which
+it was resolved to present the proposed
+Round Robin to John, signed
+by as many names as they could muster;
+in which Jack, who seemed to be
+of opinion that the more they asked
+the greater was their chance of getting
+something at least, set forth the articles
+he wanted, and without which,
+he told John, he could no longer remain
+in his house; but that he and
+his relatives and friends would forthwith,
+if this petition was rejected,
+walk out, to the infinite scandal of the
+neighbourhood, leaving the Squire
+without a teacher or a writing-master
+within fifty miles to supply their place.
+They demanded that the Squire should
+give up the nomination of the ushers
+entirely, though in whose favour they
+did not explain; and that Jack was in
+future to be a law unto himself, and
+to be supreme in all matters of education,
+with power to himself to define
+in what such matters consisted. On
+these requests being conceded, they
+stated that they would continue to
+give their countenance to the Squire
+as in times past; otherwise the whole
+party must quit possession incontinently.
+Jack prevailed on a good
+many to sign this document&mdash;though
+some did not like the idea of walking
+out, demurred, and added after the
+word <i>incontinently</i>, &quot;<i>i.e.</i> when
+convenient,&quot;&mdash;and thus signed, they put the
+Round Robin under a twopenny
+cover, and dispatched it to &quot;John
+Bull, Esquire&quot;&mdash;with haste.</p>
+
+<p>If they really thought the Squire
+was to be bullied into these terms by
+this last sally, they found themselves
+consumedly mistaken; for after a time
+down came a long and perfectly civil
+letter from the Squire's secretary, telling
+them their demands were totally
+out of the question, and that the
+Squire would see them at the antipodes
+sooner than comply with them.</p>
+
+<p>Did Jack then, you will ask, walk
+out as he had threatened, when he got
+the Squire's answer? Not he. He
+now gave notice that he intended to
+apply for an Act of Parliament on the
+subject: and that, in the meantime,
+the matter might stand over. Meantime,
+and in case matters should come
+to the worst, he is busily engaged
+begging all over the country, for cash
+to erect a new wooden tenement for
+him, in the event of his having to leave
+his old one of stone and lime. Some
+say even that he has been seen laying
+down several pounds of gunpowder
+in the cellar of his present house, and
+has been heard to boast of his intention
+to blow up his successor when
+he takes possession; but for my
+own part, and seeing how he has
+shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is
+no nearer removing than he was a
+year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially
+to several people, that even
+if his new house were all ready for
+him, he could not, with his asthmatic
+tendency, think of entering it for a
+twelvemonth or so, till the lath and
+plaster should be properly seasoned.
+Of all this, however, we shall hear
+more anon.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s7" id="bw329s7"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page366" id="page366" title="page366"></a>
+<h2>PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY A COCKNEY.</h3>
+
+<p>When any one thinks of French
+literature, there immediately rises before
+him a horrid phantasmagoria of
+repulsive objects&mdash;murders, incests,
+parricides, and every imaginable shape
+of crime that horror e'er conceived or
+fancy feigned. He sees the whole
+efforts of a press, brimful of power
+and talent, directed against every
+thing that has hitherto been thought
+necessary to the safety of society,
+or the happiness of domestic life&mdash;marriage
+deliberately written down,
+and proved to be the cause of all the
+miseries of the social state: and strange
+to say, in the crusade against matrimony,
+the sharpest swords and strongest
+lances are wielded by women.
+Those women are received into society&mdash;men's
+wives and daughters associate
+with them&mdash;and their books are
+noticed in the public journals without
+any allusions to the Association for the
+prevention of vice, but rather with the
+praises which, in other times and
+countries, would have been bestowed
+on works of genius and virtue. The
+taste of the English public has certainly
+deteriorated within the last few
+years; and popularity, the surest index
+of the public's likings, though not
+of the writer's deservings, has attended
+works of which the great staple
+has been crime and blackguardism. A
+certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy
+energy, has enabled the writer
+to throw an interest round pickpockets
+and murderers; and if this interest
+were legitimately produced, by the
+exhibition of human passions modified
+by the circumstances of the actor&mdash;if
+it arose from the development of one
+real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering
+man's heart, we could only wonder
+at the author's choice of such a
+subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge
+that he had widened our
+sphere of knowledge&mdash;and made us
+feel, as we all do, without taking the
+same credit for it to ourselves that
+the old blockhead in France does, that
+being human, we have sympathies with
+all, even the lowest and wickedest of
+our kind. But the interest those works
+excite arises from no such legitimate
+source&mdash;not from the development of
+our common nature, but from the creation
+of a new one&mdash;from startling
+contrasts, not of two characters but of
+one&mdash;tenderness, generosity in one
+page; fierceness and murder in the
+next. But though our English <i>tastes</i>
+are so far deteriorated as to tolerate,
+or even to admire, the records
+of cruelty and sin now proceeding
+every day from the press&mdash;our English
+<i>morals</i> would recoil with horror
+from the deliberate wickedness
+which forms the great attraction of
+the French modern school of romance.
+The very subjects chosen for their
+novels, by the most popular of their
+female writers, shows a state of feeling
+in the authors more dreadful to
+contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones
+descriptions of
+our chroniclers of Newgate. A married
+woman, the heroine&mdash;high in
+rank, splendid in intellect, radiant
+in beauty&mdash;has for the hero a villain
+escaped from the hulks. There is no
+record of his crimes&mdash;we are not called
+upon to follow him in his depredations,
+or see him cut throats in the
+scientific fashion of some of our indigenous
+rascals. He is the philosopher,&mdash;the
+instructor&mdash;the guide. The object
+of <i>his</i> introduction is to show the
+iniquity of human laws&mdash;the object
+of <i>her</i> introduction is to show the absurdity
+of the institution of marriage.
+This would never be tolerated in England.
+Again, a married woman is
+presented to us&mdash;for the sympathy
+which with us attends a young couple
+to the church-door, only begins in
+France after they have left it: as a
+child she has been betrothed to a person
+of her own rank&mdash;at five or six incurable
+idiocy takes possession of her
+proposed husband&mdash;but when she is
+eighteen the marriage takes place&mdash;the
+husband is a mere child still; for
+his intellect has continued stationary
+though his body has reached maturity&mdash;a
+more revolting picture was never
+presented than that of the condition of
+the idiot's wife&mdash;her horror of her husband&mdash;and
+of course her passion for
+another. The most interesting scenes
+between the lovers are constantly interrupted
+by the hideous representative of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page367" id="page367" title="page367"></a>matrimony, the grinning husband, who
+rears his slavering countenance from
+behind the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate
+wife with a sacred awe for
+the holy obligations of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Again, a dandy of fifty is presented
+to us, whose affection for his ward has
+waited, of course, till she is wedded to
+another, to ripen into love. He still
+continues her protector against the
+advances of others; for jealousy is a
+good point of character in every one
+but the husband, and there it is only
+ridiculous. The husband in this case
+is another admirable specimen of the
+results of wedlock for life&mdash;he is a
+chattering, shallow pretender&mdash;a political
+economist, prodigiously dull
+and infinitely conceited&mdash;an exaggerated
+type of the Hume-Bowring statesman&mdash;and,
+as is naturally to be expected,
+our sympathies are awakened
+for the wretched wife, and we rejoice
+to see that her beauty and talents, her
+fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated
+by a dashing young fellow, who
+outwits our original friend the dandy
+of fifty and the philosophical deput&eacute;;
+the whole leaving a pleasing impression
+on the reader's mind from the conviction
+that the heroine is no longer neglected.</p>
+
+<p>From the similarity of these stories&mdash;and
+they are only taken at random
+from a great number&mdash;it will be seen
+that the spirit of almost all of them is
+the same. But when we go lower in
+the scale, and leave the class of philosophic
+novels, we find their tales of
+life and manners still more absurd
+in their total untrueness than the
+others were hateful in their design.
+There is a novel just now appearing
+in one of the most widely-circulated
+of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely
+overdone, that if it had been meant
+for a caricature of the worst parts of
+our own hulk-and-gallows authors, it
+would have been very much admired;
+but meant to be serious, powerful,
+harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is
+a most curious exhibition of a nation's
+taste and a writer's audacity. The
+<i>Mysteries of Paris</i>, by Eugene Sue,
+has been dragging its slow length
+along for a long time, and gives no
+sign of getting nearer its denouement
+than when it began. A sovereign
+prince is the hero&mdash;his own daughter,
+whom he has disowned, the heroine;
+and the tale commences by his fighting
+a man on the street, and taking a
+fancy to his unknown child, who is
+the inhabitant of one of the lowest
+dens in the St Giles' of Paris! The
+other <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i> are convicts,
+receivers of stolen goods, murderers,
+intriguers of all ranks&mdash;the
+aforesaid prince, sometimes in the disguise
+of a workman, sometimes of a
+pickpocket, acting the part of a providence
+among them, rewarding the
+good and punishing the guilty. The
+English personages are the Countess
+Sarah McGregor&mdash;the lawful wife of
+the prince&mdash;her brother Tom, and Sir
+Walter Murph, Esquire. These are all
+jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and
+flurried&mdash;first in flash kens, where the
+language is slang; then in country
+farms, and then in halls and palaces&mdash;and
+so intermixed and confused, that
+the clearest head gets puzzled with
+the entanglements of the story; and
+confusion gets worse confounded as
+the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue
+will manage ever to come to a close is
+an enigma to us; and we shall wait
+with some impatience to see how he
+will distribute his poetic justice, when
+he can't get his puppets to move another
+step. Horror seems the great
+ingredient in the present literary fare
+of France, and in the <i>Myst&egrave;res de
+Paris</i> the most confirmed glutton of
+such delicacies may sup full of them.
+In the midst of such depraved and
+revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of
+satisfaction, though not of the loftiest
+kind, to turn to the coarse fun and
+ludicrous descriptions of Paul de Kock.
+And, after all, our friend Paul has not
+many more sins than coarseness and
+buffoonery to answer for. As to his
+attempting, of set purpose, to corrupt
+people's morals, it never entered into
+his head. He does not know what
+morals are; they never form any part
+of his idea of manners or character.
+If a good man comes in his way, he
+looks at him with a strange kind of
+unacquaintance that almost rises into
+respect; but he is certainly more affectionate,
+and on far better terms,
+with men about town&mdash;amative hairdressers,
+flirting grisettes, and the
+whole genus, male and female, of the
+epiciers. It would no doubt be an
+improvement if the facetious Paul
+could believe in the existence of an
+honest woman; but such women as
+come in his way he describes to the
+life. A ball in a dancing-master's
+private room up six pairs of stairs, a
+pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner
+at a restaurateur's, or a family consultation
+<a class="pagenum" name="page368" id="page368" title="page368"></a>on a proposal of marriage,
+are far more in Paul's way than tales
+of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity.
+One is only sorry, in the midst
+of so much gaiety and good-humour,
+to stumble on some scene or sentiment
+that gives on the inclination to
+throw the book in the fire, or start,
+like C&aelig;sar, on the top of the diligence
+to pull the author's ears. But the
+next page sets all right again; and
+you go on laughing at the disasters of
+my neighbour Raymond, or admiring
+the graces or Chesterfieldian politeness
+of M. Bellequeue. French nature
+seems essentially different from
+all the other natures hitherto known;
+and yet, though so new, there never
+rises any doubt that it is <i>a</i> nature, a
+reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and
+not a sham. The personages presented
+to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely,
+in the strict sense of the word, be
+called human beings; but they are
+French beings of real flesh and blood,
+speaking and thinking French in the
+most decided possible manner, and at
+intervals possessed of feelings which
+make us inclined to include them in
+the great genus <i>homo</i>, though with
+so many inseparable accidents, that it
+is impossible for a moment to shut
+one's eyes to the species to which
+they belong. But such as they are in
+their shops, and back-parlours, and
+ball-rooms, and <i>f&ecirc;tes champ&ecirc;tres</i>, there
+they are in Paul de Kock&mdash;nothing
+extenuated, little set down in malice&mdash;vain,
+empty, frivolous, good-tempered,
+gallant, lively, and absurd. Let us
+go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate
+the anniversary of the marriage
+of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the
+day of St Eustache.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At a little distance from the ball,
+towards the middle of the wood, a numerous
+party is seated on the grass, or
+rather on the sand; napkins are spread
+on the ground, and covered with plates
+and cold meat and fruits. The bottles
+are placed in the cool shade, the glasses
+are filled and emptied rapidly; good appetites
+and open air make every thing
+appear excellent. They make plates
+out of paper, and toss pieces of pat&eacute;
+and sausage to each other. They eat,
+they drink, they sing, they laugh and
+play tricks. It seems a struggle who
+shall be funniest. It is well known
+that all things are allowable in the
+country; and the cits now assembled
+in the wood of Romainville seem fully
+persuaded of the fact. A jolly old
+governor of about fifty tries to carve
+a turkey, and can't succeed. A little
+woman, very red, very fat, and very
+round, hastens to seize a limb of the
+bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly
+old governor at the other&mdash;the leg separates
+at last, and the lady goes
+sprawling on the grass, while the
+gentleman topples over in the opposite
+direction with the remainder of the
+animal in his hand. The shouts of
+laughter redouble, and M. Moutonnet&mdash;such
+is the name of the jolly old
+governor&mdash;resumes his place, declaring
+that he will never try to carve
+any thing again. 'I knew you would
+never be able to manage it,' said a
+large woman bluntly, in a tone that
+agreed exactly with her starched and
+crabbed features. She was sitting
+opposite the stout gentleman, and had
+seen with indignation the alacrity with
+which the little lady had flown to M.
+Moutonnet's assistance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'In the twenty years we have been
+married,' she continued, 'have you
+ever carved any thing at home, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'No, my dear, that's very true;'
+replied the stout gentleman in a submissive
+voice, and trying to smile his
+better half into good-humour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'You don't know how to help a
+dish of spinach, and yet you attempt
+a dish like that!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'My dear&mdash;in the country, you
+know&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'In the country, sir, as in the town,
+people shouldn't try things they can't
+perform.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'You know, Madame Moutonnet,
+that generally I never attempt any
+thing&mdash;but to day'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'To day you should have done
+as you do on other days,' retorted the
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Ah, but, my love, you forget that
+this is Saint Eustache&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!'
+is repeated in chorus by the whole
+company, and the glasses are filled
+and jingled as before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'To the health of Eustache; Eustache
+for ever!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,'
+replied M. Moutonnet graciously smiling&mdash;'and
+yours, my angel.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses
+himself. She tried to assume
+an amiable look, and condescends to
+approach her glass to that of M. Eustache
+Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet
+is a rich laceman of the Rue
+St Martin; a man highly respected
+<a class="pagenum" name="page369" id="page369" title="page369"></a>in trade; no bill of his was ever protested,
+nor any engagement failed in.
+For the thirty years he has kept shop
+he has been steadily at work from
+eight in the morning till eight at night.
+His department is to take care of the
+day-book and ledger; Madame Moutonnet
+manages the correspondence
+and makes the bargains. The business
+of the shop and the accounts are
+confided to an old clerk and Mademoiselle
+Eugenie Moutonnet, with
+whom we shall presently become better
+acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps
+already have perceived, is not
+commander-in-chief at hone. His
+wife directs, rules, and governs all
+things. When she is in good-humour&mdash;a
+somewhat extraordinary occurrence&mdash;she
+allows her husband to go
+and take his little cup of coffee, provided
+he goes for that purpose to
+the coffee-house at the corner of
+the Rue Mauconseil&mdash;for it is famous
+for its liberal allowance of sugar, and
+M. Moutonnet always brings home
+three lumps of it to his wife. On
+Sundays they dine a little earlier, to
+have time for a promenade to the
+Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions
+into the country are very
+rare, and only on extraordinary occasions,
+such as the f&ecirc;te-day of M. and
+Madame Moutonnet. That regular
+life does not hinder the stout lace-merchant
+from being the happiest of
+men&mdash;so true is it that what is one
+man's poison is another man's meat.
+M. Moutonnet was born with simple
+tastes&mdash;she required to be led and
+managed like a child. Don't shrug
+your shoulders at this avowal, ye
+spirited gentlemen, so proud of your
+rights, so puffed up with your merits.
+You! who think yourselves always
+masters of your actions, you yield to
+your passions every day! they lead
+you, and sometimes lead you very ill.
+Well, M. Moutonnet has no fear of
+that&mdash;he has no passions&mdash;he knows
+nothing but his trade, and obedience
+to his spouse. He finds that a man
+can be very happy, though he does
+not know how to carve a turkey, and
+lets himself be governed by his wife.
+Madame Moutonnet is long past forty,
+but it is a settled affair that she is
+never to be more than thirty-six. She
+never was handsome, but she is large
+and tall, and her husband is persuaded
+she is superb. She is not a coquette,
+but she thinks herself superior
+to every body else in talents and beauty.
+She never cared a rush about her husband,
+but if he was untrue to her she
+would tear his eyes out. Madame
+Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively
+jealous of her rights. A daughter is
+the sole issue of the marriage of M.
+Eustache Moutonnet and Mademoiselle
+Barbe Desormeaux. She is now
+eighteen years old, and at eighteen
+the young ladies in Paris are generally
+pretty far advanced. But Eugenie
+has been educated severely&mdash;and although
+possessed of a good deal of
+spirit, is timid, docile, submissive,
+and never ventures on a single observation
+in presence of her parents.
+She has cleverness, grace, and sensibility,
+but she is ignorant of the advantages
+she has received from nature&mdash;her
+sentiments are as yet concentrated
+at the bottom of her heart.
+She is not coquettish&mdash;or rather she
+scarcely ventures to give way to the
+inclination so natural to women, which
+leads them to please and to be pretty.
+But Eugenie has no need of those
+little arts, so indispensable to others,
+or to have recourse to her mirror every
+hour. She is well made, and she is
+beautiful; her eyes are soft and expressive,
+her voice is tender and agreeable,
+her brow is shadowed by dark
+locks of hair, her mouth furnished with
+fine white teeth. In short, she has
+that nameless something about her,
+which charms at first sight, which is
+not always possessed by greater beauties
+and more regular features. We
+now know all the Moutonnet family;
+and since we have gone so far, let us
+make acquaintance with the rest of
+the party who have come to the wood
+of Romainville to celebrate the Saint
+Eustache.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The little woman who rushed so
+vigorously to the assistance of M.
+Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman
+of the name of Bernard, who
+is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M.
+Bernard plays the amiable and the
+fool at the same time. He laughs and
+quizzes, makes jokes, and even puns;
+he is the wit of the party. His wife has
+been rather good-looking, and wishes
+to be so still. She squeezes in her
+waist till she can hardly breathe, and
+takes an hour to fit her shoes on&mdash;for
+she is determined to have a small foot.
+Her face is a little too red; but her
+eyes are very lively, and she is constantly
+<a class="pagenum" name="page370" id="page370" title="page370"></a>trying to give them as mischievous
+an expression as she can.
+Madame Bernard has a great girl of
+fifteen, whom she dresses as if she
+were five, and treats occasionally to
+a new doll, by way of keeping her a
+child. By the side of Madame Bernard
+is seated a young man of eighteen,
+who is almost as timid as Eugenie,
+and blushes when he is spoken
+to, though he has stood behind a counter
+for six months. He is the son of
+a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife
+has undertaken to patronize him, and
+introduce him to good society.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A person of about forty years of
+age, with one of those silly countenances
+which there is no mistaking at
+the first glance, is seated beside Eugenie.
+M. Dupont&mdash;such is his name&mdash;is
+a rich grocer of the Rue aux
+Ours. He wears powder and a queue,
+because he fancies they are becoming,
+and his hairdresser has told him
+that they are very aristocratic. His
+coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured
+waistcoat, give him still more
+the appearance of a simpleton, and
+agree admirably with the astonished
+expression of his gooseberry eyes. He
+dangles two watch-chains, that hang
+down his nankeen trowsers, with great
+satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration
+at the wisdom of his own
+remarks. He thinks himself captivating
+and full of wit. He has the
+presumption of ignorance, propped up
+by money. Finally, he is a bachelor,
+which gives him great consideration
+in all the families where there are
+marriageable daughters. M. and
+Madame Gerard, perfumers in the
+Rue St Martin, are also of the party.
+The perfumer enacts the gallant gay
+Lothario, and in his own district has
+the reputation of a prodigious rake,
+though he is ugly, and ill-made, and
+squints. But he fancies he overcomes
+all these drawbacks by covering himself
+with odours and perfumes&mdash;accordingly,
+you smell him half an hour
+before he comes in sight. His wife
+is young and pretty. She married
+him at fifteen, and has a boy of nine,
+who looks more like her brother than
+her son. The little Gerard hollos
+and jumps about, breaks the glasses
+and bottles, and makes as much noise
+as all the rest of the company put together.
+'He's a little lion,' exclaims
+M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I
+was. You never could hear yourselves
+speak wherever I was, at his age.
+People were delighted with me. My
+son is my perfect image.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of
+forty-five, who takes every opportunity
+of declaring that she never intends
+to marry, and sighs every tine
+M. Dupont looks at her, is next to
+M. Moutonnet. The old clerk of the
+laceman&mdash;M. Bidois&mdash;who waits for
+Madame Moutonnet's permission before
+he opens his mouth, and fills his
+glass every time she is not looking&mdash;is
+placed at the side of Mademoiselle
+Cecile Gerard; who, though she swears
+every minute that she never will
+marry, and that she hates the men,
+is very ill pleased to have old M.
+Bidois for her neighbour, and hints
+pretty audibly that Madame Bernard
+monopolizes all the young beaux. A
+young man of about twenty, tall,
+well-made, with handsome features,
+whose intelligent expression announces
+that he is intended for higher
+things than perpetually to be measuring
+yards of calico, is seated at the
+right hand of Eugenie. That young
+man, whose name is Adolphe, is assistant
+in a fashionable warehouse
+where Madame Moutonnet deals; and
+as he always gives good measure, she
+has asked him to the f&ecirc;te of St Eustache.
+And now we are acquainted
+with all the party who are celebrating
+the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We are not going to follow Paul de
+Kock in the adventures of all the party
+so carefully described to us. Our
+object in translating the foregoing
+passage, was to enable our readers to
+see the manner of people who indulge
+in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville,
+desiring them to compare M.
+Moutonnet and <i>his</i> friends, with any
+laceman and <i>his</i> friends he may choose
+to fix upon in London. A laceman
+as well to do in the world as M. Moutonnet,
+a grocer as rich as M. Dupont,
+and even a perfumer as fashionable
+as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait
+dinner at Blackwall, or make up
+a party to the races at Epsom&mdash;and
+as to admitting such a humble servitor
+as M. Bidois to their society, or even
+the unfriended young mercer's assistant,
+M. Adolphe, they would as soon
+think of inviting one of the new police.
+Five miles from town our three friends
+would pass themselves off for lords,
+and blow-up the waiter for not making
+haste with their brandy and water, in
+<a class="pagenum" name="page371" id="page371" title="page371"></a>the most aristocratic manner imaginable.
+In France, or at least in Paul
+de Kock, there seems no straining after
+appearances. The laceman continues
+a laceman when he is miles
+away from the little back shop; and
+even the laceman's lady has no desire
+to be mistaken for the wife of a squire.
+Madame Moutonnet seems totally unconscious
+of the existence of any lady
+whatever, superior to herself in rank
+or station. The Red Book is to her
+a sealed volume. Her envies, hatreds,
+friendships, rivalries, and ambitions,
+are all limited to her own circle. The
+wife of a rich laceman, on the other
+hand, in England, most religiously
+despises the wives of almost all other
+tradesmen; she scarcely knows in
+what street the shop is situated, but
+from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead,
+looks down with supreme disdain
+on the toiling creatures who
+stand all day behind a counter. The
+husband, in the same way, manages
+to cast off every reminiscence of the
+shop, in the course of his three miles
+in the omnibus, and at six or seven
+o'clock you might fancy they were a
+duke and duchess, sitting in a gaudily
+furnished drawing-room, listening to
+two elegant young ladies torturing a
+piano, and another still more elegant
+young lady severely flogging a harp.
+The effect of this, so far as our English
+Paul de Kocks are concerned, is,
+that their linen-drapers, and lacemen,
+and rich perfumers, are represented
+assuming a character that does not
+belong to them, and aping people
+whom they falsely suppose to be their
+betters; whereas the genuine Paul
+paints the Parisian tradesmen without
+any affectation at all. Ours are made
+laughable by the common farcical attributes
+of all pretensions, great or
+small; while real unsophisticated
+shopkeeping (French) nature is the
+staple of Paul's character-sketches,
+and they are more valuable, and in
+the end more interesting, accordingly.
+Who cares for the exaggerated efforts
+of a Manchester warehouseman to be
+polished and gentlemanly? It is only
+acting after all, and gives us no insight
+into his real character, or the character
+of his class, any more than Mr
+Coates' anxiety to be Romeo enlightened
+us as to his disposition in other
+respects. The Manchester warehouseman,
+though he fails in his attempt
+at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable
+and pains-taking individual,
+and, with the single exception of that
+foible, offers nothing to the most careful
+observer to distinguish him from
+the stupid and respectable in any part
+of the world. And in this respect,
+any one starting as the chronicler of
+citizen life among us, would labour
+under a great disadvantage. Whether
+our people are phlegmatic, or stupid,
+or sensible&mdash;all three of which epithets
+are generally applicable to the same
+individual&mdash;or that they have no opportunities
+of showing their peculiarities
+from the domestic habits of the
+animal&mdash;it is certain that, however
+better they may be qualified for the
+business of life than their neighbours,
+they are far less fitted for the pages
+of a book. And the proof of it is this,
+that wherever any of our novelists has
+introduced a tradesman, he has either
+been an invention altogether, or a caricature.
+Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie
+never lived in the Saut Market in
+half such true flesh and blood as he
+does in <i>Rob Roy</i>. At all events, the
+inimitable Bailie is known to the universe
+at large by the additions made
+to his real character by the prodigal
+hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous
+contrasts in which he is placed
+with the caterans and reivers of the
+hills. In the city of Glasgow he was
+looked upon, and justly, as an honour
+to the gude town&mdash;consulted on all
+difficult matters, and famous for his
+knowledge of the world and his natural
+sagacity. Would this have been
+a fit subject for description? or is it
+just to think of the respectable Bailie
+in the ridiculous point of view in
+which he is presented to us in the
+Highlands? How would Sir Peter
+Laurie look if he had been taken long
+ago by Algerine pirates, and torn,
+with all his civic honours thick upon
+him, from the magisterial chair, and
+made hairdresser to the ladies of the
+harem&mdash;threatened with the bastinado
+for awkwardness in combing, as
+he now commits other unfortunate
+fellows to the treadmill for crimes
+scarcely more enormous? Paul de
+Kock derives none of his interest
+from odd juxtapositions. He knows
+nothing about caves and prisons and
+brigands&mdash;but he knows every corner
+of coffee-houses, and beer-shops, and
+ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms
+give him the command of another set
+of characters, totally unknown to the
+English world of fiction, because non-existent
+in England. With us, no
+<a class="pagenum" name="page372" id="page372" title="page372"></a>shop-boy or apprentice would take
+his sweetheart to a public hop at any
+of the licenced music-houses. No
+decent girl would go there, nor even
+any girl that wished to keep up the
+appearance of decency. No flirtations,
+to end in matrimony, take their
+rise between an embryo boot-maker
+and a barber's daughter, in the course
+of the <i>chaine Anglaise</i> beneath the
+trees of the Green Park, or even at
+the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have
+flinty hearts, and the above-mentioned
+barber would probably increase
+the beauty of his daughter's &quot;bonny
+black eye,&quot; by giving her another, if
+she talked of going to a ball, whether
+in a room or the open air. The Puritans
+have left their mark. Dancing
+is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual
+M.C. But let us follow the barber,
+or rather hairdresser&mdash;for the
+mere gleaner of beards is not intended
+by the name&mdash;into his own amusements.
+In Paul de Kock he goes to a
+coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
+and pockets the entire sugar; or
+to a ball, where he performs all the offices
+of a court chamberlain, and captivates
+all hearts by his graceful deportment.
+His wife, perhaps, goes
+with him, and flirts in a very business-like
+manner with a tobacconist;
+and his daughter is whirled about in
+a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the
+young confectioner, with as much
+elegance and decorum as if they were
+a young marquis and his bride in the
+dancing hall at Devonshire House.
+Our English friend goes to enjoy a
+pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a
+cigar, and gin and water, at the neighbouring
+inn. Or when he determines
+on having a night of real rational enjoyment,
+he goes to some tavern
+where singing is the order of the
+evening. A stout man in the chair
+knocks on the table, and being the
+landlord, makes disinterested enquiries
+if every gentleman has a bumper.
+He then calls on himself for a song,
+and states that he is to be accompanied
+on the piano by a distinguished
+performer; whereupon, a tall young
+man of a moribund expression of
+countenance, and with his hair closely
+pomatumed over his head, rises, and,
+after a low bow, seats himself at the
+instrument. The stout man sings,
+the young man plays, and thunders
+of applause, and various fresh orders
+for kidneys and strong ale, and welch
+rabbits and cold-without, reward
+their exertions. Drinking goes on
+for some time, and waiters keep flying
+about with dishes of all kinds, and the
+hairdresser becomes communicative
+to his next neighbour, a butcher from
+Whitechapel, and they exchange their
+sentiments about kidneys and music
+in general, and the kidneys and music
+now offered to them in particular. In
+a few minutes, a gentleman with a
+strange obliquity in his vision, seated
+in the middle of the coffee-room, takes
+off his hat, and after a thump on the
+table from the landlord's hammer,
+commences a song so intensely comic,
+that when it is over, the orders for
+supper and drink are almost unanimous.
+The house is now full, the
+theatres have discharged their hungry
+audiences, and a distinguished
+guinea-a-week performer seats himself
+in the very next box to the hairdresser.
+That worthy gentleman by
+this time is stuffed so full of kidneys,
+and has drank so many glasses of
+brandy and water, that he can scarcely
+understand the explanations of the
+Whitechapel butcher, who has a great
+turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat
+the dramatic performer to a tumbler
+of gin-twist. Another knock on the
+table produces a momentary silence,
+and a little man starts off with an extempore
+song, where the conviviality
+of the landlord, and the goodness of
+his suppers, are duly chronicled. The
+hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
+admiration, and even attempts to join
+in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go.
+He goes, and narrowly escapes making
+the acquaintance of Mr Jardine,
+from his extraordinary propensity to
+brush all the lamp-posts he encounters
+with the shoulder of his coat; and gets
+home, to the great comfort of his wife
+and daughter, who have gone cozily
+off to sleep, in the assurance that their
+distinguished relative is safely locked
+up in the police-office. The Frenchman,
+on the other hand, never gets
+into mischief from an overdose of <i>eau
+sucr&eacute;e</i>, though sometimes he certainly
+becomes very rombustious from a glass
+or two of <i>vin ordinaire</i>; and nothing
+astonishes us so much as the small
+quantities of small drink which have
+an effect on the brains of the steadiest
+of the French population. They get
+not altogether drunk, but decidedly
+very talkative, and often quarrelsome,
+on a miserable modicum of their indigenous
+small beer, to a degree which
+would not be excusable if it were
+<a class="pagenum" name="page373" id="page373" title="page373"></a>brandy. We constantly find whole
+parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious
+state of excitement after two
+rounds of a bottle&mdash;jostling the peasants,
+and talking more egregious
+nonsense than before. And when they
+quarrel, what a Babel of words, and
+what a quakerism of hands! Instead
+of a round or two between the parties,
+as it would be in our own pugnacious
+disagreements, they merely, when it
+comes to the worst, push each other
+from side to side, and shout lustily for
+the police; and squalling women, and
+chattering men, and ignorant country
+people, and elegant mercers' apprentices,
+and gay-mannered grocers, hustle,
+and scream, and swear, and lecture,
+and threaten, and bluster&mdash;but not a
+single blow! The guardian of the
+public peace appears, and the combatants
+evanish into thin air; and in a
+few minutes after this dreadful <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i>,
+the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and
+all goes &quot;gaily as a marriage-bell.&quot; We
+don't say, at the present moment, that
+one of these methods of conducting a
+quarrel is better than the other, (though
+we confess we are rather partial to a
+hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on the
+claret-cork)&mdash;all we mean to advance
+is, that with the materials to work
+upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful
+describer of real scenes, has a manifest
+advantage over the describer of English
+incidents of a parallel kind.</p>
+
+<p>The affectations of a French cit,
+when that nondescript animal condescends
+to be affected, are more varied
+and interesting than those of their
+brethren here. He has a taste for the
+fine arts&mdash;he talks about the opera&mdash;likes
+to know artists and authors&mdash;and,
+though living up five or six pairs of
+stairs in a narrow lane, gives <i>soir&eacute;es</i>
+and <i>conversazion&eacute;s</i>. More ludicrous all
+this, and decidedly less disgusting,
+than the assumptions of our man-milliners
+and fishmongers. There is
+short sketch by Paul de Kock, called
+a <i>Soir&eacute;e Bourgeoise</i>, which we translate
+entire, as an illustration of this
+curious phase of French character;
+and we shall take an early opportunity
+of bringing before our readers
+the essays of the daily feuilletonists of
+the Parisian press, which give a clearer
+insight into the peculiarities of French
+domestic literature than can be acquired
+in any other quarter.</p>
+
+<h3>A CIT'S SOIREE.</h3>
+
+<p>Lights were observed some time
+ago, in the four windows of an apartment
+on the second floor of a house in
+the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite
+so brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers,
+but still it announced something.
+These four windows, with lights glancing
+in them all, had an air of rejoicing,
+and the industrious inhabitants of
+the Rue Grenetat, who don't generally
+go to much expense for illumination,
+even in their shops, looked at the four
+windows which eclipsed the street
+lamps in their brilliancy, and said,
+&quot;There's certainly something very
+extraordinary going on this evening
+at M. Lupot's!&quot; M. Lupot is an
+honest tradesman, who has retired
+from business some time. After having
+sold stationary for thirty years,
+without ever borrowing of a neighbour,
+or failing in a payment, M.
+Lupot, having scraped together an
+income of three hundred and twenty
+pounds, disposed of his stock in trade,
+and closed his ledger, to devote himself
+entirely to the pleasures of domestic
+life with his excellent spouse,
+Madam Felicit&eacute; Lupot&mdash;a woman of
+an amazingly apathetic turn of mind,
+who did admirably well in the shop
+as long as she had only to give change
+for half-crowns, but whose abilities
+extended no further. But this had not
+prevented her from making a very
+good wife to her husband, (which
+proves that much talent is not required
+for that purpose,) and presenting
+him with a daughter and a son.</p>
+
+<p>The daughter was the eldest, and
+had attained her seventeenth year;
+and M. Lupot, who spared nothing
+on her education, did not despair of
+finding a husband for her with a soul
+above sticks of sealing-wax and wafers&mdash;more
+especially as it was evident
+she had no turn for trade, and believed
+she had a decided genius for the
+fine arts&mdash;for she had painted her father
+as a shepherd with his crook,
+when she was only twelve, and had
+learned a year after to play &quot;Je suis
+Lindore&quot; by ear on the piano. M.
+Lupot was proud of his daughter,
+who was thus a painter and a musician;
+who was a foot taller than her
+papa; who held herself as upright as
+a Prussian grenadier; who made a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page374" id="page374" title="page374"></a>curtsy like Taglioni, who had a Roman
+nose three times the size of
+other people's, a mouth to match, and
+eyes so arch and playful, that it was
+difficult to discover them. The boy
+was only seven; he was allowed to do
+whatever he chose&mdash;he was so very
+young; and Monsieur Ascanius
+availed himself of the permission, and
+was in mischief from morning to
+night. His father was too fond of
+him to scold him, and his mother
+wouldn't take the trouble to get into
+a passion.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, one morning M. Lupot
+soliloquized&mdash;&quot;I have a good fortune,
+a charming family, and a wife who has
+never been in a rage; but all this does
+not lead to a man's being invited,
+courted, and made much of in the
+world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove
+and red sealing-wax, I have seen
+nobody but a few friends&mdash;retired
+tradesmen like myself&mdash;who drop in
+to take a hand at <i>vingt-et-un</i>, or loto;
+but I wish more than that&mdash;my daughter
+must not live in so narrow a circle;
+my daughter has a decided turn for the
+arts; I ought to have artists to my
+house. I will give soir&eacute;es, tea-parties&mdash;yes,
+with punch at parting, if it be
+necessary. We shall play <i>bouillote</i>
+and <i>&eacute;carte</i>, for my daughter can't endure
+loto. Indeed, I wish to set people
+talking about my re-unions, and to
+find a husband for Celanire worthy of
+her.&quot; M. Lupot was seated near his
+wife, who was seated on an elastic
+sofa, and was caressing a cat on her
+knee. He said to her&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Felicit&eacute;, I intend to give
+soir&eacute;es&mdash;to receive lots of company.
+We live in too confined a sphere for
+our daughter, who was born for the
+arts&mdash;and for Ascanius, who, it strikes
+me, will make some noise in the
+world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lupot continued to caress
+the cat, and replied, &quot;Well, what have
+I to do with that? Do I hinder you
+from receiving company? If it doesn't
+cause me any trouble&mdash;for I must tell
+you first of all, you musn't count on me
+to help you&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will have nothing at all to
+do, my dear Felicit&eacute;, but the honours
+of the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must be getting up every minute&quot;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do it so gracefully,&quot; replied
+the husband&mdash;&quot;I will give all the orders,
+and Celanire will second me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle was enchanted with
+the intention of her sire, and threw her
+arms round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh yes! papa,&quot; she said, &quot;invite
+as many as you can, I will learn to
+play some country-dances that we
+may have a ball, and finish my head
+of Belisarius&mdash;you must get it framed
+for the occasion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the little Ascanius whooped
+and hollo'd in the middle of the room.
+&quot;I shall have tea and punch and
+cakes. I'll eat every thing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After this conversation M. Lupot
+had set to work. He went to his
+friends and his friends' friends&mdash;to
+people he hardly knew, and invited
+them to his party, begging them to
+bring any body with them they liked.
+M. Lupot had formerly sold rose-coloured
+paper to a musician, and drawing
+pencils to an artist. He went to
+his ancient customers, and pressed them
+to come and to bring their professional
+friends with them. In short, M.
+Lupot was so prodigiously active that
+in four days he had run through nearly
+the whole of Paris, caught an immense
+cold, and spent seven shillings
+in cab hire. Giving an entertainment
+has its woes as well as its pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>The grand day, or rather the
+grand evening, at last arrived. All
+the lamps were lighted, and they had
+even borrowed some from their neighbours;
+for Celanire had discovered
+that their own three lamps did not
+give light enough both for the public-room
+and the supper-room&mdash;(which
+on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.)
+It was the first time that
+M. Lupot had borrowed any thing&mdash;but
+also it was the first time that M.
+Lupot gave a soir&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>From the dawn of day M. Lupot
+was busy in preparation: He had
+ordered in cakes and refreshments;
+bought sundry packs of cards, brushed
+the tables, and tucked up the curtains.
+Madame Lupot had sat all the time
+quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from
+time to time, &quot;I'm afraid 'twill be a
+troublesome business all this receiving
+company.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Celanire had finished her Belisarius,
+who was an exact likeness of
+Blue Beard, and whom they had honoured
+with a Gothic frame, and
+placed in a conspicuous part of the
+room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed
+with amazing care. She had a
+new gown, her hair plaited <i>&agrave; la Clotilde</i>.
+All this must make a great
+<a class="pagenum" name="page375" id="page375" title="page375"></a>sensation. Ascanius was rigged out
+in his best; but this did not hinder
+him from kicking up a dust in the
+room, from getting up on the furniture,
+handling the cards, and taking
+them to make houses; from opening
+the cupboards, and laying his fingers
+on the cakes.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes M. Lupot's patience
+gave way, and he cried, &quot;Madame, I
+beg you'll make your son be quiet.&quot;
+But Madame Lupot answered without
+turning her head, &quot;Make him quiet
+yourself, M. Lupot&mdash;You know very
+well it's <i>your</i> business to manage him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was now eight o'clock, and nobody
+was yet arrived. Mademoiselle
+looked at her father, who looked at
+his wife, who looked at her cat. The
+father of the family muttered every
+now and then&mdash;&quot;Are we to have our
+grand soir&eacute;e all to ourselves?&quot; And
+he cast doleful looks on his lamps, his
+tables, and all his splendid preparations.
+Mademoiselle Celanire sighed
+and looked at her dress, and then
+looked in the mirror. Madame Lupot
+was as unmoved as ever, and said,
+&quot;Is this what we've turned every
+thing topsy-turvy for?&quot; As for little
+Ascanius, he jumped about the room,
+and shouted, &quot;If nobody comes, what
+lots of cakes we shall have!&quot; At last
+the bell rang. It is a family from the
+Rue St Denis, retired perfumers, who
+have only retained so much of their
+ancient profession, that they cover
+themselves all over with odours.
+When they enter the room, you feel
+as if a hundred scent-bottles were
+opened at once. There is such a smell
+of jasmine and vanille, that you have
+good luck if you get off without a
+headache. Other people drop in. M.
+Lupot does not know half his guests,
+for many of them are brought by
+others, and even these he scarcely
+knows the names of. But he is enchanted
+with every thing. A young
+fashionable is presented to him by
+some unknown third party, who says,
+&quot;This is one of our first pianists, who
+is good enough to give up a great concert
+this evening to come here.&quot; The
+next is a famous singer, a lion in musical
+parties, who is taken out every
+where, and who will give one of his
+latest compositions, though unfortunately
+labouring under a cold. This
+man won the first prize at the Conservatory,
+an unfledged Boildieu, who
+will be a great composer of operas&mdash;when
+he can get librettos to his music,
+and music to his librettos. The next
+is a painter. He has shown at the
+exhibition&mdash;he has had wonderful success.
+To be sure nobody bought his
+pictures, because he didn't wish to
+sell them to people that couldn't appreciate
+them. In short, M. Lupot
+sees nobody in his rooms that is not
+first-rate in some way or other. He
+is delighted with the thought&mdash;ravished,
+transported. He can't find words
+enough to express his satisfaction at
+having such geniuses in his house. For
+their sakes he neglects his old friends&mdash;he
+scarcely speaks to them. It seems
+the new-comers, people he has never
+seen before, are the only people worthy
+of his attentions. Madame Lupot is
+tired of getting up, curtsying, and
+sitting down again. But her daughter
+is radiant with joy; her husband goes
+from room to room, rubbing his hands,
+as if he had bought all Paris, and got
+it a bargain. And little Ascanius
+never comes out of the bed-room
+without his mouth full. But it is not
+enough to invite a large party; you
+must know how to amuse them; it is
+a thing which very few people have
+the art of, even those most accustomed
+to have soir&eacute;es. In some you
+get tired, and you are in great ceremony;
+you must restrict yourself to
+a conversation that is neither open,
+nor friendly, nor amusing. In others,
+you are pestered to death by the amphitryon,
+who is perhaps endowed
+with the bump of music, and won't
+leave the piano for fear some one else
+should take his place. There are
+others fond of cards, who only ask
+their friends that they may make up
+a table. Such individuals care for
+nothing but the game, and don't
+trouble themselves whether the rest
+of their guests are amused or not.
+Ah! there are few homes that know
+how to receive their company, or
+make every body pleased. It requires
+a tact, a cleverness, an absence of
+self, which must surely be very unusual
+since we see so few specimens
+of them in the soir&eacute;es we attend.</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot went to and fro&mdash;from
+the reception-room to the bed-chamber,
+and back again&mdash;he smiled, he
+bowed, and rubbed his hands. But
+the new-comers, who had not come to
+his house to see him smile and rub his
+hands, began to say, in very audible
+whispers, &quot;Ah, well, do people pass
+the whole night here looking at each
+other? Very delightful&mdash;very!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page376" id="page376" title="page376"></a>M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation
+with a big man in spectacles,
+with a neckcloth of great dimensions,
+and who makes extraordinary faces as
+he looks round on the company. M.
+Lupot has been told, that the gentleman
+with the large neckcloth is a literary
+man, and that he will probably be
+good enough to read or recite some
+lines of his own composition. The
+ancient stationer coughs three times
+before venturing to address so distinguished
+a character, but says at last&mdash;&quot;Enchanted
+to see at my house a
+gentleman so&mdash;an author of such&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you're the host here, are you?&mdash;the
+master of the house?&quot;&mdash;said
+the man in the neckcloth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I flatter myself I am&mdash;with my
+wife, of course&mdash;the lady on the sofa&mdash;you
+see her? My daughter, sir&mdash;she's
+the tall young lady, so upright in
+her figure. She designs, and has an
+excellent touch on the piano. I have
+a son also&mdash;a little fiend&mdash;it was he
+who crept this minute between my legs&mdash;he's
+an extraordinary clev&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is one thing, sir,&quot; replied
+the big man, &quot;that I can't comprehend&mdash;a
+thing that amazes me&mdash;and
+that is, that people who live in the
+Rue Grenetat should give parties.
+It is a miserable street&mdash;a horrid street&mdash;covered
+eternally with mud&mdash;choked
+up with cars&mdash;a wretched part of the
+town, dirty, noisy, pestilential&mdash;bah!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet, sir, for thirty years I have
+lived here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh Lord, sir, I should have died
+thirty times over! When people live
+in the Rue Grenetat they should give
+up society, for you'll grant it is a regular
+trap to seduce people into such
+an abominable street. I&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing
+his hands. He moves off from
+the big man in the spectacles, whose
+conversation had by no means amused
+him, and he goes up to a group of
+young people who seem examining the
+Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're admiring my daughter's
+drawing,&quot; said M. Lupot to himself;
+&quot;I must try to overhear what these
+artists are saying.&quot; The young people
+certainly made sundry remarks
+on the performance, plentifully intermixed
+with sneers of a very unmistakable
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you make out what the head
+is meant for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not I. I confess I never saw any
+thing so ridiculous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's Belisarius, my dear fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Impossible!&mdash;it's the portrait of
+some grocer, some relation, probably, of
+the family&mdash;look at the nose&mdash;the
+mouth&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is intolerable folly to put a frame
+to such a daub.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They must be immensely silly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, it isn't half so good as the
+head of the Wandering Jew at the top
+of a penny ballad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot has heard enough. He
+slips off from the group without a
+word, and glides noiselessly to the piano.
+The young performer who had
+sacrificed a great concert to come to
+his soir&eacute;e, had sat down to the instrument
+and run his fingers over the
+notes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a spinnet!&quot; he cried&mdash;&quot;what
+a wretched kettle! How can you expect
+a man to perform on such a miserable
+instrument? The thing is absurd&mdash;hear
+this A&mdash;hear this G&mdash;it's like a hurdygurdy&mdash;not
+one note of it in tune!&quot; But
+the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding,
+and played incessantly,
+thumping the keys with such tremendous
+force, that every minute a chord
+snapped; when such a thing happened&mdash;he
+burst into a laugh, and said,
+&quot;Good! there's another gone&mdash;there
+will soon be none left.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot flushed up to the ears.
+He felt very much inclined to say to
+the celebrated performer, &quot;Sir, I
+didn't ask you here to break all the
+chords of my piano. Let the instrument
+alone if you don't like it, but
+don't hinder other people from playing
+on it for our amusement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the good M. Lupot did not venture
+on so bold a speech, which would
+have been a very sensible speech nevertheless;
+and he stood quietly while
+his chords were getting smashed,
+though it was by no means a pleasant
+thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to
+her father. She is distressed at the
+way her piano is treated; she has no
+opportunity of playing her air; but
+she hopes to make up for it by singing
+a romance, which one of their old
+neighbours is going to accompany on
+the guitar.</p>
+
+<p>It is not without some difficulty that
+M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's
+song. At sight of the old neighbour
+and his guitar a smothered laugh
+is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable
+that the gentleman is not unlike
+a respectable Troubadour with a barrel
+<a class="pagenum" name="page377" id="page377" title="page377"></a>organ, and that his guitar is like an
+ancient harp. There is great curiosity
+to hear the old gentleman touch his
+instrument. He begins by beating
+time with his feet and his head, which
+latter movement gives him very much
+the appearance of a mandarin that you
+sometimes see on a mantelpiece. Nevertheless
+Mademoiselle Lupot essays
+her ballad; but she can never manage
+to overtake her accompanier, who, instead
+of following the singer, seems
+determined to make no alteration in
+the movement of his head and feet.
+The ballad is a failure&mdash;Celanire is confused,
+she has mistaken her notes&mdash;she
+loses her recollection; and, instead of
+hearing his daughter's praises, M. Lupot
+overhears the young people whispering&mdash;&quot;It
+wouldn't do in a beer-shop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must order in the tea,&quot; thought
+the ex-stationer&mdash;&quot;it will perhaps put
+them into good-humour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And M. Lupot rushes off to give
+instructions to the maid; and that old
+individual, who has never seen such a
+company before, does not know how to
+get on, and breaks cups and saucers
+without mercy, in the effort to make
+haste.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nannette, have you got ready the
+other things you were to bring in with
+the tea?&mdash;the muffins&mdash;the cakes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir&quot;&mdash;replied Nannette&mdash;&quot;all
+is ready&mdash;every thing will be in in a moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But there is another thing I told
+you, Nannette&mdash;the sandwiches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The witches, sir?&mdash;the sand?&quot;&mdash;enquired
+the puzzled Nannette.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is an English dish&mdash;I explained
+it to you before&mdash;slices of bread and
+butter, with ham between.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh la, sir!&quot; exclaimed the maid&mdash;&quot;I
+have forgotten that rago&ucirc;t&mdash;oh dear!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;make haste, Nannette; get
+ready some immediately, while my
+daughter hands round the tea and
+muffins&mdash;you can bring them in on a
+tray.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old domestic hurries into the
+kitchen grumbling at the English dainty,
+and cuts some slices of bread and
+covers them with butter; but as she
+had never thought of the ham, she cogitates
+a long time how she can supply
+the want of it&mdash;at last, on looking
+round, she discovers a piece of beef
+that had been left at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardieu,&quot; she says, &quot;I'll cut some
+lumps of this and put them on the
+bread. With plenty of salt they'll
+pass very well for ham&mdash;they'll drive
+me wild with their English dishes&mdash;they
+will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The maid speedily does as she says,
+and then hurries into the room with a
+tray covered with her extempore ham
+sandwiches.</p>
+
+<p>Every body takes one,&mdash;for they
+have grown quite fashionable along
+with tea. But immediately there is an
+universal murmur in the assembly.
+The ladies throw their slices into the
+fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on the
+furniture, and they cry&mdash;&quot;why the
+devil do people give us things like these?&mdash;they're
+detestable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's my opinion, God forgive me!
+the man means to feed us with scraps
+from the pig-trough,&quot; says another.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a regular do, this soir&eacute;e,&quot; says
+a third.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The tea is disgustingly smoked,&quot;
+says a fourth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all the little cakes look as if
+they had been fingered before,&quot; says
+the fifth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Decidedly they wish to poison us,&quot;
+says the big man in the neckcloth,
+looking very morose.</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot is in despair. He goes
+in search of Nannette, who has hidden
+herself in the kitchen; and he busies
+himself in gathering up the fragments
+of the bread and butter from the floor
+and the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lupot says nothing; but
+she is in very bad humour, for she has
+put on a new cap, which she felt sure
+would be greatly admired; and a lady
+has come to her and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, madame, what a shocking
+head-dress!&mdash;your cap is very old-fashioned&mdash;those
+shapes are quite gone
+out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet, madame,&quot; replies Madame
+Lupot, &quot;I bought it, not two
+days ago, in the Rue St Martin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, madame&mdash;Is that the street
+you go to for the fashions? Go to
+Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous
+Gaillon&mdash;you'll get delicious caps
+there&mdash;new fashions and every thing
+so tasteful: for Heaven's sake, madame,
+never put on that cap again. You
+look, at least, a hundred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's worth one's while, truly,&quot;
+thought Madame Lupot, &quot;to tire one's
+self to death receiving people, to be
+treated to such pretty compliments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page378" id="page378" title="page378"></a>Her husband, in the meanwhile,
+continued his labours in pursuit of the
+rejected sandwiches.</p>
+
+<p>The big man in spectacles, who
+wondered that people could live in the
+Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless,
+of coming there for nothing. He
+has seated himself in an arm-chair in
+the middle of the room, and informs
+the company that he is going to repeat
+a few lines of his own to them.&mdash;The
+society seems by no means enchanted
+with the announcement, but forms itself
+in a circle, to listen to the poet.
+He coughs and spits, wipes his mouth,
+tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has
+the lamps raised, the doors shut, asks
+a tumbler of sugar and water, and
+passes his hand through his hair.
+After continuing these operations for
+some minutes, the literary man at last
+begins. He spouts his verses in a
+voice enough to break the glasses; before
+he has spoken a minute, he has
+presented a tremendous picture of
+crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds, sufficient
+to appal the stoutest hearts, when
+suddenly a great crash from the inner
+room attracts universal attention. It
+is the young Ascanius, who was trying
+to get a muffin on the top of a pile of
+dishes, and has upset the table, with
+muffin, and dishes, and all on his own
+head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain
+the cause of the dreadful cries of his
+son; the company follow him, not a
+little rejoiced to find an excuse for
+hearing no more of the poem; and the
+poet, deprived in this way of an audience,
+gets up in a furious passion,
+takes his hat, and rushes from the
+room, exclaiming&mdash;&quot;It serves me
+right. How could I have been fool
+enough to recite good verses in the
+Rue Grenetat!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ascanius is brought in and roars
+lustily, for two of the dishes have been
+broken on his nose; and as there is
+no chance now, either of poetry or
+music, the party have recourse to
+cards&mdash;for it is impossible to sit all night
+and do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>They make up a table at <i>bouillote</i>,
+and another at <i>ecart&eacute;</i>. M. Lupot
+takes his place at the latter. He is
+forced to cover all the bets when his
+side refuses; and M. Lupot, who
+never played higher than shilling
+stakes in his life, is horrified when they
+tell him&mdash;&quot;You must lay down fifteen
+francs to equal our stakes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifteen francs!&quot; says M. Lupot,
+&quot;what is the meaning of all this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It means, that you must make up
+the stakes of your side, to what we
+have put down on this. The master
+of the house is always expected to
+make up the difference.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays
+down his fifteen francs and loses them;
+next game the deficiency is twenty.
+In short, in less than half an hour, the
+ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His
+eyes start out of his head&mdash;he scarcely
+knows where he is; and to complete
+his misery, the opposite party, in lifting
+up the money they have won, upset
+one of the lamps he had borrowed
+from his neighbours, and smashed it
+into fifty pieces.</p>
+
+<p>At last the hour of separation comes.
+The good citizen has been anxious for
+it for a long time. All his gay company
+depart, without even wishing
+good-night to the host who has exerted
+himself so much for their entertainment.
+The family of the Lupots are
+left alone; Madame, overcome with
+fatigue, and vexed because her cap had
+been found fault with; Celanire, with
+tears in her eyes, because her music
+and Belisarius had been laughed at;
+and Ascanius sick and ill, because he
+has nearly burst himself with cakes and
+muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the
+unhappiest of all, thinking of his ninety
+francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette
+gathered up the crumbs of the
+sandwiches, and muttered&mdash;&quot;Do they
+think people make English dishes to
+have them thrown into the corners of
+the room?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's done,&quot; said M. Lupot; &quot;I
+shall give no more soir&eacute;es. I begin to
+think I was foolish in wishing to leave
+my own sphere. When people of the
+same class lark and joke each other,
+it's all very well; but when you meddle
+with your superiors, and they are
+uncivil, it hurts your feelings. Their
+mockery is an insult, and you don't
+get over it soon. My dear Celanire,
+I shall decidedly try to marry you to a
+stationer.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s8" id="bw329s8"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page379" id="page379" title="page379"></a>
+<h2>THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.</h3>
+
+<h3>OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.</h3>
+
+<p>The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in
+our last for the admiration and instruction
+of remote ages. When the nineteenth
+century shall be long out of date,
+and centuries in general out of their
+<i>teens</i>, posterity will revert to our delineation
+of the heavy swell with pleasure
+undiminished, through the long
+succession of ages yet to come; the
+macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be
+forgotten, or remembered only in our
+graphic portraiture of the heavy swell.
+But the heavy swell is, after all, a
+harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting
+sin, his <i>monomania</i>, is vanity tinctured
+with pride: his weak point can
+hardly be called a crime, since it affects
+and injures nobody but himself, if, indeed,
+it can be said to injure him who
+glories in his vocation&mdash;who is the
+echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.</p>
+
+<p>The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary,
+are positively noxious to society,
+as well particular as general. There
+is a twofold or threefold iniquity in
+their goings-on; they sin against society,
+their families, and themselves;
+the whole business of their lives is a
+perversion of the text of Scripture,
+which commandeth us, &quot;in whatever
+station we are, therewith to be content.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gentility-monger is a family
+man, having a house somewhere in
+Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is
+sometimes a man of independent fortune&mdash;how
+acquired, nobody knows;
+that is his secret, his mystery. He will
+let no one suppose that he has ever
+been in trade; because, when a man
+intends gentility-mongering, it must
+never be known that he has formerly
+carried on the tailoring, or the shipping,
+or the cheese-mongering, or the
+fish-mongering, or any other mongering
+than the gentility-mongering. His
+house is very stylishly furnished; that
+is to say, as unlike the house of a man
+of fashion as possible&mdash;the latter having
+only things the best of their kind, and
+for use; the former displaying every
+variety of extravagant gimcrackery,
+to impress you with a profound idea of
+combined wealth and taste, but which,
+to an educated eye and mind only, conveys
+a lively idea of ostentation. When
+you call upon a gentility-monger, a
+broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike
+footman, in Aurora plushes,
+ushers you to a drawing-room, where,
+on tables round, and square, and hexagonal,
+are set forth jars, porcelain,
+china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed
+parrots under bell-glasses; corals, minerals,
+and an infinity of trumpery,
+among which albums, great, small, and
+intermediate, must by no means be
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The room is papered with some
+<i>splendacious</i> pattern in blue and gold;
+a chandelier of imposing gingerbread
+depends from the richly ornamented
+ceiling; every variety of ottoman,
+lounger, settee, is scattered about, so
+that to get a chair involves the right-of-search
+question; the bell-pulls are
+painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels
+carpet of flaming colours, curtains with
+massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous
+frames; prints, after Ross, of
+her Majesty and Prince Albert, of
+course; and mezzotints of the Duke of
+Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for
+whom the gentility-monger has a profound
+respect, and of whom he talks
+with a familiarity showing that it is
+not <i>his</i> fault, at least, if these exalted
+personages do not admit him to the
+honour of their acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, you see the drawing-room is
+not intended for sitting down in, and
+when the lady appears, you are inclined
+to believe she never sits down; at least
+the full-blown swell of that satin skirt
+seems never destined to the compression
+of a chair. The conversation is
+as usual&mdash;&quot;Have you read the morning
+paper?&quot;&mdash;meaning the Court Circular
+and fashionable intelligence; &quot;do you
+know whether the Queen is at Windsor
+or Claremont, and how long her Majesty
+intends to remain; whether town is
+fuller than it was, or not so full; when
+the next Almacks' ball takes place;
+whether you were at the last drawing-room,
+and which of the fair <i>debutantes</i>
+you most admire; whether Tamburini
+is to be denied us next year?&quot; with many
+<a class="pagenum" name="page380" id="page380" title="page380"></a>lamentations touching the possible defection,
+as if the migrations of an
+opera thrush were of the least consequence
+to any rational creature&mdash;of
+course you don't say so, but lament
+Tamburini as if he were your father;
+&quot;whether it is true that we are to have
+the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito,
+this season; and what a heaven of delight
+we shall experience from the united
+action of these twenty supernatural
+pettitoes.&quot; You needn't express yourself
+after this fashion, else you will
+shock miss, who lounges near you in
+an agony of affected rapture: you must
+sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your
+cane, and say &quot;divine&mdash;yes&mdash;hope it
+may be so&mdash;exquisite&mdash;<i>exquisite</i>.&quot; This
+naturally leads you to the last new
+songs, condescendingly exhibited to you
+by miss, if you are <i>somebody</i>, (if <i>nobody</i>,
+miss does not appear;) you are
+informed that &quot;<i>My heart is like a
+pickled salmon</i>&quot; is dedicated to the
+Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon
+you are favoured with sundry passages
+(out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages,
+&amp;c., of that illustrious family;
+you are asked whether Bishop is the
+composer of &quot;<i>I saw her in a twinkling</i>,&quot;
+and whether the <i>minor</i> is not fine?
+Miss tells you she has transposed it
+from G to C, as suiting her voice better&mdash;whereupon
+mamma acquaints you,
+that a hundred and twenty guineas for
+a harp is moderate, she thinks; you
+think so too, taking that opportunity
+to admire the harp, saying that you
+saw one exactly like it at Lord (any
+Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in
+St James's Square. This produces an
+invitation to dinner; and with many
+lamentations on English weather, and
+an eulogium on the climate of Florence,
+you pay your parting compliments,
+and take your leave.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner you meet a claret-faced
+Irish absentee, whose good society is a
+good dinner, and who is too happy to
+be asked any where that a good dinner
+is to be had; a young silky clergyman,
+in black curled whiskers, and a
+white <i>choker</i>; one of the meaner fry
+of M.P.'s; a person who <i>calls himself</i> a
+foreign count; a claimant of a dormant
+peerage; a baronet of some sort, not
+above the professional; sundry propriety-faced
+people in yellow waistcoats,
+who say little, and whose social
+position you cannot well make out;
+half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age,
+dressed in grand style, with turbans of
+imposing <i>tournure</i>; and a young, diffident,
+equivocal-looking gent who sits
+at the bottom of the table, and whom
+you instinctively make out to be a
+family doctor, tutor, or nephew, with
+expectations. No young ladies, unless
+the young ladies of the family, appear
+at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers;
+because the motive of the
+entertainment is pride, not pleasure;
+and therefore prigs and frumps are in
+keeping, and young women with brains,
+or power of conversation, would only
+distract attention from the grand business
+of life, that is to say, dinner; besides,
+a seat at table here is an object,
+where the expense is great, and nobody
+is asked for his or her own sake, but
+for an object either of ostentation, interest,
+or vanity. Hospitality never
+enters into the composition of a gentility-monger:
+he gives a dinner, wine,
+and a shake of the hand, but does not
+know what the word <i>welcome</i> means:
+he says, now and then, to his wife
+&quot;My dear, I think we must give a
+dinner;&quot; a dinner is accordingly determined
+on, cards issued three weeks
+in advance, that you may be premeditatedly
+dull; the dinner is gorgeous to
+repletion, that conversation may be
+kept as stagnant as possible. Of those
+happy surprize invitations&mdash;those unexpected
+extemporaneous dinners, that
+as they come without thinking or
+expectation, so go off with <i>eclat</i>, and
+leave behind the memory of a cheerful
+evening&mdash;he has no idea; a man of
+fashion, whose place is fixed, and who
+has only himself to please, will ask
+you to a slice of crimped cod and a
+hash of mutton, without ceremony;
+and when he puts a cool bottle on the
+table, after a dinner that he and his
+friend have really enjoyed, will never
+so much as apologize with, &quot;my dear
+sir, I fear you have had a wretched
+dinner,&quot; or &quot;I wish I had known: I
+should have had something better.&quot;
+This affected depreciation of his hospitality
+he leaves to the gentility-monger,
+who will insist on cramming you with
+fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are like
+to burst; and then, by way of apology,
+get his guests to pay the reckoning in
+plethoric laudation of his mountains
+of victual.</p>
+
+<p>If you wait in the drawing-room,
+kicking your heels for an hour after
+the appointed time, although you arrived
+to a <i>minute</i>, as every Christian
+does, you may be sure that somebody
+<a class="pagenum" name="page381" id="page381" title="page381"></a>who patronizes the gentility-monger,
+probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky,
+is expected, and has not come. It is
+vain for you to attempt to talk to your
+host, hostess, or miss, who are absorbed,
+body and soul, in expectation of Honourable
+Sniftky; the propriety-faced
+people in the yellow waistcoats attitudinize
+in groups about the room,
+putting one pump out, drawing the
+other in, inserting the thumb gracefully
+in the arm-hole of the yellow
+waistcoats, and talking <i>icicles</i>; the
+young fellows play with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley
+in a button-hole&mdash;admire
+a flowing portrait of miss, asking one
+another if it is not very like&mdash;or hang
+over the back of a chair of one of the
+turbaned ladies, who gives good evening
+parties; the host receives a great many
+compliments upon one thing and
+another, from some of the professed
+diners-out, who take every opportunity
+of paying for their dinner beforehand;
+every body freezes with the chilling
+sensation of dinner deferred, and
+&quot;curses, not loud but deep,&quot; are imprecated
+on the Honourable Sniftky.
+At last, a prolonged <i>rat-tat-tat</i> announces
+the arrival of the noble beast,
+the lion of the evening; the Honourable
+Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in
+the Foreign Office, is announced by
+the footman out of livery, (for the day,)
+and announces himself a minute after:
+he comes in a long-tailed coat and
+boots, to show his contempt for his
+entertainers, and mouths a sort of apology
+for keeping his betters waiting,
+which is received by the gentility-monger,
+his lady, and miss, with nods,
+and becks, and wreathed smiles of unqualified
+admiration and respect.</p>
+
+<p>As the order of precedence at the
+house of a gentility-monger is not
+strictly understood, the host desires
+Honourable Sniftky to take down miss;
+and calling out the names of the other
+guests, like muster-master of the
+guards, pairs them, and sends them
+down to the dining-room, where you
+find the nephew, or family doctor, (or
+whatever he is,) who has inspected the
+arrangement of the table, already in
+waiting.</p>
+
+<p>You take your place, not without
+that excess of ceremony that distinguishes
+the table of a gentility-monger;
+the Honourable Sniftky, <i>ex-officio</i>,
+takes his place between mamma
+and miss, glancing vacancy round the
+table, lest any body should think himself
+especially honoured by a fixed
+stare; covers are removed by the mob
+of occasional waiters in attendance,
+and white soup and brown soup, thick
+and heavy as judges of assize, go circuit.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes hobnobbing, with an
+interlocutory dissertation upon a <i>plateau,
+candelabrum</i>, or some other superfluous
+machine, in the centre of the
+table. One of the professed diners-out,
+discovers for the twentieth time an
+inscription in dead silver on the pedestal,
+and enquires with well-affected
+ignorance whether that is a <i>present</i>;
+the gentility-monger asks the diner-out
+to wine, as he deserves, then enters
+into a long apologetical self-laudation
+of his exertions in behalf of the CANNIBAL
+ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION,
+AND BRITISH SUBJECT TRANSPORTATION
+SOCIETY, (some emigration
+crimping scheme, in short,) in which
+his humble efforts to diffuse civilization
+and promote Christianity, however unworthy,
+(&quot;No, no!&quot; from the diner-out,)
+gained the esteem of his fellow-labourers,
+and the approbation of his
+own con&mdash;&mdash;&quot;Shall I send you some
+fish, sir?&quot; says the man at the foot of
+the table, addressing himself to the
+Honourable Sniftky, and cutting short
+the oration.</p>
+
+<p>A monstrous salmon and a huge
+turbot are now dispensed to the hungry
+multitude; the gentility-monger
+has no idea that the biggest turbot is
+not the best; he knows it is the <i>dearest</i>,
+and that is enough for him; he
+would have his dishes like his cashbook,
+to show at a glance how much
+he has at his banker's. When the
+flesh of the guests has been sufficiently
+fishified, there is an <i>interregnum</i>, filled
+up with another circuit of wine, until
+the arrival of the <i>pi&egrave;ces de resistance</i>,
+the imitations of made dishes, and
+the usual <i>etceteras</i>. The conversation,
+meanwhile, is carried on in a <i>staccato</i>
+style; a touch here, a hit there, a miss
+almost every where; the Honourable
+Sniftky turning the head of mamma
+with affected compliments, and hobnobbing
+to himself without intermission.
+After a sufficiently tedious interval,
+the long succession of wasteful
+extravagance is cleared away with the
+upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a
+look from our hostess, rise with dignity
+and decorously retire, miss modestly
+bringing up the rear&mdash;the man at the
+foot of the table with the handle of the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page382" id="page382" title="page382"></a>door in one hand, and a napkin in the
+other, bowing them out.</p>
+
+<p>Now the host sings out to the Honourable
+Sniftky to draw his chair
+closer and be jovial, as if people, after
+an oppressively expensive dinner, can
+be jovial <i>to order</i>. The wine goes
+round, and laudations go with it; the
+professed diners-out enquire the
+vintage; the Honourable Mr Sniftky intrenches
+himself behind a rampart of
+fruit dishes, speaking only when he is
+spoken to, and glancing inquisitively
+at the several speakers, as much as to
+say, &quot;What a fellow you are, to talk;&quot;
+the host essays a <i>bon-mot</i>, or tells a
+story bordering on the <i>ideal</i>, which he
+thinks is fashionable, and shows that
+he knows life; the Honourable Sniftky
+drinks claret from a beer-glass, and
+after the third bottle affects to discover
+his mistake, wondering what he
+could be thinking of; this produces
+much laughter from all save the professed
+diners-out, who dare not take
+such a liberty, and is <i>the</i> jest of the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>When the drinkers, drinkables, and
+talk are quite exhausted, the noise of a
+piano recalls to our bewildered
+recollections the ladies, and we drink their
+healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending
+that it is foreign-post night at
+the Foreign Office, walks off without
+even a bow to the assembled diners, the
+gentility-monger following him submissively
+to the door; then returning,
+tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone,
+he's such a good-natured fellow, while
+the gentleman so characterized gets
+into his cab, drives to his club, and
+excites the commiseration of every
+body there, by relating how he was
+bored with an old <i>ruffian</i>, who insisted
+upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner
+in Bryanston Square; at which there
+are many &quot;Oh's!&quot; and &quot;Ah's!&quot; and
+&quot;what could you expect?&mdash;Bryanston
+Square!&mdash;served you right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, the guests, relieved
+of the presence of the Honourable
+Sniftky, are rather more at their ease;
+a baronet (who was lord mayor, or
+something of that sort) waxes jocular,
+and gives decided indications of
+something like &quot;how came you so;&quot;
+the man at the foot of the table contradicts
+one of the diners-out, and is
+contradicted in turn by the baronet;
+the foreign count is in deep conversation
+with a hard-featured man, supposed
+to be a stockjobber; the clergyman
+extols the labours of the host in
+the matter of the Cannibal Islands'
+Aborigines Protection Society, in which
+his reverence takes an interest; the
+claimant of the dormant peerage retails
+his pedigree, pulling to pieces the
+attorney-general, who has expressed
+an opinion hostile to his pretensions.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, the piano is joined
+by a harp, in musical solicitation of
+the company to join the ladies in the
+drawing-room; they do so, looking
+flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs,
+sip tea, the younger beaux turning
+over, with miss, Books of Beauty
+and Keepsakes: at eleven, coaches and
+cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing
+with a melancholy countenance
+your sense of the delightfulness
+of the evening, get to your chambers,
+and forget, over a broiled bone and a
+bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal,
+prosy, thankless, stone-faced,
+yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing,
+unintellectual, selfish, stupid set you
+have been condemned to pass an afternoon,
+assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition
+of vulgar wealth, where gulosity
+has been unrelieved by one single
+sally of wit, humour, good-nature,
+humanity, or charity; where you come
+without a welcome, and leave without
+a friend.</p>
+
+<p>The whole art of the gentility-mongers
+of all sorts in London, and
+<i>&agrave; fortiori</i> of their wives and families, is
+to lay a tax upon social intercourse
+as nearly as possible amounting to a
+prohibition; their dinners are criminally
+wasteful, and sinfully extravagant
+to this end; to this end they
+insist on making <i>price</i> the test of what
+they are pleased to consider <i>select society</i>
+in their own sets, and they consequently
+cannot have a dance without
+guinea tickets nor a <i>pic-nic</i> without
+dozens of champagne. This shows
+their native ignorance and vulgarity
+more than enough; genteel people go
+upon a plan directly contrary, not
+merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying
+themselves without extravagance
+or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers
+would do well to imitate
+people of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The exertions a gentility-monger
+will make, to rub his skirts against
+people above him; the humiliations,
+mortifications, snubbing, he will submit
+to, are almost incredible. One
+would hardly believe that a retired
+tradesman, of immense wealth, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page383" id="page383" title="page383"></a>enjoying all the respect that immense
+wealth will secure, should actually
+offer large sums of money to a lady of
+fashion, as an inducement to procure
+for him cards of invitation to her <i>set</i>,
+which he stated was the great object
+of his existence. Instead of being indignant
+at his presumption, the lady
+in question, pitying the poor man's
+folly, attempted to reason with him,
+assuring him with great truth that
+whatever might be his wealth, his
+power or desire of pleasing, he would
+be rendered unhappy and ridiculous,
+by the mere dint of pretension to a
+circle to which he had no legitimate
+claim, and advising him, as a friend,
+to attempt some more laudable and
+satisfactory ambition.</p>
+
+<p>All this good advice was, however,
+thrown away; our gentility-monger
+persevered, contriving somehow to
+gain a passport to some of the <i>outer</i>
+circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed,
+laughed at, and honoured with
+the <i>soubriquet</i> (he was a pianoforte
+maker) of the <i>Semi-Grand</i>!</p>
+
+<p>We know another instance, where
+two young men, engaged in trade in
+the city, took a splendid mansion at
+the West End, furnished it sumptuously,
+got some desperate knight or
+baronet's widow to give parties at
+their house, inviting whomsoever she
+thought proper, at their joint expense.
+It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows
+succeeded in getting into good
+society, not indeed in the <i>Court Circular</i>,
+but in the&mdash;<i>Gazette</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is another class of gentility-mongers
+more to be pitied than the
+last; those, namely, who are endeavouring
+to &quot;make a connexion,&quot; as the
+phrase is, by which they may gain advancement
+in their professions, and are
+continually on the look-out for introductions
+to persons of quality, their
+hangers-on and dependents. There is
+too much of this sort of thing among
+medical men in London, the family
+nature of whose profession renders
+connexion, private partiality, and personal
+favour, more essential to them
+than to others. The lawyer, for example,
+need not be a gentility-monger;
+he has only to get round attorneys, for
+the opportunity to show what he can
+do, when he has done this, in which a
+little toadying, &quot;<i>on the sly</i>,&quot; is necessary&mdash;all
+the rest is easy. The court
+and the public are his judges; his
+powers are at once appreciable, his
+talent can be calculated, like the money
+in his pocket; he can now go on
+straight forward, without valuing the
+individual preference or aversion of
+any body.</p>
+
+<p>But a profession where men make
+way through the whisperings of women,
+and an inexhaustible variety of
+<i>sotto voce</i> contrivances, must needs
+have a tendency to create a subserviency
+of spirit and of manner, which
+naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering:
+where realities, such as
+medical experience, reading, and skill,
+are remotely, or not at all, appreciable,
+we must take up with appearances;
+and of all appearances, the appearance
+of proximity to people of fashion is the
+most taking and seductive to people
+<i>not</i> of fashion. It is for this reason that
+a rising physician, if he happen to have
+a lord upon his sick or visiting list,
+never has done telling his plebeian patients
+the particulars of his noble case,
+which they swallow like almond milk,
+finding it an excellent <i>placebo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As it is the interest of a gentility-monger,
+and his constant practice, to
+be attended by a fashionable physician,
+in order that he may be enabled continually
+to talk of what Sir Henry
+thinks of this, and how Sir Henry objects
+to that, and the opinion of Sir
+Henry upon t'other, so it is the business
+of the struggling doctor to be
+a gentility-monger, with the better
+chance of becoming one day or other
+a fashionable physician. Acting on
+this principle, the poor man must necessarily
+have a house in a professional
+neighbourhood, which usually abuts
+upon a neighbourhood fashionable or
+exclusive; he must hire a carriage by
+the month, and be for ever stepping in
+and out of it, at his own door, keeping
+it purposely bespattered with mud to
+show the extent of his visiting acquaintance;
+he must give dinners to people
+&quot;who <i>may</i> be useful,&quot; and be continually
+on the look-out for those lucky
+accidents which have made the fortunes,
+and, as a matter of course, the
+<i>merit</i>, of so many professional men.</p>
+
+<p>He becomes a Fellow of the Royal
+Society, which gives him the chance
+of conversing with a lord, and the right
+of entering a lord's (the president's)
+house, which is turned into sandwich-shop
+four times a-year for his
+reception; this, being the nearest approach
+<a class="pagenum" name="page384" id="page384" title="page384"></a>he makes to acquaintance with
+great personages, he values with the importance
+it deserves.</p>
+
+<p>His servants, with famine legibly
+written on their bones, are assiduous
+and civil; his wife, though half-starved,
+is very genteel, and at her dinner parties
+burns candle-ends from the palace.<a name="footnotetag48" id="footnotetag48"></a><a href="#footnote48"><sup>48</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>If you pay her a morning visit, you
+will have some such conversation as
+follows.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pray, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, is there any news
+to-day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Great distress, I understand,
+throughout the country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed&mdash;the old story, shocking&mdash;very.&mdash;Pray,
+have you heard the delightful
+news? The Princess-Royal
+has actually cut a tooth!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I assure you; and the sweet
+little royal love of a martyr has borne
+it like a hero.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Positively?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Positively, I assure you; Doctor
+Tryiton has just returned from a consultation
+with his friend Sir Henry,
+upon a particularly difficult case&mdash;Lord
+Scruffskin&mdash;case of elephantiasis
+I think they call it, and tells me that
+Sir Henry has arrives express from
+Windsor with the news.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, there will
+be a general illumination?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really, madam, I cannot say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>There ought to be</i>, [with emphasis.]
+You must know, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, Dr
+Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter
+a beautifully bound copy of his
+work on ulcerated sore throat; he says
+there is a great analogy between ulcers
+of the throat and den&mdash;den&mdash;den&mdash;something,
+I don't know what&mdash;teething,
+in short. If nothing comes of it,
+Dr Tryiton, thank Heaven, can do without
+it; but you know, Mr &mdash;&mdash;, it may,
+on a future occasion, be <i>useful to our
+family</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If there is, in the great world of
+London, one thing more spirit-sinking
+than another, it is to see men condemned,
+by the necessities of an overcrowded
+profession, to sink to the
+meannesses of pretension for a desperate
+accident by which they may insure
+success. When one has had an
+opportunity of being behind the scenes,
+and knowing what petty shifts, what
+poor expedients of living, what anxiety of
+mind, are at the bottom of all this
+empty show, one will not longer marvel
+that many born for better things should
+sink under the difficulties of their position,
+or that the newspapers so continually
+set forth the miserably unprovided
+for condition in which they so
+often are compelled to leave their families.
+To dissipate the melancholy
+that always oppresses us when constrained
+to behold the ridiculous antics
+of the gentility-mongers, which we
+chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation&mdash;let
+us contrast the hospitality
+of those who, with wiser ambition,
+keep themselves, as the saying
+is, &quot;<i>to themselves</i>;&quot; and, as a bright
+example, let us recollect our old friend
+Joe Stimpson.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller
+in Bermondsey, the architect of
+his own fortune, which he has raised
+to the respectable elevation of somewhere
+about a quarter of a million
+sterling. He is now in his seventy-second
+year, has a handsome house,
+without and pretension, overlooking
+his tanyard. He has a joke upon
+prospects, calling you to look from the
+drawing-room window at his tanpits,
+asking you if you ever saw any thing
+like that at the west end of the town;
+replying in the negative, Joe, chuckling,
+observes that it is the finest prospect <i>he</i>
+ever saw in his life, and although he
+has been admiring it for half a century,
+he has not done admiring it yet.
+Joe's capacity for the humorous may
+be judged of by this specimen; but in
+attention to business few can surpass
+him, while his hospitality can command
+a wit whenever he chooses to angle for
+one with a good dinner. He has a
+wife, a venerable old smiling lady in
+black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes;
+three daughters, unmarried; and a
+couple of sons, brought up, after the
+London fashion, to inherit their father's
+business, or, we might rather say,
+<i>estate</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain
+<a class="pagenum" name="page385" id="page385" title="page385"></a>unmarried, we cannot say, nor
+would it be decorous to enquire; but
+hearing them drop a hint now and then
+about visits, &quot;a considerable time ago,&quot;
+to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we are
+led, however reluctantly in the case of
+ladies <i>now</i> evangelical, to conclude,
+their attention has formerly been directed
+to gentility-mongering at these
+places of fashionable resort; the tanyard
+acting as a repellent to husbands
+of a social position superior to their
+own, and their great fortunes operating
+in deterring worthy persons of their
+own station from addressing them; or
+being the means of inducing them to
+be too prompt with refusals, these
+amiable middle-aged young ladies are
+now &quot;on hands,&quot; paying the penalty
+of one of the many curses that pride
+of wealth brings in its train. At present,
+however, their &quot;affections are set
+on things above;&quot; and, without meaning
+any thing disrespectful to my
+friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet,
+and Susan Stimpson are certainly the
+three least agreeable members of the
+family. The sons are, like all other
+sons in the houses of their fathers,
+steady, business-like, unhappy, and
+dull; they look like fledged birds in
+the nest of the old ones, out of place;
+neither servants nor masters, their
+social position is somewhat equivocal,
+and having lived all their lives in the
+house of their father, seeing as he sees,
+thinking as he thinks, they can hardly
+be expected to appear more than a
+brace of immature Joe Stimpsons.
+They are not, it is true, tainted with
+much of the world's wickedness, neither
+have they its self-sustaining trials,
+its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles,
+or that experience which is gathered
+only by men who quit, when
+they can quit it, the petticoat string,
+and the paternal despotism of even a
+happy home. As for the old couple,
+time, although silvering the temples
+and furrowing the front, is hardly seen
+to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder
+of either, much less to put his
+finger on eyes, ears, or lips&mdash;the two
+first being yet as &quot;wide awake,&quot; and
+the last as open to a joke, or any other
+good thing, as ever they were; in sooth,
+it is no unpleasing sight to see this
+jolly old couple with nearly three half
+centuries to answer for, their affection
+unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and
+temper undisturbed by the near approach,
+beyond hope of respite, of that
+stealthy foe whose assured advent
+strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson,
+if he thinks of death at all, thinks of
+him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked
+down stairs by the family physician;
+the Bible of the old lady is seldom far
+from her hand, and its consolations
+are cheering, calming, and assuring.
+The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing
+in common with man or wife,
+unless when Joe, exasperated with his
+evangelical daughters' continual absence
+at the class-meetings, and love-feasts,
+and prayer-meetings, somewhat
+indignantly complains, that &quot;so long as
+they can get to heaven, they don't care
+who goes to &mdash;&mdash;,&quot; a place that Virgil
+and Tasso have taken much pains in
+describing, but which the old gentleman
+sufficiently indicates by one emphatic
+monosyllable.</p>
+
+<p>Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates
+cant and humbug, and has no prejudices&mdash;hating
+the French he will not acknowledge
+is a prejudice, but considers
+the bounden duty of an Englishman;
+and, though fierce enough upon other
+subjects of taxation, thinks no price
+too high for drubbing them. He was
+once prevailed upon to attempt a journey
+to Paris; but having got to Calais,
+insisted upon returning by the next
+packet, swearing it was a shabby concern,
+and he had seen enough of it.</p>
+
+<p>He takes in the <i>Gentleman's Magazine,</i>
+because his father did it before
+him&mdash;but he never reads it; he takes
+pride in a corpulent dog, which is ever
+at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache,
+and swears at any body who
+calls it <i>tic-douloureux.</i></p>
+
+<p>When you go to dine with him, you
+are met at the door by a rosy-checked
+lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles
+a hearty welcome, and assures you,
+though an utter stranger, of the character
+of the house and its owner. You
+are conducted to the drawing-room,
+a plain, substantial, <i>honest</i>-looking
+apartment; there you find the old
+couple, and are received with a warmth
+that gives assurance of the nearest approach
+to what is understood by <i>home</i>.
+The sons, released from business, arrive,
+shake you heartily by the hand,
+and are really glad to see you; of the
+daughters we say nothing, as there is
+nothing in <i>them</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The other guests of the day come
+dropping in&mdash;all straightforward, business-like,
+free, frank-hearted fellows&mdash;aristocrats
+of wealth, the best, because
+<a class="pagenum" name="page386" id="page386" title="page386"></a>the <i>unpretending</i>, of their class; they
+come, too, <i>before</i> their time, for they
+know their man, and that Joe Stimpson
+keeps nobody waiting for nobody.
+When the clock&mdash;for here is no <i>gong</i>&mdash;strikes
+five, you descend to dinner;
+plain, plentiful, good, and well dressed;
+no tedious course, with long intervals
+between; no oppressive <i>set-out</i> of superfluous
+plate, and what, perhaps, is
+not the least agreeable accessory, no
+piebald footmen hanging over your
+chair, whisking away your plate before
+you have done with it, and watching
+every bit you put into your mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Your cherry-cheeked friend and another,
+both in the family from childhood,
+(another good sign of the house,)
+and looking as if they really were glad&mdash;and
+so they are&mdash;to have an opportunity
+of obliging you, do the servitorial offices
+of the table; you are sure of a glass
+of old sherry, and you may call for
+strong beer, or old port, with your
+cheese&mdash;or, if a Scotchman, for a dram&mdash;without
+any other remark than an invitation
+to &quot;try it again, and make
+yourself comfortable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, you are invited, as a
+young man, to smoke a cigar with the
+&quot;boys,&quot; as Joe persists in calling
+them. You ascend to a bed-room, and
+are requested to keep your head out o'
+window while smoking, lest the &quot;Governor&quot;
+should snuff the fumes when
+he comes up stairs to bed: while you
+are &quot;craning&quot; your neck, the cherry-cheeked
+lass enters with brandy and
+water, and you are as merry and easy
+as possible. The rest of the evening
+passes away in the same unrestrained
+interchange of friendly courtesy; nor
+are you permitted to take your leave
+without a promise to dine on the next
+Sunday or holiday&mdash;Mrs Stimpson
+rating you for not coming last Easter
+Sunday, and declaring she cannot think
+&quot;why young men should mope by
+themselves, when she is always happy
+to see them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Honour to Joe Stimpson and his
+missus! They have the true <i>ring</i> of
+the ancient coin of hospitality; none
+of your hollow-sounding <i>raps</i>: they
+know they have what I want, <i>a home</i>,
+and they will not allow me, at their
+board, to know that I want one: they
+compassionate a lonely, isolated man,
+and are ready to share with him the
+hearty cheer and unaffected friendliness
+of their English fireside: they
+know that they can get nothing by
+me, nor do they ever dream of an
+acknowledgment for their kindness;
+but I owe them for many a social day
+redeemed from cheerless solitude;
+many an hour of strenuous labour do
+I owe to the relaxation of the old wainscotted
+dining-room at Bermondsey.</p>
+
+<p>Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all
+who are satisfied with their station,
+happy in their home, have no repinings
+after empty sounds of rank and shows
+of life; and who extend the hand of
+friendly fellowship to the homeless,
+<i>because they have no home</i>!</p>
+
+<h3>THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.</h3>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;There is a quantity of talent latent among men, ever rising to the level of the great occasions
+that call it forth.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This illustration, borrowed by Sir
+James Mackintosh from chemical science,
+and so happily applied, may serve
+to indicate the undoubted truth, that
+talent is a <i>growth</i> as much as a <i>gift</i>;
+that circumstances call out and develop
+its latent powers; that as soil,
+flung upon the surface from the uttermost
+penetrable depths of earth, will
+be found to contain long-dormant
+germs of vegetable life, so the mind of
+man, acted upon by circumstances,
+will ever be found equal to a certain
+sum of production&mdash;the amount of
+which will be chiefly determined by
+the force and direction of the external
+influence which first set it in motion.</p>
+
+<p>The more we reflect upon this important
+subject, we shall find the more,
+that external circumstances have an
+influence upon intellect, increasing in
+an accumulating ratio; that the political
+institutions of various countries
+have their fluctuating and contradictory
+influences; that example controls
+in a great degree intellectual production,
+causing after-growths, as it were,
+of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds,
+and giving a character and
+individuality to habits of thought and
+modes of expression; in brief, that
+great occasions will have great instruments,
+and there never was yet a noted
+time that had not noted men. Dull,
+jog-trot, money-making, commercial
+times will make, if they do not find,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page387" id="page387" title="page387"></a>dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial
+men: in times when ostentation
+and expense are the measures of respect,
+when men live rather for the
+world's opinion than their own, poverty
+becomes not only the evil but
+the shame, not only the curse but the
+disgrace, and will be shunned by every
+man as a pestilence; every one will
+fling away immortality, to avoid it;
+will sink, as far as he can, his art in
+his trade; and <i>he</i> will be the greatest
+genius who can turn most money.</p>
+
+<p>It may be urged that true genius
+has the power not only to <i>take</i> opportunities,
+but to make them: true, it
+may make such opportunities as the
+time in which it lives affords; but
+these opportunities will be great or
+small, noble or ignoble, as the time is
+eventful or otherwise. All depends
+upon the time, and you might as well
+have expected a Low Dutch epic poet
+in the time of the great herring fishery,
+as a Napoleon, a Demosthenes, a Cicero
+in this, by some called the nineteenth,
+but which we take leave to designate
+the &quot;<i>dot-and-carry-one</i>&quot; century. If
+a Napoleon were to arise at any corner
+of any London street, not five seconds
+would elapse until he would be
+&quot;<i>hooked</i>&quot; off to the station-house by
+Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D
+division, with an exulting mob of men
+and boys hooting at his heels: if
+Demosthenes or Cicero, disguised as
+Chartist orators, mounting a tub at
+Deptford, were to Philippicize, or
+entertain this motley auditory with
+speeches against Catiline or Verres,
+straightway the Superintendent of
+the X division, with a <i>posse</i> of constables
+at his heels, dismounts the
+patriot orator from his tub, and hands
+him over to a plain-spoken business-like
+justice of the peace, who regards
+an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
+point of view with any
+other vagabond.</p>
+
+<p>What is become of the eloquence of
+the bar? Why is it that flowery
+orators find no grist coming to their
+mills? How came it that, at Westminster
+Hall, Charles Philips missed
+his market? What is the reason, that
+if you step into the Queen's Bench, or
+Common Pleas, or Exchequer, you
+will hear no such thing as a speech&mdash;behold
+no such animal as an orator&mdash;only
+a shrewd, plain, hard-working,
+steady man, called an attorney-general,
+or a sergeant, or a leading counsel,
+quietly talking over a matter of law
+with the judge, or a matter of fact
+with the jury, like men of business as
+they are, and shunning, as they would
+a rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments,
+figures, flowers, and the obsolete embroidery
+of rhetoric?</p>
+
+<p>The days of romantic eloquence are
+fled&mdash;the great constitutional questions
+that called forth &quot;thoughts that
+breathe, and words that burn,&quot; from
+men like Erskine, are <i>determined</i>.
+Would you have men oratorical over
+a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about
+an action of trespass on the case, or a
+rule to compute?</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, when Follett practised
+before committees of the House of
+Commons, and, by chance, any question
+involving points of interest and
+difficulty in Parliamentary law and
+practice came before the Court, there
+was something worth hearing: the
+<i>opportunity</i> drew out the <i>man</i>, and the
+<i>orator</i> stepped before the <i>advocate</i>.
+Even now, sometimes, it is quite refreshing
+to get a topic in these Courts
+worthy of Austin, and Austin working
+at it. But no man need go to look for
+orators in our ordinary courts of law;
+judgment, patience, reading, and that
+rare compound of qualities known and
+appreciated by the name of <i>tact</i>, tell
+with judges, and influence juries; the
+days of <i>palaver</i> are gone, and the talking
+heroes extinguished for ever.</p>
+
+<p>All this is well known in London;
+but the three or four millions (it may
+be <i>five</i>) of great men, philosophers,
+poets, orators, patriots, and the like, in
+the rural districts, require to be informed
+of this our declension from the
+heroics, in order to appreciate, or at
+least to understand, the modesty, sobriety,
+business-like character, and division
+of labour, in the vast amount of
+talent abounding in every department
+of life in London.</p>
+
+<p>London overflows with talent. You
+may compare it, for the purpose of
+illustration, to one of George Robins'
+patent filters, into which pours turbid
+torrents of Thames water, its sediment,
+mud, dirt, weeds, and rottenness;
+straining through the various <i>strata</i>,
+its grosser particles are arrested in
+their course, and nothing that is not
+pure, transparent, and limpid is transmitted.
+In the great filter of London
+life, conceit, pretension, small provincial
+abilities, <i>pseudo</i>-talent, <i>soi-disant</i>
+intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung
+<a class="pagenum" name="page388" id="page388" title="page388"></a>out again. True genius is tested by
+judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty,
+privation; and, passing through
+many ordeals, persevering, makes its
+way through all; and at length, in the
+fulness of time, flows forth, in acknowledged
+purity and refinement, upon the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>There is a perpetual onward, upward
+tendency in the talent, both high and
+low, mechanical and intellectual, that
+abounds in London:</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Emulation hath a thousand sons,&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>who are ever and always following fast
+upon your heels. There is no time to
+dawdle or linger on the road, no
+&quot;stop and go on again:&quot; if you but
+step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your
+place is occupied&mdash;you are edged off,
+pushed out of the main current, and
+condemned to circle slowly in the lazy
+eddy of some complimenting clique.
+Thousands are to be found, anxious
+and able to take your place; while
+hardly one misses you, or turns his
+head to look after you should you lose
+your own: you <i>live</i> but while you
+<i>labour</i>, and are no longer remembered
+than while you are reluctant to repose.</p>
+
+<p>Talent of all kinds brings forth
+perfect fruits, only when concentrated
+upon one object: no matter how versatile
+men may be, mankind has a wise
+and salutary prejudice against diffused
+talent; for although <i>knowledge</i> diffused
+immortalizes itself, diffused <i>talent</i> is
+but a shallow pool, glittering in the
+noonday sun, and soon evaporated;
+<i>concentrated</i>, it is a well, from whose
+depths perpetually may we draw the
+limpid waters. Therefore is the talent
+of London concentrated, and the division
+of labour minute. When we talk
+of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters,
+in a provincial place, we recognize at
+once a man who embraces all that his
+opportunities present him with, in
+whatever department of his profession.
+The lawyer is, at one and the same
+time, advocate, chamber counsel, conveyancer,
+pleader; the doctor an accoucheur,
+apothecary, physician, surgeon,
+dentist, or at least, in a greater
+or less degree, unites in his own person,
+these&mdash;in London, distinct and separate&mdash;professions,
+according as his
+sphere of action is narrow or extended;
+the country journalist is sometimes proprietor,
+editor, sub-editor, traveller, and
+canvasser, or two or more of these
+heterogeneous and incompatible avocations.
+The result is, an obvious,
+appreciable, and long-established superiority
+in that product which is the
+result of minutely divided labour.</p>
+
+<p>The manufacture of a London watch
+or piano will employ, each, at least
+twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers,
+importers, and venders of the
+raw material used in these articles;
+every one of these tradesmen shall be
+nay, <i>must</i> be, the best of their class, or
+at least the best that can be obtained;
+and for this purpose, the inducements
+of high wages are held out to workmen
+generally, and their competition
+for employment enables the manufacturer
+to secure the most skilful. It
+is just the same with a broken-down
+constitution, or a lawsuit: the former
+shall be placed under the care of a
+lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor,
+a dropsy-doctor, or whatever
+other doctor is supposed best able to
+understand the case; each of these
+doctors shall have read lectures and
+published books, and made himself
+known for his study and exclusive attention
+to one of the &quot;thousand ills
+that flesh is heir to:&quot; the latter shall
+go through the hands of dozens of
+men skilful in that branch of the law
+connected with the particular injury.
+So it is with every thing else of production,
+mechanical or intellectual, or
+both, that London affords: the extent
+of the market permits the minute division
+of labour, and the minute division
+of labour reacts upon the market,
+raising the price of its produce, and
+branding it with the signs of a legitimate
+superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Hence the superior intelligence of
+working men, of all classes, high and
+low, in the World of London; hence
+that striving after excellence, that
+never-ceasing tendency to advance in
+whatever they are engaged in, that so
+distinguishes the people of this wonderful
+place; hence the improvements
+of to-day superseded by the improvements
+of to-morrow; hence speculation,
+enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants
+of less extended spheres of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>Competition, emulation, and high
+wages give us an aristocracy of talent,
+genius, skill, <i>tact</i>, or whatever you like
+to call it; but you are by no means to
+understand that any of these aristocracies,
+or better classes, stand prominently
+before their fellows <i>socially</i>, or,
+that one is run after in preference to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page389" id="page389" title="page389"></a>another; nobody runs after anybody
+in the World of London.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect, no capital, no country
+on the face of the earth, resembles us;
+every where else you will find a leading
+class, giving a tone to society, and
+moulding it in some one or other direction;
+a predominating <i>set</i>, the pride of
+those who are <i>in</i>, the envy of those who
+are <i>below</i> it. There is nothing of this
+kind in London; here every man has
+his own set, and every man his proper
+pride. In every set, social or professional,
+there are great names, successful
+men, prominent; but the set is
+nothing the greater for them: no man
+sheds any lustre upon his fellows, nor
+is a briefless barrister a whit more
+thought of because he and Lyndhurst
+are of the same profession.</p>
+
+<p>Take a look at other places: in
+money-getting places, you find society
+following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy
+of 'Change: every man knows
+the worth of every other man, that is
+to say, <i>what</i> he is worth.</p>
+
+<p>A good man, elsewhere a relative
+term, is <i>there</i> a man good for <i>so</i> much;
+hats are elevated and bodies depressed
+upon a scale of ten thousand pounds
+to an inch; &quot;I hope you are well,&quot;
+from one of the aristocracy of these
+places is always translated to mean,
+&quot;I hope you are solvent,&quot; and &quot;how
+d'ye do?&quot; from another, is equivalent
+to &quot;doing a bill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Go abroad, to Rome for example&mdash;You
+are smothered beneath the petticoats
+of an ecclesiastical aristocracy.
+Go to the northern courts of Europe&mdash;You
+are ill-received, or perhaps not received
+at all, save in military uniform;
+the aristocracy of the epaulet meets
+you at every turn, and if you are not
+at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing.
+Make your way into Germany&mdash;What
+do you find there? an aristocracy
+of functionaries, mobs of nobodies
+living upon everybodies; from
+Herr Von, Aulic councillor, and Frau
+Von, Aulic councilloress, down to
+Herr Von, crossing-sweeper, and Frau
+Von, crossing-sweeperess&mdash;for the women
+there must be <i>better</i>-half even in
+their titles&mdash;you find society led, or,
+to speak more correctly, society <i>consisting</i>
+of functionaries, and they, every
+office son of them, and their wives&mdash;nay,
+their very curs&mdash;alike insolent and
+dependent. &quot;Tray, Blanche, and
+Sweetheart, see they bark at <i>me</i>!&quot;
+There, to get into society, you must
+first get into a place: you must contrive
+to be the <i>servant</i> of the public
+before you are permitted to be the
+<i>master</i>: you must be paid by, before
+you are in a condition to despise, the
+<i>canaille</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Passing Holland and Belgium as
+more akin to the genius of the English
+people, as respects the supremacy of
+honest industry, its independent exercise,
+and the comparative insignificance
+of aristocracies, conventionally
+so called, we come to FRANCE: there
+we find a provincial and a Parisian
+aristocracy&mdash;the former a servile mob
+of placemen, one in fifty, at least, of
+the whole population; and the latter&mdash;oh!
+my poor head, what a <i>clanjaffrey</i>
+of <i>journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes</i>,
+dramatists, novelists, <i>vaudivellistes</i>,
+poets, literary ladies, lovers of literary
+ladies, <i>hommes de lettres, claqueurs,
+litt&eacute;rateurs, g&eacute;rants, censeurs, rapporteurs</i>,
+and <i>le diable boiteux</i> verily
+knows what else!</p>
+
+<p>These people, with whom, or at least
+with a great majority of whom, common
+sense, sobriety of thought, consistency
+of purpose, steady determination
+in action, and sound reasoning,
+are so sadly eclipsed by their vivacity,
+<i>empressement</i>, prejudice, and party zeal,
+form a prominent, indeed, <i>the</i> prominent
+aristocracy of the <i>salons</i>: and
+only conceive what must be the state
+of things in France, when we know
+that Paris acts upon the provinces, and
+that Paris is acted upon by this foolscap
+aristocracy, without station, or,
+what is perhaps worse, enjoying station
+without property; abounding in
+maddening and exciting influences,
+but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed,
+<i>ungenius-like</i> qualities of patience,
+prudence, charity, forbearance,
+and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn
+nation, more than any other in
+Europe, stands in need.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the name of goodness, is
+the heart of the philanthropist to be
+gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled
+over the earth? When are paltry
+family intrigues to cease, causing the
+blood of innocent thousands to be shed?
+When will the aristocracy of genius in
+France give over jingling, like castanets,
+their trashy rhymes &quot;<i>gloire</i>&quot; and
+&quot;<i>victoire</i>,&quot; and apply themselves to objects
+worthy of creatures endowed with
+the faculty of reason? Or, if they must
+<a class="pagenum" name="page390" id="page390" title="page390"></a>have fighting, if it is their nature, if
+the prime instinct with them is the
+thirst of human blood, how cowardly,
+how paltry, is it to hound on their
+fellow-countrymen to war with England,
+to war with Spain, to war with
+every body, while snug in their offices,
+doing their little best to bleed nations
+with their pen!</p>
+
+<p>Why does not the foolscap aristocracy
+rush forth, inkhorn in hand,
+and restore the glories (as they call
+them) of the Empire, nor pause till they
+mend their pens victorious upon the
+brink of the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>To resume: the aristocracies of our
+provincial capitals are those of literature
+in the one, and lickspittling in
+the other: mercantile towns have their
+aristocracies of money, or muckworm
+aristocracies: Rome has an ecclesiastical&mdash;Prussia,
+Russia, military aristocracies:
+Germany, an aristocracy of
+functionaries: France has two, or even
+three, great aristocracies&mdash;the military,
+place-hunting, and foolscap.</p>
+
+<p>Now, then, attend to what we are
+going to say: London is cursed with
+no predominating, no overwhelming,
+no <i>characteristic</i> aristocracy. There is
+no <i>set</i> or <i>clique</i> of any sort or description
+of men that you can point to, and
+say, that's the London set. We turn
+round and desire to be informed what set
+do you mean: every <i>salon</i> has its set, and
+every pot-house its set also; and the
+frequenters of each set are neither envious
+of the position of the other, nor
+dissatisfied with their own: the pretenders
+to fashion, or hangers-on upon
+the outskirts of high life, are alone the
+servile set, or spaniel set, who want
+the proper self-respecting pride which
+every distinct aristocracy maintains in
+the World of London.</p>
+
+<p>We are a great firmament, a moonless
+azure, glowing with stars of all
+magnitudes, and myriads of <i>nebul&aelig;</i> of
+no magnitudes at all: we move harmoniously
+in our several orbits, minding
+our own business, satisfied with
+our position, thinking, it may be, with
+harmless vanity, that we bestow more
+light upon earth than any ten, and that
+the eyes of all terrestrial stargazers
+are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders,
+and quacks, are our meteors, our <i>auror&aelig;</i>,
+our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
+athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling
+into irretrievable darkness: our
+tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter,
+invisible to the naked eye: our clear
+frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling
+is prosperity, and we, too
+have our clouds that hide us from the
+eyes of men. The noonday of our own
+bustling time beholds us dimly; but
+posterity regards us as it were from the
+bottom of a well. Time, that exact
+observer, applies his micrometer to
+every one of us, determining our rank
+among celestial bodies without appeal
+and from time to time enrolling in his
+<i>ephemeris</i> such new luminaries as may
+be vouchsafed to the long succession
+of ages.</p>
+
+<p>If there is one thing that endears
+London to men of superior order&mdash;to
+true aristocrats, no matter of what species,
+it is that universal equality of
+outward condition, that republicanism
+of everyday life, which pervades the
+vast multitudes who hum, and who
+drone, who gather honey, and who,
+without gathering, consume the products
+of this gigantic hive. Here you
+can never be extinguished or put out
+by any overwhelming interest.</p>
+
+<p>Neither are we in London pushed
+to the wall by the two or three hundred
+great men of every little place.
+We are not invited to a main of small
+talk with the cock of his own dung-hill;
+we are never told, as a great
+favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead,
+the phrenologist, is to be there, and
+that we can have our &quot;bumps&quot; felt for
+nothing; or that the Chevalier Doembrownski
+(a London pickpocket in disguise)
+is expected to recite a Polish
+ode, accompanying himself on the
+Jew's harp; we are not bored with the
+misconduct of the librarian, who <i>never</i>
+has the first volume of the last new
+novel, or invited to determine whether
+Louisa Fitzsmythe or Angelina Stubbsville
+deserves to be considered the heroine;
+we are not required to be in
+raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or
+Clara Novello are expected, or to break
+our hearts with disappointment because
+they didn't come: the arrival,
+performances, and departure, of Ducrow's
+horses, or Wombwell's wild
+beasts, affect us with no extraordinary
+emotion; even Assizes time concerns
+most of us nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace
+in London is the aristocracy
+of wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a
+provincial town, keeps her carriage,
+and is at once the envy and the scandal
+<a class="pagenum" name="page391" id="page391" title="page391"></a>of all the Ladies who have to proceed
+upon their ten toes, we wot not
+the existence. Mr Bill Wright, the
+banker, the respected, respectable, influential,
+twenty per cent Wright, in
+London is merely a licensed dealer in
+money; he visits at Camberwell Hill,
+or Hampstead Heath, or wherever
+other tradesmen of his class delight to
+dwell; his wife and daughters patronize
+the Polish balls, and Mr Bill
+Wright, jun., sports a stall at the
+(English) opera; we are not overdone
+by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs
+Bill Wright, or the Misses Bill Wright,
+nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright
+the younger: in a word, we don't care
+a crossed cheque for the whole Bill
+Wrightish connexion.</p>
+
+<p>What are carriages, or carriage-keeping
+people in London? It is not
+here, as in the provinces, by their carriages
+shall you know them; on the
+contrary, the carriage of a duchess is
+only distinguishable from that of a
+<i>parvenu</i>, by the superior expensiveness
+and vulgarity of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth
+with us, defeats the end it aims at.
+That expense which is lavished to impress
+us with awe and admiration,
+serves only as a provocative to laughter,
+and inducement to contempt;
+where great wealth and good taste go
+together, we at once recognize the harmonious
+adaptation of means and ends;
+where they do not, all extrinsic and
+adventitious expenditure availeth its
+disbursers nothing.</p>
+
+<p>What animal on earth was ever so
+inhumanly preposterous as a lord
+mayor's footman, and yet it takes
+sixty guineas, at the least, to make that
+poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?</p>
+
+<p>No, sir; in London we see into, and
+see through, all sorts of pretension:
+the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever
+kind of quackery and imposture.
+When I say <i>we</i>, I speak of the vast
+multitudes forming the educated, discriminating,
+and thinking classes of
+London life. We pass on to <i>what</i> a
+man <i>is</i>, over <i>who</i> he is, and what he
+<i>has</i>; and, with one of the most accurate
+observers of human character and
+nature to whom a man of the world
+ever sat for his portrait&mdash;the inimitable
+La Bruyere&mdash;when offended with
+the hollow extravagance of vulgar
+riches, we exclaim&mdash;&quot;<i>Tu te trompes,
+Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant,
+ce grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent,
+et ces six b&ecirc;tes qui te trainent, tu
+penses qu'on t'en estime d'avantage: ou
+ecarte tout cet attirail qui t'est &eacute;tranger,
+pour p&eacute;n&eacute;trer jusq'a toi qui n'es qu'un
+fat</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In London, every man is responsible
+for himself, and his position is the
+consequence of his conduct. If a great
+author, for example, or artist, or politician,
+should choose to outrage the
+established rules of society in any essential
+particular, he is neglected and
+even shunned in his private, though
+he may be admired and lauded in his
+public capacity. Society marks the
+line between the <i>public</i> and the <i>social</i>
+man; and this line no eminence, not
+even that of premier minister of England,
+will enable a public man to confound.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever you are invited in London
+to be introduced to a great man,
+by any of his parasites or hangers-on,
+you may be assured that your great
+man is no such thing; you may make
+up your mind to be presented to some
+quack, some hollow-skulled fellow,
+who makes up by little arts, small tactics,
+and every variety of puff, for the
+want of that inherent excellence which
+will enable him to stand alone. These
+gentlemen form the Cockney school
+proper of art, literature, the drama,
+every thing; and they go about seeking
+praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects,
+with their mouths wide open;
+they pursue their prey in troops, like
+Jackals, and like them, utter at all
+times a melancholy, complaining howl;
+they imagine that the world is in a
+conspiracy not to admire them, and
+they would bring an action against the
+world if they could. But as that is
+impossible, they are content to rail
+against the world in good set terms;
+they are always puffing in the papers,
+but in a side-winded way, yet you can
+trace them always at work, through the
+daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in
+desperate exertion to attract public
+attention. They have at their head one
+sublime genius, whom they swear by,
+and they admire him the more, the
+more incomprehensible and oracular
+he appears to the rest of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>These are the men who cultivate extensive
+tracts of forehead, and are
+deeply versed in the effective display
+of depending ringlets and ornamental
+whiskers; they dress in black, with
+white <i>chokers</i>, and you will be sure to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page392" id="page392" title="page392"></a>find a lot of them at evening parties
+of the middling sort of doctors, or the
+better class of boarding-houses.</p>
+
+<p>This class numbers not merely literary
+men, but actors, artists, adventuring
+politicians, small scientifics, and
+a thousand others, who have not energy
+or endurance to work their way in
+solitary labour, or who feel that they
+do not possess the power to go alone.</p>
+
+<p>Public men in London appear naked
+at the bar of public opinion; laced
+coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail
+nothing, because these things are common,
+and have the common fate of
+common things, to be cheaply estimated.
+The eye is satiated with them,
+they come like shadows, so depart;
+but they do not feed the eye of the
+mind; the understanding is not the
+better for such gingerbread; we are
+compelled to look out for some more
+substantial nutriment, and we try the
+inward man, and test his capacity.
+Instead of measuring his bumps, like a
+landsurveyor, we dissect his brain,
+like an anatomist; we estimate him,
+whether he be high or low, in whatever
+department of life, not by what
+he says he can do, or means to do, but
+by what he <i>has</i> done. By this test is
+every man of talent tried in London;
+this is his grand, his formal difficulty,
+to get the opportunity of showing what
+he can do, of being put into circulation,
+of having the chance of being
+tested, like a shilling, by the <i>ring</i> of
+the customer and the <i>bite</i> of the critic;
+for the opportunity, the chance to
+edge in, the chink to <i>wedge</i> in, the
+<i>purchase</i> whereon to work the length
+of his lever, he must be ever on the
+watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement,
+the April shower of
+praise, he must await the long winter
+of &quot;hope deferred&quot; passing away. Patience,
+the <i>courage</i> of the man of talent,
+he must exert for many a dreary
+and unrewarded day; he must see the
+quack and the pretender lead an undiscerning
+public by the nose, and say
+nothing; nor must he exult when the
+too-long enduring public at length
+kicks the pretender and the quack
+into deserved oblivion. From many a
+door that will hereafter gladly open for
+him, he must be content to be presently
+turned away. Many a scanty
+meal, many a lonely and unfriended
+evening, in this vast wilderness, must
+he pass in trying on his armour, and
+preparing himself for the fight that he
+still believes <i>will</i> come, and in which
+his spirit, strong within him, tells him
+he must conquer. While the night
+yet shrouds him he must labour, and
+with patient, and happily for him, if,
+with religious hope, he watch the first
+faint glimmerings of the dawning day;
+for his day, if he is worthy to behold
+it, will come, and he will yet be recompensed
+&quot;by that time and chance
+which happeneth to all.&quot; And if his
+heart fails him, and his coward spirit
+turns to flee, often as he sits, tearful,
+in the solitude of his chamber, will the
+remembrance of the early struggles of
+the immortals shame that coward spirit.
+The shade of the sturdy Johnson,
+hungering, dinnerless, will mutely reproach
+him for sinking thus beneath
+the ills that the &quot;scholar's life assail.&quot;
+The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith,
+pursued to the gates of a prison
+by a mercenary wretch who fattened
+upon the produce of that lovely mind,
+smiling upon him, will bid him be of
+good cheer. A thousand names, that
+fondly live in the remembrance of our
+hearts, will he conjure up, and all will
+tell the same story of early want, and
+long neglect, and lonely friendlessness.
+Then will reproach himself, saying,
+&quot;What am I, that I should quail before
+the misery that broke not minds
+like these? What am I, that I should
+be exempt from the earthly fate of the
+immortals?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nor marvel, then, that men who
+have passed the fiery ordeal, whose
+power has been tried and not found
+wanting, whose nights of probation,
+difficulty, and despair are past, and
+with whom it is now noon, should
+come forth, with deportment modest
+and subdued, exempt from the insolent
+assumption of vulgar minds, and their
+yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships:
+that such men as Campbell
+and Rogers, and a thousand others in
+every department of life and letters,
+should partake of that quietude of
+manner, that modesty of deportment,
+that compassion for the unfortunate of
+their class, that unselfish admiration
+for men who, successful, have deserved
+success, that abomination of cliques,
+coteries, and <i>conversazion&eacute;s</i>, and all
+the littleness of inferior fry: that such
+men should have parasites, and followers,
+and hangers-on; or that, since men
+like themselves are few and far between,
+they should live for and with
+such men alone.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page393" id="page393" title="page393"></a>But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou
+shame, thou sin, with what tides of
+<i>pseudo</i> talent hast thou not filled this
+ambitious town? Ass, dolt, miscalculator,
+quack, pretender, how many
+hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious
+fools? Serpent, tempter, evil
+one, how many hast thou seduced
+from the plough tail, the carpenter's
+bench, the schoolmaster's desk, the
+rural scene, to plunge them into misery
+and contempt in this, the abiding-place
+of their betters, thou unhanged
+cheat? Hence the querulous piping
+against the world and the times, and
+the neglect of genius, and appeals to
+posterity, and damnation of managers,
+publishers, and the public; hence
+cliques, and <i>claqueurs</i>, and coteries, and
+the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of
+letters; hence bickerings, quarellings,
+backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity
+of contempt; hence the impossibility
+of literary union, and the absolute
+necessity imposed upon the great
+names of our time of shunning, like a
+pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck
+individuals who would tear the coats
+off their backs in desperate adherence
+to the skirts. Thou, too, O Vanity!
+art responsible for greater evils:&mdash;Time
+misspent, industry misdirected,
+labour unrequited, because uselessly or
+imprudently applied: poverty and isolation,
+families left unprovided for,
+pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses,
+subscriptions!</p>
+
+<p>True talent, on the contrary, in
+London, meets its reward, if it lives to
+be rewarded; but it has, of its own
+right, no <i>social</i> pre-eminence, nor is
+it set above or below any of the other
+aristocracies, in what we may take the
+liberty of calling its private life. In
+this, as in all other our aristocracies,
+men are regarded not as of their set,
+but as of themselves: they are <i>individually</i>
+admired, not worshipped as a
+congregation: their social influence is
+not aggregated, though their public
+influence may be. When a man, of
+whatever class, leaves his closet, he is
+expected to meet society upon equal
+terms: the scholar, the man of rank,
+the politician, the <i>millionaire</i>, must
+merge in the gentleman: if he chooses
+to individualize his aristocracy in his
+own person, he must do so at home,
+for it will not be understood or submitted
+to any where else.</p>
+
+<p>The rewards of intellectual labour
+applied to purposes of remote, or not
+immediately appreciable usefulness, as
+in social literature, and the loftier
+branches of the fine arts, are, with us,
+so few, as hardly to be worth mentioning,
+and pity 'tis that it should be so.
+The law, the church, the army, and
+the faculty of physic, have not only
+their fair and legitimate remuneration
+for independent labour, but they have
+their several prizes, to which all who
+excel, may confidently look forward
+when the time of weariness and exhaustion
+shall come; when the pressure of
+years shall slacken exertion, and diminished
+vigour crave some haven of repose,
+or, at the least, some mitigated
+toil, with greater security of income:
+some place of honour with repose&mdash;the
+ambition of declining years. The
+influence of the great prize of the law,
+the church, and other professions in
+this country, has often been insisted
+upon with great reason: it has been
+said, and truly said, that not only do
+these prizes reward merit already
+passed through its probationary stages,
+but serve as inducements to all who
+are pursuing the same career. It is not
+so much the example of the prize-holder,
+as the <i>prize</i>, that stimulates
+men onward and upward: without the
+hope of reaching one of those comfortable
+stations, hope would be extinguished,
+talent lie fallow, energy be
+limited to the mere attainment of subsistence;
+great things would not be
+done, or attempted, and we would
+behold only a dreary level of indiscriminate
+mediocrity. If this be true of
+professions, in which, after a season
+of severe study, a term of probation,
+the knowledge acquired in early life
+sustains the professor, with added experience
+of every day, throughout the
+rest of his career, with how much more
+force will it apply to professions or
+pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually
+on the rack to produce novelties,
+and in which it is considered
+derogatory to a man to reproduce his
+own ideas, copy his own pictures, or
+multiply, after the same model, a variety
+of characters and figures!</p>
+
+<p>A few years of hard reading, constant
+attention in the chambers of the
+conveyancer, the equity craftsman,
+the pleader, and a few years more of
+that disinterested observance of the
+practice of the courts, which is
+liberally afforded to every young barrister,
+and indeed which many enjoy throughout
+life, and he is competent, with
+<a class="pagenum" name="page394" id="page394" title="page394"></a>moderate talent, to protect the interests
+of his client, and with moderate mental
+labour to make a respectable figure in
+his profession. In like manner, four
+or five years sedulous attendance on
+lectures, dissections, and practice of
+the hospitals, enables your physician
+to see how little remedial power exists
+in his boasted art; knowing this, he
+feels pulses, and orders a recognized
+routine of draughts and pills with the
+formality which makes the great secret
+of his profession. When the patient
+dies, nature, of course, bears the
+blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered
+with, recovers his patient,
+the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward
+his success is determined by
+other than medical sciences: a pillbox
+and pair, a good house in some
+recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a
+bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking,
+shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling
+weak-minded men and women,
+and, if possible, a religious connexion.</p>
+
+<p>For the clergyman, it is only necessary
+that he should be orthodox,
+humble, and pious; that he should on
+no occasion, right or wrong, set himself
+in opposition to his ecclesiastical
+superiors; that he should preach unpretending
+sermons; that he should
+never make jokes, nor understand the
+jokes of another: this is all that he
+wants to get on respectably. If he is
+ambitious, and wishes one of the great
+prizes, he must have been a free-thinking
+reviewer, have written pamphlets,
+or made a fuss about the Greek
+particle, or, what will avail him more
+than all, have been tutor to a minister
+of state.</p>
+
+<p>Thus you perceive, for men whose
+education is <i>intellectual</i>, but whose
+practice is more or less <i>mechanical</i>,
+you have many great, intermediate,
+and little prizes in the lottery of life;
+but where, on the contrary, are the
+prizes for the historian, transmitting
+to posterity the events, and men, and
+times long since past; where the prize
+of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic,
+the epic, or the lyric poet, the essayist,
+and all whose works are likely
+to become the classics of future times;
+where the prize of the public journalist,
+who points the direction of public
+opinion, and, himself without place,
+station, or even name, teaches Governments
+their duty, and prevents Ministers
+of State becoming, by hardihood
+or ignorance, intolerable evils; where
+the prize of the great artist, who has
+not employed himself making faces for
+hire, but who has worked in loneliness
+and isolation, living, like Barry, upon
+raw apples and cold water, that he
+might bequeath to his country some
+memorial worthy the age in which he
+lived, and the art <i>for</i> which he lived?
+For these men, and such as these, are
+no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful
+country sets apart for them no
+places where they can retire in the
+full enjoyment of their fame; condemned
+to labour for their bread, not
+in a dull mechanical routine of professional,
+official, or business-like
+duties, but in the most severe, most
+wearing of all labour, <i>the labour of
+the brain</i>, they end where they begun.
+With struggling they begin life, with
+struggling they make their way in life,
+with struggling they end life; poverty
+drives away friends, and reputation
+multiplies enemies. The man whose
+thoughts will become the thoughts
+of our children, whose minds will be
+reflected in the mirror of <i>his</i> mind,
+who will store in their memories his
+household words, and carry his lessons
+in their hearts, dies not unwillingly,
+for he has nothing in life to look forward
+to; closes with indifference his
+eyes on a prospect where no gleam of
+hope sheds its sunlight on the broken
+spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble
+friends to a lowly sepulchre, and
+the newspapers of some days after
+give us the following paragraph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We regret to be obliged to state
+that Dr &mdash;&mdash;, or &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, Esq. (as
+the case may be) died, on Saturday
+last at his lodgings two pair back
+in Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his
+cottage (a miserable cabin where he
+retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames.
+It is our melancholy duty
+to inform our readers that this highly
+gifted and amiable man, who for so
+many years delighted and improved the
+town, and who was a most strenuous
+supporter of the (Radical or Conservative)
+cause, (<i>it is necessary to set
+forth this miserable statement to awaken
+the gratitude of faction towards the family
+of the dead</i>,) has left a rising family
+totally unprovided for. We are satisfied
+that it is only necessary to allude to
+this distressing circumstance, in order
+to enlist the sympathies, &amp;c. &amp;c., (in
+short, <i>to get up a subscription</i>).&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We confess we are at a loss to understand
+why the above advertisement
+<a class="pagenum" name="page395" id="page395" title="page395"></a>should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted
+with only the interpolation of
+name and date, when any man dies who
+has devoted himself to pursuits of a
+purely intellectual character. Nor are
+we unable to discover in the melancholy,
+and, as it would seem, unavoidable
+fates of such men, substantial
+grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy
+of talent to the pursuit of professional
+distinction, accompanied by
+profit, of which our literature, art, and
+science are now suffering, and will
+continue to suffer, the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>In a highly artificial state of society,
+where a command, not merely of the
+essentials, but of some of the superfluities
+of life are requisite as passports
+to society, no man will willingly devote
+himself to pursuits which will
+render him an outlaw, and his family
+dependent on the tardy gratitude of
+an indifferent world. The stimulus of
+fame will be inadequate to maintain
+the energies even of <i>great</i> minds, in a
+contest of which the victories are
+wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any
+man willingly consume the morning
+of his days in amassing intellectual
+treasures for posterity, when his
+contemporaries behold him dimming
+with unavailing tears his twilight
+of existence, and dying with the worse
+than deadly pang, the consciousness
+that those who are nearest and dearest
+to his heart must eat the bread of
+charity. Nor is it quite clear to our
+apprehension, that the prevalent system
+of providing for merely intellectual
+men, by a State annuity or pension,
+is the best that can be devised:
+it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy
+of talent should be exposed to the
+taunt of receiving the means of their
+subsistence from this or that minister,
+upon suppositions of this or that
+ministerial assistance which, whether
+true or false, cannot fail to derogate
+from that independent dignity of mind
+which is never extinguished in the
+breast of the true aristocrat of talent,
+save by unavailing struggles, long-continued,
+with the unkindness of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>We wish the aristocracy of power to
+think over this, and so very heartily
+bid them farewell.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329s9" id="bw329s9"></a><h2>THE LOST LAMB.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY DELTA.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p>A shepherd laid upon his bed,</p>
+<p>With many a sigh, his aching head,</p>
+<p>For him&mdash;his favourite boy&mdash;on whom</p>
+<p>Had fallen death, a sudden doom.</p>
+<p>&quot;But yesterday,&quot; with sobs he cried,</p>
+<p>&quot;Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,</p>
+<p>Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,</p>
+<p>Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!</p>
+<p>It cannot be that thou art gone;</p>
+<p>It cannot be, that now, alone,</p>
+<p>A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,</p>
+<p>Whilst thou within its bosom lie?</p>
+<p>Methinks I see thee smiling there,</p>
+<p>With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,</p>
+<p>As thou were wont, when fondling me,</p>
+<p>To clasp my neck from off my knee!</p>
+<p>Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,</p>
+<p>My boy, or else my heart will break!&quot;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>Each adding to that father's woes,</p>
+<p>A thousand bygone scenes arose;</p>
+<p>At home&mdash;a field&mdash;each with its joy,</p>
+<p>Each with its smile&mdash;and all his boy!</p>
+<p>Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,</p>
+<p>With darkness and with doubt opprest;</p>
+<p>Now sank despondent, while amain</p>
+<p>Unnerving tears fell down like rain:</p>
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page396" id="page396" title="page396"></a>Air&mdash;air&mdash;he breathed, yet wanted breath&mdash;</p>
+<p>It was not life&mdash;it was not death&mdash;</p>
+<p>But the drear agony between,</p>
+<p>Where all is heard, and felt, and seen&mdash;</p>
+<p>The wheels of action set ajar;</p>
+<p>The body with the soul at war.</p>
+<p>'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find</p>
+<p>A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;</p>
+<p>Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went&mdash;</p>
+<p>The noon from midnight's azure tent</p>
+<p>Shone down, and, with serenest light,</p>
+<p>Flooded the windless plains of night;</p>
+<p>The lake in its clear mirror show'd</p>
+<p>Each little star that twinkling glow'd;</p>
+<p>Aspens, that quiver with a breath,</p>
+<p>Were stirless in that hush of death;</p>
+<p>The birds were nestled in their bowers;</p>
+<p>The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;</p>
+<p>Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven</p>
+<p>A while its sinless calm had given</p>
+<p>To lower regions, lest despair</p>
+<p>Should make abode for ever there;</p>
+<p>So tranquil&mdash;so serene&mdash;so bright&mdash;</p>
+<p>Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,</p>
+<p>His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;</p>
+<p>And, placid, in that calm profound,</p>
+<p>His silent flocks lay slumbering round:</p>
+<p>With flowing mantle, by his side,</p>
+<p>Sudden, a stranger he espied,</p>
+<p>Bland was his visage, and his voice</p>
+<p>Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.&mdash;</p>
+<p>&quot;Why is thy mourning thus?&quot; he said,</p>
+<p>&quot;Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?</p>
+<p>Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so</p>
+<p>Abroad despairing thou dost go?</p>
+<p>As if the God who gave thee breath,</p>
+<p>Held not the keys of life and death!</p>
+<p>When from the flocks that feed about,</p>
+<p>A single lamb thou choosest out,</p>
+<p>Is it not that which seemeth best</p>
+<p>That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?</p>
+<p>Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,</p>
+<p>With his choice little ones below</p>
+<p>Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks</p>
+<p>Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,</p>
+<p>Early, ere sin hath render'd dim</p>
+<p>The image of the seraphim!&quot;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p>Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;</p>
+<p>Again within his bosom burn'd</p>
+<p>The light of faith; and, from that day,</p>
+<p>He trode serene life's onward way.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<a name="bw329s10" id="bw329s10"></a>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page397" id="page397" title="page397"></a>
+<h2>COMTE.</h2>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p><i>Cours de Philosophie Positive</i>, par M. Auguste Comte.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to find in some extreme,
+uncompromising, eccentric
+work, written for the complete renovation
+of man, a new establishment of
+truth, little else, after all its tempest
+of thought has swept over the mind,
+than another confirmation of old, and
+long-settled, and temperate views.
+Our sober philosophy, like some familiar
+landscape seen after a thunder
+storm, comes out but the more distinct,
+the brighter, and the more tranquil,
+for the bursting cloud and the
+windy tumult that had passed over its
+surface. Some such experience have
+we just had. Our Conservative principles,
+our calm and patient manner
+of viewing things, have rarely received
+a stronger corroboration than from
+the perusal or the extraordinary work
+of M. Comte&mdash;a work written, assuredly,
+for no such comfortable purpose,
+but for the express object (so far as
+we can at present state it to our readers)
+of re-organizing political society,
+by means of an intellectual reformation
+amongst political thinkers.</p>
+
+<p>We would not be thought to throw
+an idle sneer at those generous hopes
+of the future destiny of society which
+have animated some of the noblest
+and most vigorous minds. It is no
+part of a Conservative philosophy to
+doubt on the broad question of the
+further and continuous improvement
+of mankind. Nor will the perusal of
+M. Comte's work induce, or permit,
+such a doubt. But while he leaves
+with his reader a strong impression
+of the unceasing development of social
+man, he leaves a still stronger impression
+of the futile or mischievous efforts
+of those&mdash;himself amongst the
+number&mdash;who are thrusting themselves
+forward as the peculiar and exclusive
+advocates of progress and improvement.
+He exhibits himself in
+the attitude of an innovator, as powerless
+in effect as he is daring to design;
+whilst, at the same time, he
+deals a <i>crashing</i> blow (as upon rival
+machinators) on that malignant party
+in European politics, whether it call
+itself liberal or of the movement,
+whose most distinct aim seems to be
+to unloose men from the bonds of
+civil government. We, too, believe in
+the silent, irresistible progress of human
+society, but we believe also that
+he is best working for posterity, as
+well as for the welfare of his contemporaries,
+who promotes order and
+tranquil effort in his own generation,
+by means of those elements of order
+which his own generation supplies.</p>
+
+<p>That which distinguishes M. Comte's
+work from all other courses of philosophy,
+or treatises upon science, is the
+attempt to reduce to the <i>scientific method</i>
+of cogitation the affairs of human
+society&mdash;morality, politics; in short, all
+those general topics which occupy our
+solitary and perplexed meditation, or
+sustain the incessant strife of controversy.
+These are to constitute a new
+science, to be called <i>Social Physics</i>, or
+<i>Sociology</i>. To apply the Baconian,
+or, as it is here called, the positive
+method, to man in all phases of his
+existence&mdash;to introduce the same fixed,
+indissoluble, imperturbable order in
+our ideas of morals, politics, and history,
+that we attain to astronomy and
+mechanics, is the bold object of his
+labours. He does not here set forth
+a model of human society based on
+scientific conclusions; something of
+this kind is promised us in a future
+work; in the present undertaking he
+is especially anxious to compel us to
+think on all such topics in the scientific
+method, <i>and in no other</i>. For be
+it known, that science is not only weak
+in herself, and has been hitherto incompetent
+to the task of unravelling
+the complicate proceedings of humanity,
+but she has also a great rival in
+the form of theologic method, wherein
+the mind seeks a solution for its
+difficulties in a power above nature.
+The human being has contracted an
+inveterate habit of viewing itself as
+standing in a peculiar relation to a
+supreme Architect and Governor of
+the world&mdash;a habit which in many
+ways, direct and indirect, interferes, it
+seems, with the application of the positive
+method. This habit is to be
+corrected; such supreme Architect
+and Governor is to be dismissed from
+<a class="pagenum" name="page398" id="page398" title="page398"></a>the imagination of men; science is to
+supply the sole mode of thought, and
+humanity to be its only object.</p>
+
+<p>We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary
+book, and this is an epithet
+which our readers are already
+fully prepared to apply. But the book,
+in our judgment, is extraordinary in
+more senses than one. It is as remarkable
+for the great mental energy
+it displays, for its originality and occasional
+profundity of thought, as it
+is for the astounding conclusions to
+which it would conduct us, for its
+bold paradoxes, and for what we can
+designate no otherwise than its egregious
+errors. As a discipline of the
+mind, so far as a full appreciation is
+concerned of the scientific method, it
+cannot be read without signal advantage.
+The book is altogether an anomaly;
+exhibiting the strangest mixture
+that ever mortal work betrayed
+of manifold blunder and great intellectual
+power. The man thinks at
+times with the strength of a giant.
+Neither does he fail, as we have already
+gathered, in the rebellious and
+destructive propensities for which
+giants have been of old renowned.
+Fable tells us how they could have
+no gods to reign over them, and how
+they threatened to drive Jupiter himself
+from the skies. Our intellectual
+representative of the race nourishes
+designs of equal temerity. Like his
+earth-born predecessors, his rage, we
+may be sure, will be equally vain.
+No thunder will be heard, neither will
+the hills move to overwhelm him; but
+in due course of time he will lie down,
+and be covered up with his own earth,
+and the heavens will be as bright and
+stable as before, and still the abode of
+the same unassailable Power.</p>
+
+<p>For the <i>style</i> of M. Comte's work,
+it is not commendable. The philosophical
+writers of his country are in
+general so distinguished for excellence
+in this particular, their exposition of
+thought is so remarkably felicitous,
+that a failure in a Frenchman in the
+mere art of writing, appears almost as
+great an anomaly as any of the others
+which characterize this production.
+During the earlier volumes, which are
+occupied with a review of the recognized
+branches of science, the vices of
+style are kept within bounds, but
+after he has entered on what is the
+great subject of all his lucubrations,
+his social physics, they grow distressingly
+conspicuous. The work extends
+to six volumes, some of them of unusually
+large capacity; and by the time
+we arrive at the last and the most bulky,
+the style, for its languor, its repetitions,
+its prolixity, has become intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>Of a work of this description, distinguished
+by such bold features, remarkable
+for originality and subtlety,
+as well as for surprising hardihood
+and eccentricity of thought, and bearing
+on its surface a manner of exposition
+by no means attractive, we imagine
+that our readers will not be
+indisposed to receive some notice.
+Its errors&mdash;supposing we are capable
+of coping with them&mdash;are worthy of
+refutation. Moreover, as we have
+hinted, the impression it conveys is,
+in relation to politics, eminently Conservative;
+for, besides that he has
+exposed, with peculiar vigour, the
+utter inadequacy of the movement, or
+liberal party, to preside over the organization
+of society, there is nothing
+more calculated to render us content
+with an <i>empirical</i> condition of tolerable
+well-being, than the exhibition
+(and such, we think, is here presented
+to us) of a strong mind palpably at
+fault in its attempt to substitute, out
+of its own theory of man, a better
+foundation for the social structure than
+is afforded by the existing unphilosophical
+medley of human thought.
+Upon that portion of the <i>Cours de
+Philosophie Positive</i> which treats of
+the sciences usually so called, we do
+not intend to enter, nor do the general
+remarks we make apply to it. Our
+limited object is to place our reader at
+the point of view which M. Comte
+takes in his new science of Sociology;
+and to do this with any justice to him
+or to ourselves, in the space we can
+allot to the subject, will be a task of
+sufficient difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>And first, as to the title of the work,
+<i>Philosophie Positive</i>, which has, perhaps,
+all this while been perplexing
+the reader. The reasons which induced
+M. Comte to adopt it, shall be
+given in his own words; they could
+not have been appreciated until some
+general notion had been given of the
+object he had in view.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;There is doubtless,&quot; he says, in his
+<i>Avertissement</i>, &quot;a close resemblance between
+my <i>Philosophie Positive</i>, and what
+the English, especially since the days of
+Newton, understand by <i>Natural Philosophy</i>.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page399" id="page399" title="page399"></a>But I would not adopt this last
+expression, any more than that of <i>Philosophy
+of the Sciences</i>, which would have
+perhaps been still more precise, because
+neither of these has yet been extended to
+all orders of phenomena, whilst <i>Philosophie
+Positive</i>, in which I comprehend the
+study of the social phenomena, as well as
+all others, designs a uniform manner of
+reasoning applicable to all subjects on which
+the human mind can be exerted. Besides
+which, the expression <i>Natural Philosophy</i>
+is employed in England to denote the
+aggregate of the several sciences of observation,
+considered even in their most
+minute details; whereas, by the title of
+<i>Philosophie Positive</i>, I intimate, with
+regard to the several positive sciences, a
+study of them only in their generalities,
+conceiving them as submitted to a uniform
+method, and forming the different parts of
+a general plan of research. The term
+which I have been led to construct is,
+therefore, at once more extended and more
+restricted than other denominations, which
+are so far similar that they have reference
+to the same fundamental class of ideas.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This very announcement of M.
+Comte's intention to comprehend in
+his course of natural philosophy the
+study of the several phenomena, compels
+us to enquire how far these are
+fit subjects for the strict application
+of the scientific method. We waive
+the metaphysical question of the free
+agency of man, and the theological
+question of the occasional interference
+of the Divine Power; and presuming
+these to be decided in a manner favourable
+to the project of our Sociologist,
+we still ask if it be possible to make
+of the affairs of society&mdash;legislation
+and politics, for instance&mdash;a department
+of science?</p>
+
+<p>The mere multiplicity and complication
+of facts in this department of
+enquiry, have been generally regarded
+as rendering such an attempt hopeless.
+In any social problem of importance,
+we invariably feel that to embrace the
+whole of the circumstances, with all
+their results and dependencies, is really
+out of our power, and we are forced
+to content ourselves with a judgment
+formed on what appear to us the principal
+facts. Thus arise those limited
+truths, admitting of exceptions, of
+qualification, of partial application, on
+which we are fain to rely in the conduct
+of human affairs. In framing his
+measures, how often is the statesman,
+or the jurist, made aware of the utter
+impossibility of guarding them against
+every species of objection, or of so
+constructing them that they shall present
+an equal front on every side!
+How still more keenly is the speculative
+politician made to feel, when giving
+in his adherence to some great
+line of policy, that he cannot gather
+in under his conclusions <i>all</i> the political
+truths he is master of! He reluctantly
+resigns to his opponent the possession,
+or at least the usufruct, of a
+certain class of truths which he is
+obliged to postpone to others of more
+extensive or more urgent application.</p>
+
+<p>But this multiplicity and complication
+of facts may merely render the
+task of the Sociologist extremely difficult,
+not impossible; and the half
+truths, and the perplexity of thought
+above alluded to, may only prove that
+his scientific task has not yet been
+accomplished. Nothing is here presented
+in the nature of the subject to
+exclude the strict application of <i>the
+method</i>. There is, however, one essential,
+distinctive attribute of human society
+which constitutes a difference in
+the nature of the subject, so as to
+render impossible the same scientific
+survey and appreciation of the social
+phenomena of the world that we may
+expect to obtain of the physical. This
+is the gradual and incessant <i>developement</i>
+which humanity has displayed,
+and is still displaying. Who can tell
+us that that <i>experience</i> on which a
+fixed and positive theory of social man
+is to be formed, is all before us?
+From age to age that experience is
+enlarging.</p>
+
+<p>In all recognized branches of science
+nature remains the same, and continually
+repeats herself; she admits of no
+novelty; and what appears new to us,
+from our late discovery of it, is as old
+as the most palpable sequence of
+facts that, generation after generation,
+catches the eye of childhood.
+The new discovery may disturb our
+theories, it disturbs not the condition
+of things. All is still the same as it
+ever was. What we possessed of real
+knowledge is real knowledge still. We
+sit down before a maze of things bewildering
+enough; but the vast mechanism,
+notwithstanding all its labyrinthian
+movements, is constant to
+itself, and presents always the same
+problem to the observer. But in this
+department of humanity, in this sphere
+of social existence, the case is otherwise.
+The human being, with hand,
+with intellect, is incessantly at work&mdash;has
+a progressive movement&mdash;<i>grows</i>
+<a class="pagenum" name="page400" id="page400" title="page400"></a>from age to age. He discovers, he
+invents, he speculates; his own inventions
+react upon the inventor; his own
+thoughts, creeds, speculations, become
+agents in the scene. Here <i>new facts</i>
+are actually from time to time starting
+into existence; new elements are introduced
+into society, which science
+could not have foreseen; for if they
+could have been foreseen, they would
+already have been there. A new
+creed, even a new machine, may confound
+the wisest of speculations. Man
+is, in relation to the science that would
+survey society, a <i>creator</i>. In short,
+that stability in the order of events,
+that invariable recurrence of the same
+linked series, on which science depends
+for its very existence, here, in
+some measure, fails us. In such degree,
+therefore, as humanity can be
+described as progressive, or developing
+itself, in such degree is it an untractable
+subject for the scientific method.
+We have but one world, but
+one humanity before us, but one specimen
+of this self developing creature,
+and that perhaps but half grown, but
+half developed. How can we know
+whereabouts <i>we are</i> in our course, and
+what is coming next? We want the
+history of some extinguished world in
+which a humanity has run its full
+career; we need to extend our observation
+to other planets peopled with
+similar but variously developed inhabitants,
+in order scientifically to understand
+such a race as ours.</p>
+
+<p>What, for example, could be more
+safely stated as an eternal law of society
+than that of property?&mdash;a law
+which so justly governs all our political
+reasonings, and determines the
+character of our political measures
+the most prospective&mdash;a law which
+M. Comte has not failed himself to
+designate as fundamental. And yet,
+by what right of demonstration can we
+pronounce this law to be inherent in
+humanity, so that it shall accompany
+the race during every stage of its
+progress? That industry should be
+rewarded by a personal, exclusive
+property in the fruits of industry, is
+the principle consecrated by our law
+of property, and to which the spontaneous
+passions of mankind have in
+all regions of the earth conducted.
+Standing where we do, and looking
+out as far as our intellectual vision
+can extend, we pronounce it to be the
+basis of society; but if we added
+that, as long as the world lasts, it
+must continue to be the basis of society,
+that there are no elements in man to
+furnish forth, if circumstances favoured
+their development, a quite different
+principle for the social organization,
+we feel that we should be overstepping
+the modest bounds of truth, and
+stating our proposition in terms far
+wider and more absolute than we
+were warranted. Experiments have
+been made, and a tendency has repeatedly
+been manifested, to frame
+an association of men in which the
+industry of the individual should have
+its immediate reward and motive in
+the participated prosperity of the general
+body&mdash;where the good of the
+whole should be felt as the interest
+of each. <i>How</i> such a principle is to
+be established, we confess ourselves
+utterly at a loss to divine; but that
+no future events unforeseen by us,
+no unexpected modification of the
+circumstances affecting human character,
+shall ever develop and establish
+such a principle&mdash;this is what
+no scientific mind would venture to
+assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate
+to our sphere of activity,
+nor need it, nor <i>can</i> it, pass beyond
+that sphere. We know that the law
+of property now forms the basis of
+society; we know that an attempt to
+abrogate it would be the signal for
+war and anarchy, and we know this
+also, that <i>at no time</i> can its opposite
+principle be established by force, because
+its establishment will require a
+wondrous harmony in the social
+body; and a civil war, let the victory
+fall where it may, must leave mankind
+full of dissension, rancour, and
+revenge. Our convictions, therefore,
+for all practical purposes, can receive
+no confirmation. If the far future is
+to be regulated by different principles,
+of what avail the knowledge of
+them, or how can they be intelligible
+to us, to whom are denied the circumstances
+necessary for their establishment,
+and for the demonstration of
+their reasonableness?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The great Aristotle himself,&quot;
+says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility
+of any man elevating himself
+above the circumstances of his
+age&mdash;&quot;The great Aristotle himself,
+the profoundest thinker of ancient
+times, (<i>la plus forte t&ecirc;te de toute l'antiquit&eacute;</i>,)
+could not conceive of a state
+of society not based on slavery, the
+irrevocable abolition of which commenced
+a few generations afterwards.&quot;&mdash;Vol.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page401" id="page401" title="page401"></a>iv. p.38. In the sociology
+of Aristotle, slavery would have
+been a fundamental law.</p>
+
+<p>There is another consideration, not
+unworthy of being mentioned, which
+bears upon this matter. In one portion
+of M. Comte's work, (we cannot
+now lay our hand upon the passage,)
+the question comes before him of the
+comparative <i>happiness</i> of the savage
+and the civilized man. He will not
+entertain it, refuses utterly to take
+cognizance of the question, and contents
+himself with asserting the fuller
+<i>development</i> of his nature displayed
+by the civilized man. M. Comte
+felt that science had no scale for this
+thing happiness. It was not ponderable,
+nor measurable, nor was there
+an uniformity of testimony to be collected
+thereon. How many of our
+debates and controversies terminate
+in a question of this kind&mdash;of the
+comparative happiness of two several
+conditions? Such questions are, for
+the most part, practically decided by
+those who have to <i>feel</i>; but to estimate
+happiness by and for the feelings
+of others, would be the task of
+science. Some future Royal Society
+must be called upon to establish a
+<i>standard measure</i> for human felicity.</p>
+
+<p>We are speaking, it will be remembered,
+of the production of a science.
+A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly
+available in the examination
+of social questions, and may be
+of eminent utility to the moralist, the
+jurist, and the politician&mdash;though it
+is worthy of observation that even the
+habit of scientific thought, if not in
+some measure tempered to the occasion,
+may display itself very inconveniently
+and prejudicially in the determination
+of such questions. Our
+author, for instance, after satisfying
+himself that marriage is a fundamental
+law of society, is incapable of
+tolerating any infraction whatever of
+this law in the shape of a divorce.
+He would give to it the rigidity of
+a law of mechanics; he finds there
+should be cohesion here, and he will
+not listen to a single case of separation:
+forgetful that a law of society
+may even be the more stable for admitting
+exceptions which secure for it
+the affection of those by whom it is
+to be reverenced and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>With relation to the <i>past</i>, and in
+one point of view&mdash;namely, so far as
+regards the development of man in
+his speculative career&mdash;our Sociologist
+has endeavoured to supply a law
+which shall meet the peculiar exigencies
+of his case, and enable him to
+take a scientific survey of the history
+of a changeful and progressive being.
+At the threshold of his work we encounter
+the announcement of a <i>new
+law</i>, which has regulated the development
+of the human mind from its
+rudest state of intellectual existence.
+As this law lies at the basis of M.
+Comte's system&mdash;as it is perpetually
+referred to throughout his work&mdash;as
+it is by this law he proceeds to view
+history in a scientific manner&mdash;as,
+moreover, it is by aid of this law that
+he undertakes to explain the <i>provisional
+existence</i> of all theology, explaining
+it in the past, and removing it
+from the future&mdash;it becomes necessary
+to enter into some examination of its
+claims, and we must request our readers'
+attention to the following statement
+of it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;In studying the entire development
+of the human intelligence in its different
+spheres of activity, from its first efforts
+the most simple up to our own days, I
+believe I have discovered a great fundamental
+law, to which it is subjected by an
+invariable necessity, and which seems to
+me capable of being firmly established,
+whether on those proofs which are furnished
+by a knowledge of our organization,
+or on those historical verifications which
+result from an attentive examination of
+the past. The law consists in this&mdash;that
+each of our principal conceptions, each
+branch of our knowledge, passes successively
+through three different states of theory:
+the <i>theologic</i>, or fictitious; the <i>metaphysic</i>,
+or abstract; the scientific, or <i>positive</i>. In
+other terms, the human mind, by its nature,
+employs successively, in each of its researches,
+three methods of philosophizing,
+the character of which is essentially different,
+and even radically opposed; at first
+the theologic method, then the metaphysical,
+and last the positive method. Hence
+three distinct philosophies, or general
+systems of conceptions on the aggregate of
+phenomena, which mutually exclude each
+other; the first is the necessary starting-point
+of the human intelligence; the third
+is its fixed and definite state; the second
+is destined to serve the purpose only of
+transition.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the <i>theologic</i> state, the human mind,
+directing its researches to the intimate
+nature of things, the first causes and the
+final causes of all those effects which arrest
+its attention, in a word, towards an absolute
+knowledge of things, represents to itself
+<a class="pagenum" name="page402" id="page402" title="page402"></a>the phenomena as produced by the direct
+and continuous action of supernatural
+agents, more or less numerous, whose
+arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent
+anomalies of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the <i>metaphysic</i> state, which is, in
+its essence, a modification of the former,
+the supernatural agents are displaced by
+abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
+abstractions) inherent in things, and
+conceived as capable of engendering by
+themselves all the observed phenomena&mdash;whose
+explanation, thenceforth, consists in
+assigning to each its corresponding entity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At last, in the <i>positive</i> state the human
+mind, recognizing the impossibility of
+obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
+search after the origin and destination of
+the universe, and the knowledge of the
+intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
+itself exclusively to the discovery, by the
+combined efforts of ratiocination and observation,
+of their effective laws; that is to
+say, their invariable relations of succession
+and of similitude. The explanation of
+things, reduced now to its real terms, becomes
+nothing more than the connexion
+established between the various individual
+phenomena and certain general facts, the
+number of which the progress of science
+tends continually to diminish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>theologic</i> system has reached the
+highest state of perfection of which it is
+susceptible, when it has substituted the
+providential action of one only being for
+the capricious agency of the numerous
+independent divinities who had previously
+been imagined. In like manner, the last
+term of the <i>metaphysic</i> system consists in
+conceiving, instead of the different special
+entities, one great general entity, <i>nature</i>,
+considered as the only source of all phenomena.
+The perfection of the <i>positive</i>
+system, towards which it unceasingly tends,
+though it is not probable it can ever attain
+to it, would be the ability to represent all
+observable phenomena as particular cases
+of some one general fact; such, for instance,
+as that of gravitation.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I.
+p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<p>After some very just, and indeed
+admirable, observations on the necessity,
+or extreme utility, of a theologic
+hypothesis at an early period of mental
+development, in order to promote
+any systematic thought whatever, he
+proceeds thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;It is easily conceivable that our understanding,
+compelled to proceed by degrees
+almost imperceptible, could not pass
+abruptly, and without an intermediate
+stage, from the <i>theologic</i> to the <i>positive</i>
+philosophy. Theology and physics are so
+profoundly incompatible, their conceptions
+have a character so radically opposed, that
+before renouncing the one to employ exclusively
+the other, the mind must make
+use of intermediate conceptions of a bastard
+character, fit, for that very reason, gradually
+to operate the transition. Such is
+the natural destination of metaphysical
+conceptions; they have no other real utility.
+By substituting, in the study of phenomena,
+for supernatural directive agency
+an inseparable entity residing in things,
+(although this be conceived at first merely
+as an emanation from the former,) man
+habituates himself, by degrees, to consider
+only the facts themselves, the notion of
+these metaphysical agents being gradually
+subtilized, till they are no longer in the
+eyes of men of intelligence any thing but
+the names of abstractions. It is impossible
+to conceive by what other process our
+understanding could pass from considerations
+purely supernatural, to considerations
+purely natural, from the theologic to the
+positive <i>r&eacute;gime</i>.&quot;&mdash;P. 13.</p></div>
+
+<p>We need hardly say that we enter
+our protest against the supposition
+that theology is not the <i>last</i>, as well
+as the <i>first</i>, of our forms of thought&mdash;against
+the assertion that is here, and
+throughout the work, made or implied,
+that the scientific method, rigidly applied
+in its appropriate field of enquiry,
+would be found incompatible
+with the great argument of an intelligent
+Cause, and would throw the
+whole subject of theology out of the
+range of human knowledge. It would
+be superfluous for us to re-state that
+argument; and our readers would probably
+be more displeased to have presented
+before them a hostile view of
+this subject, though for the purpose
+only of controversy, than they would
+be edified by a repetition of those reasonings
+which have long since brought
+conviction to their minds. We will
+content ourselves, therefore, with this
+protest, and with adding&mdash;as a fact of
+experience, which, in estimating a law
+of development, may with peculiar
+propriety be insisted on&mdash;that hitherto
+no such incompatibility has made
+itself evident. Hitherto science, or
+the method of thinking, which its
+cultivation requires and induces, has
+not shown itself hostile to the first
+great article of religion&mdash;that on
+which revelation proceeds to erect all
+the remaining articles of our faith.
+If it is a fact that, in rude times, men
+began their speculative career by assigning
+individual phenomena to the
+immediate causation of supernatural
+powers, it is equally a fact that they
+<a class="pagenum" name="page403" id="page403" title="page403"></a>have hitherto, in the most enlightened
+times, terminated their inductive labours
+by assigning that <i>unity</i> and
+<i>correlation</i> which science points out
+in the universe of things to an ordaining
+intelligence. We repeat, as a
+matter of experience, it is as rare in
+this age to find a reflective man who
+does not read <i>thought</i> in this unity
+and correlation of material phenomena,
+as it would have been, in some
+rube superstitious period, to discover
+an individual who refused to see, in
+any one of the specialities around him,
+the direct interference of a spirit or
+demon. In our own country, men of
+science are rather to blame for a too
+detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner
+of treating this great argument,
+than for any disposition to desert it.</p>
+
+<p>Contenting ourselves with this protest,
+we proceed to the consideration
+of the <i>new law</i>. That there is, in the
+statement here made of the course
+pursued in the development of speculative
+thought, a measure of truth;
+and that, in several subjects, the course
+here indicated may be traced, will
+probably, by every one who reads the
+foregoing extracts, be at once admitted.
+But assuredly very few will read
+it without a feeling of surprise at finding
+what (under certain limitations)
+they would have welcomed in the form
+of a general observation, proclaimed
+to them as a <i>law</i>&mdash;a scientific law&mdash;which
+from its nature admits of no
+exception; at finding it stated that
+every branch of human knowledge
+must of necessity pass through these
+three theoretic stages. In the case of
+some branches of knowledge, it is impossible
+to point out what can be understood
+as its several theologic and
+metaphysic stages; and even in cases
+where M. Comte has himself applied
+these terms, it is extremely difficult to
+assign to them a meaning in accordance
+with that which they bear in this
+statement of his law; as, for instance,
+in his application of them to his own
+science of social physics. But we
+need not pause on this. What a palpable
+fallacy it is to suppose, because
+M. Comte find the positive and theologic
+methods incompatible, that, historically
+speaking, and in the minds of
+men, which certainly admit of stranger
+commixtures than this, they should
+&quot;mutually exclude each other&quot;&mdash;that,
+in short, men have not been all along,
+in various degrees and proportions,
+both <i>theologic</i> and <i>positive</i>.</p>
+
+<p>What is it, we ask, that M. Comte
+means by the <i>succession</i> of these several
+stages or modes of thinking? Does
+he mean that what is here called the
+positive method of thought is not
+equally <i>spontaneous</i> to the human mind
+as the theological, but depends on it
+for its development? Hardly so.
+The predominance of the positive method,
+or its complete formation, may
+be postponed; but it clearly has an
+origin and an existence independent
+of the theological. No barbarian ever
+deified, or supernaturalized, every
+process around him; there must always
+have been a portion of his experience
+entertained merely <i>as experience</i>.
+The very necessity man has
+to labour for his subsistence, brings him
+into a practical acquaintance with the
+material world, which induces observation,
+and conducts towards a natural
+philosophy. If he is a theologian the
+first moment he gives himself up to
+meditation, he is on the road to the
+Baconian method the very day he begins
+to labour. The rudest workman
+uses the lever; the mathematician
+follows and calculates the law which
+determines the power it bestows;
+here we have industry and then science,
+but what room for the intervention of
+theology?</p>
+
+<p>Or does M. Comte mean this only&mdash;which
+we presume to be the case&mdash;that
+these methods of thought are, in
+succession, predominant and brought
+to maturity? If so, what necessity
+for this <i>metaphysic</i> apparatus for the
+sole purpose of <i>transition</i>? If each
+of these great modes, the positive and
+theological, has its independent source,
+and is equally spontaneous&mdash;if they
+have, in fact, been all along contemporary,
+though in different stages of
+development, the function attributed
+to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous;
+there can be no place for it;
+there is no transition for it to operate.
+And what can be said of <i>a law
+of succession</i> in which there is no relation
+of cause and effect, or of invariable
+sequence, between the phenomena?</p>
+
+<p>Either way the position of M.
+Comte is untenable. If he intends
+that his two great modes of thought,
+the theologic and the positive, (between
+which the metaphysic performs
+the function of transition,) are
+<i>not</i> equally spontaneous, but that the
+one must in the order of nature precede
+the other; then, besides that this
+is an unfounded supposition, it would
+<a class="pagenum" name="page404" id="page404" title="page404"></a>follow&mdash;since the mind, or <i>organization</i>,
+of man remains from age to age
+the same in its fundamental powers&mdash;that,
+at this very time, no man could
+be inducted into the positive state of
+any branch of knowledge, without
+first going through its theologic and
+metaphysic. Truth must be expounded
+through a course of errors. Science
+must be eternally postponed, in every
+system of education, to theology, and
+a theology of the rudest description&mdash;a
+result certainly not contemplated by
+M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he
+intends that they <i>are</i> equally spontaneous
+in their character, equally native
+to the mind, then, we repeat,
+what becomes of the elaborate and
+&quot;indispensable&quot; part ascribed to the
+<i>metaphysic</i> of effectuating a transition
+between them? And how can we
+describe that as a scientific <i>law</i> in
+which there is confessedly no immediate
+relation of cause and effect, or
+sequency, established? The statement,
+if true, manifestly requires to
+be resolved into the law, or laws, capable
+of explaining it.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps our readers have all this
+while suspected that we are acting in
+a somewhat captious manner towards
+M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded
+that this author could not have
+here required their assent, strictly
+speaking, to a <i>law</i>, but that he used
+the term vaguely, as many writers
+have done&mdash;meaning nothing more
+by it than a course of events which
+has frequently been observed to take
+place; and under this impression they
+may be more disposed to receive the
+measure of truth contained in it than
+to cavil at the form of the statement.
+But indeed M. Comte uses the language
+of science in no such vague
+manner; he requires the same assent
+to this law that we give to any one
+of the recognized laws of science&mdash;to
+that of gravitation for instance,
+to which he himself likens it, pronouncing
+it, in a subsequent part of
+his work, to have been as incontrovertibly
+established. Upon this law,
+think what we may of it, M. Comte
+leans throughout all his progress; he
+could not possibly dispense with it;
+on its stability depends his whole social
+science; by it, as we have already
+intimated, he becomes master of the
+past and of the future; and an appreciation
+of its necessity to him, at once
+places us at that point of view from
+which M. Comte contemplates our
+mundane affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It is his object to put the scientific
+method in complete possession of the
+whole range of human thought, especially
+of the department, hitherto unreduced
+to subjection, of social phenomena.
+Now there is a great rival in
+the field&mdash;theology&mdash;which, besides
+imparting its own supernatural tenets,
+influences our modes of thinking on
+almost all social questions. Theology
+cannot itself be converted into a branch
+of science; all those tenets by which it
+sways the hopes and fears of men are
+confessedly above the sphere of science:
+if science, therefore, is to rule absolutely,
+it must remove theology. But
+it can only remove by explaining; by
+showing how it came there, and how,
+in good time, it is destined to depart.
+If the scientific method is entirely to
+predominate, it must explain religion,
+as it must explain every thing that
+exists, or has existed; and it must also
+reveal the law of its departure&mdash;otherwise
+it cannot remain sole mistress of
+the speculative mind. Such is the
+office which the law of development
+we have just considered is intended to
+fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing
+its purpose we must now leave
+our readers to decide.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus, as he presumes, cleared
+the ground for the absolute and exclusive
+dominion of the positive method,
+M. Comte proceeds to erect the <i>hierarchy</i>,
+as he very descriptively calls it,
+of the several sciences. His classification
+of these is based on the simplest
+and most intelligible principle.
+We think that we rather add to, than
+diminish from, the merits of this classification,
+when we say, that it is such
+as seems spontaneously to arise to any
+reflective mind engaged in a review of
+human knowledge. Commencing with
+the most simple, general, and independent
+laws, it proceeds to those
+which are more complicated, which
+presume the existence of other laws;
+in such manner that at every stage of
+our scientific progress we are supporting
+ourselves on the knowledge acquired
+in the one preceding.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;The positive philosophy,&quot; he tells us,
+&quot;falls naturally into five divisions, or five
+fundamental sciences, whose order of succession
+is determined by the necessary or
+invariable subordination (estimated according
+to no hypothetical opinions) of their several
+phenomena; these are, astronomy,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page405" id="page405" title="page405"></a>mechanics, (<i>la physique</i>,) chemistry, physiology,
+and lastly, social physics. The first
+regards the phenomena the most general,
+the most abstract, the most remote from
+humanity; they influence all others, without
+being influenced by them. The phenomena
+considered by the last are, on the
+contrary, the most complicated, the most
+concrete, the most directly interesting to
+man; they depend more or less on all the
+preceding phenomena, without exercising
+on them any influence. Between these
+two extremes, the degrees of speciality,
+of complication and personality, of phenomena,
+gradually increase, as well as their
+successive dependence.&quot;&mdash;Vol. I. p. 96.</p></div>
+
+<p>The principle of classification is excellent,
+but is there no rank dropt out
+of this <i>hierarchy</i>? The metaphysicians,
+or psychologists, who are wont
+to consider themselves as standing at
+the very summit&mdash;where are they?
+They are dismissed from their labours&mdash;their
+place is occupied by others&mdash;and
+what was considered as having
+substance and reality in their proceedings,
+is transferred to the head of
+physiology. The phrenologist is admitted
+into the hierarchy of science as
+an honest, though hitherto an unpractised,
+and not very successful labourer;
+the metaphysician, with his class of
+internal observations, is entirely scouted.
+M. Comte considers the <i>mind</i> as
+one of those abstract entities which it
+is the first business of the positive
+philosophy to discard. He speaks of
+man, of his organization, of his thought,
+but not, scientifically, of his <i>mind</i>.
+This entity, this occult cause, belongs
+to the <i>metaphysic</i> stage of theorizing.
+&quot;There is no place,&quot; he cries, &quot;for this
+illusory psychology, the last transformation
+of theology!&quot;&mdash;though, by the
+way, so far as a belief in this abstract
+entity of mind is concerned, the <i>metaphysic</i>
+condition of our knowledge appears
+to be quite as old, quite as
+primitive, as any conception whatever of
+theology. Now, whether M. Comte
+be right in this preference of the
+phrenologist, we will not stay to discuss&mdash;it
+were too wide a question;
+but thus much we can briefly and indisputably
+show, that he utterly misconceives,
+as well as underrates, the
+<i>kind of research</i> to which psychologists
+are addicted. As M. Comte's style
+is here unusually vivacious, we will
+quote the whole passage. Are we
+uncharitable in supposing that the
+prospect of demolishing, at one fell
+swoop, the brilliant reputations of a
+whole class of Parisian <i>savans</i>, added
+something to the piquancy of the
+style?</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Such has gradually become, since the
+time of Bacon, the preponderance of the
+positive philosophy; it has at present assumed
+indirectly so great an ascendant
+over those minds even which have been
+most estranged from it, that metaphysicians
+devoted to the study of our intelligence,
+can no longer hope to delay the
+fall of their pretended science, but by presenting
+their doctrines as founded also
+upon the observation of facts. For this
+purpose they have, in these later times,
+attempted to distinguish, by a very singular
+subtilty, two sorts of observations of
+equal importance, the one external, the
+other internal; the last of which is exclusively
+destined for the study of intellectual
+phenomena. This is not the place to
+enter into the special discussion of this
+sophism. I will limit myself to indicate
+the principal consideration, which clearly
+proves that this pretended direct contemplation
+of the mind by itself, is a pure
+illusion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a long while ago men imagined
+they had explained vision by saying that
+the luminous action of bodies produces on
+the retina pictures representative of
+external forms and colours. To this the
+physiologists [query, the <i>physiologists</i>]
+have objected, with reason, that if it was
+<i>as images</i> that the luminous impressions
+acted, there needed another eye within
+the eye to behold them. Does not a
+similar objection hold good still more
+strikingly in the present case?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is clear, in fact, from an invincible
+necessity, that the human mind can observe
+directly all phenomena except its
+own. For by whom can the observation
+be made? It is conceivable that,
+relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe
+himself in regard to the passions
+which animate him, from this anatomical
+reason, that the organs which are the seat
+of them are distinct from those destined
+to the function of observation. Though
+each man has had occasion to make on
+himself such observations, yet they can
+never have any great scientific importance;
+and the best means of knowing the passions
+will be always to observe them without;
+[<i>indeed</i>!] for every state of passion
+very energetic&mdash;that is to say, precisely
+those which it would be most essential to
+examine, are necessarily incompatible with
+the state of observation. But as to observing
+in the same manner intellectual
+phenomena, while they are proceeding, it
+is manifestly impossible. The thinking
+individual cannot separate himself in two
+parts, of which the one shall reason, and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page406" id="page406" title="page406"></a>the other observe it reasoning. The organ
+observed and the organ observing being
+in this case identical, how can observation
+be carried on?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This pretended psychological method
+is thus radically absurd. And only consider
+to what procedures profoundly contradictory
+it immediately conducts! On
+the other hand, they recommend you to
+isolate yourself as much as possible from
+all external sensation; and, above all,
+they interdict you every intellectual exercise;
+for if you were merely occupied in
+making the most simple calculation, what
+would become of your <i>internal</i> observation?
+On the other hand, after having
+thus, by dint of many precautions, attained
+to a perfect state of intellectual slumber,
+you are to occupy yourself in contemplating
+the operations passing in your mind&mdash;while
+there is no longer any thing passing
+there. Our descendants will one day see
+these ludicrous pretensions transferred to
+the stage.&quot;&mdash;P. 34.</p></div>
+
+<p>They seem transferred to the stage
+already&mdash;so completely burlesqued is
+the whole process on which the psychologist
+bases his results. He does not
+pretend to observe the mind itself; but
+he says, you can remember previous
+states of consciousness, whether of
+passion or of intellectual effort, and
+pay renewed attention to them. And
+assuredly there is no difficulty in understanding
+this. When, indeed, M.
+Cousin, after being much perplexed
+with the problem which Kant had
+thrown out to him, of objective and
+subjective truth, comes back to the
+public and tells them, in a second edition
+of his work, that he has succeeded
+in discovering, in the inmost recesses
+of the mind, and at a depth of the
+consciousness to which neither he
+nor any other had before been able to
+penetrate, this very sense of the absolute
+in truth of which he was in
+search&mdash;something very like the account
+which M. Conte gives, may be
+applicable. But when M. Cousin, or
+other psychologists, in the ordinary
+course of their investigations, observe
+mental phenomena, they simply pay
+attention to what memory brings them
+of past experiences; observations
+which are not only a legitimate source
+of knowledge, but which are continually
+made, with more or less accuracy,
+by every human being. If they are
+impossible according to the doctrines
+of phrenology, let phrenology look to
+this, and rectify her blunder in the
+best way, as speedily as she can. M.
+Comte may think fit to depreciate the
+labours of the metaphysician; but it
+is not to the experimental philosopher
+alone that he is indebted for that positive
+method which he expounds
+with so exclusive an enthusiasm. M.
+Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts
+the fundamental principles of Gall's
+system, but repudiates, as consummately
+absurd, the list of organs, and
+the minute divisions of the skull,
+which at present obtain amongst
+phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist,
+so far and no further, but from
+certain information gathered from his
+consciousness, or his memory, which
+convicted phrenology of error? And
+how can he, or any other, rectify this
+erroneous division of the cranium, and
+establish a more reasonable one, unless
+by a course of craniological observations
+directed and confirmed by
+those internal observations which he
+is pleased here to deride?</p>
+
+<p>His hierarchy being erected, he
+next enters on a review of the several
+received sciences, marking throughout
+the successful, or erroneous, application
+of the positive method. This
+occupies three volumes. It is a portion
+of the work which we are restricted
+from entering on; nor shall we
+deviate from the line we have prescribed
+to ourselves. But before
+opening the fourth volume, in which
+he treats of social physics, it will not
+be beside our object to take a glance at
+the <i>method</i> itself, as applied in the
+usual field of scientific investigation,
+to nature, as it is called&mdash;to inorganic
+matter, to vegetable and animal life.</p>
+
+<p>We are not here determining the
+merits of M. Comte in his exposition
+of the scientific method; we take it
+as we find it; and, in unsophisticated
+mood, we glance at the nature of this
+mental discipline&mdash;to make room for
+which, it will be remembered, so wide
+a territory is to be laid waste.</p>
+
+<p>Facts, or phenomena, classed according
+to their similitude or the law
+of their succession&mdash;such is the material
+of science. All enquiry into
+causes, into substance, into being,
+pronounced impertinent and nugatory;
+the very language in which
+such enquiries are couched not allowed,
+perhaps, to have a meaning&mdash;such
+is the supreme dictate of the method,
+and all men yield to it at least a nominal
+submission. Very different is
+the aspect which science presents to
+us in these severe generalities, than
+<a class="pagenum" name="page407" id="page407" title="page407"></a>when she lectures fluently before gorgeous
+orreries; or is heard from behind
+a glittering apparatus, electrical
+or chemical; or is seen, gay and sportive
+as a child, at her endless game of
+unwearying experiment. Here she is
+the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The
+museful, meditative spirit passes from
+one object of its wonder to another, and
+finds, at every pause it makes, that
+science is as strenuous in forbidding
+as in satisfying enquiry. The planet
+rolls through space&mdash;ask not how!&mdash;the
+mathematician will tell you at
+what rate it flies&mdash;let his figures suffice.
+A thousand subtle combinations
+are taking place around you, producing
+the most marvellous transformations&mdash;the
+chemist has a table of substances,
+and a table of proportions&mdash;names
+and figures both&mdash;<i>why</i> these
+transmutations take place, is a question
+you should be ashamed to ask.
+Plants spring up from the earth, and
+<i>grow</i>, and blossom at your feet, and
+you look on with delight, and an unsubduable
+wonder, and in a heedless
+moment you ask what is <i>life?</i> Science
+will generalize the fact to you&mdash;give
+you its formula for the expression of
+<i>growth, decomposition, and recomposition</i>,
+under circumstances not as yet
+very accurately collected. Still you
+stand gazing at the plant which a short
+while since stole through a crevice of
+the earth, and taking to itself, with
+such subtle power of choice, from the
+soil or the air, the matter that it needed,
+fashioned it to the green leaf and
+the hanging blossom. In vain! Your
+scientific monitor calls you from futile
+reveries, and repeats his formula of
+decomposition and recomposition. As
+<i>attraction</i> in the planet is known only
+as a movement admitting of a stated
+numerical expression, so <i>life</i> in the
+plant is to be known only as decomposition
+and recomposition taking
+place under certain circumstances.
+Think of it as such&mdash;no more. But,
+O learned philosopher! you exclaim,
+you shall tell me that you know not
+what manner of thing life is, and I
+will believe you; and if you add that
+I shall never discover it, I will believe
+you; but you cannot prevent me
+from knowing that it is something I
+do not know. Permit me, for I cannot
+help it, still to wonder what life
+is. Upon the dial of a watch the
+hands are moving, and a child asks
+why? Child! I respond, that the
+hands <i>do</i> move is an ultimate fact&mdash;so,
+represent it to yourself&mdash;and here,
+moreover, is the law of their movement&mdash;the
+longer index revolves twelve
+times while the shorter revolves once.
+This is knowledge, and will be of use
+to you&mdash;more you cannot understand.
+And the child is silent, but still it
+keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows
+there is something that it does not
+know.</p>
+
+<p>But while you are looking, in spite
+of your scientific monitor, at this
+beautiful creature that grows fixed
+and rooted in the earth&mdash;what is this
+that glides forth from beneath its
+leaves, with self-determined motion,
+not to be expressed by a numerical
+law, pausing, progressing, seeking,
+this way and that, its pasture?&mdash;what
+have we here? <i>Irritability and a tissue.</i>
+Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the
+philosopher has touched it, coiling and
+writhing itself&mdash;what is this? <i>Sensation
+and a nerve.</i> Does the nerve <i>feel</i>?
+you inconsiderately ask, or is there
+some sentient being, other than the
+nerve, in which sensation resides? A
+smile of derision plays on the lip of the
+philosopher. <i>There is sensation</i>&mdash;you
+cannot express the fact in simpler or
+more general terms. Turn your enquiries,
+or your microscope, on the
+organization with which it is, in order
+of time, connected. Ask not me, in
+phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible
+mysteries of ontology. And
+you, O philosopher! who think and
+reason thus, is not the thought within
+thee, in every way, a most perplexing
+matter? Not more perplexing, he replies,
+than the pain of yonder worm,
+which seems now to have subsided,
+since it glides on with apparent pleasure
+over the surface of the earth.
+Does the organization of the man, or
+something else within him, <i>think</i>?&mdash;does
+the organization of that worm, or
+something else within it, <i>feel</i>?&mdash;they
+are virtually the same questions, and
+equally idle. Phenomena are the sole
+subjects of science. Like attraction
+in the planet, like life in the vegetable,
+like sensation in the animal, so thought
+in man is an ultimate fact, which we
+can merely recognize, and place in its
+order in the universe. Come with me
+to the dissecting-room, and examine
+that cerebral apparatus with which it
+is, or <i>was</i>, connected.</p>
+
+<p>All this &quot;craves wary walking.&quot;
+It is a trying course, this <i>method</i>, for
+the uninitiated. How it strains the
+mind by the very limitations it imposes
+<a class="pagenum" name="page408" id="page408" title="page408"></a>on its outlook! How mysterious is this
+very sharp, and well-defined separation
+from all mystery! How giddy is
+this path that leads always so close
+over the unknowable! Giddy as that
+bridge of steel, framed like a scimitar,
+and as fine, which the faithful Moslem,
+by the aid of his Prophet, will
+pass with triumph on his way to Paradise.
+But of our bridge, it cannot be
+said that it has one foot on earth and
+one in heaven. Apparently, it has no
+foundation whatever; it rises from
+cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans
+an inpenetrable abyss. A mist, which
+no wind disperses, involves both extremities
+of our intellectual career,
+and we are seen to pass like shadows
+across the fantastic, inexplicable interval.</p>
+
+<p>We now open the fourth volume,
+which is emblazoned with the title of
+<i>Physique Social</i>. And here we will
+at once extract a passage, which, if
+our own remarks have been hitherto
+of an unattractive character, shall reward
+the reader for his patience. It
+is taken from that portion of the work&mdash;perhaps
+the most lucid and powerful
+of the whole&mdash;where, in order to
+demonstrate the necessity of his new
+science of Sociology, M. Comte enters
+into a review of the two great political
+parties which, with more or less
+distinctness, divide every nation of
+Europe; his intention being to show
+that both of them are equally incompetent
+to the task of organizing society.
+We shall render our quotation as brief
+as the purpose of exposition will allow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;It is impossible to deny that the political
+world is intellectually in a deplorable
+condition. All our ideas of <i>order</i> are
+hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient
+system of religious and military power,
+regarded especially in its constitution,
+catholic and feudal; a doctrine which,
+from the philosophic point of view of this
+treatise, represents incontestably the <i>theologic</i>
+state of the social science. All our
+ideas of <i>progress</i> continue to be
+exclusively deduced from a philosophy purely
+negative, which, issuing from Protestantism,
+has taken in the last age its final form
+and complete development; the doctrines
+of which constitute, in reality, the <i>metaphysic</i>
+state of politics. Different classes
+of society adopt the one or the other of
+these, just as they are disposed to feel
+chiefly the want of conservation or that of
+amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these
+antagonist doctrines present themselves in
+all their plenitude, and with their primitive
+homogeneity; they are found less and
+less in this form, except in minds purely
+speculative. But the monstrous medley
+which men attempt in our days of their
+incompatible principles, cannot evidently
+be endowed with any virtue foreign to the
+elements which compose it, and tends
+only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;However pernicious may be at present
+the theologic doctrine, no true philosophy
+can forget that the formation and
+first development of modern societies were
+accomplished under its benevolent tutelage;
+which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate
+in the historical portion of this
+work. But it is not the less incontestably
+true that, for about three centuries, its
+influence has been, amongst the nations
+most advanced, essentially retrograde, notwithstanding
+the partial services it has
+throughout that period rendered. It
+would be superfluous to enter here into a
+special discussion of this doctrine, in order
+to show its extreme insufficiency at the
+present day. The deplorable absence of
+all sound views of social organization can
+alone account for the absurd project of
+giving, in these times, for the support of
+social order, a political system which has
+already been found unable to sustain itself
+before the spontaneous progress of intelligence
+and of society. The historical analysis
+which we shall subsequently institute
+of the successive changes which have gradually
+brought about the entire dissolution
+of the catholic and feudal system, will
+demonstrate, better than any direct argument,
+its radical and irrevocable decay.
+The theologic school has generally no other
+method of explaining this decomposition
+of the old system than by causes merely
+accidental or personal, out of all reasonable
+proportion with the magnitude of the
+results; or else, when hard driven, it has
+recourse to its ordinary artifice, and attempts
+to explain all by an appeal to the
+will of Providence, to whom is ascribed
+the intention of raising a time of trial for
+the social order, of which the commencement,
+the duration, and the character, are
+all left equally obscure.&quot;...&mdash;P.14</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a point of view strictly logical, the
+social problem might be stated thus:&mdash;construct
+a doctrine that shall be so
+rationally conceived that it shall be found,
+as it develops itself, to be still always consistent
+with its own principles. Neither
+of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition,
+even by the rudest approximation.
+Both display numerous and direct contradictions,
+and on important points. By
+this alone their utter insufficiency is clearly
+exhibited. The doctrine which shall fulfil
+this condition, will, from this test, be recognized
+as the one capable of reorganizing
+<a class="pagenum" name="page409" id="page409" title="page409"></a>society; for it is an <i>intellectual reorganization</i>
+that is first wanted&mdash;a re-establishment
+of a real and durable harmony
+amongst our social ideas, disturbed and
+shaken to the very foundation. Should
+this regeneration be accomplished in one
+intelligence only, (and such must necessarily
+be its manner of commencement,)
+its extension would be certain; for the
+number of intelligences to be convinced
+can have no influence except as a question
+of time. I shall not fail to point out,
+when the proper opportunity arrives, the
+eminent superiority, in this respect, of the
+positive philosophy, which, once extended
+to social phenomena, will necessarily combine
+the ideas of men in a strict and
+complete manner, which in no other way can
+be attained.&quot;&mdash;P. 20.</p></div>
+
+<p>M. Comte then mentions some of
+the inconsistencies of the theologic
+school.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Analyze, for example, the vain attempts,
+so frequently renewed during two
+centuries by so many distinguished minds,
+to subordinate, according to the theologic
+formula, reason to faith; it is easy to
+recognize the radical contradiction this
+attempt involves, which establishes reason
+herself as supreme judge of this very
+submission, the extent and the permanence
+of which is to depend upon her variable
+and not very rigid decisions. The most
+eminent thinker of the present catholic
+school, the illustrious <i>De Maistre</i>,
+himself affords a proof, as convincing as
+involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction
+in his philosophy, when, renouncing
+all theologic weapons, he labours in his
+principal work to re-establish the Papal
+supremacy on purely historical and political
+reasonings, instead of limiting himself
+to command it by right divine&mdash;the
+only mode in true harmony with such
+a doctrine, and which a mind, at another
+epoch, would not certainly have hesitated
+to adopt.&quot;&mdash;P. 25.</p></div>
+
+<p>After some further observations on
+the theologic or retrograde school, he
+turns to the <i>metaphysic</i>, sometimes
+called the anarchical, sometimes <i>doctrine
+critique</i>, for M. Comte is rich in
+names.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;In submitting, in their turn, the <i>metaphysic</i>
+doctrine to a like appreciation, it
+must never be overlooked that, though
+exclusively critical, and therefore purely
+revolutionary, it has not the less merited,
+for a long time, the title of progressive,
+as having in fact presided over the principal
+political improvements accomplished
+in the course of the three last centuries,
+and which have necessarily been of a
+<i>negative</i> description. If, when conceived
+in an absolute sense, its dogmas manifest,
+in fact, a character directly anarchical,
+when viewed in an historical position, and
+in their antagonism to the ancient system,
+they constitute a provisional state, necessary
+to the introduction of a new political
+organization.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By a necessity as evident as it is
+deplorable, a necessity inherent in our
+feeble nature, the transition from one
+social system to another can never be
+direct and continuous; it supposes always,
+during some generations at least, a sort of
+interregnum, more or less anarchical,
+whose character and duration depend on
+the importance and extent of the renovation
+to be effected. (While the old system
+remains standing, though undermined, the
+public reason cannot become familiarized
+with a class of ideas entirely opposed to it.)
+In this necessity we see the legitimate
+source of the present <i>doctrine critique</i>&mdash;a
+source which at once explains the indispensable
+services it has hitherto rendered,
+and also the essential obstacles it now
+opposes to the final reorganization of
+modern societies....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Under whatever aspect we regard it,
+the general spirit of the metaphysic revolutionary
+system consists in erecting into
+a normal and permanent state a necessarily
+exceptional and transitory condition. By
+a direct and total subversion of political
+notions, the most fundamental, it represents
+government as being, by its nature, the
+necessary enemy of society, against which
+it sedulously places itself in a constant
+state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is
+disposed incessantly to restrain more and
+more its sphere of activity, in order to
+prevent its encroachments, and tends
+finally to leave it no other than the simple
+functions of general police, without any
+essential participation in the supreme direction
+of the action of the collective
+body or of its social development.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Approaching to a more detailed examination
+of this doctrine, it is evident that
+the absolute right of free examination
+(which, connected as it is with the liberty
+of the press and the freedom of education,
+is manifestly its principal and fundamental
+dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the
+consecration, under the vicious abstract
+form common to all metaphysic conceptions,
+of that transitional state of unlimited
+liberty in which the human mind has been
+spontaneously placed, in consequence of
+the irrevocable decay of the theologic
+philosophy, and which must naturally remain
+till the establishment in the social domain
+of the positive method.<a name="footnotetag49" id="footnotetag49"></a><a href="#footnote49"><sup>49</sup></a> ... However
+salutary and indispensable in its historical
+<a class="pagenum" name="page410" id="page410" title="page410"></a>position, this principle opposes a grave
+obstacle to the reorganization of society,
+by being erected into an absolute and permanent
+dogma. To examine always without
+deciding ever, would be deemed great
+folly in any individual. How can the dogmatic
+consecration of a like disposition
+amongst all individuals, constitute the definitive
+perfection of the social order, in
+regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so
+peculiarly important, and so difficult, to
+establish? Is it not evident, on the contrary,
+that such a disposition is, from its
+nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as,
+if it could be indefinitely prolonged, it
+must hinder every true mental organization?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No association whatever, though destined
+for a special and temporary purpose,
+and though limited to a small number
+of individuals, can subsist without a
+certain degree of reciprocal confidence,
+both intellectual and moral, between its
+members, each one of whom finds a continual
+necessity for a crowd of notions, to
+the formation of which he must remain a
+stranger, and which he cannot admit but
+on the faith of others. By what monstrous
+exception can this elementary condition
+of all society be banished from that
+total association of mankind, where the
+point of view which the individual takes,
+is most widely separated from that point
+of view which the collective interest requires,
+and where each member is the least
+capable, whether by nature or position, to
+form a just appreciation of these general
+rules, indispensable to the good direction
+of his personal activity. Whatever intellectual
+development we may suppose possible,
+in the mass of men it is evident,
+that social order will remain always necessarily
+incompatible with the permanent
+liberty left to each, to throw back every
+day into endless discussion the first principles
+even of society....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The dogma of <i>equality</i> is the most
+essential and the most influential after
+that which I have just examined, and is,
+besides, in necessary relation to the principle
+of the unrestricted liberty of judgment;
+for this last indirectly leads to the
+conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental
+character&mdash;an equality of intelligence.
+In its bearing on the ancient
+system, it has happily promoted the development
+of modern civilization, by presiding
+over the final dissolution of the old
+social classification. But this function
+constitutes the sole progressive destination
+of this energetic dogma, which tends in its
+turn to prevent every just reorganization,
+since its destructive activity is blindly directed
+against the basis of every new
+classification. For, whatever that basis
+may be, it cannot be reconciled with a
+pretended equality, which, to all intelligent
+men, can now only signify the triumph
+of the inequalities developed by
+modern civilization, over those which had
+predominated in the infancy of society....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same philosophical appreciation
+is applicable with equal ease to the dogma
+of the <i>sovereignty of the people</i>. Whilst
+estimating, as is fit, the indispensable
+transitional office of this revolutionary
+dogma, no true philosopher can now misunderstand
+the fatal anarchical tendency
+of this metaphysical conception, since in
+its absolute application it opposes itself to
+all regular institution, condemning indefinitely
+all superiors to an arbitrary dependence
+on the multitude of their inferiors,
+by a sort of transference to the people of
+the much-reprobated right of kings.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As our author had shown how the
+<i>theologic</i> philosophy was inconsistent
+often with itself, so, in criticising the
+<i>metaphysics</i>, he exposes here also
+certain self-contradictions. He reproaches
+it with having, in its contests
+with the old system, endeavoured,
+at each stage, to uphold and adopt
+some of the elementary principles of
+that very system it was engaged in
+destroying.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Thus,&quot; he says, &quot;there arose a Christianity
+more and more simplified, and reduced
+at length to a vague and powerless
+theism, which, by a strange medley of
+terms, the metaphysicians distinguished by
+the title of <i>natural religion</i>, as if all religion
+was not inevitably <i>supernatural</i>.
+In pretending to direct the social reorganization
+after this vain conception, the
+metaphysic school, notwithstanding its
+destination purely revolutionary, has always
+implicitly adhered, and does so, especially
+and distinctly, at the present day, to
+the most fundamental principle of the ancient
+political doctrine&mdash;that which represents
+the social order as necessarily reposing
+on a theological basis. This is now
+the most evident, and the most pernicious
+inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine.
+Armed with this concession, the school of
+Bossuet and De Maistre will always maintain
+an incontestable logical superiority over
+<a class="pagenum" name="page411" id="page411" title="page411"></a>the irrational detractors of Catholicism,
+who, while they proclaim the want of a
+religious organization, reject, nevertheless,
+the elements indispensable to its realization.
+By such a concession the revolutionary
+school concur in effect, at the present
+day, with the retrograde, in preventing
+a right organization of modern societies,
+whose intellectual condition more and
+more interdicts a system of politics founded
+on theology.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Our readers will doubtless agree
+with us, that this review of political
+parties (though seen through an extract
+which we have been compelled
+to abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible
+in quoting from an author)
+displays a singular originality and
+power of thought; although each one
+of them will certainly have his own
+class of objections and exceptions to
+make. We said that the impression
+created by the work was decidedly
+<i>conservative</i>, and this quotation has
+already borne us out. For without
+implying that we could conscientiously
+make use of every argument here put
+into our hands, we may be allowed to
+say, as the lawyers do in Westminster
+Hail, <i>if this be so</i>, then it follows that
+we of the retrograde, or as we may
+fairly style ourselves in England&mdash;seeing
+this country has not progressed
+so rapidly as France&mdash;we of the stationary
+party are fully justified in
+maintaining our position, unsatisfactory
+though it may be, till some better
+and more definite system has been
+revealed to us, than any which has
+yet made its advent in the political
+world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic,
+or liberal school have no proper
+office but that of destruction&mdash;if
+its nature be essentially transitional&mdash;can
+we be called upon to forego this
+position, to quit our present anchorage,
+until we know whereto we are to
+be transferred? Shall we relinquish
+the traditions of our monarchy, and
+the discipline of our church, before
+we hear what we are to receive in exchange?
+M. Comte would not advise
+so irrational a proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>But M. Comte has himself a <i>constructive</i>
+doctrine; M. Comte will
+give us in exchange&mdash;what? The
+Scientific Method!</p>
+
+<p>We have just seen something of
+this scientific method. M. Comte
+himself is well aware that it is a style
+of thought by no means adapted to the
+multitude. Therefore there will arise
+with the scientific method an altogether
+new class, an intellectual aristocracy,
+(not the present race of <i>savans</i>
+or their successors, whom he is
+particularly anxious to exclude from
+all such advancement,) who will expound
+to the people the truths to
+which that method shall give birth.
+This class will take under its control
+all that relates to education. It will
+be the seat of the moral power, not of
+the administrative. This, together
+with some arguments to establish
+what few are disposed to question, the
+fundamental character of the laws of
+property and of marriage, is all that
+we are here presented with towards
+the definite re-organization of society.</p>
+
+<p>We shall not go back to the question,
+already touched upon, and which
+lies at the basis of all this&mdash;how far it
+is possible to construct a science of
+Sociology. There is only one way in
+which the question can be resolved in
+the affirmative&mdash;namely, by constructing
+the science.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we may observe, that
+the general consent of a cultivated
+order of minds to a certain class of
+truths, is not sufficient for the purposes
+of government. We take, says
+M. Comte, our chemistry from the
+chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer;
+if these were fixed principles,
+we should take our politics
+with the same ease from the graduated
+politician. But it is worth while to
+consider what it is we do when we
+take our chemistry from the chemist,
+and our astronomy from the astronomer.
+We assume, on the authority
+of our teacher, certain facts which it
+is not in our power to verify; but his
+reasonings upon these facts we must
+be able to comprehend. We follow
+him as he explains the facts by which
+knowledge has been obtained, and
+yield to his statement a rational conviction.
+Unless we do this, we cannot
+be said to have any knowledge
+whatever of the subject&mdash;any chemistry
+or astronomy at all. Now, presuming
+there were a science of politics,
+as fixed and perfect as that of
+astronomy, the people must, at all
+events, be capable of understanding
+its exposition, or they could not possibly
+be governed by it. We need
+hardly say that those ideas, feelings,
+and sentiments, which can be made
+general, are those only on which government
+can rest.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the preceding extract,
+our author exposes the futility
+<a class="pagenum" name="page412" id="page412" title="page412"></a>of that attempt which certain churchmen
+are making, as well on this side
+of the Channel as the other, to reason
+men back into a submission of their
+reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology
+should be above the apprehension
+of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems
+occasionally to presume it would be,)
+he would impose on his intellectual
+priesthood a task of the very same
+kind, and even still more hopeless.
+A multitude once taught to argue and
+decide on politics, must be reasoned
+back into a submission of their reason
+to political teachers&mdash;teachers who
+have no sacred writings, and no traditions
+from which to argue a delegated
+authority, but whose authority
+must be founded on the very reasonableness
+of the entire system of their
+doctrine. But this is a difficulty we
+are certainly premature in discussing,
+as the true Catholic church in politics
+has still itself to be formed.</p>
+
+<p>We are afraid, notwithstanding all
+his protestations, M. Comte will be
+simply classed amongst the <i>Destructives</i>,
+so little applicable to the generality
+of minds is that mode of thought,
+to establish which (and it is for this
+we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely,
+for so great sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>The fifth volume&mdash;the most remarkable,
+we think, of the whole&mdash;contains
+that historical survey which has been
+more than once alluded to in the foregoing
+extracts. This volume alone
+would make the fortune of any expert
+Parisian scribe who knew how to select
+from its rich store of original materials,
+who had skill to arrange and expound,
+and, above all, had the dexterity to
+adopt somewhat more ingeniously than
+M. Comte has done, his abstract statements
+to our reminiscences of historical
+facts. Full of his own generalities,
+he is apt to forget the concrete matter
+of the annalist. Indeed, it is a
+peculiarity running through the volume,
+that generalizations, in themselves
+of a valuable character, are
+shown to disadvantage by an unskilful
+alliance with history.</p>
+
+<p>We will make one quotation from
+this portion of the work, and then we
+must leave M. Comte. In reviewing
+the theological progress of mankind,
+he signalizes three epochs, that of
+Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of
+Monotheism. Our extract shall relate
+to the first of these, to that primitive
+state of religion, or idolatry, in which
+<i>things themselves</i> were worshipped;
+the human being transferring to them
+immediately a life, or power, somewhat
+analogous to its own.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Exclusively habituated, for so long a
+time, to a theology eminently metaphysic,
+we must feel at present greatly embarrassed
+in our attempt to comprehend this
+gross primitive mode of thought. It is
+thus that fetishism has often been confounded
+with polytheism, when to the
+latter has been applied the common expression
+of idolatry, which strictly relates
+to the former only; since the priests of
+Jupiter or Minerva would, no doubt, have
+as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of
+worshipping images, as do the Catholic
+doctors of the present day a like unjust
+accusation of the Protestants. But though
+we are happily sufficiently remote from
+fetishism to find a difficulty in conceiving
+it, yet each one of us has but to retrace
+his own mental history, to detect the
+essential characters of this initial state.
+Nay, even eminent thinkers of the present
+day, when they allow themselves to be
+involuntarily ensnared (under the influence,
+but partially rectified, of a vicious
+education) to attempt to penetrate the
+mystery of the essential production of any
+phenomenon whose laws are not familiar
+to them, they are in a condition personally
+to exemplify this invariable instinctive
+tendency to trace the generation of unknown
+effects to a cause analogous to life,
+which is no other, strictly speaking, than
+the principle of fetishism....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated,
+has always necessarily for its
+base pure fetishism, which deifies instantly
+each body and each phenomenon capable
+of exciting the feeble thought of infant
+humanity. Whatever essential transformations
+this primitive philosophy may afterwards
+undergo, a judicious sociological
+analysis will always expose to view this
+primordial base, never entirely concealed,
+even in a religious state the most remote
+from the original point of departure. Not
+only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy
+has presented, at the time of its greatest
+splendour, the established and prolonged
+coexistence, in the several castes of the
+hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs,
+since the inferior ranks still remained in
+simple fetishism, whilst the higher orders
+were in possession of a very remarkable
+polytheism, and the most exalted of its
+members had probably raised themselves
+to some form of monotheism; but we can
+at all times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in
+the theologic spirit traces of this original
+fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst
+subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical
+forms. What, in reality, is that celebrated
+conception of a soul of the world amongst
+the ancients, or that analogy, more modern,
+drawn between the earth and an
+<a class="pagenum" name="page413" id="page413" title="page413"></a>immense living animal, and other similar
+fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the
+pomp of philosophical language? And, in
+our own days even, what is this cloudy
+pantheism which so many metaphysicians,
+especially in Germany, make great boast
+of, but generalized and systematized fetishism
+enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze
+the vulgar.&quot;&mdash;Vol. V. p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<p>He then remarks on the perfect
+adaptation of this primitive theology
+to the initial torpor of the human
+understanding, which it spares even
+the labour of creating and sustaining
+the facile fictions of polytheism. The
+mind yields passively to that natural
+tendency which leads us to transfer to
+objects without us, that sentiment of
+existence which we feel within, and
+which, appearing at first sufficiently to
+explain our own personal phenomena,
+serves directly as an uniform base, an
+absolute unquestioned interpretation,
+of all external phenomena. He dwells
+with quite a touching satisfaction on
+this child-like and contented condition
+of the rude intellect.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;All observable bodies,&quot; he says
+&quot;being thus immediately personified and
+endowed with passions suited to the energy
+of the observed phenomena, the external
+world presents itself spontaneously to the
+spectator in a perfect harmony, such as
+never again has been produced, and which
+must have excited in him a peculiar sentiment
+of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us
+in the present day to be characterized,
+even when we refer back with a meditation
+the most intense on this cradle of
+humanity.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Do not even these few fragments
+bear out our remarks, both of praise
+and censure? We see here traces of
+a deep penetration into the nature of
+man, coupled with a singular negligence
+of the historical picture. The
+principle here laid down as that of
+fetishism, is important in many respects;
+it is strikingly developed, and
+admits of wide application; but (presuming
+we are at liberty to seek in
+the rudest periods for the origin of
+religion) we do not find any such
+systematic procedure amongst rude
+thinkers&mdash;we do not find any condition
+of mankind which displays that
+complete ascendancy of the principle
+here described. Our author would
+lead us to suppose, that the deification
+of objects was uniformly a species of
+explanation of natural phenomena.
+The accounts we have of fetishism,
+as observed in barbarous countries,
+prove to us that this animation of
+stocks and stones has frequently no
+connexion whatever with a desire to
+explain <i>their</i> phenomena, but has resulted
+from a fancied relation between
+those objects and the human being.
+The <i>charm</i> or the <i>amulet</i>&mdash;some object
+whose presence has been observed to
+cure diseases, or bring good-luck&mdash;grows
+up into a god; a strong desire
+at once leading the man to pray to his
+amulet, and also to attribute to it the
+power of granting his prayer.<a name="footnotetag50" id="footnotetag50"></a><a href="#footnote50"><sup>50</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>We carry on our quotation one step
+further, for the sake of illustrating the
+impracticable <i>unmanageable</i> nature of
+our author's generalizations when historically
+applied. Having advanced
+to this stage in the development of
+theologic thought, he finds it extremely
+difficult to extricate the human mind
+from that state in which he has, with
+such scientific precision, fixed it.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;Speculatively regarded, this great
+transformation of the religious spirit
+<a class="pagenum" name="page414" id="page414" title="page414"></a>(from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps
+the most fundamental that it has ever undergone,
+though we are at present so far
+separated from it as not to perceive its
+extent and difficulty. The human mind,
+it seems to me, passed over a less interval
+in its transit from polytheism to monotheism,
+the more recent and better understood
+accomplishment of which has naturally
+taught us to exaggerate its importance&mdash;an
+importance extremely great only in
+a certain social point of view, which I
+shall explain in its place. When we reflect
+that fetishism supposes matter to be
+eminently active, to the point of being
+truly alive, while polytheism necessarily
+compels it to an inertia almost absolute,
+submitted passively to the arbitrary will
+of the divine agent; it would seem at first
+impossible to comprehend the real mode
+of transition from one religious <i>r&eacute;gime</i>
+to the other.&quot;&mdash;P. 97.</p></div>
+
+<p>The transition, it seems, was effected
+by an early effort of generalization;
+for as men recognized the similitude
+of certain objects, and classified them
+into one species, so they approximated
+the corresponding Fetishes, and reduced
+them at length to a principal
+Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena,
+who thus, liberated from
+matter, and having of necessity an independent
+being of its own, became a god.</p>
+
+<div class="blkquot"><p>&quot;For the gods differ essentially from
+pure fetishes, by a character more general
+and more abstract, pertaining to their
+indeterminate residence. They, each of
+them, administer a special order of phenomena,
+and have a department more or
+less extensive; while the humble fetish
+governs one object only, from which it is
+inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
+resemblance of certain phenomena was
+observed, it was necessary to classify the
+corresponding fetishes, and to reduce
+them to a chief, who, from this time, was
+elevated to the rank of a god&mdash;that is to
+say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
+whose residence is not rigorously fixed.
+There could not exist, properly speaking,
+a fetish common to several bodies; this
+would be a contradiction, every fetish
+being necessarily endowed with a material
+individuality. When, for example,
+the similar vegetation of the several trees
+in a forest of oaks, led men to represent,
+in their theological conceptions, what was
+<i>common</i> in these objects, this abstract being
+could no longer be the fetish of a tree, but
+became the god of the forest.&quot;&mdash;P. 101.</p></div>
+
+<p>This apparatus of transition is ingenious
+enough, but surely it is utterly
+uncalled for. The same uncultured
+imagination that could animate a tree,
+could people the air with gods. Whenever
+the cause of any natural event is
+<i>invisible</i>, the imagination cannot rest
+in Fetishism; it must create some
+being to produce it. If thunder is to
+be theologically explained&mdash;and there
+is no event in nature more likely to
+suggest such explanation&mdash;the imagination
+cannot animate the thunder;
+it must create some being that thunders.
+No one, the discipline of whose
+mind had not been solely and purely
+<i>scientific</i>, would have created for itself
+this difficulty, or solved it in such
+a manner.<a name="footnotetag51" id="footnotetag51"></a><a href="#footnote51"><sup>51</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<a name="bw329-footnotes" id="bw329-footnotes"></a><h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a> <b>Footnote 1</b>: <a href="#footnotetag1">(return)</a>
+<p>There is, strictly speaking, no middle class in Russia; the &quot;bourgeoisie,&quot; or
+merchants, it is true, may seem to form an exception to this remark, but into their
+circles the traveller would find it, from many reasons, difficult, and even impossible, to
+enter.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> <b>Footnote 2</b>: <a href="#footnotetag2">(return)</a>
+<p>In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be required of us. Though we
+might fill many pages with instances of the two great sins of the translator, commission
+and omission, the <i>poco piu</i> and <i>poco meno</i>, we will content ourselves with taking, <i>ad
+aperturam libri</i>, an example. At page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring's Russian
+Anthology, will be found a short lyric piece of Dm&iacute;trieff, entitled &quot;To Chloe.&quot; It
+consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of these five stanzas, three have
+a totally different meaning in the English from their signification in the Russian, and of
+the remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look for in vain in the
+original. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the verses in question present nothing
+in style, subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty to a translator.
+Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece in question was taken at random,)
+it will not be necessary to dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through
+Bowring's versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of the Russian metres&mdash;sins
+against <i>costume</i>, as, for example, the making a hussar (a <i>Russian</i> hussar) swear
+by his <i>beard</i>, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a> <b>Footnote 3</b>: <a href="#footnotetag3">(return)</a>
+<p>Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this important personage, his real
+name was Constantine.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a> <b>Footnote 4</b>: <a href="#footnotetag4">(return)</a>
+<p>For instance, the <i>j</i>, (pronounced as the French <i>j</i>), <i>ts, sh, shtsh, tch, ui, y&auml;</i>. As
+the characters representing these sounds are not to be found in the &quot;case&quot; of an
+English compositor, we cannot enter into their Oriental origin.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a> <b>Footnote 5</b>: <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a>
+<p>Not to speak of the capitals, the &gamma;, &delta;, &zeta;, &kappa;, &lambda;, &mu;, &omicron;, &pi;, &rho;, &sigmaf;, &phi;, &chi;, &theta;, have undergone
+hardly the most trifling change in form; &psi;, &xi;, &omega;, though they do not occur in the Russian,
+are found in the Slavonic alphabet. The Russian pronunciation of their letter B, which
+agrees with that of the modern Greeks, is V, there being another character for the
+<i>sound</i> B.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a> <b>Footnote 6</b>: <a href="#footnotetag6">(return)</a>
+<p>The crown was not worn by the ancient Russian sovereigns, or &quot;Grand Princes,&quot;
+as they were called; the insignia of these potentates was a close skull-cap, called in
+Russian sh&aacute;pka, bonnet; many of which are preserved in the regalia of Moscow.
+This bonnet is generally surrounded by the most precious furs, and gorgeously decorated
+with gems.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a> <b>Footnote 7</b>: <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a>
+<p>For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels, &amp;c. Two of the last-mentioned
+species of works are very curious from their antiquity. The Pilgrimage to
+Jerusalem of Daniel, prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century;
+and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nik&iacute;tin, merchant of Tver, made
+about 1470.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a> <b>Footnote 8</b>: <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a>
+<p>The only traces left on the <i>language</i> by the Tartar domination are a few words,
+chiefly expressing articles of dress.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a> <b>Footnote 9</b>: <a href="#footnotetag9">(return)</a>
+<p>The non-Russian reader must be cautioned not to confuse Iv&aacute;n III. (surnamed
+Vel&iacute;kiy, or the Great) with Ivan IV., the Cruel, the latter of whom is to foreigners
+the most prominent figure in the Russian history. Iv&aacute;n III. mounted the throne in
+1462, and his terrible namesake in 1534; the reign of Vass&iacute;liy Iv&aacute;novitch intervening
+between these two memorable epochs.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a> <b>Footnote 10</b>: <a href="#footnotetag10">(return)</a>
+<p>The translator recently met in society a Russian officer, who had served with
+distinction in the country which forms the scene of &quot;Ammal&aacute;t Bek.&quot; This gentleman
+had intimately known Marl&iacute;nski, and bore witness to the perfect accuracy of his
+delineations, as well of the external features of nature as of the characters of his
+<i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>. The officer alluded to had served some time in the very regiment
+commanded by the unfortunate Verkh&oacute;ffsky. Our fair readers may be interested to
+learn, that Seltanetta still lives, and yet bears traces of her former beauty. She married
+the Shamkh&aacute;l, and now resides in feudal magnificence at Tarki, where she exercises
+great sway, which she employs in favour of the Russian interest, to which she
+is devoted.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a> <b>Footnote 11</b>: <a href="#footnotetag11">(return)</a>
+<p>Djoum&aacute; answers to our Sabbath. The days of the Mahomedan week are as follows:
+Shambi, Saturday; Ikhshamb&aacute;, Sunday; Doushamb&aacute;, Monday; Seshamb&aacute;,
+Tuesday; Tchershamb&aacute;, Wednesday; Pkhanshamb&aacute;, Thursday; Djoum&aacute;, Friday.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a> <b>Footnote 12</b>: <a href="#footnotetag12">(return)</a>
+<p>S&aacute;kla, a Circassian hut.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a> <b>Footnote 13</b>: <a href="#footnotetag13">(return)</a>
+<p>A species of garment, resembling a frock-coat with an upright collar, reaching to
+the knees, fixed in front by hooks and eyes, worn by both sexes.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a> <b>Footnote 14</b>: <a href="#footnotetag14">(return)</a>
+<p>The trowsers of the <i>women</i>: those worn by the men, though alike in form, are
+called shalw&aacute;rs. It is an offence to tell a man that he wears the toum&aacute;n; being equivalent
+to a charge of effeminacy; and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a> <b>Footnote 15</b>: <a href="#footnotetag15">(return)</a>
+<p>It is the ordinary manner of the Asiatics to sit in this manner in public, or in the
+presence of a superior.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a> <b>Footnote 16</b>: <a href="#footnotetag16">(return)</a>
+<p>A kind of rude cart with two wheels.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a> <b>Footnote 17</b>: <a href="#footnotetag17">(return)</a>
+<p>The first Shamkh&aacute;ls were the kinsmen and representatives of the Khalifs of Damascus:
+the last Shamkh&aacute;l died on his return from Russia, and with him finished this
+useless rank. His son, Suleiman Pacha, possessed his property as a private individual.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a> <b>Footnote 18</b>: <a href="#footnotetag18">(return)</a>
+<p>The attendants of a Tartar noble, equivalent to the &quot;henchman&quot; of the ancient
+Highlanders. The no&uacute;ker waits behind his lord at table, cuts up and presents the
+food.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a> <b>Footnote 19</b>: <a href="#footnotetag19">(return)</a>
+<p>3500 English feet&mdash;three quarters of a mile.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a> <b>Footnote 20</b>: <a href="#footnotetag20">(return)</a>
+<p>Foster-brother; from the word &quot;emdjek&quot;&mdash;suckling. Among the tribes of the
+Caucasus, this relationship is held more sacred than that of nature. Every man would
+willingly die for his emdjek.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a> <b>Footnote 21</b>: <a href="#footnotetag21">(return)</a>
+<p>This is a celebrated race of Persian horses, called Teke.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a> <b>Footnote 22</b>: <a href="#footnotetag22">(return)</a>
+<p>The being obliged to transport provisions.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a> <b>Footnote 23</b>: <a href="#footnotetag23">(return)</a>
+<p>The chief of a village.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a> <b>Footnote 24</b>: <a href="#footnotetag24">(return)</a>
+<p>The subordinates of the atarost.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a> <b>Footnote 25</b>: <a href="#footnotetag25">(return)</a>
+<p>Go to the devil.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a> <b>Footnote 26</b>: <a href="#footnotetag26">(return)</a>
+<p>The Asiatics mark their horses by burning them on their haunch with a hot iron.
+This peculiar mark, the <span lang="EL" title="stigma">&sigma;&tau;&iota;&gamma;&mu;&alpha;</span> or <span lang="EL" title="kotpa">&kappa;&omicron;&tau;&pi;&alpha;</span> of the Greeks is called &quot;t&aacute;vro.&quot;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a> <b>Footnote 27</b>: <a href="#footnotetag27">(return)</a>
+<p>The brother of Hassan Khan Djemont&aacute;i, who became Khan of Av&aacute;r by marrying
+the Khan's widow and heiress.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a> <b>Footnote 28</b>: <a href="#footnotetag28">(return)</a>
+<p>The Russian detachment, consisting on this occasion of 3000 men, was surrounded
+by 60,000. These were, Ouizmi Karakaid&aacute;khsky, the Av&aacute;retzes, Akoush&iacute;netzes,
+the Boulin&eacute;tzes of the Koi-So&uacute;, and others. The Russians fought their way
+out by night, but with considerable loss.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a> <b>Footnote 29</b>: <a href="#footnotetag29">(return)</a>
+<p>The whip of a Kazak.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a> <b>Footnote 30</b>: <a href="#footnotetag30">(return)</a>
+<p>A superintendent.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a> <b>Footnote 31</b>: <a href="#footnotetag31">(return)</a>
+<p>The house, in Tartar, is &quot;ev;&quot; &quot;outakh,&quot; mansion; and &quot;sar&aacute;i,&quot; edifice in
+general; &quot;haram-khan&eacute;h,&quot; the women's apartments. For palace they employ the
+word &quot;igar&aacute;t.&quot; The Russians confound all these meanings in the word &quot;s&aacute;kla,&quot;
+which, in the Circassian language, is house.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a> <b>Footnote 32</b>: <a href="#footnotetag32">(return)</a>
+<p>The father of Ammal&aacute;t was the eldest of the family, and consequently the true
+heir to the Shamkhal&aacute;t. But the Russians, having conquered Daghest&aacute;n, not trusting
+to the good intentions of this chief, gave the power to the younger brother.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a> <b>Footnote 33</b>: <a href="#footnotetag33">(return)</a>
+<p>A <i>jeu-de-mots</i> which the Asiatics admire much; &quot;kizil-gulli&aacute;r&quot; means simply
+roses, but the Khan alludes to &quot;kiz&iacute;l,&quot; ducats.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a> <b>Footnote 34</b>: <a href="#footnotetag34">(return)</a>
+<p>The Tartars, like the North American Indians, always, if possible, shelter themselves
+behind rocks and enclosures, &amp;c., when engaged in battle.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a> <b>Footnote 35</b>: <a href="#footnotetag35">(return)</a>
+<p>The commander-in-chief.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a> <b>Footnote 36</b>: <a href="#footnotetag36">(return)</a>
+<p>A kind of dried bread.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a> <b>Footnote 37</b>: <a href="#footnotetag37">(return)</a>
+<p>The mountaineers are bad Mussulmans, the Sooni sect is predominant; but the
+Daghest&aacute;netzes are in general Shageeds, as the Persians. The sects hate each other
+with all their heart.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a> <b>Footnote 38</b>: <a href="#footnotetag38">(return)</a>
+<p>The Circassian sabre.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a> <b>Footnote 39</b>: <a href="#footnotetag39">(return)</a>
+<p>A rough cloak, used as a protection in bad weather.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a> <b>Footnote 40</b>: <a href="#footnotetag40">(return)</a>
+<p>Friend, comrade.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a> <b>Footnote 41</b>: <a href="#footnotetag41">(return)</a>
+<p>Tchin&aacute;r, the palmated-leaved plane.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote42" name="footnote42"></a> <b>Footnote 42</b>: <a href="#footnotetag42">(return)</a>
+<p>Having no lead, the Av&aacute;retzes use balls of copper, as they possess small mines of
+that metal.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote43" name="footnote43"></a> <b>Footnote 43</b>: <a href="#footnotetag43">(return)</a>
+<p>The translation adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote44" name="footnote44"></a> <b>Footnote 44</b>: <a href="#footnotetag44">(return)</a>
+<p>Written in the time of French war.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote45" name="footnote45"></a> <b>Footnote 45</b>: <a href="#footnotetag45">(return)</a>
+<p>To the shore of the Seine.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote46" name="footnote46"></a> <b>Footnote 46</b>: <a href="#footnotetag46">(return)</a>
+<p>John Bull, Part IV. ch. ii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote47" name="footnote47"></a> <b>Footnote 47</b>: <a href="#footnotetag47">(return)</a>
+<p>Tale of a Tub. Sect. xi.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote48" name="footnote48"></a> <b>Footnote 48</b>: <a href="#footnotetag48">(return)</a>
+<p>In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St. James's Street, may be seen
+stumps, or, as the Scotch call them, <i>doups</i> of wax-lights, with the announcement
+&quot;Candle-ends from Buckingham Palace.&quot; These are eagerly bought up by the gentility-mongers,
+who burn, or it may be, in the excess of their loyalty, <i>eat</i> them!</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote49" name="footnote49"></a> <b>Footnote 49</b>: <a href="#footnotetag49">(return)</a>
+<p>&quot;There is,&quot; says M. Comte here in a note, which consists of an extract from a
+previous work&mdash;&quot;there is no liberty of conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry,
+even in physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit to the principles
+established in these sciences by competent men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is
+because the ancient principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed, there
+are, properly speaking, in this interval no established principles.&quot;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote50" name="footnote50"></a> <b>Footnote 50</b>: <a href="#footnotetag50">(return)</a>
+<p>Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism in Africa. It is the
+best which just now falls under our hand, and perhaps a longer search would not find
+a better. Those only who never read <i>The Doctor</i>, will be surprised to find it quoted
+on a grave occasion:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+&quot;The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is known to be a corrupt
+application of the Portuguese word for witchcraft, <i>feiti&ccedil;o</i>; the vernacular name
+is <i>Bossum</i>, or <i>Bossifoe</i>. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every village,
+every family, and every individual. A great hill, a rock any way remarkable
+for its size or shape, or a large tree, is generally the national Fetish. The king's is
+usually the largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one, take the first
+thing they happen to see, however worthless&mdash;a stick, a stone, the bone of a beast,
+bird, or fish, unless the worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
+and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The ceremony of consecration
+he performs himself, assembling his family, washing the new object of his devotion,
+and sprinkling them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
+in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and with as much reason.
+Barbot says that some of the Europeans on that coast not only encouraged their slaves
+in this superstition, but believed in it, and practised it themselves.&quot;&mdash;Vol. V. p. 136.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote class="footnote">
+<a id="footnote51" name="footnote51"></a> <b>Footnote 51</b>: <a href="#footnotetag51">(return)</a>
+<p>At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is taken, the <i>Doctor</i> tells a
+story which, if faith could be put in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves,
+(and such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,) might
+deserve a place in the history of superstition.
+</p><p>
+&quot;One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a reputation which will be as lasting
+as it is great, was, when a boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful schoolmaster;
+and in the state of mind which that constant fear produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his
+fetish, and used every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged.&quot;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12761-h.htm or 12761-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/7/6/12761/
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page images provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/12761.txt b/old/12761.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4716bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12761.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10248 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.
+       March, 1843, Vol. LIII.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12761]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page images provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
+
+NO. CCCXXIX.   MARCH, 1843.   VOL. LIII.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    AMMALAT BEK. A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLINSKI
+    POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.--NO. VI.
+    CALEB STUKELY. PART XII.
+    IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. SANDT AND KOTZEBUE
+    THE JEWELLER'S WIFE. A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO
+    THE TALE OF A TUB:
+        AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER--HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME
+    PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS, BY A COCKNEY
+    THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.
+    THE LOST LAMB. BY DELTA
+    COMTE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+AMMALAT BEK.
+
+A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLINSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A. OF
+CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL
+LYCEUM OF TSARSKOE SELO.
+
+
+THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental
+neighbours with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of
+no very recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem
+to possess us:
+
+    "----tenet insanabile multos
+    _Terrarum_ [Greek: kakoithes], et aegro in corde senescit:"
+
+when the press groans with "Tours," "Trips," "Hand-books," "Journeys,"
+"Visits."
+
+In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England
+knows very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social
+condition, manners, and literature of one of the most powerful among her
+continental sisters.
+
+The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in
+the reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that
+epoch, so auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by
+Chancellor in 1554, has never since been relaxed: the two nations have
+advanced, each at its own pace, and by its own paths, towards the
+sublime goal of improvement and civilization--have stood shoulder to
+shoulder in the battle for the weal and liberty of mankind.
+
+It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and
+Elizabeth is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter
+and of Catharine. The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be
+found in any indifference or want of curiosity on the part of English
+travellers. There is no lack of pilgrims annually leaving the bank of
+Thames,
+
+    "With cockle hat and staff,
+      With gourd and sandal shoon;"
+
+armed duly with note-book and "patent Mordan," directing their wandering
+steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a
+very short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince
+a foreigner how defective, and often how false, is the information given
+by travellers respecting the social and national character of the
+Russians. These abundant and singular misrepresentations are not, of
+course, voluntary; and it may not be useless to point out their
+principal sources.
+
+The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the
+language, and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten
+track--from St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny
+Novgorod, without any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may
+enjoy, during a visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which
+the higher classes are so justly celebrated; but his association with
+the nobility will be found an absolute obstacle to the making even a
+trifling progress in the Russian language; which, though now regaining a
+degree of attention from the elevated classes,[1] too long denied to it
+by those with whom their native tongue _was_ an unfashionable one--he
+would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very frequent
+opportunities of hearing.
+
+     [1] There is, strictly speaking, no middle class in Russia; the
+     "bourgeoisie," or merchants, it is true, may seem to form an
+     exception to this remark, but into their circles the traveller
+     would find it, from many reasons, difficult, and even
+     impossible, to enter.
+
+But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a
+determination to study the noble and interesting language of the
+country, an intention of remaining here long enough to learn it, he was
+often discouraged by the belief, that the literature was too poor to
+repay his time and labour. Besides, the Russian language has so little
+relation to the other European tongues--it stands so much alone, and
+throws so little direct light upon any of them, that another obstacle
+was thrown into his way.
+
+The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all
+derived, more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the
+whole south and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon
+the other cognate dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental
+tongues facilitates, nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand
+others, which are less languages of distinct type than dialects of the
+same speech, offshoots from the same stock.
+
+Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in
+every disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German
+periodicals with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched
+rags of translation which are all that has been hitherto done towards
+the reproduction, in our own language, of the literature of Russia.
+These versions were made by persons utterly unacquainted with the
+country, the manners, and the people, or made after the Russian had been
+distilled through the alembic of a previous French or German
+translation.
+
+Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation
+sooner than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than
+honourable to the literary enterprise of England, that the present is
+the first attempt to introduce to the British public any work of Russian
+Prose Fiction whatever, with any thing like a reasonable selection of
+subject and character, at least _directly_ from the original language.
+
+The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of
+"Russian Anthology," and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would
+appear at first sight an exception to that indifference to the
+productions of Russian genius of which we have accused the English
+public; and the popularity of that collection would be an additional
+encouragement to the hope, that our charge may be, if not ill-founded,
+at least exaggerated.
+
+We are willing to believe, that the degree--if we are rightly informed,
+no slight one--of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in
+England, was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme
+incompetency with which the translations they contained were executed.
+
+It is always painful to find fault--more painful to criticise with
+severity--the work of a person whose motive was the same as that which
+actuates the present publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness[2]
+exhibited in the versions in question tends to give a false and
+disparaging idea of the value and the tone of Russian poetry, we may be
+excused for our apparent uncourteousness in thus pointing out their
+defects.
+
+     [2] In making so grave a charge, proof will naturally be
+     required of us. Though we might fill many pages with instances
+     of the two great sins of the translator, commission and
+     omission, the _poco piu_ and _poco meno_, we will content
+     ourselves with taking, _ad aperturam libri_, an example. At
+     page 55 of the Second Part of Bowring's Russian Anthology, will
+     be found a short lyric piece of Dmitrieff, entitled "To Chloe."
+     It consists of five stanzas, each of four very short lines. Of
+     these five stanzas, three have a totally different meaning in
+     the English from their signification in the Russian, and of the
+     remaining two, one contains an idea which the reader will look
+     for in vain in the original. This carelessness is the less
+     excusable, as the verses in question present nothing in style,
+     subject, or diction, which could offer the smallest difficulty
+     to a translator. Judging this to be no unfair test, (the piece
+     in question was taken at random,) it will not be necessary to
+     dilate upon minor defects, painfully perceptible through
+     Bowring's versions; as, for instance, a frequent disregard of
+     the Russian metres--sins against _costume_, as, for example,
+     the making a hussar (a _Russian_ hussar) swear by his _beard_,
+     &c. &c. &c.
+
+It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a
+brief sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin,
+growth, and fortunes of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In
+doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as
+possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters
+in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow
+and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas,
+suddenly into light.
+
+In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the
+department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety,
+though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more
+fully the intellectual annals of Russia.
+
+In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril[3] and
+Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious
+boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostislaff, Sviatopolk, and Kotsel, then
+chiefs of the Moravians.
+
+     [3] Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this
+     important personage, his real name was Constantine.
+
+The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek
+alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain
+sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,[4] to add a number of
+other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So
+closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the
+Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any
+necessity.
+
+     [4] For instance, the _j_, (pronounced as the French _j_), _ts,
+     sh, shtsh, tch, ui, yae_. As the characters representing these
+     sounds are not to be found in the "case" of an English
+     compositor, we cannot enter into their Oriental origin.
+
+These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the
+Russian) varied surprisingly little in their form,[5] and perhaps
+without any change whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern
+alphabet of the Russian language; an examination of which would go far,
+in our opinion, to settle the long agitated question respecting the
+ancient pronunciation of the classic languages, particularly as Cyril
+and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a language totally foreign
+from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.
+
+     [5] Not to speak of the capitals, the [Greek: gamma, delta,
+     zeta, kappa, lambda, mu, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, phi, chi,
+     theta], have undergone hardly the most trifling change in form;
+     [Greek: psi, xi, omega], though they do not occur in the
+     Russian, are found in the Slavonic alphabet. The Russian
+     pronunciation of their letter B, which agrees with that of the
+     modern Greeks, is V, there being another character for the
+     _sound_ B.
+
+In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the
+first monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril
+immediately after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken
+at Thessalonika was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely
+Greek words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of
+the version being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the
+Scriptures were not translated into any specific spoken dialect at all;
+but that a kind of _mezzo-termine_ was selected--or rather formed--for
+the purpose. What we have advanced derives a still stronger degree of
+probability from the circumstance, that the Slavonic Bible follows the
+Greek _construction_. This Bible, with slight changes and corrections
+produced by three or four revisions made at different periods, is that
+still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language of
+the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the Bible
+forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper
+classes--who are instructed in this _dead_ language, precisely as an
+Italian must study Latin in order to read the Bible.
+
+Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history,
+towers, like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid,
+one colossal figure--that of Vladimir Sviatoslavitch; the first to
+surmount the bloody splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet[6] with the
+mildly-radiant Cross of Christ.
+
+     [6] The crown was not worn by the ancient Russian sovereigns,
+     or "Grand Princes," as they were called; the insignia of these
+     potentates was a close skull-cap, called in Russian shapka,
+     bonnet; many of which are preserved in the regalia of Moscow.
+     This bonnet is generally surrounded by the most precious furs,
+     and gorgeously decorated with gems.
+
+From the conversion to Christianity of Vladimir and his
+subjects--passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar
+hordes, which lasted for about 250 years--we may consider two languages,
+essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of
+the 17th century--the one the written or learned, the other the spoken
+language.
+
+The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were
+translated: and this remained the learned or official language for a
+long period. In this--or in an imitation of this, effected with various
+degrees of success--were compiled the different collections of Monkish
+annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select
+their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of
+facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were
+composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above
+classes[7] were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of
+the Church and of learning.
+
+     [7] For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels,
+     &c. Two of the last-mentioned species of works are very curious
+     from their antiquity. The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem of Daniel,
+     prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century;
+     and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nikitin,
+     merchant of Tver, made about 1470.
+
+The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much
+allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which
+overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a
+half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented
+themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised
+probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language;
+and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect
+upon the Russian tongue.[8]
+
+     [8] The only traces left on the _language_ by the Tartar
+     domination are a few words, chiefly expressing articles of
+     dress.
+
+It is to the reign of Alexei Mikhailovitch, who united Little Russia to
+Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the
+country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little
+Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit
+of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.
+
+The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future
+fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would
+possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia
+such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more
+extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain
+disturbing--if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure
+impeding--forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable
+dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and
+admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to
+rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also
+destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was
+national--that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse
+the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter
+perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other
+languages, than the production of originality in his own.
+
+This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems
+to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number
+of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter's time
+
+     "A Babylonish dialect;"
+
+the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with
+an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every
+tongue; terms which might have been--have, indeed, since
+been--translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the
+literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish
+our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of
+translations, but very few original productions.
+
+From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note:
+we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or
+vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have
+proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting,
+cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.
+
+At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it
+will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages--the Slavonic, to
+which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little
+Russia.
+
+The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from
+which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably
+raise a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing
+this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon
+the circumstance, that the literature is--as we have stated--divisible
+into two distinct and widely differing regions. It will be sufficiently
+accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a
+century back from the present time; and to consider Lomonosoff as its
+founder. Mikhail Vassilievitch Lomonosoff, born in 1711, is the author
+who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the
+North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in
+almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of
+science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles
+he had fixed as a grammarian.
+
+He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in
+conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumarokoff and Kheraskoff, he
+laid the foundations of the Russian literature.
+
+Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the
+reverence due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's
+letters, it will be sufficient to remark, that Soumarokoff was the first
+to introduce tragedy and opera, and Kheraskoff, the author of two epic
+poems which we omit to particularize, as not coming within our present
+scope, wrote a work entitled "Cadmus and Harmonia," which may be
+considered as the first romance. It is a narrative and metaphysical
+work, which we should class as a "prose poem;" the style being
+considerably elevated above the tone of the "Musa pedestris."
+
+The name of Emin comes next in historical, though not literary,
+importance: though the greater part of his productions consists of
+translations, particularly of those shorter pieces of prose fiction
+called by the Italians "novelle," he was the author of a few original
+pieces, now but little read; his style bears the marks, like that of
+Kheraskoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want of finish.
+
+The reputation of Karamzin is too widely spread throughout Europe to
+render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by
+him to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he
+commenced a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first
+chapters.
+
+Narejniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia--or rather of
+the South or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of
+vivacity, but as they are deformed by defects both in style and taste,
+his reputation has become almost extinct. We cannot quit this division
+of our subject, which refers to romantic fiction anterior to the
+appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning the names
+of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished as having
+produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical
+event--Polevoi and Bestonjeff--the latter of whom wrote, under the name
+of Marlinski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high
+and deserved reputation.
+
+It is with Zagoskin that we may regard the regular historical
+novel--viewing that species of composition as exemplified in the works
+of Scott--as having commenced.
+
+With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is
+so extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory
+allusion to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing
+which, we shall attend more exclusively to those productions of which
+the subject or treatment is purely national.
+
+One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zagoskin,
+whose historical romance "Youriy Miloslaffskiy," met with great and
+permanent success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most
+interesting crisis in the Russian history, when the valour of Minin
+enabled his countrymen to shake off the hated yoke of Poland. His other
+work, "Roslavleoff," is less interesting: the period is 1812. We may
+also mention his "Iskonsitel"--"the Tempter"--a fantastic story, in
+which an imaginary being is represented as mingling with and influencing
+the affairs of real life.
+
+Of Boulgarin, we may mention, besides his "Ivan Vuijgin," a romance in
+the manner of "Gil Blas," the scenery and characters of which are
+entirely Russian, two historical novels of considerable importance. "The
+False Dimitri," and "Mazeppa,"--the hero of the latter being _a real
+person_, and not, as most readers are aware, a fictitious character
+invented by Byron.
+
+Next comes the name of Lajetchnikoff, whose "Last Page" possesses a
+reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The
+action passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great,
+and Catharine plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Glueck,
+becoming empress at the conclusion. The "House of Ice," by the same
+writer, is perhaps more generally known than the preceding work. The
+last-named romance depicts with great spirit the struggle between the
+Russian and foreign parties in the reign of Anna Ivanovna. But perhaps
+the most remarkable work of Lajetchnikoff is the romance entitled
+"Bassourman," the scene of which is laid under Ivan III., surnamed the
+Great.[9] Another Polevoi (Nikolai) produced a work of great
+merit:--"The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord," a very faithful picture of
+the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the
+circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe
+to Polevoi a wild story entitled "Abbaddon." Veltman produced, under the
+title of "Kostshei the Deathless," a historical study of the manners of
+the twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust
+to omit the name of a lady, the Countess Shishkin, who produced the
+historical novel "Mikhail Vassilievitch Skopin-Shuisky," which obtained
+great popularity.
+
+     [9] The non-Russian reader must be cautioned not to confuse
+     Ivan III. (surnamed Velikiy, or the Great) with Ivan IV., the
+     Cruel, the latter of whom is to foreigners the most prominent
+     figure in the Russian history. Ivan III. mounted the throne in
+     1462, and his terrible namesake in 1534; the reign of Vassiliy
+     Ivanovitch intervening between these two memorable epochs.
+
+The picturesque career of Lomonosoff gave materials for a romantic
+biography of that poet, the work of Xenophont Polevoi, resembling, in
+its mixture of truth and fiction, the "Wahrheit und Dichtung" of Goethe.
+
+Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those
+exhibiting scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been
+neglected. Kalashnikoff wrote "The Merchant Jaloboff's Daughter," and
+the "Kamtchadalka," both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia;
+the former painting various parts of that wild and interesting country,
+the latter confined more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtchatka.
+Besides Gogol, whose easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many
+humorous sketches of provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitcheff,
+whose "Kholmsky Family" possesses much interest; but the delineations of
+Gogol depend so much for their effect upon delicate shades of manner,
+&c., that it is not probable they can ever be effectively reproduced in
+another language.
+
+Mentioning Peroffsky, whose "Monastirka" gives a picture of Russian
+interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation.
+His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of
+a very curious race--the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchernaia
+Jenstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society,
+which was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.
+
+The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British
+readers to a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most
+unaccountably neglected by the English public, the present would not be
+a fit occasion to enter with any minuteness into the history of Russian
+letters, or to give, in fact, more than a passing allusion to its chief
+features; the translator hopes that he will be excused for the
+meagreness of the present notice.
+
+He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any
+increasing desire on the part of his countrymen to become more
+accurately acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is
+convinced, of a very high degree of respect and admiration. How could
+that acquaintance be so delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the
+interchange of literature? The great works of English genius are read,
+studied, and admired, throughout the vast empire of Russia; the language
+of England is rapidly and steadily extending, and justice, no less than
+policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions respecting the social
+and domestic character, no less than the history, of Russia, should be
+dispelled by truth.
+
+The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to
+specify one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the
+present romance, as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in
+England the literature of Russia.
+
+It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the
+facts and characters are all strictly true;[10] besides this, the author
+passed many years in the Caucasus, and made full use of the
+opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming familiar with the language,
+manners, and scenery of a region on which the attention of the English
+public has long been turned with peculiar interest.
+
+     [10] The translator recently met in society a Russian officer,
+     who had served with distinction in the country which forms the
+     scene of "Ammalat Bek." This gentleman had intimately known
+     Marlinski, and bore witness to the perfect accuracy of his
+     delineations, as well of the external features of nature as of
+     the characters of his _dramatis personae_. The officer alluded
+     to had served some time in the very regiment commanded by the
+     unfortunate Verkhoffsky. Our fair readers may be interested to
+     learn, that Seltanetta still lives, and yet bears traces of her
+     former beauty. She married the Shamkhal, and now resides in
+     feudal magnificence at Tarki, where she exercises great sway,
+     which she employs in favour of the Russian interest, to which
+     she is devoted.
+
+The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it
+is hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public
+always "_novitatis avida_," and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with
+the "Bismillahs" and "Mashallahs" of the ordinary oriental novels, may
+find some piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life--that of the
+Caucasian Tartars.
+
+The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for
+which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon
+the method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian
+orthography, as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as
+_zh_, &c. &c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the
+correct pronunciation. Throughout these pages the vowels _a, e, i, o,
+y_, are supposed to be pronounced as in French, the diphthong _ou_ as in
+the word _you_, the _j_ always with the French sound.
+
+With respect to the combinations of consonants employed, _kh_ has the
+gutteral sound of the _ch_ in the Scottish word _loch_, and _gh_ is like
+a rather rough or coarse aspirate.
+
+The simple _g_ is invariably to be uttered hard, as in _gun_ or _gall_.
+
+To avoid the possibility of errors, the combination _tch_, though not a
+very soft one to the eye, represents a Russian sound for which there is
+no character in English. It is, of course, uttered as in the word
+_watch_.
+
+As a great deal of the apparent discord of Russian words, as pronounced
+by foreigners, arises from ignorance of the place of the accent, we have
+added a sign over every polysyllable word, indicating the part on which
+the stress is to be laid.
+
+The few preceding rules will, the translator hopes, enable his
+countrymen to _attack_ the pronunciation of the Russian names without
+the ancient dread inspired by terrific and complicated clusters of
+consonants; and will perhaps prove to them that the language is both an
+easy and a melodious one.
+
+     _St Petersburg, November_ 10, 1842.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+    "Be slow to offend--swift to revenge!"
+      _Inscription on a dagger of Daghestan._
+
+It was Djouma.[11] Not far from Bouinaki, a considerable village of
+Northern Daghestan, the young Tartars were assembled for their national
+exercise called "djigitering;" that is, the horse-race accompanied by
+various trials of boldness and strength. Bouinaki is situated upon two
+ledges of the precipitous rocks of the mountain: on the left of the road
+leading from Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above the town, the crest
+of Caucasus, feathered with wood; on the right, the shore, sinking
+imperceptibly, spreads itself out into meadows, on which the Caspian Sea
+pours its eternal murmur, like the voice of human multitudes.
+
+     [11] Djouma answers to our Sabbath. The days of the Mahomedan
+     week are as follows: Shambi, Saturday; Ikhshamba, Sunday;
+     Doushamba, Monday; Seshamba, Tuesday; Tchershamba, Wednesday;
+     Pkhanshamba, Thursday; Djouma, Friday.
+
+A vernal day was fading into evening, and all the inhabitants, attracted
+rather by the coolness of the breeze than by any feeling of curiosity,
+had quitted their saklas,[12] and assembled in crowds on both sides of
+the road. The women, without veils, and with coloured kerchiefs rolled
+like turbans round their heads, clad in the long chemise,[13] confined
+by the short arkhaloukh, and wide toumans,[14] sat in rows, while
+strings of children sported before them. The men, assembled in little
+groups, stood, or rested on their knees;[15] others, in twos or threes,
+walked slowly round, smoking tobacco in little wooden pipes: a cheerful
+buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded the clattering of hoofs, and the
+cry "katch, katch!" (make way!) from the horsemen preparing for the
+race.
+
+     [12] Sakla, a Circassian hut.
+
+     [13] A species of garment, resembling a frock-coat with an
+     upright collar, reaching to the knees, fixed in front by hooks
+     and eyes, worn by both sexes.
+
+     [14] The trowsers of the _women_: those worn by the men, though
+     alike in form, are called shalwars. It is an offence to tell a
+     man that he wears the touman; being equivalent to a charge of
+     effeminacy; and _vice versa_.
+
+     [15] It is the ordinary manner of the Asiatics to sit in this
+     manner in public, or in the presence of a superior.
+
+Nature, in Daghestan, is most lovely in the month of May. Millions of
+roses poured their blushes over the crags; their odour was streaming in
+the air; the nightingale was not silent in the green twilight of the
+wood, almond-trees, all silvered with their flowers, arose like the
+cupolas of a pagoda, and resembled, with their lofty branches twined
+with leaves, the minarets of some Mussulman mosque. Broad-breasted oaks,
+like sturdy old warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and
+chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked
+like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the
+summer heats. Sportive flocks of sheep--their fleeces speckled with
+rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for
+hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and
+there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating
+on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills--such is the frame
+that encloses the picture of every Mussulman village. On this Djouma,
+the neighbourhood of Bouinaki was more than usually animated. The sun
+poured his floods of gold on the dark walls of the flat-roofed saklas,
+clothing them with fantastic shadows, and adding beauty to their forms.
+In the distance, crawling along the mountain, the creaking arbas[16]
+flitted among the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past them,
+before them, flew a horseman, raising the dust along the road ... the
+mountain crest and the boundless sea gave grandeur to this picture, and
+all nature breathed a glow of life.
+
+     [16] A kind of rude cart with two wheels.
+
+"He comes, he comes!" was murmured through the crowd; all was in motion.
+The horsemen, who till now had been chattering with their acquaintance
+on foot, or disorderedly riding about the meadow, now leaped upon their
+steeds, and dashed forward to meet the cavalcade which was descending to
+the plain: it was Ammalat Bek, the nephew of the Shamkhal[17] of Tarki,
+with his suite. He was habited in a black Persian cloak, edged with
+gold-lace, the hanging sleeves thrown back over his shoulders. A Turkish
+shawl was wound round his arkhaloukh, which was made of flowered silk.
+Red shalwars were lost in his yellow high-heeled riding-boots. His gun,
+dagger, and pistol, glittered with gold and silver arabesque work. The
+hilt of his sabre was enriched with gems. The Prince of Tarki was a
+tall, well-made youth, of frank countenance; black curls streamed behind
+his ears from under his cap--a slight mustache shaded his upper lip--his
+eyes glittered with a proud courtesy. He rode a bright bay steed, which
+fretted under his hand like a whirlwind. Contrary to custom, the horse's
+caparison was not the round Persian housing, embroidered all over with
+silk, but the light Circassian saddle, ornamented with silver on a black
+ground; and the stirrups were of the black steel of Kharaman, inlaid
+with gold. Twenty noukers[18] on spirited horses, and dressed in cloaks
+glittering with lace, their caps cocked jauntily, and leaning affectedly
+on one side, pranced and sidled after him. The people respectfully stood
+up before their Bek, and bowed, pressing their right hand upon their
+right knee. A murmur of whispered approbation followed the young chief
+as he passed among the women. Arrived at the southern extremity of the
+ground, Ammalat stopped. The chief people, the old men leaning upon
+their sticks, and the elders of Bouinaki, stood round in a circle to
+catch a kind word from the Bek; but Ammalat did not pay them any
+particular attention, and with cold politeness replied in monosyllables
+to the flatteries and obeisances of his inferiors. He waved his hand;
+this was the signal to commence the race.
+
+     [17] The first Shamkhals were the kinsmen and representatives
+     of the Khalifs of Damascus: the last Shamkhal died on his
+     return from Russia, and with him finished this useless rank.
+     His son, Suleiman Pacha, possessed his property as a private
+     individual.
+
+     [18] The attendants of a Tartar noble, equivalent to the
+     "henchman" of the ancient Highlanders. The nouker waits behind
+     his lord at table, cuts up and presents the food.
+
+Twenty of the most fiery horsemen dashed forward, without the slightest
+order or regularity, galloping onward and back again, placing themselves
+in all kinds of attitudes, and alternately passing each other. At one
+moment they jostled one another from the course, and at the same time
+held in their horses, then again they let them go at full gallop over
+the plain. After this, they each took slender sticks, called djigidis,
+and darted them as they rode, either in the charge or the pursuit, and
+again seizing them as they flew, or picking them up from the earth.
+Several tumbled from their saddles under the strong blows; and then
+resounded the loud laugh of the spectators, while loud applauses greeted
+the conqueror; sometimes the horses stumbled, and the riders were thrown
+over their heads, hurled off by a double force from the shortness of
+their stirrups. Then commenced the shooting. Ammalat Bek had remained a
+little apart, looking on with apparent pleasure. His noukers, one after
+the other, had joined the crowd of djigiterers, so that, at last, only
+two were left by his side. For some time he was immovable, and followed
+with an indifferent gaze the imitation of an Asiatic combat; but by
+degrees his interest grew stronger. At first he watched the cavaliers
+with great attention, then he began to encourage them by his voice and
+gestures, he rose higher in his stirrups, and at last the warrior-blood
+boiled in his veins, when his favourite nouker could not hit a cap which
+he had thrown down before him. He snatched his gun from his attendants,
+and dashed forward like an arrow, winding among the sporters. "Make
+way--make way!" was heard around, and all, dispersing like a rain-cloud
+on either side, gave place to Ammalat Bek.
+
+At the distance of a verst[19] stood ten poles with caps hanging on
+them. Ammalat rode straight up to them, waved his gun round his head,
+and turned close round the pole; as he turned he stood up in his
+stirrups, turned back--bang!--the cap tumbled to the ground; without
+checking his speed he reloaded, the reins hanging on his horse's
+neck--knocked off another, then a third--and so on the whole ten. A
+murmur of applause arose on all sides; but Ammalat, without stopping,
+threw his gun into the hands of one of his noukers, pulled out a pistol
+from his belt, and with the ball struck the shoe from the hind foot of
+his horse; the shoe flew off, and fell far behind him; he then again
+took his gun from his nouker, and ordered him to gallop on before him.
+Quicker than thought both darted forward. When half-way round the
+course, the nouker drew from his pocket a rouble, and threw it up in the
+air. Ammalat raised himself in the saddle, without waiting till it fell;
+but at the very instant his horse stumbled with all his four legs
+together, and striking the dust with his nostrils, rolled prostrate. All
+uttered a cry of terror; but the dexterous horseman, standing up in the
+stirrups, without losing his seat, or even leaning forward, as if he had
+been aware that he was going to fall, fired rapidly, and hitting the
+rouble with his ball, hurled it far among the people. The crowd shouted
+with delight--"Igeed, igeed! (bravo!) Alla valla-ha!" But Ammalat Bek,
+modestly retiring, dismounted from his steed, and throwing the reins to
+his djilladar, (groom,) ordered him immediately to have the horse shod.
+The race and the shooting was continued.
+
+     [19] 3500 English feet--three quarters of a mile.
+
+At this moment there rode up to Ammalat his emdjek,[20] Saphir-Ali, the
+son of one of the poor beks of Bouinaki, a young man of an agreeable
+exterior, and simple, cheerful character. He had grown up with Ammalat,
+and therefore treated him with great familiarity. He leaped from his
+horse, and nodding his head, exclaimed--"Nouker Memet Rasoul has knocked
+up the old cropped[21] stallion, in trying to leap him over a ditch
+seven paces wide." "And did he leap it?" cried Ammalat impatiently.
+"Bring him instantly to me!" He went to meet the horse--and without
+putting his foot in the stirrup, leaped into the saddle, and galloped to
+the bed of a mountain-torrent. As he galloped, he pressed the horse with
+his knee, but the wearied animal, not trusting to his strength, bolted
+aside on the very brink, and Ammalat was obliged to make another turn.
+The second time, the steed, stimulated by the whip, reared up on his
+hind-legs in order to leap the ditch, but he hesitated, grew restive,
+and resisted with his fore-feet. Ammalat grew angry. In vain did
+Saphir-Ali entreat him not to force the horse, which had lost in many a
+combat and journey the elasticity of his limbs. Ammalat would not listen
+to any thing; but urging him with a cry, and striking him with his drawn
+sabre for the third time, he galloped him at the ravine; and when, for
+the third time, the old horse stopped short in his stride, not daring to
+leap, he struck him so violently on the head with the hilt of his sabre,
+that he fell lifeless on the earth.
+
+     [20] Foster-brother; from the word "emdjek"--suckling. Among
+     the tribes of the Caucasus, this relationship is held more
+     sacred than that of nature. Every man would willingly die for
+     his emdjek.
+
+     [21] This is a celebrated race of Persian horses, called Teke.
+
+"This is the reward of faithful service!" said Saphir-Ali,
+compassionately, as he gazed on the lifeless steed.
+
+"This is the reward of disobedience!" replied Ammalat, with flashing
+eyes.
+
+Seeing the anger of the Bek, all were silent. The horsemen, however,
+continued their djigitering.
+
+And suddenly was heard the thunder of Russian drums, and the bayonets of
+Russian soldiers glittered as they wound over the hill. It was a company
+of the Kourinsky regiment of infantry, sent from a detachment which had
+been dispatched to Akoush, then in a state of revolt, under Sheikh Ali
+Khan, the banished chief of Derbend. This company had been protecting a
+convoy of supplies from Derbend, whither it was returning by the
+mountain road. The commander of the company, Captain -----, and one
+officer with him, rode in front. Before they had reached the
+race-course, the retreat was beaten, and the company halted, throwing
+aside their havresacks and piling their muskets, but without lighting a
+fire.
+
+The arrival of a Russian detachment could have been no novelty to the
+inhabitants of Daghestan in the year 1819; and even yet, it must be
+confessed, it is an event that gives them no pleasure. Superstition made
+them look on the Russians as eternal enemies--enemies, however, vigorous
+and able; and they determined, therefore, not to injure them but in
+secret, by concealing their hatred under a mask of amity. A buzz spread
+among the people on the appearance of the Russians: the women returned
+by winding paths to the village, not forgetting, however, to gaze
+secretly at the strangers. The men, on the contrary, threw fierce
+glances at them over their shoulders, and began to assemble in groups,
+discussing how they might best get rid of them, and relieve themselves
+from the podvod[22], and so on. A multitude of loungers and boys,
+however, surrounded the Russians as they reposed upon the grass. Some of
+the Kekkhouds (starosts[23]) and Tehaoushes (desiatniks[24]) appointed
+by the Russian Government, hastily advancing to the Captain, pulled off
+their caps, after the usual salutation, "Khot ghialdi!" (welcome!) and
+"Yakshimousen, tazamousen, sen-ne-ma-mousen," (I greet you,) arrived at
+the inevitable question at a meeting of Asiatics, "What news?"--"Na
+khaber?"
+
+     [22] The being obliged to transport provisions.
+
+     [23] The chief of a village.
+
+     [24] The subordinates of the atarost.
+
+"The only news with me is, that my horse has cast a shoe, and the poor
+devil is dead lame," answered the Captain in pretty good Tartar: "and
+here is, just _apropos_, a blacksmith!" he continued, turning to a
+broad-shouldered Tartar, who was filing the fresh-shod hoof of Ammalat's
+horse. "Kounak! (my friend,)--shoe my horse--the shoes are ready--'tis
+but the clink of a hammer, and 'tis done in a moment!"
+
+The blacksmith turned sulkily towards the Captain a face tanned by his
+forge and by the sun, looked from the corners of his eyes at his
+questioner, stroked the thick mustache which overshadowed a beard long
+unrazored, and which might for its bristles have done honour to any
+boar; flattened his arakshin (bonnet) on his head, and coolly continued
+putting away his tools in their bag.
+
+"Do you understand me, son of a wolf race?" said the Captain.
+
+"I understand you well," answered the blacksmith,--"you want your horse
+shod."
+
+"And I should advise you to shoe him," replied the Captain, observing on
+the part of the Tartar a desire to jest.
+
+"To-day is a holiday: I will not work."
+
+"I will pay you what you like for your work; but I tell you that,
+whether you like it or not, you must do what I want."
+
+"The will of Allah is above ours; and he does not permit us to work on
+Djouma. We sin enough for gain on common days, so on a holiday I do not
+wish to buy coals with silver."[25]
+
+     [25] Go to the devil.
+
+"But were you not at work just now, obstinate blockhead? Is not one
+horse the same as another? Besides, mine is a real Mussulman--look at
+the mark[26]--the blood of Karabakh."
+
+     [26] The Asiatics mark their horses by burning them on their
+     haunch with a hot iron. This peculiar mark, the [Greek: stigma]
+     or [Greek: kotpa] of the Greeks is called "tavro."
+
+"All horses are alike; but not so those who ride them: Ammalat Bek is my
+aga (lord.)"
+
+"That is, if you had taken it into your head to refuse him, he would
+have had your ears cropped; but you will not work for me, in the hope
+that I would not dare to do the same. Very well, my friend! I certainly
+will not crop your ears, but be assured that I will warm that orthodox
+back of yours with two hundred pretty stinging nogaikas (lashes with a
+whip) if you won't leave off your nonsense--do you hear?"
+
+"I hear--and I answer as I did before: I will not shoe the horse--for I
+am a good Mussulman."
+
+"And I will make you shoe him, because I am a good soldier. As you have
+worked at the will of your Bek, you shall work for the need of a Russian
+officer--without this I cannot proceed. Corporals, forward!"
+
+In the mean time a circle of gazers had been extending round the
+obstinate blacksmith, like a ring made in the water by casting a stone
+into it. Some in the crowd were disputing the best places, hardly
+knowing what they were running to see; and at last more cries were
+heard: "It is not fair--it cannot be: to-day is a holiday: to-day it is
+a sin to work!" Some of the boldest, trusting to their numbers, pulled
+their caps over their eyes, and felt at the hilts of their daggers,
+pressing close up to the Captain, and crying "Don't shoe him, Alekper!
+Do nothing for him: here's news, my masters! What new prophets for us
+are these unwashed Russians?" The Captain was a brave man, and thoroughly
+understood the Asiatics. "Away, ye rascals!" he cried in a rage, laying
+his hand on the butt of his pistol. "Be silent, or the first that dares
+to let an insult pass his teeth, shall have them closed with a leaden
+seal!"
+
+This threat, enforced by the bayonets of some of the soldiers, succeeded
+immediately: they who were timid took to their heels--the bolder held
+their tongues. Even the orthodox blacksmith, seeing that the affair was
+becoming serious, looked round on all sides, and muttered "Nedjelaim?"
+(What can I do?) tucked up his sleeves, pulled out from his bag the
+hammer and pincers, and began to shoe the Russian's horse, grumbling
+between his teeth, "_Vala billa beetmi eddeem_, (I will not do it, by
+God!)" It must be remarked that all this took place out of Ammalat's
+presence. He had hardly looked at the Russians, when, in order to avoid
+a disagreeable rencontre, he mounted the horse which had just been shod,
+and galloped off to Bouinaki, where his house was situated.
+
+While this was taking place at one end of the exercising ground, a
+horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers. He was of
+middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of
+linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike
+equipment, and followed by five noukers. By their dusty dress, and the
+foam which covered their horses, it might be seen that they had ridden
+far and fast. The first horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers,
+advanced slowly along the piles of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids
+of fire-arms. The noukers, following the steps of their master, far from
+turning aside, coolly rode over the scattered weapons. The sentry, who
+had challenged them while they were yet at some distance, and warned
+them not to approach, seized the bit of the steed bestridden by the
+mail-coated horseman, while the rest of the soldiers, enraged at such an
+insult from a Mussulman, assailed the party with abuse. "Hold hard! Who
+are you?" was the challenge and question of the sentinel. "Thou must be
+a raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan Akhmet Khan of Avar,"[27]
+coolly answered the man in mail, shaking off the hand of the sentry from
+his reins. "I think last year I left the Russians a keepsake at Bashli.
+Translate that for him," he said to one of his noukers. The Avaretz
+repeated his words in pretty intelligible Russian.
+
+     [27] The brother of Hassan Khan Djemontai, who became Khan of
+     Avar by marrying the Khan's widow and heiress.
+
+"'Tis Akhmet Khan! Akhmet Khan!" shouted the soldiers. "Seize him! hold
+him fast! down with him! pay him for the affair of Bashli[28]--the
+villains cut our wounded to pieces."
+
+     [28] The Russian detachment, consisting on this occasion of
+     3000 men, was surrounded by 60,000. These were, Ouizmi
+     Karakaidakhsky, the Avaretzes, Akoushinetzes, the Boulinetzes
+     of the Koi-Sou, and others. The Russians fought their way out
+     by night, but with considerable loss.
+
+"Away, brute!" cried Sultan Akhmet Khan to the soldier who had again
+seized the bridle of his horse--"I am a Russian general."
+
+"A Russian traitor!" roared a multitude of voices; "bring him to the
+Captain: drag him to Derbend, to Colonel Verkhoffsky."
+
+"'Tis only to hell I would go with such guides!" said Akhmet, with a
+contemptuous smile, and making his horse rear, he turned him to the
+right and left; then, with a blow of the nogaik,[29] he made him leap
+into the air, and disappeared. The noukers kept their eye on the
+movements of their chief, and uttering their warcry, followed his steps,
+and overthrowing several of the soldiers, cleared a way for themselves
+into the road. After galloping off to a distance of scarce a hundred
+paces, the Khan rode away at a slow walk, with an expression of the
+greatest _sang-froid_, not deigning to look back, and coolly playing
+with his bridle. The crowd of Tartars assembled round the blacksmith
+attracted his attention. "What are you quarrelling about, friends?"
+asked Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining in his horse.
+
+     [29] The whip of a Kazak.
+
+In sign of respect and reverence, they all applied their hands to their
+foreheads when they saw the Khan. The timid or peaceably disposed among
+them, dreading the consequences, either from the Russians or the Khan,
+to which this rencontre might expose them, exhibited much discomfiture
+at the question; but the idle, the ruffian, and the desperate--for all
+beheld with hatred the Russian domination--crowded turbulently round him
+with delight. They hurriedly told him what was the matter.
+
+"And you stand, like buffaloes, stupidly looking on, while they force
+your brother to work like a brute under the yoke!" exclaimed the Khan,
+gloomily, to the bystanders; "while they laugh in your face at your
+customs, and trample your faith under their feet! and ye whine like old
+women, instead of revenging yourselves like men! Cowards! cowards!"
+
+"What can we do?" cried a multitude of voices together; "the Russians
+have cannon--they have bayonets!"
+
+"And ye, have ye not guns? have ye not daggers? It is not the Russians
+that are brave, but ye that are cowards! Shame of Mussulmans! The sword
+of Daghestan trembles before the Russian whip. Ye are afraid of the roll
+of the cannon; but ye fear not the reproach of cowardice. The ferman of
+a Russian pristav[30] is holier to you than a chapter of the Koran.
+Siberia frightens you more than hell. Did your forefathers act, did your
+forefathers think thus? They counted not their enemies, they calculated
+not. Outnumbered or not, they met them, bravely fought them, and
+gloriously died! And what fear ye? Have the Russians ribs of iron? Have
+their cannon no breach? Is it not by the tail that you seize the
+scorpion?" This address stirred the crowd. The Tartar vanity was touched
+to the quick. "What do we care for them? Why do we let them lord it over
+us here?" was heard around. "Let us liberate the blacksmith from his
+work--let us liberate him!" they roared, as they narrowed their circle
+round the Russian soldiers, amidst whom Alekper was shoeing the
+captain's horse. The confusion increased. Satisfied with the tumult he
+had created, Sultan Akhmet Khan, not wishing to mix himself up in an
+insignificant brawl, rode out of the crowd, leaving two noukers to keep
+alive the violent spirit among the Tartars, while, accompanied by the
+remainder, he rode rapidly to the ootakh[31] of Ammalat.
+
+     [30] A superintendent.
+
+     [31] The house, in Tartar, is "ev;" "outakh," mansion; and
+     "sarai," edifice in general; "haram-khaneh," the women's
+     apartments. For palace they employ the word "igarat." The
+     Russians confound all these meanings in the word "sakla,"
+     which, in the Circassian language, is house.
+
+"Mayest thou be victorious," said Sultan Akhmet Khan to Ammalat Bek, who
+received him at the threshold. This ordinary salutation, in the
+Circassian language, was pronounced with so marked an emphasis, that
+Ammalat as he kissed him, asked, "Is that a jest or a prophecy, my fair
+guest?"
+
+"That depends on thee," replied the Sultan. "It is upon the right heir
+of the Shamkhalat[32] that it depends to draw the sword from the
+scabbard."
+
+     [32] The father of Ammalat was the eldest of the family, and
+     consequently the true heir to the Shamkhalat. But the Russians,
+     having conquered Daghestan, not trusting to the good intentions
+     of this chief, gave the power to the younger brother.
+
+"To sheath it no more, Khan? An unenviable destiny. Methinks it is
+better to reign in Bouinaki, than for an empty title to be obliged to
+hide in the mountains like a jackal."
+
+"To bound from the mountains like a lion, Ammalat; and to repose, after
+your glorious toils, in the palace of your ancestors."
+
+"To repose? Is it not better not to be awakened at all?
+
+"Would you behold but in a dream what you ought to possess in reality?
+The Russians are giving you the poppy, and will lull you with tales,
+while another plucks the golden flowers of the garden."[33]
+
+     [33] A _jeu-de-mots_ which the Asiatics admire much;
+     "kizil-gulliar" means simply roses, but the Khan alludes to
+     "kizil," ducats.
+
+"What can I do with my force?"
+
+"Force--that is in thy soul, Ammalat!... Despise dangers and they bend
+before you.... Dost thou hear that?" added Sultan Akhmet Khan, as the
+sound of firing reached them from the town. "It is the voice of
+victory!"
+
+Saphir-Ali rushed into the chamber with an agitated face.
+
+"Bouinaki is in revolt," he hurriedly began; "a crowd of rioters has
+overpowered the detachment, and they have begun to fire from the
+rocks."[34]
+
+     [34] The Tartars, like the North American Indians, always, if
+     possible, shelter themselves behind rocks and enclosures, &c.,
+     when engaged in battle.
+
+"Rascals!" cried Ammalat, as he threw his gun over his shoulder. "How
+dared they to rise without me! Run, Saphir-Ali, threaten them with my
+name; kill the first who disobeys."
+
+"I have done all I could to restrain them," said Saphir-Ali, "but none
+would listen to me, for the noukers of Sultan Akhmet Khan were urging
+them on, saying that he had ordered them to slay the Russians."
+
+"Indeed! did my noukers say that?" asked the Khan.
+
+"They did not say so much, but they set the example," said Saphir-Ali.
+
+"In that case they have done well," replied Sultan Akhmet Khan: "this is
+brave!"
+
+"What hast thou done, Khan!" cried Ammalat, angrily.
+
+"What you might have done long ago!"
+
+"How can I justify myself to the Russians?"
+
+"With lead and steel.... The firing is begun.... Fate works for you ...
+the sword is drawn ... let us go seek the Russians!"
+
+"They are here!" cried the Captain, who, followed by two men, had broken
+through the disorderly ranks of the Tartars, and dashed into the house
+of their chief. Confounded by the unexpected outbreak in which he was
+certain to be considered a party, Ammalat saluted his enraged
+guest--"Come in peace!" he said to him in Tartar.
+
+"I care not whether I come in peace or no," answered the Captain, "but I
+find no peaceful reception in Bouinaki. Thy Tartars, Ammalat, have dared
+to fire upon a soldier of mine, of yours, a subject of our Tsar."
+
+"In very deed, 'twas absurd to fire on a Russian," said the Khan,
+contemptuously stretching himself on the cushions of the divan, "when
+they might have cut his throat."
+
+"Here is the cause of all the mischief, Ammalat!" said the Captain,
+angrily, pointing to the Khan; "but for this insolent rebel not a
+trigger would have been pulled in Bouinaki! But you have done well,
+Ammalat Bek, to invite Russians as friends, and to receive their foe as
+a guest, to shelter him as a comrade, to honour him as a friend! Ammalat
+Bek, this man is named in the order of the commander-in-chief; give him
+up."
+
+"Captain," answered Ammalat, "with us a guest is sacred. To give him up
+would be a sin upon my soul, an ineffaceable shame upon my head; respect
+my entreaty; respect our customs."
+
+"I will tell you, in your turn--respect the Russian laws. Remember your
+duty. You have sworn allegiance to the Tsar, and your oath obliges you
+not to spare your own brother if he is a criminal."
+
+"Rather would I give up my brother than my guest, Sir Captain! It is not
+for you to judge my promises and obligations. My tribunal is Allah and
+the padishah! In the field, let fortune take care of the Khan; but
+within my threshold, beneath my roof, I am bound to be his protector,
+and I will be!"
+
+"And you shall be answerable for this traitor!"
+
+The Khan had lain in haughty silence during this dispute, breathing the
+smoke from his pipe: but at the word "traitor," his blood was fired, he
+started up, and rushed indignantly to the Captain.
+
+"Traitor, say you?" he cried. "Say rather, that I refused to betray him
+to whom I was bound by promise. The Russian padishah gave me rank, the
+sardar[35] caressed me--and I was faithful so long as they demanded of
+me nothing impossible or humiliating. But, all of a sudden, they wished
+me to admit troops into Avar--to permit fortresses to be built there;
+and what name should I have deserved, if I had sold the blood and sweat
+of the Avaretzes, my brethren! If I had attempted this, think ye that I
+could have done it? A thousand free daggers, a thousand unhired bullets,
+would have flown to the heart of the betrayer. The very rocks would have
+fallen on the son who could betray his father. I refused the friendship
+of the Russians; but I was not their enemy--and what was the reward of
+my just intentions, my honest counsels? I was deeply, personally
+insulted by the letter of one of your generals, whom I had warned. That
+insolence cost him dear at Bashli ... I shed a river of blood for some
+few drops of insulting ink, and that river divides us for ever."
+
+     [35] The commander-in-chief.
+
+"That blood cries for vengeance!" replied the enraged Captain. "Thou
+shalt not escape it, robber!"
+
+"Nor thou from me!" shouted the infuriated Khan, plunging his dagger
+into the body of the Captain, as he lifted his hand to seize him by the
+collar. Severely wounded, the officer fell groaning on the carpet.
+
+"Thou hast undone me!" cried Ammalat, wringing his hands. "He is a
+Russian, and my guest!"
+
+"There are insults which a roof cannot cover," sullenly replied the
+Khan. "The die is cast: it is no time to hesitate. Shut your gate, call
+your people, and let us attack the enemy."
+
+"An hour ago I had no enemy ... there are no means now for repulsing
+them ... I have neither powder nor ball ... The people are dispersed."
+
+"They have fled!" cried Saphir-Ali in despair. "The Russians are
+advancing at full march over the hill. They are close at hand!"
+
+"If so, go with me, Ammalat!" said the Khan. "I rode to Tchetchna
+yesterday, to raise the revolt along the line ... What will be the end,
+God knows; but there is bread in the mountains. Do you consent?"
+
+"Let us go!" ... replied Ammalat, resolvedly.... "When our only safety
+is in flight, it is no time for disputes and reproaches."
+
+"Ho! horses, and six noukers with me!"
+
+"And am I to go with you?" said Saphir-Ali, with tears in his
+eyes--"with you for weal or woe!"
+
+"No, my good Saphir-Ali, no. Remain you here to govern the household,
+that our people and the strangers may not seize every thing. Give my
+greeting to my wife, and take her to my father-in-law, the Shamkhal.
+Forget me not, and farewell!"
+
+They had barely time to escape at full gallop by one gate, when the
+Russians dashed in at the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The vernal noon was shining upon the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud
+voices of the moollahs had called the inhabitants of Tchetchna to
+prayer. By degrees they came forth from the mosques, and though
+invisible to each other from the towers on which they stood, their
+solitary voices, after awaking for a moment the echoes of the hills,
+sank to stillness in the silent air.
+
+The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a Turkish devotee, one of those
+missionaries annually sent into the mountains by the Divan of Stamboul,
+to spread and strengthen the faith, and to increase the detestation felt
+by the inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing on the roof of the
+mosque, having performed the usual call, ablution, and prayer. He had
+not been long installed as moollah of Igali, a village of Tchetchna; and
+plunged in a deep contemplation of his hoary beard, and the circling
+smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe, he gazed from time to time with a
+curious interest on the mountains, and on the defiles which lay towards
+the north, right before his eyes. On the left arose the precipitous
+ridges dividing Tchetchna from Avar, and beyond them glittered the snows
+of Caucasus; saklas scattered disorderly along the ridges half-way up
+the mountain, and narrow paths led to these fortresses built by nature,
+and employed by the hill-robbers to defend their liberty, or secure
+their plunder. All was still in the village and the surrounding hills;
+there was not a human being to be seen on the roads or streets; flocks
+of sheep were reposing in the shade of the cliffs; the buffaloes were
+crowded in the muddy swamps near the springs, with only their muzzles
+protruded from the marsh. Nought save the hum of the insects--nought
+save the monotonous chirp of the grasshoppers indicated life amid the
+breathless silence of the mountains; and Hadji Suleiman, stretched under
+the cupola, was intensely enjoying the stillness and repose of nature,
+so congenial to the lazy immobility of the Turkish character. Indolently
+he turned his eyes, whose fire was extinguished, and which no longer
+reflected the light of the sun, and at length they fell upon two
+horsemen, slowly climbing the opposite side of the declivity.
+
+"Nephtali!" cried our Moollah, turning towards a neighbouring sakla, at
+the gate of which stood a saddled horse. And then a handsome
+Tchetchenetz, with short cut beard, and shaggy cap covering half his
+face, ran out into the street. "I see two horsemen," continued the
+Moollah; "they are riding round the village!"
+
+"Most likely Jews or Armenians," answered Nephtali. "They do not choose
+to hire a guide, and will break their necks in the winding road. The
+wild-goats, and our boldest riders, would not plunge into these recesses
+without precaution."
+
+"No, brother Nephtali; I have been twice to Mecca, and have seen plenty
+of Jews and Armenians every where. But these riders look not like Hebrew
+chafferers, unless, indeed, they exchange steel for gold in the mountain
+road. They have no bales of merchandise. Look at them yourself from
+above; your eyes are surer than mine; mine have had their day, and done
+their work. There was a time when I could count the buttons on a Russian
+soldier's coat a verst off, and my rifle never missed an infidel; but
+now I could not distinguish a ram of my own afar."
+
+By this time Nephtali was at the side of the Moollah, and was examining
+the travellers with an eagle glance.
+
+"The noonday is hot, and the road rugged," said Suleiman; "invite the
+travellers to refresh themselves and their horses: perhaps they have
+news: besides, the Koran commands us to show hospitality."
+
+"With us in the mountains, and before the Koran, never did a stranger
+leave a village hungry or sad; never did he depart without tchourek,[36]
+without blessing, without a guide; but these people are suspicious: why
+do they avoid honest men, and pass our village by by-roads, and with
+danger to their life?"
+
+     [36] A kind of dried bread.
+
+"It seems that they are your countrymen," said Suleiman, shading his
+eyes with his hand: "their dress is Tchetchna. Perhaps they are
+returning from a plundering exhibition, to which your father went with a
+hundred of his neighbours; or perhaps they are brothers, going to
+revenge blood for blood."
+
+"No, Suleiman, that is not like us. Could a mountaineer's heart refrain
+from coming to see his countrymen--to boast of his exploits against the
+Russians, and to show his booty? These are neither avengers of blood nor
+Abreks--their faces are not covered by the bashlik; besides, dress is
+deceptive. Who can tell that those are not Russian deserters! The other
+day a Kazak, who had murdered his master, fled from Goumbet-Aoul with
+his horse and arms.... The devil is strong!"
+
+"He is strong in them in whom the faith is weak, Nephtali;--yet, if I
+mistake not, the hinder horseman has hair flowing from under his cap."
+
+"May I be pounded to dust, but it is so! It is either a Russian, or, what
+is worse, a Tartar Shageed.[37] Stop a moment, my friend; I will comb
+your zilflars for you! In half-an-hour I will return, Suleiman, either
+with them,--or one of us three shall feed the mountain berkoots
+(eagles.)"
+
+     [37] The mountaineers are bad Mussulmans, the Sooni sect is
+     predominant; but the Daghestanetzes are in general Shageeds, as
+     the Persians. The sects hate each other with all their heart.
+
+Nephtali rushed down the stairs, threw the gun on his shoulders, leapt
+into his saddle and dashed down the hill, caring neither for furrow nor
+stone. Only the dust arose, and the pebbles streamed down after the bold
+horseman."
+
+"Alla akber!" gravely exclaimed Suleiman, and lit his pipe.
+
+Nephtali soon came up with the strangers. Their horses were covered with
+foam, and the sweat-drops rained from them on the narrow path by which
+they were climbing the mountain. The first was clothed in a shirt of
+mail, the other in the Circassian dress: except that he wore a Persian
+sabre instead of a shashka,[38] suspended by a laced girdle. His left
+arm was covered with blood, bound up with a handkerchief, and supported
+by the sword-knot. The faces of both were concealed. For some time he
+rode behind them along the slippery path, which overhung a precipice;
+but at the first open space he galloped by them, and turned his horse
+round. "Salam aleikom!" said he, opposing their passage along the rugged
+and half-built road among the rocks, as he made ready his arms. The
+foremost horseman suddenly wrapped his bourka[39] round his face, so as
+to leave visible only his knit brows: "Aleikom Salam!" answered he,
+cocking his gun, and fixing himself in the saddle.
+
+     [38] The Circassian sabre.
+
+     [39] A rough cloak, used as a protection in bad weather.
+
+"God give you a good journey!" said Nephtali. repeating the usual
+salutation, and preparing, at the first hostile movement, to shoot the
+stranger.
+
+"God give you enough of sense not to interrupt the traveller," replied
+his antagonist, impatiently: "What would you with us, Kounak?"[40]
+
+     [40] Friend, comrade.
+
+"I offer you rest, and a brother's repast, barley and stalls for your
+horses. My threshold flourishes by hospitality: the blessing of the
+stranger increaseth the flock, and giveth sharpness to the sword of the
+master. Fix not the seal of reproach on our whole village. Let them not
+say, 'They have seen travellers in the heat of noon, and have not
+refreshed them nor sheltered them.'"
+
+"We thank you for your kindness; but we are not wont to take forced
+hospitality; and haste is even more necessary for us than rest."
+
+"You ride to your death without a guide."
+
+"Guide!" exclaimed the traveller; "I know every step of the Caucasus. I
+have been where your serpents climb not, your tigers cannot mount, your
+eagles cannot fly. Make way, comrade: thy threshold is not on God's
+high-road, and I have no time to prate with thee."
+
+"I will not yield a step, till I know who and whence you are!"
+
+"Insolent scoundrel, out of my way, or thy mother shall beg thy bones
+from the jackall and the wind! Thank your luck, Nephtali, that thy
+father and I have eaten one another's salt; and often have ridden by his
+side in the battle. Unworthy son! thou art rambling about the roads, and
+ready to attack the peaceable travellers, while thy father's corse lies
+rotting on the fields of Russia, and the wives of the Kazaks are selling
+his arms in the bazar. Nephtali, thy father was slain yesterday beyond
+the Terek. Dost thou know me now?"
+
+"Sultan Akhmet Khan!" cried the Tchetchenetz, struck by the piercing
+look and by the terrible news. His voice was stifled, and he fell
+forward on his horse's neck in inexpressible grief.
+
+"Yes, I am Sultan Akhmet Khan! but grave this in your memory,
+Nephtali--that if you say to any one, 'I have seen the Khan of Avar,' my
+vengeance will live from generation to generation."
+
+The strangers passed on, the Khan in silence, plunged, as it seemed, in
+painful recollections; Ammalat (for it was he) in gloomy thought. The
+dress of both bore witness to recent fighting; their mustaches were
+singed by the priming, and splashes of blood had dried upon their faces;
+but the proud look of the first seemed to defy to the combat fate and
+chance; a gloomy smile, of hate mingled with scorn, contracted his lip.
+On the other hand, on the features of Ammalat exhaustion was painted. He
+could hardly turn his languid eyes; and from time to time a groan
+escaped him, caused by the pain of his wounded arm. The uneasy pace of
+the Tartar horse, unaccustomed to the mountain roads, renewed the
+torment of his wound. He was the first to break the silence.
+
+"Why have you refused the offer of these good people? We might have
+stopped an hour or two to repose, and at dewfall we could have
+proceeded."
+
+"You think so, because you feel like a young man, dear Ammalat: you are
+used to rule your Tartars like slaves, and you fancy that you can
+conduct yourself with the same ease among the free mountaineers. The
+hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;--we are defeated and flying.
+Hundreds of brave mountaineers--your noukers and my own--have fallen in
+fight with the Russians; and the Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight
+the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan, which they are wont to behold the star
+of victory! To accept the beggar's repast, perhaps to hear reproaches
+for the death of fathers and sons, carried away by me in this rash
+expedition--'twould be to lose their confidence for ever. Time will
+pass, tears will dry up; the thirst of vengeance will take place of
+grief for the dead; and then again Sultan Akhmet will be seen the
+prophet of plunder and of blood. Then again the battle-signal shall echo
+through the mountains, and I shall once more lead flying bands of
+avengers into the Russian limits. If I go now, in the moment of defeat,
+the Tchetchenetz will judge that Allah giveth and taketh away victory.
+They may offend me by rash words, and with me an offence is
+ineffaceable; and the revenge of a personal offence would obstruct the
+road that leads me to the Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel with a
+brave people--and destroy the idol of glory on which they are wont to
+gaze with rapture? Never does man appear so mean as in weakness, when
+every one can measure his strength with him fearlessly: besides, you
+need a skilful leech, and nowhere will you find a better than at my
+house. To-morrow we shall be at home; have patience until then."
+
+With a gesture of gratitude Ammalat Bek placed his hand upon his heart
+and forehead: he perfectly felt the truth of the Khan's words, but
+exhaustion for many hours had been overwhelming him. Avoiding the
+villages, they passed the night among the rocks, eating a handful of
+millet boiled in honey, without the mountaineers seldom set out on a
+journey. Crossing the Koi-Sou by the bridge near the Asheert, quitting
+its northern branch, and leaving behind them Andeh, and the country of
+the Boulinetzes of the Koi-Sou, and the naked chain of Salataou. A rude
+path lay before them, winding among forests and cliffs terrible to body
+and soul; and they began to climb the last chain which separated them on
+the north from Khounzakh or Avar, the capital of the Khans. The forest,
+and then the underwood, had gradually disappeared from the naked flint
+of the mountain, on which cloud and tempest could hardly wander. To
+reach the summit, our travellers were compelled to ride alternately to
+the right and to the left, so precipitous was the ascent of the rocks.
+The experienced steed of the Khan stepped cautiously and surely from
+stone to stone, feeling his way with his hoofs, and when they slipped,
+gliding on his haunches down the declivities: while the ardent fiery
+horse of Ammalat, trained in the hills of Daghestan, fretted, curveted,
+and slipped. Deprived of his customary grooming, he could not support a
+two days' flight under the intense cold and burning sunshine of the
+mountains, travelling among sharp rocks, and nourished only by the
+scanty herbage of the crevices. He snorted heavily as he climbed higher
+and higher; the sweat streamed from his poitrel; his large nostrils were
+dry and parched, and foam boiled from his bit. "Allah bereket!"
+exclaimed Ammalat, as he reached the crest from which there opened
+before him a view of Avar: but at the very moment his exhausted horse
+fell under him; the blood spouted from his open mouth, and his last
+breath burst the saddle-girth.
+
+The Khan assisted the Bek to extricate himself from the stirrups; but
+observed with alarm that his efforts had displaced the bandage on
+Ammalat's wounded arm, and that the blood was soaking through it afresh.
+The young man, it seemed, was insensible to pain; tears were rolling
+down his face upon the dead horse. So one drop fills not, but overflows
+the cup. "Thou wilt never more bear me like down upon the wind," he
+said, "nor hear behind thee from the dust-cloud of the race, the shouts,
+unpleasing to the rival, the acclamations of the people: in the blaze of
+battle no more shalt thou carry me from the iron rain of the Russian
+cannon. With thee I gained the fame of a warrior--why should I survive,
+or it, or thee?" He bent his face upon his knee, and remained silent a
+long time, while the Khan carefully bound up his wounded arm: at length
+Ammalat raised his head: "Leave me!" he cried, resolutely: "leave,
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, a wretch to his fate! The way is long, and I am
+exhausted. By remaining with me, you will perish in vain. See! the eagle
+soars around us; he knows that my heart will soon quiver beneath his
+talons, and I thank God! Better find an airy grave in the maw of a bird
+of prey, than leave my corse beneath a Christian foot. Farewell, linger
+not."
+
+"For shame, Ammalat! you trip against a straw....! What the great harm?
+You are wounded, and your horse is dead. Your wound will soon healed,
+and we will find you a better horse! Allah sendeth not misfortunes
+alone. In the flower of your age, and the full vigour of your faculties,
+it is a sin to despair. Mount my horse, I will lead him by the bridle,
+and by night we shall be at home. Time is precious!"
+
+"For me, time is no more, Sultan Ahkmet Khan ... I thank you heartily
+for your brotherly care, but I cannot take advantage of it ... you
+yourself cannot support a march on foot after such fatigue. I repeat ...
+leave me to my fate. Here, on these inaccessible heights, I will die
+free and contented ... And what is there to recall me to life! My
+parents lie under the earth, my wife is blind, my uncle and
+father-in-law the Shamkhal are cowering at Tarki before the Russians ...
+the Giaour is revelling in my native land, in my inheritance; and I
+myself an a wanderer from my home, a runaway from battle. I neither can,
+nor ought to live."
+
+"You ought _not_ to talk such nonsense, dear Ammalat:--and nothing but
+fever can excuse you. We are created that we may live longer than our
+fathers. For wives, if one has not teazed you enough, we will find you
+three more. If you love not the Shamkhal, yet love your own
+inheritance--you ought to live, if but for that; since to a dead man
+power is useless, and victory impossible. Revenge on the Russians is a
+holy duty: live, if but for that. That we are beaten, is no novelty for
+a warrior; to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls to us. Allah gives
+fortune; but a man creates his own glory, not by fortune, but by
+firmness. Take courage, my friend Ammalat.... You are wounded and weak;
+I am strong from habit, and not fatigued by flight. Mount! and we may
+yet live to beat the Russians."
+
+The colour returned to Ammalat's face ... "Yes, I will live for
+revenge!" he cried: "for revenge both secret and open. Believe me,
+Sultan Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I accept your generosity!
+Henceforth I am yours; I swear by the graves of my fathers.... I am
+yours! Guide my steps, direct the strokes of my arm; and if ever,
+drowned in softness, I forget my oath, remind me of this moment, of this
+mountain peak: Ammalat Bek will awake, and his dagger will be
+lightning!"
+
+The Khan embraced him, as he lifted the excited youth into the saddle.
+"Now I behold in you the pure blood of the Emirs!" said he: "the burning
+blood of their children, which flows in our veins like the sulphur in
+the entrails of the rocks, which, ever and anon inflaming, shakes and
+topples down the crags." Steadying with one hand the wounded man in the
+saddle, the Khan began cautiously to descend the rugged croft.
+Occasionally the stones fell rattling from under their feet, or the
+horse slid downward over the smooth granite, so that they were well
+pleased to reach the mossy slopes. By degrees, creeping plants began to
+appear, spreading their green sheets; and, waving from the crevices like
+fans, they hung down in long ringlets like ribbons or flags. At length
+they reached a thick wood of nut-trees; then came the oak, the wild
+cherry, and, lower still, the tchinar,[41] and the tchindar. The
+variety, the wealth of vegetation, and the majestic silence of the
+umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary adoration of the wild
+strength of nature. Ever and anon, from the midnight darkness of the
+boughs, there dawned, like the morning, glimpses of meadows, covered
+with a fragrant carpet of flowers untrodden by the foot of man. The
+pathway at one time lost itself in the depth of the thicket; at another,
+crept forth upon the edge of the rock, below which gleamed and murmured
+a rivulet, now foaming over the stones, then again slumbering on its
+rocky bed, under the shade of the barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants,
+sparkling with their rainbow tails, flitted from shrub to shrub; flights
+of wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes in an horizontal troop,
+sometimes like a column, rising to the sky; and sunset flooded all with
+its airy purple, and light mists began to rise from the narrow gorges:
+every thing breathed the freshness of evening. Our travellers were now
+near the village of Aki, and separated only by a hill from Khounzakh. A
+low crest alone divided them from that village, when the report of a gun
+resounded from the mountain, and, like an ominous signal, was repeated
+by the echoes of the cliffs. The travellers halted irresolute: the
+echoes by degrees sank into stillness. "Our hunters!" cried Sultan
+Akhmet Khan, wiping the sweat from his face: "they expect me not, and
+think not to meet me here! Many tears of joy, and many of sorrow, do I
+bear to Khounzakh!" Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in the face of Akhmet
+Khan. Vividly does every soft and every savage sentiment play on the
+features of the Asiatic.
+
+     [41] Tchinar, the palmated-leaved plane.
+
+Another report soon interrupted his meditation; then another, and
+another. Shot answered shot, and at length thickened into a warm fire.
+"'Tis the Russians!" cried Ammalat, drawing his sabre. He pressed his
+horse with the stirrup, as though he would have leaped over the ridge at
+a single bound; but in a moment his strength failed him, and the blade
+fell ringing on the ground, as his arm dropped heavily by his side.
+"Khan!" said he, dismounting, "go to the succour of your people; your
+face will be worth more to them than a hundred warriors."
+
+The Khan heard him not; he was listening intently for the flight of the
+balls, as if he would distinguish those of the Russian from the Avarian.
+"Have they, besides the agility of the goat, stolen the wings of the
+eagle of Kazbec? Can they have reached our inaccessible fastnesses?"
+said he, leaning to the saddle, with his foot already in the stirrup.
+"Farewell, Ammalat!" he cried at length, listening to the firing, which
+now grew hotter: "I go to perish on the ruins I have made, after
+striking like a thunderbolt!" At this moment a bullet whistled by, and
+fell at his feet. Bending down and picking it up, his face was lighted
+with a smile. He quietly took his foot from the stirrup, and turning to
+Ammalat, "Mount!" said he, "you shall presently find with your own eyes
+an answer to this riddle. The Russian bullets are of lead; but this is
+copper[42]--an Avaretz, my dear countryman. Besides, it comes from the
+south, where the Russians cannot be."
+
+     [42] Having no lead, the Avaretzes use balls of copper, as they
+     possess small mines of that metal.
+
+They ascended to the summit of the crest, and before their view opened
+two villages, situated on the opposite sides of a deep ravine; from
+behind them came the firing. The inhabitants sheltering themselves
+behind rocks and hedges, were firing at each other. Between them the
+women were incessantly running, sobbing and weeping when any combatant,
+approaching the edge of the ravine, fell wounded. They carried stones,
+and, regardless of the whistling of the balls, fearlessly piled them up,
+so as to make a kind of defence. Cries of joy arose from one side or the
+other, as a wounded adversary was carried from the field; a groan of
+sorrow ascended in the air when one of their kinsmen or comrades was
+hit. Ammalat gazed at the combat for some time with surprise, a combat in
+which there was a great deal more noise than execution. At length he
+turned an enquiring eye upon the Khan.
+
+"With us these are everyday affairs!" he answered, delightedly marking
+each report. "Such skirmishes cherish among us a warlike spirit and
+warlike habits. With you, private quarrels end in a few blows of the
+dagger; among us they become the common business of whole villages, and
+any trifle is enough to occasion them. Probably they are fighting about
+some cow that has been stolen. With us it is no disgrace to steal in
+another village--the shame is, to be found out. Admire the coolness of
+our women; the balls are whizzing about like gnats, yet they pay no
+attention to them! Worthy wives and mothers of brave men! To be sure,
+there would be eternal disgrace to him who could wound a woman, yet no
+man can answer for a ball. A sharp eye may aim it; but blind chance
+carries it to the mark. But darkness is falling from heaven, and
+dividing these enemies for a moment. Let us hasten to my kinsmen."
+
+Nothing but the experience of the Khan could have saved our travellers
+from frequent falls in the precipitous descent to the river Ouzen.
+Ammalat could see scarcely any thing before him; the double veil of
+night and weakness enveloped his eyes; his head turned: he beheld, as it
+were in a dream, when they again mounted an eminence, the gate and
+watch-tower of the Khan's house. With an uncertain foot he dismounted in
+a courtyard, surrounded by shouting noukers and attendants; and he had
+hardly stepped over the grated threshold when his breath failed him--a
+deadly paleness poured its snow over the wounded man's face; and the
+young Bek, exhausted by loss of blood, fatigued by travel, hunger, and
+anguish of soul, fell senseless on the embroidered carpets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
+
+No. VI.
+
+
+THE LAY OF THE BELL.
+
+     "Vivos voco--Mortuous plango--Fulgura frango."
+
+      Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,
+        Awaits the mould of baked clay.
+      Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth--
+        THE BELL that shall be born to-day!
+            And wearily now,
+            With the sweat of the brow,
+    Shall the work win its grace in the master's eye,
+    But the blessing that hallows must come from high.
+
+    And well an earnest word beseems
+      The work the earnest hand prepares;
+    Its load more light the labour deems,
+      When sweet discourse the labour shares.
+    So let us ponder--nor in vain--
+      What strength has wrought when labour wills;
+    For who would not the fool disdain
+      Who ne'er can feel what he fulfills?
+    And well it stamps our Human Race,
+      And hence the gift TO UNDERSTAND,
+    When in the musing heart we trace
+      Whate'er we fashion with the hand.
+
+      From the fir the fagot take,
+        Keep it, heap it hard and dry,
+      That the gather'd flame may break
+        Through the furnace, wroth and high.
+            Smolt the copper within--
+            Quick--the brass with the tin,
+    That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell
+    May flow in the right course glib and well.
+
+    What now these mines so deeply shroud,
+      What Force with Fire is moulding thus,
+    Shall from yon steeple, oft and loud,
+      Speak, witnessing of us!
+    It shall, in later days unfailing,
+      Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;
+    Its solemn voice with Sorrow wailing,
+      Or choral chiming to Devotion.
+    Whatever sound in man's deep breast
+      Fate wakens, through his winding track,
+    Shall strike that metal-crowned crest,
+      Which rings the moral answer back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      See the silvery bubbles spring!
+        Good! the mass is melting now!
+      Let the salts we duly bring
+        Purge the flood, and speed the flow.
+            From the dross and the scum,
+            Pure, the fusion must come;
+    For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,
+    That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.
+
+    That voice, with merry music rife,
+      The cherish'd child shall welcome in;
+    What time the rosy dreams of life,
+      In the first slumber's arms begin.
+    As yet in Time's dark womb unwarning,
+      Repose the days, or foul or fair;
+    And watchful o'er that golden morning,
+      The Mother-Love's untiring care!
+
+      And swift the years like arrows fly--
+      No more with girls content to play,
+      Bounds the proud Boy upon his way,
+      Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,
+      With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;
+      And, wearied with the wish to roam,
+      Again seeks, stranger-like, the Father-Home.
+      And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks
+        Out from its native morning skies,
+      With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,
+        The Virgin stands before his eyes.
+      A nameless longing seizes him!
+        From all his wild companions flown;
+      Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;
+        He wanders all alone.
+      Blushing, he glides where'er she move;
+        Her greeting can transport him;
+      To every mead to deck his love,
+        The happy wild flowers court him!
+      Sweet Hope--and tender Longing--ye
+        The growth of Life's first Age of Gold;
+      When the heart, swelling, seems to see
+        The gates of heaven unfold!
+    O Love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,
+    Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Browning o'er the pipes are simmering,
+        Dip this fairy rod within;
+      If like glass the surface glimmering,
+        Then the casting may begin.
+            Brisk, brisk to the rest--
+            Quick!--the fusion to test;
+    And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign,
+    If the ductile and brittle united combine.
+
+    For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,
+    And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,
+      Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong:
+    So be it with thee, if for ever united,
+    The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;
+      Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.
+
+    Lovely, thither are they bringing,
+      With her virgin wreath, the Bride!
+    To the love-feast clearly ringing,
+      Tolls the church-bell far and wide!
+    With that sweetest holyday,
+      Must the May of Life depart;
+    With the cestus loosed--away
+      Flies ILLUSION from the heart!
+        Yet Love lingers lonely,
+          When Passion is mute,
+        And the blossoms may only
+          Give way to the fruit.
+
+        The Husband must enter
+          The hostile life,
+          With struggle and strife,
+          To plant or to watch,
+          To snare or to snatch,
+          To pray and importune,
+        Must wager and venture
+          And hunt down his fortune!
+      Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,
+      And the garners are fill'd with the gold of the grain,
+      Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!
+        Within sits Another,
+          The thrifty Housewife;
+        The mild one, the mother--
+          Her home is her life.
+        In its circle she rules,
+        And the daughters she schools,
+          And she cautions the boys,
+        With a bustling command,
+        And a diligent hand
+          Employ'd she employs;
+        Gives order to store,
+        And the much makes the more;
+    Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,
+    And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;
+    And she hoards in the presses, well polish'd and full,
+    The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;
+    Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavour
+    Rests never!
+      Blithe the Master (where the while
+      From his roof he sees them smile)
+        Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;
+      There, the beams projecting far,
+      And the laden store-house are,
+      And the granaries bow'd beneath
+        The blessings of the golden grain;
+      There, in undulating motion,
+      Wave the corn-fields like an ocean.
+      Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:--
+      "My house is built upon a rock,
+      And sees unmoved the stormy shock
+        Of waves that fret below!"
+      What chain so strong, what girth so great,
+      To bind the giant form of Fate?--
+        Swift are the steps of Woe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now the casting may begin;
+        See the breach indented there:
+      Ere we run the fusion in,
+        Halt--and speed the pious prayer!
+          Pull the bung out--
+          See around and about
+    What vapour, what vapour--God help us!--has risen?--
+    Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!
+
+    What, friend, is like the might of fire
+    When man can watch and wield the ire?
+    Whate'er we shape or work, we owe
+    Still to that heaven-descended glow.
+    But dread the heaven-descended glow,
+    When from their chain its wild wings go,
+      When, where it listeth, wide and wild
+      Sweeps the free Nature's free-born Child!
+      When the Frantic One fleets,
+        While no force can withstand,
+      Through the populous streets
+        Whirling ghastly the brand;
+      For the Element hates
+      What Man's labour creates,
+        And the work of his hand!
+      Impartially out from the cloud,
+        Or the curse or the blessing may fall!
+      Benignantly out from the cloud
+        Come the dews, the revivers of all!
+      Avengingly our from the cloud
+        Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!
+      Hark--a wail from the steeple!--aloud
+      The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!
+        Look--look--red as blood
+          All on high!
+        It is not the daylight that fills with its flood
+          The sky!
+        What a clamour awaking
+        Roars up through the street,
+        What a hell-vapour breaking
+          Rolls on through the street,
+        And higher and higher
+        Aloft moves the Column of Fire!
+        Through the vistas and rows
+        Like a whirlwind it goes,
+        And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.
+      Beams are crackling--posts are shrinking--
+      Walls are sinking--windows clinking--
+        Children crying--
+        Mothers flying--
+    And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)
+    Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!
+    Hurry and skurry--away--away,
+    And the face of the night is as clear as day!
+        As the links in a chain,
+        Again and again
+      Flies the bucket from hand to hand;
+        High in arches up rushing
+        The engines are gushing,
+    And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,
+    With a roar on the breast of the element bounds.
+      To the grain and the fruits,
+      Through the rafters and beams,
+    Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!
+    As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,
+      Rush the flames to the sky
+      Giant-high;
+    And at length,
+    Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!
+    With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,
+    And submits to his doom!
+        Desolate
+      The place, and dread
+      For storms the barren bed.
+      In the deserted gaps that casements were,
+      Looks forth despair;
+      And, where the roof hath been,
+      Peer the pale clouds within!
+
+      One look
+        Upon the grave
+        Of all that Fortune gave
+      The loiterer took--
+    Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,
+    One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left--
+    _The faces that he loves_! He counts them o'er--
+    And, see--not one dear look is missing from _that_ store!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now clasp'd the bell within the clay--
+        The mould the mingled metals fill--
+      Oh, may it, sparkling into day,
+        Reward the labour and the skill!
+          Alas! should it fail,
+          For the mould may be frail--
+    And still with our hope must be mingled the fear--
+    And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!
+
+      To the dark womb of sacred earth
+        This labour of our hands is given,
+      As seeds that wait the second birth,
+        And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!
+      Ah seeds, how dearer far than they
+        We bury in the dismal tomb,
+      Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray
+      That suns beyond the realm of day
+        May warm them into bloom!
+
+        From the steeple
+          Tolls the bell,
+        Deep and heavy,
+          The death-knell!
+      Measured and solemn, guiding up the road
+      A wearied wanderer to the last abode.
+        It is that worship'd wife--
+        It is that faithful mother![43]
+    Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,
+    From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.
+    Far from those blithe companions, born
+    Of her, and blooming in their morn;
+    On whom, when couch'd, her heart above
+    So often look'd the Mother-Love!
+
+    Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,
+      And never, never more to come--
+    She dwells within the shadowy land,
+      Who was the Mother of that Home!
+    How oft they miss that tender guide,
+      The care--the watch--the face--the MOTHER--
+    And where she sate the babes beside,
+      Sits with unloving looks--ANOTHER!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    While the mass is cooling now,
+      Let the labour yield to leisure,
+    As the bird upon the bough,
+      Loose the travail to the pleasure.
+        When the soft stars awaken,
+        Each task be forsaken!
+
+    And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,
+    If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!
+
+    Gleesome and gay,
+    On the welcoming way,
+    Through the wood glides the wanderer home!
+    And the eye and ear are meeting,
+    Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating--
+    Now, the wonted shelter near,
+    Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;
+    Creaking now the heavy wain,
+    Reels with the happy harvest grain.
+    Which with many-coloured leaves,
+    Glitters the garland on the sheaves;
+    And the mower and the maid
+    Bound to the dance beneath the shade!
+    Desert street, and quiet mart;--
+    Silence is in the city's heart;
+    Round the taper burning cheerly,
+    Gather the groups HOME loves so dearly;
+    And the gate the town before
+    Heavily swings with sullen roar!
+
+      Though darkness is spreading
+        O'er earth--the Upright
+      And the Honest, undreading,
+        Look safe on the night.
+      Which the evil man watching in awe,
+      For the Eye of the Night is the Law!
+        Bliss-dower'd: O daughter of the skies,
+    Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ
+    Blends like to like in light and joy--
+    Builder of Cities, who of old
+    Call'd the wild man from waste and wold.
+    And in his hut thy presence stealing,
+    Roused each familiar household feeling;
+      And, best of all the happy ties,
+    The centre of the social band,--
+    _The Instinct of the Fatherland!_
+
+    United thus--each helping each,
+      Brisk work the countless hands for ever;
+    For nought its power to strength can teach,
+    Like Emulation and Endeavour!
+    Thus link'd the master with the man,
+      Each in his rights can each revere,
+    And while they march in freedom's van,
+      Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!
+    To freemen labour is renown!
+      Who works--gives blessings and commands;
+    Kings glory in the orb and crown--
+      Be ours the glory of our hands.
+
+    Long in these walls--long may we greet
+    Your footfalls, Peace and concord sweet!
+    Distant the day, Oh! distant far,
+    When the rude hordes of trampling War
+      Shall scare the silent vale;
+      And where,
+      Now the sweet heaven when day doth leave
+      The air;
+      Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of Eve;
+    Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,
+    From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Now, its destined task fulfill'd,
+        Asunder break the prison-mould;
+      Let the goodly Bell we build,
+        Eye and heart alike behold.
+          The hammer down heave,
+          Till the cover it cleave.
+    For the Bell to rise up to the freedom of day,
+    Destruction must seize on the shape of the clay.
+
+    To break the mould, the master may,
+      If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;
+    But woe, when on its fiery way
+      The metal seeks itself to pour.
+    Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,
+      Exploding from its shattered home,
+    And glaring forth, as from a hell,
+      Behold the red Destruction come!
+    When rages strength that has no reason,
+    _There_ breaks the mould before the season;
+    When numbers burst what bound before,
+    Woe to the State that thrives no more!
+    Yea, woe, when in the City's heart,
+      The latent spark to flame is blown;
+    And Millions from their silence start,
+      To claim, without a guide, their own!
+    Discordant howls the warning Bell,
+      Proclaiming discord wide and far,
+    And, born but things of peace to tell,
+      Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:
+    "Freedom! Equality!"--to blood,
+      Rush the roused people at the sound!
+    Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
+      And banded murder closes round!
+    The hyaena-shapes, that women were!
+      Jest with the horrors they survey;
+    They hound--they rend--they mangle there--
+      As panthers with their prey!
+    Nought rests to hallow--burst the ties
+      Of life's sublime and reverent awe;
+    Before the Vice the Virtue flies,
+      And Universal Crime is Law!
+    Man fears the lion's kingly tread;
+      Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;
+    And still the dreadliest of the dread,
+      Is Man himself in error!
+    No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes
+      The Blind!--Why place it in his hand?
+    It lights not him--it but consumes
+      The City and the Land!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!
+        The kernel bursts its husk--behold
+      From the dull clay the metal rise,
+        Clear shining, as a star of gold!
+          Neck and lip, but as one beam,
+          It laughs like a sun-beam.
+    And even the scutcheon, clear graven, shall tell
+    That the art of a master has fashion'd the Bell!
+
+    Come in--come in
+    My merry men--we'll form a ring
+    The new-born labour christening;
+      And "CONCORD" we will name her!--
+    To union may her heart-felt call
+      In brother-love attune us all!
+    May she the destined glory win
+      For which the master sought to frame her--
+    Aloft--(all earth's existence under,)
+      In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar
+    To dwell--the Neighbour of the Thunder,
+      The Borderer of the Star!
+    Be hers above a voice to raise
+      Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,
+    Who, while they move, their Maker praise,
+      And lead around the wreathed year!
+    To solemn and eternal things
+      We dedicate her lips sublime!--
+    To fan--as hourly on she swings
+      The silent plumes of Time!--
+    No pulse--no heart--no feeling hers!
+      She lends the warning voice to Fate;
+    And still companions, while she stirs,
+      The changes of the Human State!
+    So may she teach us, as her tone
+      But now so mighty, melts away--
+    That earth no life which earth has known
+      From the Last Silence can delay!
+
+    Slowly now the cords upheave her!
+      From her earth-grave soars the Bell;
+    Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her
+      In the Music-Realm to dwell!
+        Up--upwards--yet raise--
+        She has risen--she sways.
+    Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,
+    And oh, may thy first sound be hallow'd to--PEACE![44]
+
+     [43] The translation adheres to the original, in forsaking the
+     rhyme in these lines and some others.
+
+     [44] Written in the time of French war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VOTIVE TABLETS.
+
+    What the God taught me--what, through life, my friend
+      And aid hath been,
+    With pious hand, and grateful, I suspend
+      The temple walls within.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE GOOD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+    Foster the Good, and thou shalt tend the Flower
+      Already sown on earth;--
+    Foster the Beautiful, and every hour
+      Thou call'st new flowers to birth!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO ----.
+
+    Give me that which thou know'st--I'll receive and attend;--
+    But thou giv'st me _thyself_--pri'thee spare me, my friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+    That which hath been can INTELLECT declare,
+      What Nature built--it imitates or gilds--
+    And REASON builds o'er Nature--but in air--
+      _Genius_ alone in Nature--Nature builds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CORRECTNESS--(Free translation.)
+
+    The calm correctness where no fault we see
+    Attests Art's loftiest--or its least degree;
+    Alike the smoothness of the surface shows
+    The Pool's dull stagnor--the great Sea's repose!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE IMITATOR.
+
+    Good out of good--_that_ art is known to all--
+    But Genius from the bad the good can call--
+    Thou, mimic, not from leading strings escaped,
+    Work'st but the matter that's already shaped!
+    The already shaped a nobler hand awaits--
+    All matter asks a spirit that creates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MASTER.
+
+    The herd of Scribes by what they tell us
+    Show all in which their wits excel us;
+    But the true Master we behold
+    In what his art leaves--just untold!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO THE MYSTIC.
+
+    That is the real mystery which around
+      All life, is found;--
+    Which still before all eyes for aye has been,
+      Nor eye hath seen!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ASTRONOMICAL WORKS.
+
+    All measureless, all infinite in awe,
+      Heaven to great souls is given--
+    And yet the sprite of littleness can draw
+      Down to its inch--the Heaven!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE DIVISION OF RANKS.
+
+    Yes, there's a patent of nobility
+      Above the meanness of our common state;
+    With what they _do_ the vulgar natures buy
+      Its titles--and with what they _are_, the great!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THEOPHANY.
+
+    When draw the Prosperous near me, I forget
+      The gods of heaven; but where
+    Sorrow and suffering in my sight are set,
+      The gods, I feel, are there!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE CHIEF END OF MAN.
+
+    What the chief end of Man?--Behold yon tree,
+      And let it teach thee, Friend!
+    _Will_ what that will-less yearns for;--and for thee
+      Is compass'd Man's chief end!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ULYSSES.
+
+    To gain his home all oceans he explored--
+    Here Scylla frown'd--and there Charybdis roar'd;
+    Horror on sea--and horror on the land--
+    In hell's dark boat he sought the spectre land,
+    Till borne--a slumberer--to his native spot
+    He woke--and sorrowing, knew his country not!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOVE TO HERCULES.
+
+    'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,
+    But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE SOWER.
+
+    See, full of hope, thou trustest to the earth
+      The golden seed, and waitest till the spring
+    Summons the buried to a happier birth;
+      But in Time's furrow duly scattering,
+    Think'st thou, how deeds by wisdom sown may be,
+      Silently ripen'd for Eternity?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MERCHANT.
+
+    Where sails the ship?--It leads the Tyrian forth
+    For the rich amber of the liberal North.
+    Be kind ye seas--winds lend your gentlest wing,
+    May in each creek, sweet wells restoring spring!--
+    To you, ye gods, belong the Merchant!--o'er
+    The waves, his sails the wide world's goods explore;
+    And, all the while, wherever waft the gales,
+    The wide world's good sails with him as he sails!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+COLUMBUS.
+
+    Steer on, bold Sailor--Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,
+    And hopeless at the helm may drop the weak and weary hand,
+    YET EVER--EVER TO THE WEST, for there the coast must lie,
+    And dim it dawns and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;
+    Yea, trust the guiding God--and go along the floating grave,
+    Though hid till now--yet now, behold the New World o'er the wave!
+    With Genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,
+    And ever what the One foretels the Other shall fulfil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE TO THE NORTHERN WANDERER.
+
+    And o'er the river hast thou past, and o'er the mighty sea,
+    And o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me;
+    To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows,
+    And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes--
+    Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here,
+    But art thou nearer now to me--or I to thee more near?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS.
+
+    What the Grecian arts created,
+    May the victor Gaul, elated,
+      Bear with banners to his strand.[45]
+    In museums many a row,
+    May the conquering showman show
+      To his startled Fatherland!
+
+    Mute to him, they crowd the halls,
+    Ever on their pedestals
+      Lifeless stand they!--He alone
+    Who alone, the Muses seeing,
+    Clasps--can warm them into being;
+    The Muses to the Vandal--stone!
+
+     [45] To the shore of the Seine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE POETRY OF LIFE.
+
+    "Who would himself with shadows entertain,
+    Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,
+    Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?
+    Though with my dream my heaven should be resign'd--
+    Though the free-pinion'd soul that now can dwell
+    In the large empire of the Possible,
+    This work-day life with iron chains may bind,
+    Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,
+    And solemn duty to our acts decreed,
+    Meets us thus tutor'd in the hour of need,
+    With a more sober and submissive mind!
+    How front Necessity--yet bid thy youth
+    Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, Truth."
+
+    So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I;
+    As from Experience--that sure port serene--
+    Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,
+    The summer glory withers from the scene,
+    Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,
+    The godlike images that seem'd so fair!
+    Silent the playful Muse--the rosy Hours
+    Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers
+    Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair.
+    Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre,
+    Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;--
+    The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire
+    With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life.
+    The world seems what it _is_--A Grave! and Love
+    Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above,
+    And _sees_!--He sees but images of clay
+    Where he dream'd gods; and sighs--and glides away.
+    The youngness of the Beautiful grows old,
+    And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold;
+    And in the crowd of joys--upon thy throne
+    Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CALEB STUKELY.
+
+PART XII.
+
+THE PARSONAGE.
+
+
+It was not without misgiving that I knocked modestly at the door of Mr
+Jehu Tomkins. For himself, there was no solidity in his moral
+composition, nothing to grapple or rely upon. He was a small weak man of
+no character at all, and but for his powerful wife and active partner,
+would have become the smallest of unknown quantities in the respectable
+parish that contained him. Upon his own weak shoulders he could not have
+sustained the burden of an establishment, and must inevitably have
+dwindled into the lightest of light porters, or the most aged of
+errand-boys. Nothing could have saved him from the operation of a law,
+as powerful and certain as that of gravitation, in virtue of which the
+soft and empty-headed of this world walk to the wall, and resign,
+without a murmur, their places to their betters. As for the deaconess, I
+have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor
+of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in
+reference to her. This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the
+knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales
+that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may
+be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,--and carry hearts
+about with them as easily as they carry bags.
+
+My first application was unsuccessful. The deacon was not at home. "Mr
+Tomkins and his lady had gone _to hear_ the Reverend Doctor
+Whitefroth,"--a northern and eccentric light, now blazing for a time in
+the metropolis. It is a curious fact, and worthy to be recorded, that Mr
+Tomkins, and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist whom I had hitherto
+encountered, never professed to visit the house of prayer with any other
+object than that of _hearing_. It was never by any accident to worship
+or to pray. What, in truth was the vast but lowly looking building, into
+which hundreds crowded with the dapper deacon at their head, sabbath
+after sabbath--what but a temple sacred to vanity and excitement,
+eloquence and perspiration! Which one individual, taken at random from
+the concourse, was not ready to declare that his business there that day
+was "to hear the dear good man," and nothing else? If you could lay
+bare--as, thank Heaven, you cannot--your fellow-creature's heart,
+whither would you behold stealing away the adoration that, in such a
+place, in such a time, is due to one alone--whither, if not to Mr
+Clayton? But let this pass.
+
+I paid a second visit to my friend, and gained admittance. It was about
+half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and the shop had been closed
+some twenty minutes before. I was ushered into a well-furnished room
+behind the shop, where sat the firm--Mrs Jehu and the junior partner.
+The latter looked into his lady's face, perceived a smile upon it, and
+then--but not till then, he offered me his hand, and welcomed me with
+much apparent warmth. This ceremony over, Mr Tomkins grew fidgety and
+uneasy, and betrayed a great anxiety to get up a conversation which he
+had not heart enough to set a going. Mrs Tomkins, a woman of the world,
+evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling, and in peace. I perceived
+immediately that I must state at once the object of my visit, and I
+proceeded to the task.
+
+"Mrs Tomkins," I commenced.
+
+"Sir?" said that lady, and then a postman's knock brought us to a stop,
+and Jehu skipped across the room to listen at the door.
+
+"That's him, my dear Jemima," exclaimed the linen-draper, "I know his
+knock," and then he skipped as quickly to his chair again.
+
+The door of the apartment was opened by a servant girl, who entered the
+room alone and approached her mistress with a card. Mrs Tomkins looked
+at it through her eye-glass, said "she was most happy," and the servant
+then retired. The card was placed upon the table near me, and, as I
+believe, for my inspection. I took it up, and read the following words,
+"_Mr Stanislaus Levisohn_." They were engraven in the centre of the
+paper, and were surrounded by a circle of rays, which in its turn was
+enveloped in a circle of clouds. In the very corner of the card, and in
+very small characters, the words "_general merchant_" were written.
+
+There was a noise of shoe-cleaning outside the door for about five
+minutes, then the door was opened again by the domestic, and a
+remarkable gentleman walked very slowly in. He was a tall individual,
+with small cunning eyes, black eye-brows, and a beard. He was rather
+shabbily attired, and not washed with care. He had thick boorish hands,
+and he smelt unpleasantly of tobacco smoke; an affected grin at variance
+with every feature, was planted on his face, and sickened an
+unprejudiced observer at the very first gaze. His mode of uttering
+English betrayed him for a foreigner. He was a native of Poland. Before
+uttering a syllable, the interesting stranger walked to a corner of the
+room, turned himself to the wall, and muttered a few undistinguishable
+words. He then bowed lowly to the company, and took a chair, grinning
+all the while.
+
+"Is that a Polish move?" asked Mr Tomkins.
+
+"It vos de coshtom mit de anshent tribes, my tear sare, vor alles tings,
+to recommend de family to de protection of de hevins. Vy not now mit all
+goot Christians?"
+
+"Why not indeed?" added Mrs Tomkins. "May I offer you a glass of raisin
+wine?"
+
+"Tank you. For de shtomack's sake--yase."
+
+A glass was poured out. It was but decent to offer me another. I paid my
+compliments to the hostess and the gentlemen, and was about to drink it
+off, when the enlightened foreigner called upon me in a loud voice to
+desist.
+
+"Shtay, mein young friend--ve are not de heathen and de cannibal. It is
+our privilege to live in de Christian society mit de Christian lady. Ve
+most ask blessing--alvays--never forget--you excuse--vait tree minutes."
+
+It was not for me to protest against so pious a movement, albeit it
+presented itself somewhat inopportunely and out of place. Mr Levisohn
+covered his face with one hand, and murmured a few words. The last only
+reached me. It was "Amen," and this was rather heaved up in a sigh, than
+articulately expressed.
+
+"Do you like the wine?" asked Jehu, as if he thought it superfine.
+
+"Yase, I like moch--especially de sherry and de port."
+
+Jehu smiled, but made no reply.
+
+Mrs Tomkins supposed that port and sherry were favourite beverages in
+Poland, but, for her part, she had found that nothing agreed so well
+with British stomachs as the native wines.
+
+"Ah! my lady," said the Pole, "ve can give up very moch so long ve got
+British religions."
+
+"Very true, indeed," answered Mrs Tomkins. "Pray, Mr Levisohn, what may
+be your opinion of the lost sheep? Do you think they will come into the
+fold during our time?"
+
+Before the gentleman replies, it may be proper to state on his behalf,
+that he had never given his questioner any reason to suppose that he was
+better informed on such mysterious subjects than herself. The history of
+his introduction into the family of the linen-draper is very short. He
+had been for some years connected with Mr Tomkins in the way of
+business, having supplied that gentleman with all the genuine foreign,
+but certainly English, perfumery, that was retailed with considerable
+profit in his over-nice and pious establishment. Mrs Tomkins, no less
+zealous in the cause of the church than that of her own shop, at length,
+and all on a sudden, resolved to set about his conversion, and to
+present him to the chapel as a brand plucked with her own hand from the
+burning. As a preliminary step, he was invited to supper, and treated
+with peculiar respect. The matter was gently touched upon, but
+discussion postponed until another occasion. Mr Levisohn being very
+shrewd, very needy, and enjoying no particular principles of morality
+and religion, perceived immediately the object of his hostess, met her
+more than half-way in her Christian purposes, and accepted her numerous
+invitations to tea and supper with the most affectionate readiness.
+Within two months he was received into the bosom of the church, and
+became as celebrated for the depth and intensity of his belief as for
+the earnestness and promptitude with which he attended the meetings of
+the brethren, particularly those in which eating and drinking did not
+constitute the least important part of the proceedings. Being a
+foreigner, he was listened to with the deepest attention, very often
+indeed to his serious annoyance, for his ignorance was awful, and his
+assurance, great as it was, not always sufficient to get him clear of
+his difficulties. His foreign accent, however, worked wonders for him,
+and whenever too hard pressed, afforded him a secure and happy retreat.
+An unmeaning grin, and "_me not pronounce_," had saved him from
+precipices, down which an Englishman, _caeteris paribus_, must
+unquestionably have been dashed.
+
+"Vill dey come?" said Mr Levisohn, in answer to the question. "Yase,
+certainly, if dey like, I tink."
+
+"Ah, sir, I fear you are a latitudinarian," said the lady.
+
+"I hope Hevin, my dear lady, vill forgive me for dat, and all my
+wickedness. I am a shinner, I shtink!"
+
+I looked at the converted gentleman, at the same moment that Mrs Jehu
+assured him that it would be a great thing if they were all as satisfied
+of their condition as he might be. "Your strong convictions of your
+worthlessness is alone a proof," she added, "of your accepted state."
+
+"My lady," continued the humble Stanislaus, "I am rotten, I am a tief, a
+blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket, a housebreak, a sticker mit de
+knife. I vish somebody would call me names all de day long, because I
+forget sometime dat I am de nashty vurm of de creation. I tink I hire a
+boy to call me names, and make me not forget. Oh, my lady, I alvays
+remember those fine words you sing--
+
+    'If I could read my title clear
+      To manshions in de shkies,
+    I say farevell to every fear,
+      And vipe my veeping eyes.'"
+
+"That is so conscientious of you. Pray, my dear sir, is there an
+Establishment in Poland? or have you Independent churches?"
+
+"Ah, my dear lady, we have noting at all!"
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"Yase, it is possible--it is true."
+
+"Who could have thought it! What! nothing?"
+
+"Noting at all, my lady. Do not ask me again, I pray you. It is
+frightful to a goot Christian to talk dese tings."
+
+"What is your opinion of the Arminian doctrine, Mr Stanislaus?"
+
+"Do you mean de doctrine?" enquired Stanislaus, slowly, as though he
+found some difficulty in answering the question.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir."
+
+"I tink," said the gentleman, after some delay, "it vould he very goot
+if were not for someting."
+
+"Dear me!" cried Mrs Jehu, "that is so exactly my opinion!"
+
+"Den dere is noting more to be said about dat," continued Stanislaus,
+interrupting her; "and I hope you vill not ask dese deep questions, my
+dear lady, vich are not at all proper to be answered, and vich put me
+into de low spirits. Shall ve sing a hymn?"
+
+"By all means," exclaimed the hostess, who immediately made preparations
+for the ceremony. Hymn-books were introduced, and the servant-maid
+ordered up, and then a quartet was performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs
+Tomkins, her husband, and Betsy. The subject of the song was the
+courtship of Isaac. Two verses only have remained in my memory, and the
+manner in which they were given out by the fervent Stanislaus will never
+be forgotten. They ran thus:--
+
+    "Ven Abraham's servant to procure
+      A vife for Isaac vent,
+    He met Rebekah, tould his vish,
+      Her parents gave conshent.
+
+    'Shtay,' Satan, my old master, cries,
+      'Or force shall thee detain.'
+    'Hinder me not, I vill be gone,
+      I vish to break my chain.'"
+
+This being concluded, Mr Tomkins asked Mr Levisohn what he had to say in
+the business line, to which Mr Levisohn replied, "Someting very goot,
+but should he not vait until after soppare?" whereupon Mr Tomkins gave
+his lady a significant leer, and the latter retired, evidently to
+prepare the much desired repast. Then did little Jehu turn
+confidentially to Stanislaus, and ask him when he meant to deliver that
+ere _conac_ that he had promised him so long ago.
+
+"Ven Providence, my tear dikkon, paremits--I expect a case of goots at
+de cushtom-house every day; but my friend vot examins de marchandis, and
+vot saves me de duties ven I makes it all right mit him, is vary ill, I
+am sorry for to say, and ve most vait, mit Christian patience, my dear
+sare, till he get well. You see dat?"
+
+"Oh, yes; that's clear enough. Well, Stanny, I only hope that fellow
+won't die. I don't think you'd find it so easy to make it _all right_
+with any other chap; that's all!"
+
+"I hope he vill not die. Ve mosht pray dat he live, my dear dikkon. I
+tink it vill be vell if der goot Mr Clayton pray mit der church for him.
+You shall speak for him."
+
+"Well, what have you done about the _Eau de Cologne_?" continued Jehu
+Tomkins. "Have you nailed the fellow?"
+
+"It vos specially about dis matter dat I vish to see you, my dear sare.
+I persvade der man to sell ten cases. He be very nearly vot you call in
+der mess. He valk into de Gazette next week. He shtarve now. I pity him.
+De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I give fifty shilling--two pound ten.
+He buy meat for de childs, and is tankful. I take ten shillings for my
+trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit vary little."
+
+"Any good bills in the market, Stanny?"
+
+Stanislaus Levisohn winked.
+
+"Ho--you don't say so," said the deacon. "Have you got 'em with you?"
+
+"After soppare, my dear sare," answered Stanislaus, who looked at me,
+and winked again significantly at Jehu.
+
+Mrs Tomkins returned, accompanied by the vocal Betsy. The cloth was
+spread, and real silver forks, and fine cut tumblers, and blue plates
+with scripture patterns, speedily appeared. Then came a dish of fried
+sausages and parsley--then baked potatoes--then lamb chops. Then we all
+sat round the table, and then, against all order and propriety, Mrs Jehu
+grossly and publicly insulted her husband at his own board, by calling
+upon the enlightened foreigner to ask a blessing upon the meal.
+
+The company sat down; but scarcely were we seated before Stanislaus
+resumed.
+
+"I tank you, my tear goot Mrs Tomkins for dat shop mit der brown, ven it
+comes to my turn to be sarved. It look just der ting."
+
+Mrs Jehu served her guest immediately.
+
+"I vill take a sossage, tear lady, also, if you please."
+
+"And a baked potato?"
+
+"And a baked potato? Yase."
+
+He was served.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Christian lady, have you got, perhaps, der littel
+pickel-chesnut and der crimson cabbage?"
+
+"Mr Tomkins, go down-stairs and get the pickles," said the mistress of
+the house, and Tomkins vanished like a mouse on tiptoe.
+
+Before he could return, Stanislaus had eaten more than half his chop,
+and discovered that, after all, "it was _not_ just the ting." Mrs Jehu
+entreated him to try another. He declined at first; but at length
+suffered himself to be persuaded. Four chops had graced the dish
+originally; the remaining two were divided equally between the lady and
+myself. I begged that my share might be left for the worthy host, but
+receiving a recommendation from his wife "not to mind _him_," I said no
+more, but kept Mr Stanislaus Levisohn in countenance.
+
+"I hope you'll find it to your liking, Mr Stukely," said our hostess.
+
+"Mishter vat?" exclaimed the foreigner, looking quickly up. "I tink
+I"----
+
+"What is the matter, my dear sir?" enquired the lady of the house.
+
+"Noting, my tear friend, I tought der young gentleman vos a poor
+unconverted sinner dat I met a long time ago. Dat is all. Ve talk of
+someting else."
+
+Has the reader forgotten the dark-visaged individual, who at the
+examination of my lamented father before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy
+made his appearance in company with Mr Levy and the ready Ikey? Him I
+mean of the vivid imagination, who swore to facts which were no facts at
+all, and whom an unpoetic jury sentenced to vile imprisonment for wilful
+perjury? _There he sat_, transformed into a Pole, bearded and whiskered,
+and the hair of his head close clipped, but in every other regard the
+same as when the constable invited him to forsake a too prosaic and
+ungrateful world: and had Mr Levisohn been wise and guarded, the
+discovery would never have been made by me; for we had met but once
+before, then only for a short half hour, and under agitating
+circumstances. But my curiosity and attention once roused by his
+exclamation, it was impossible to mistake my man. I fixed my eye upon
+him, and the harder he pulled at his chop, and the more he attempted to
+evade my gaze, the more satisfied was I that a villain and an impostor
+was seated amongst us. Thinking, absurdly enough, to do my host and
+hostess a lasting service, I determined without delay to unmask the
+pretended saint, and to secure his victims from the designs he purposed.
+
+"Mr Levisohn," I said immediately, "you have told the truth--we have met
+before."
+
+"Nevare, my tear friend, you mistake; nevare in my life, upon my vurd."
+
+"Mrs Tomkins," I continued, rising, "I should not be worthy of your
+hospitality if I did not at once make known to you the character of that
+man. He is a convicted criminal. I have myself known him to be guilty of
+the grossest practices." Mr Levisohn dropped his chop, turned his greasy
+face up, and then looked round the room, and endeavoured to appear
+unconcerned, innocent, and amazed all at once. At this moment Jehu
+entered the room with the pickles, and the face of the deaconess grew
+fearfully stern.
+
+"Were you ever in the Court of Bankruptcy, Mr Levisohn?" I continued.
+
+"I have never been out of London, my good sare. You labour under de
+mistake.--I excuse you. Ah!" he cried our suddenly, as if a new idea had
+struck him very hard; "I see now vot it is. I explain. You take me for
+somebody else."
+
+"I do not, sir. I accuse you publicly of having committed perjury of the
+most shameless kind, and I can prove you guilty of the charge. Do you
+know a person of the name of Levy?"
+
+Mr Stanislaus looked to the ceiling after the manner of individuals who
+desire, or who do not desire, as the case may be, to call a subject to
+remembrance. "No," he answered, after a long pause; "certainly not. I
+never hear dat name."
+
+"Beware of him, Mrs Tomkins," I continued, "he is an impostor, a
+disgrace to mankind, and to the faith which he professes."
+
+"What do you mean by that, you impertinent young man?" said Mrs Tomkins,
+her blood rising to her face, herself rising from her chair. "I should
+have thought that a man who had been so recently expelled from his
+church would have had more decency. A pretty person you must be, to
+bring a charge of this kind against so good a creature as that."
+
+"No, do not say dat," interposted Stanny; "I am not goot. I am a brute
+beast."
+
+"Mr Tomkins," continued the lady, "I don't know what object that person
+has in disturbing the peace of our family, or why he comes here at all
+to-night. He is a mischief-making, hardened young man, or he would never
+have come to what he has. Well, I'm sure--What will Satan put into his
+head next!"
+
+"I vould vish you be not angry. Der young gentleman is, I dare say, vary
+goot at heart. He is labouring under de deloosions."
+
+"Mr Levisohn, pardon me, I am not. Proofs exist, and I can bring them to
+convict you."
+
+"Do you hear that, Mr Tomkins. Were you ever insulted so before? Are you
+master in your own house?"
+
+"What shall I do?" said Jehu, trembling with excitement at the door.
+
+"Do! What! Give him his hat, turn him out."
+
+"Oh, my dear goot Christian friends," said Mr Levisohn, imploringly; "de
+booels of der Christian growls ven he shees dese sights; vot is de goot
+of to fight? It is shtoopid. Let me be der peacemaker. Der yong man has
+been drink, perhaps. I forgive him from te bottom of my heart. If ve
+quarrel ve fight. If ve fight ve lose every ting.
+
+    'So Samson, ven his hair vos lost,
+    Met the Philistines to his cost,
+    Shook his vain limbs in shad shurprise,
+    Made feeble fight, and lost his eyes.'"
+
+"Mr Tomkins," I exclaimed, "I court inquiry, I can obtain proofs."
+
+"We want none of your proofs, you backslider," cried the deaconess.
+
+"Madam, you"----
+
+"Get out of the house, ambassador of Satan! Mr Tomkins, will you tell
+him instantly to go?"
+
+"Go!" squealed Tomkins from the door, not advancing an inch.
+
+I seized my hat, and left the table.
+
+"You will be sorry for this, sir," said I; "and you, madam"----
+
+"Don't talk to me, you bad man. If you don't go this minute I'll spring
+the rattle and have up the watchmen."
+
+I did not attempt to say another word. I left the room, and hurried from
+the house. I had hardly shut the street door before it was violently
+opened again, and the head of Mr Levisohn made itself apparent.
+
+"Go home," exclaimed that gentleman, "and pray to be shaved, you
+shtoopid ass."
+
+It was not many days after the enacting of this scene, that I entered
+upon my duties as the instructor of the infant children of my friend. It
+was useless to renew my application to the deacon, and I abandoned the
+idea. The youngest of my pupils was the lisping Billy. It was my honour
+to introduce him at the very porch of knowledge--to place him on the
+first step of learning's ladder--to make familiar to him the simple
+letters of his native tongue, in whose mysterious combinations the
+mighty souls of men appear and speak. The lesson of the alphabet was the
+first that I gave, and a heavy sadness depressed and humbled me when, as
+the child repeated wonderingly after me, letter by letter, I could not
+but feel deeply and acutely the miserable blighting of my youthful
+promises. How long was it ago--it seemed but yesterday, when the sun
+used to shine brightly into my own dear bed-room, and awake me with its
+first gush of light, telling my ready fancy that he came to rouse me
+from inaction, and to encourage me to my labours. Oh, happy labours!
+Beloved books! What joy I had amongst you! The house was silent--the
+city's streets tranquil as the breath of morning. I heard nothing but
+the glorious deeds ye spoke of, and saw only the worthies that were but
+dust, when centuries now passed were yet unborn, but whose immortal
+spirits are vouchsafed still to elevate man, and cheer him onward. How
+intense and sweet was our communion; and as I read and read on, how
+gratefully repose crept over me; how difficult it seemed to think
+unkindly of the world, or to believe in all the tales of human
+selfishness and cruelty with which the old will ever mock the ear and
+dull the heart of the confiding and the young. How willing I felt to
+love, and how gay a place was earth, with her constant sun, and
+overflowing lap, and her thousand joys, for man! And how intense was the
+fire of _hope_ that burned within me--fed with new fuel every passing
+hour, and how abiding and how beautiful _the future_! THE FUTURE! and it
+was here--a nothing--a dream--a melancholy phantasm!
+
+There are seasons of adversity, in which the mind, plunged in
+despondency and gloom, is startled and distressed by pictures of a
+happier time, that travel far to fool and tantalize the suffering heart.
+I sat with the child, and gazing full upon him, beheld him not, but--a
+vision of my father's house. There sits the good old man, and at his
+side--ah, how seldom were they apart!--my mother. And there, too, is the
+clergyman, my first instructor. Every well-remembered piece of furniture
+is there. The chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated by me for its age,
+and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew myself.
+The antique bookcase--the solid chest of drawers--the solemn sofa, all
+substantial as ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable and
+natural properties of the domestic parlour. My mother has her eyes upon
+me, and they are full of tears. My father and the minister are building
+up my fortunes, are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity an edifice
+formed of glittering words, incorporeal as the breath that rears it. And
+the feelings of that hour come back upon me. I glow with animation,
+confidence, and love. I have the strong delight that beats within the
+bosom of the boy who has the parents' trusty smile for ever on him. I
+dream of pouring happiness into those fond hearts--of growing up to be
+their prop and staff in their decline. I pierce into the future, and
+behold myself the esteemed and honoured amongst men--the patient,
+well-rewarded scholar--the cherished and the cherisher of the dear
+authors of my life--all brightness--all glory--all unsullied joy. The
+child touches my wet cheek, and asks me why I weep?--why?--why? He knows
+not of the early wreck that has annihilated the unhappy teacher's peace.
+
+We were still engaged upon our lesson, when John Thompson interrupted
+the proceeding, by entering the apartment in great haste, and placing in
+my hands a newspaper. "He had been searching," he said, "for one whole
+fortnight, to find a situation that would suit me, and now he thought
+that he had hit upon it. There it was, 'a tutorer in a human family,' to
+teach the languages and the sciences. Apply from two to four. It's just
+three now. Send the youngster to his mother, and see after it, my
+friend. I wouldn't have you lose it for the world." I took the journal
+from his hands, and, as though placed there by the hand of the avenger
+to arouse deeper remorse, to draw still hotter blood from the lacerated
+heart, the following announcement, and nothing else, glared on the
+paper, and took possession of my sight.
+
+"UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. After a contest more severe than any known for
+years, MR JOHN SMITHSON, _of Trinity College, Cambridge_, has been
+declared THE SENIOR WRANGLER of his year. Mr Smithson is, we understand,
+the son of a humble curate in Norfolk, whose principal support has been
+derived from the exertions of his son during his residence in the
+University. The honour could not have been conferred on a more deserving
+child of Alma Mater."
+
+A hundred recollections crowded on my brain. My heart was torn with
+anguish. The perseverance and the filial piety of Smithson, so opposite
+to my unsteadiness and unnatural disloyalty, confounded and unmanned me.
+I burst into tears before the faithful Thompson, and covered my face for
+very shame.
+
+"What is the matter, lad?" exclaimed the good fellow, pale with
+surprise, his eye trembling with honest feeling. "Have I hurt you? Drat
+the paper! Don't think, Stukely, I wished to get rid of you. Don't think
+so hard of your old friend. I thought to help and do you service; I know
+you have the feelings of a gentleman about you, and I wouldn't wound
+'em, God knows, for any thing. There, think no more about it. I am so
+rough a hand, I'm not fit to live with Christians. I mean no harm,
+believe me. Get rid of you, my boy! I only wish you'd say this is your
+home, and never leave me--that would make me happy."
+
+"Thompson," I answered, through my tears, "I am not deserving of your
+friendship. You have not offended me. You have never wronged me. You are
+all kindness and truth. I have had no real enemy but myself. Read that
+paper."
+
+I pointed to the paragraph, and he read it.
+
+"What of it?" he asked.
+
+"Thompson," listen to me; "what do you say of such a son?"
+
+"I can guess his father's feelings," said my friend. "Earth's a heaven,
+Stukely, when father and child live together as God appointed them."
+
+"But when a child breaks a parent's heart, Thompson--what then?"
+
+"Don't talk about it, lad. I have got eleven of 'em, and that's a side
+of the picture that I can't look at with pleasure. I think the boys are
+good. They have gone on well as yet; but who can tell what a few years
+will do?"
+
+"Or a few months, Thompson," I answered quickly, "or a few days, or
+hours, when the will is fickle, principles unfixed, and the heart
+treacherous and false. That Smithson and I, Thompson, were fellow
+students. We left home together--we took up our abode in the University
+together--we were attached to the same college--taught by the same
+master--read from the same books. My feelings were as warm as his. My
+resolution to do well apparently as firm, my knowledge and attainments
+as extensive. If he was encouraged, and protected, and urged forward by
+the fond love of a devoted household--so was I. If parental blessings
+hallowed his entrance upon those pursuits which have ended so
+successfully for him--so did they mine. If he had motive for exertion, I
+had not less--we were equal in the race which we began together--look at
+us now!"
+
+"How did it happen, then?"
+
+"He was honest and faithful to his purpose. I was not. He saw one object
+far in the distance before him, and looked neither to the right nor
+left, but dug his arduous way towards it. He craved not the false
+excitement of temporary applause, nor deemed the opinion of weak men
+essential to his design. He had a sacred duty to perform, which left him
+not the choice of action, and he performed it to the letter. He had a
+feeling conscience, and a reasoning heart, and the home of his youth,
+and the sister who had grown up with him, the father who had laboured,
+the mother who had striven for him, visited him by night and by day--in
+his silent study, and in his lonely bed, comforting, animating, and
+supporting him by their delightful presence."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"Just the reverse of this. I had neither simplicity of aim, nor
+stability of affection. One slip from the path, and I hadn't energy to
+take the road again. One vicious inclination, and the virtuous resolves
+of years melted before it. The sneer of a fool could frighten me from
+rectitude--the smile of a girl render me indifferent to the pangs that
+tear a parent's heart. Look at us both. Look at him--the man whom I
+treated with contemptuous derision. What a return home for him--his
+mission accomplished--HIS DUTY DONE! Look at me, the outcast, the
+beggar, the despised--the author of a mother's death, a father's
+bankruptcy and ruin--with no excuse for misconduct, no promise for the
+future, no self-justification, and no hope of pardon beyond that
+afforded to the vilest criminal that comes repentant to the mercy throne
+of God!"
+
+"Well--but, sir--Stukely--don't take the thing to heart. You are
+young--look for'rads. Oh, I tell you, it's a blessed thing to be sorry
+for our faults, and to feel as if we wished to do better for the time to
+come. I'm an older man than you, and I bid you take comfort, and trust
+to God for better things, and better things will come, too. You are not
+so badly off now as you were this time twelvemonth. And you know I'll
+never leave you. Don't despond--don't give away. It's unnatural for a
+man to do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh, bless you, this is a life of
+suffering and sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't go mad to think
+of leaving all his young 'uns behind him, and every thing he loves, if
+he wasn't taught that there's a quieter place above, where all shall
+meet agin? You know me, my boy; I can't talk, but I want to comfort you
+and cheer you up--and so, give me your hand, old fellow, and say you
+won't think of all this any more, but try and forget it, and see about
+settling comfortably in life. What do you say to the advertisement? A
+tutorer in a human family, to teach the languages and the sciences. Come
+now, that's right; I'm glad to see you laugh. I suppose I don't give the
+right pronunciation to the words. Well, never mind; laugh at your old
+friend. He'd rather see you laugh at him than teaze your heart about
+your troubles."
+
+Thompson would not be satisfied until I had read the advertisement, and
+given him my opinion of its merits. He would not suffer me to say
+another word about my past misfortunes, but insisted on my looking
+forward cheerfully, and like a man. The situation appeared to him just
+the thing for me; and after all, if I had wrangled as well as that 'ere
+Smithson--(though, at the same time, _wrangling_ seemed a very
+aggravating word to put into young men's mouths at all)--perhaps I
+shouldn't have been half as happy as a quiet comfortable life would make
+me. "I was cut out for a tutorer. He was sure of it. So he'd thank me to
+read the paper without another syllable." The advertisement, in truth,
+was promising. "The advertiser, in London, desired to engage the
+services of a young gentleman, capable of teaching the ancient
+languages, and giving his pupils 'an introduction to the sciences.' The
+salary would be liberal, and the occupation with a humane family in the
+country, who would receive the tutor as one of themselves. References
+would be required and given."
+
+"References would be required and given," I repeated, after having
+concluded the advertisement, and put the paper down.
+
+"Yes, that's the only thing!" said Thompson, scratching his honest ear,
+like a man perplexed and driven to a corner. "We haven't got no
+references to give. But I'll tell you what we've got though. We've got
+the papers of these freehold premises, and we've something like two
+thousand in the bank. I'll give 'em them, if you turns out a bad 'un.
+That I'll undertake to do, and shan't be frightened either. Now, you
+just go, and see if you can get it. Where do you apply?"
+
+"Wait, Thompson. I must not suffer you"----
+
+"Did you hear what I said, sir? where do you apply?"
+
+"At X.Y.Z." said I, "in Swallow street, Saint James's."
+
+"Then, don't you lose a minute. I shouldn't be surprised if the place is
+run down already. London's overstocked with tutorers and men of larning.
+You come along o' me, Billy, and don't you lose sight of this 'ere
+chance, my boy. If they wants a reference, tell 'em I'll be glad to wait
+upon 'em."
+
+Three days had not elapsed after this conversation, before my services
+were accepted by X.Y.Z.--and I had engaged to travel into Devonshire to
+enter at once upon my duties, as teacher in the dwelling-house of the
+Reverend Walter Fairman. X.Y.Z. was a man of business; and, fortunately
+for me, had known my father well. He was satisfied with my connexion,
+and with the unbounded recommendation which Thompson gave with me. Mr
+Fairman was incumbent of one of the loveliest parishes in England, and
+the guardian and teacher of six boys. My salary was fifty pounds per
+annum, with board and lodging. The matter was settled in a few hours,
+and before I had time to consider, my place was taken in the coach, and
+a letter was dispatched to Mr Fairman, announcing my intended departure.
+Nothing could exceed the joy of Thompson at my success--nothing could be
+kinder and more anxious than his valuable advice.
+
+"Now," he said as we walked together from the coach-office, "was I wrong
+in telling you that better things would turn up? Take care of yourself,
+and the best wrangler of the lot may be glad to change places with you.
+It isn't lots of larning, or lots of money, or lots of houses and
+coaches, that makes a man happy in this world. They never can do it; but
+they can do just the contrarery, and make him the miserablest wretch as
+crawls. _A contented mind_ is 'the one thing needful.' Take what God
+gives gratefully, and do unto others as you would that they should do
+unto you. That's a maxim that my poor father was always giving me, and,
+I wish, when I take the young 'uns to church, that they could always
+hear it, for human natur needs it."
+
+The evening before my setting out was spent with Thompson's family. I
+had received a special invitation, and Thompson, with the labouring
+sons, were under an engagement to the mistress of the house, to leave
+the workshop at least an hour earlier than usual. Oh, it was a sight to
+move the heart of one more hardened than I can boast to be, to behold
+the affectionate party assembled to bid me farewell, and to do honour to
+our leave-taking. A little feast was prepared for the occasion, and my
+many friends were dressed, all in their Sunday clothes, befittingly.
+There was not one who had not something to give me for a token. Mary had
+worked me a purse; and Mary blushed whilst her mother betrayed her, and
+gave the little keepsake. Ellen thought a pincushion might be useful;
+and the knitter of the large establishment provided me with comforters.
+All the little fellows, down to Billy himself, had a separate gift,
+which each must offer with a kiss, and with a word or two expressive of
+his good wishes. All hoped I would come soon again, and Aleck more than
+hinted a request that I would postpone my departure to some indefinite
+period which he could not name. Poor tremulous heart! how it throbbed
+amongst them all, and how sad it felt to part from them! Love bound me
+to the happy room--the only love that connected the poor outcast with
+the wide cold world. This was the home of my affections--could I leave
+it--could I venture once more upon the boisterous waters of life without
+regret and apprehension?
+
+Thompson kindly offered to accompany me on the following morning to the
+inn from which I was destined to depart, but I would not hear of it. He
+was full of business; had little time to spare, and none to throw away
+upon me. I begged him not to think of it, and he acquiesced in my
+wishes. We were sitting together, and his wife and children had an hour
+or two previously retired to rest.
+
+"Them's good children, ain't they, Stukely?" enquired Thompson, after
+having made a long pause.
+
+"You may well be proud of them," I answered.
+
+"It looked nice of 'em to make you a little present of something before
+you went. But it was quite right. That's just as it should be. I like
+that sort of thing, especially when a man understands the sperrit that a
+thing's given with. Now, some fellows would have been offended if any
+thing had been offered 'em. How I do hate all that!"
+
+"I assure you, Thompson, I feel deeply their kind treatment of their
+friend. I shall never forget it."
+
+"You ain't offended, then?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Well, now, I am so happy to hear it, you can't think," continued
+Thompson, fumbling about his breeches pocket, and drawing from it at
+length something which he concealed in his fist. "There, take that," he
+suddenly exclaimed; "take it, my old fellow, and God bless you. It's no
+good trying to make a fuss about it."
+
+I held a purse of money in my hand.
+
+"No, Thompson," I replied, "I cannot accept it. Do not think me proud or
+ungrateful; but I have no right to take it."
+
+"It's only twenty guineas, man, and I can afford it. Now look, Stukely,
+you are going to leave me. If you don't take it, you'll make me as
+wretched as the day is long. You are my friend, and my friend mustn't go
+amongst strangers without an independent spirit. If you have twenty
+guineas in your pocket, you needn't be worrying yourself about little
+things. You'll find plenty of ways to make the money useful. You shall
+pay me, if you like, when you grow rich, and we meets again; but take it
+now, and make John Thompson happy."
+
+In the lap of nature the troubled mind gets rest; and the wounds of the
+heart heal rapidly, once delivered there, safe from contact with the
+infectious world; and the bosom of the nursing mother is not more
+powerful or quick to lull the pain and still the sobs of her distressed
+ones. It is the sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to arrive at it is
+to secure shelter and to find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed,
+birthright and joy of angels, whither do those glimpses hover that we
+catch of thee in this tumultuous life, weak, faint, and transient though
+they be, melting the human soul with heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if
+not upon the everlasting hills, where the brown line divides the sky, or
+on the gentle sea, where sea and sky are one--a liquid cupola--or in the
+leafy woods and secret vales, where beauty lends her thrilling voice to
+silence? How often will the remembrance only of one bright spot--a
+vision of Paradise rising over the dull waste of my existence--send a
+glow of comfort to my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of repose which
+the harsh business of life cannot extinguish or disturb! And what a fair
+history comes with that shadowy recollection! How much of passionate
+condensed existence is involved in it, and how mysteriously, yet
+naturally connected with it, seem all the noblest feelings of my
+imperfect nature! The scene of beauty has become "a joy for ever."
+
+I recall a spring day--a sparkling day of the season of youth and
+promise--and a nook of earth, fit for the wild unshackled sun to skip
+along and brighten with his inconstant giddy light. Hope is everywhere;
+murmuring in the brooks, and smiling in the sky. Upon the bursting trees
+she sits; she nestles in the hedges. She fills the throat of mating
+birds, and bears the soaring lark nearer and nearer to the gate of
+Heaven. It is the first holiday of the year, and the universal heart is
+glad. Grief and apprehension cannot dwell in the human breast on such a
+day; and, for an hour, even _Self_ is merged in the general joy. I reach
+my destination; and the regrets for the past, and the fear for the
+future, which have accompanied me through the long and anxious journey,
+fall from the oppressed spirit, and leave it buoyant, cheerful,
+free--free to delight itself in a land of enchantment, and to revel
+again in the unsubstantial glories of a youthful dream. I paint the
+Future in the colours that surround me, and I confide in her again.
+
+It was noon when we reached the headquarters of the straggling parish of
+Deerhurst--its chief village. We had travelled since the golden sunrise
+over noble earth, and amongst scenes scarcely less heavenly than the
+blue vault which smiled upon them. Now the horizon was bounded by a
+range of lofty hills linked to each other by gentle undulations, and
+bearing to their summits innumerable and giant trees; these, crowded
+together, and swayed by the brisk wind, presented to the eye the figure
+of a vast and supernatural sea, and made the intervening vale of
+loveliness a neglected blank. Then we emerged suddenly--yes,
+instantaneously--as though designing nature, with purpose to surprize,
+had hid behind the jutting crag, beneath the rugged steep--upon a world
+of beauty; garden upon garden, sward upon sward, hamlet upon hamlet, far
+as the sight could reach, and purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes
+of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at
+intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake,
+buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions,
+larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty
+element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves,
+her flowers and gems, is on the shore to greet her.
+
+The entrance to the village is by a swift, precipitous descent. On
+either side are piled rude stones, placed there by a subtle hand, and
+with a poet's aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe the traveller with
+thoughts of other times--of ruined castles, and of old terrace walks.
+Already have the stones fulfilled their purpose, and the ivy, the brier,
+and the saxifrage have found a home amongst them. At the foot of the
+declivity, standing like a watchful mother, is the church--the small,
+the unpretending, the venerable and lovely village church. You do not
+see a house till she is passed. Before a house was built about her, she
+was an aged church, and her favoured graves were rich in heavenly clay.
+The churchyard gate; and then at once, the limited and quiet village,
+nestling in a valley and shut out from the world: beautiful and
+self-sufficient. Hill upon hill behind, each greener than the last--hill
+upon hill before, all exclusion, and nothing but her own surpassing
+loveliness to console and cheer her solitude. And is it not enough? What
+if she know little of the sea beyond its voice, and nothing of external
+life--her crystal stream, her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden plots,
+her variegated flowers and massive foliage, her shady dells and scented
+lanes are joys enough for her small commonwealth. Thin curling smoke
+that rises like a spirit from the hidden bosom of one green hillock,
+proclaims the single house that has its seat upon the eminence. It is
+the parsonage--my future home.
+
+With a trembling heart I left the little inn, and took my silent way to
+the incumbent's house. There was no eye to follow me, the leafy street
+was tenantless, and seemed made over to the restless sun and dissolute
+winds to wanton through it as they pleased. As I ascended, the view
+enlarged--beauty became more beauteous, silence more profound. I reached
+the parsonage gate, and my heart yearned to tell how much I longed to
+live and die on this sequestered and most peaceful spot. The
+dwelling-house was primitive and low; its long and overhanging roof was
+thatched; its windows small and many. A myrtle, luxuriant as a vine,
+covered its entire front, and concealed the ancient brick and wood. A
+raised bank surrounded the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted to a
+lawn fringed with the earliest flowers of the year. I rang the loud
+bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl gave me admittance to the house.
+In a room of moderate size, furnished by a hand as old at least as the
+grandsires of the present occupants, and well supplied with books, sat
+the incumbent. He was a man of fifty years of age or more, tall and
+gentlemanly in demeanour. His head was partly bald, and what remained of
+his hair was grey almost to whiteness. He had a noble forehead, a marked
+brow, and a cold grey eye. His mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual deep
+reflection, and the expression of every other feature tended to
+seriousness. The first impression was unfavourable. A youth, who was
+reading with the minister when I entered the apartment, was dismissed
+with a simple inclination of the head, and the Rev. Walter Fairman then
+pointed to a seat.
+
+"You have had a tedious journey, Mr Stukely," began the incumbent, "and
+you are fatigued, no doubt."
+
+"What a glorious spot this is, sir!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it is pretty," answered Mr Fairman, very coldly as I thought. "Are
+you hungry, Mr Stukely? We dine early; but pray take refreshment if you
+need it."
+
+I declined respectfully.
+
+"Do you bring letters from my agent?"
+
+"I have a parcel in my trunk, sir, which will be here immediately. What
+magnificent trees!" I exclaimed again, my eyes riveted upon a stately
+cluster, which were about a hundred yards distant.
+
+"Have you been accustomed to tuition?" asked Mr Fairman, taking no
+notice of my remark.
+
+"I have not, sir, but I am sure that I shall be delighted with the
+occupation. I have always thought so."
+
+"We must not be too sanguine. Nothing requires more delicate handling
+than the mind of youth. In no business is experience, great discernment
+and tact, so much needed as in that of instruction."
+
+"Yes, sir, I am aware of it."
+
+"No doubt," answered Mr Fairman quietly. "How old are you?"
+
+I told my age, and blushed.
+
+"Well, well," said the incumbent, "I have no doubt we shall do. You are
+a Cambridge man, Mr Graham writes me?"
+
+"I was only a year, sir, at the university. Circumstances prevented a
+longer residence. I believe I mentioned the fact to Mr Graham."
+
+"Oh yes, he told me so. You shall see the boys this afternoon. They are
+fine-hearted lads, and much may be done with them. There are six. Two of
+them are pretty well advanced. They read Euripides and Horace. Is
+Euripides a favourite of yours?"
+
+"He is tender, plaintive, and passionate," I answered; "but perhaps I
+may be pardoned if I venture to prefer the vigour and majesty of the
+sterner tragedian."
+
+"You mean you like AEschylus better. Do you write poetry, Mr Stukely? Not
+Latin verses, but English poetry."
+
+"I do not, sir."
+
+"Well, I am glad of that. It struck me that you did. Will you really
+take no refreshment? Are you not fatigued?"
+
+"Not in the least, sir. This lovely prospect, for one who has seen so
+little of nature as I have, is refreshment enough for the present."
+
+"Ah," said Mr Fairman, sighing faintly, "you will get accustomed to it.
+There is something in the prospect, but more in your own mind. Some of
+our poor fellows would be easily served and satisfied, if we could feed
+them on the prospect. But if you are not tired you shall see more of it
+if you will. I have to go down to the village. We have an hour till
+dinner-time. Will you accompany me?"
+
+"With pleasure, sir."
+
+"Very well." Mr Fairman then rang the bell, and the servant girl came
+in.
+
+"Where's Miss Ellen, Mary?" asked the incumbent.
+
+"She has been in the village since breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word
+that she was ill, and Miss took her the rice and sago that Dr Mayhew
+ordered."
+
+"Has Warden been this morning?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Foolish fellow. I'll call on him. Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman
+comes, give him that bottle of port wine; but tell him not to touch a
+drop of it himself. It is for his sick child, and it is committing
+robbery to take it. Let him have the blanket also that was looked out
+for him."
+
+"It's gone, sir. Miss sent it yesterday."
+
+"Very well. There is nothing more. Now, Mr Stukely, we will go."
+
+I have said already that the first opinion which I formed of the
+disposition of Mr Fairman was not a flattering one. Before he spoke a
+word, I felt disappointed and depressed. My impression after our short
+conversation was worse than the first. The natural effect of the scene
+in which I suddenly found myself, had been to prepare my ever too
+forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm and poetic temperament. Mr
+Fairman was many degrees removed from warmth. He spoke to me in a sharp
+tone of voice, and sometimes, I suspected, with the intention of mocking
+me. His _manner_, when he addressed the servant-girl, was not more
+pleasing. When I followed him from the room, I regretted the haste with
+which I had accepted my appointment; but a moment afterwards I entered
+into fairyland again, and the passing shadow left me grateful to
+Providence for so much real enjoyment. We descended the hill, and for a
+time, in silence, Mr Fairman was evidently engaged in deep thought, and
+I had no wish to disturb him. Every now and then we lighted upon a view
+of especial beauty, and I was on the point of expressing my unbounded
+admiration, when one look at my cool and matter-of-fact companion at
+once annoyed and stopped me.
+
+"Yes," said Mr Fairman at length, still musing. "It is very
+difficult--very difficult to manage the poor. I wonder if they are
+grateful at heart. What do you think, Mr Stukely?"
+
+"I have nothing to say of the poor, sir, but praise."
+
+Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and smiled unpleasantly.
+
+"It is the scenery, I suppose. That will make you praise every thing for
+the next day or so. It will not do, though. We must walk on our feet,
+and be prosaic in this world. The poor are not as poets paint them, nor
+is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect.
+The poets are like you--they have nothing to say but praise. Ah, me!
+they draw largely on their imaginations."
+
+"I do not, sir, in this instance," I answered, somewhat nettled. "My
+most valued friends are in the humblest ranks of life. I am proud to say
+so. I am not prepared to add, that the most generous of men are the most
+needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at
+the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves."
+
+"I believe you, Mr Stukely," answered the incumbent in a more feeling
+tone. "I am not fond of theories; yet that's a theory with which I would
+willingly pass through life; but it will not answer. It is knocked on
+the head every hour of the day. Perhaps it is our own fault. We do not
+know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant
+and helpless. Just step in here."
+
+We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill. It was a low
+dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it.
+One window was in the cob-wall. It had been fixed there originally,
+doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light,
+not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants,
+was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied
+the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A
+child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair,
+unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was
+heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and
+a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly
+countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire,
+and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an
+unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not
+twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There
+was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete
+article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed
+down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who
+sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor
+before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting,
+however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving
+family with bread?
+
+The man did not rise upon our entrance. He changed colour very slightly,
+and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.
+
+"Well, Jacob Warden," said the incumbent, "you are determined to brave
+it out, I see." The fellow did not answer.
+
+"When I told you yesterday that your idleness and bad habits were
+bringing you to ruin, you answered--_I was a liar_. I then said, that
+when you were sorry for having uttered that expression, you might come
+to the parsonage and tell me so. You have not been yet--I am grieved to
+say it. What have I ever done to you, Jacob Warden, that you should
+behave so wickedly? I do not wish you to humble yourself to me, but I
+should have been glad to see you do your duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I
+should give you up, and see you no more, for I fear you are a hardened
+man."
+
+"He hasn't had no work for a month," said the wife, in a tone of
+upbraiding, as if the minister had been the wilful cause of it.
+
+"And whose fault is that, Mrs Warden? There is work enough for sober and
+honest men in the parish. Why was your husband turned away from the
+Squire's?"
+
+"Why, all along of them spoons. They never could prove it agin him,
+that's one thing--though they tried it hard enough."
+
+"Come, come, Mrs Warden, if you love that man, take the right way to
+show it. Think of your children."
+
+"Yes; if I didn't--who would, I should like to know? The poor are
+trodden under foot."
+
+"Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor are taken care of, if they are deserving.
+God loves the poor, and commands us all to love them. Give me your
+Bible?" The woman hesitated a minute, and then answered--
+
+"Never mind the Bible, that won't get us bread."
+
+"Give me your Bible, Mrs Warden."
+
+"We have'nt got it. What's the use of keeping a Bible in the house for
+children as can't read, when they are crying for summat to eat?"
+
+"You have sold it, then?"
+
+"We got a shilling on it--that's all."
+
+"Have you ever applied to us for food, and has it been denied you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. The servant always looks grumpy at us when we come
+a-begging, and seems to begrudge us every mouthful. It's all very well
+to live on other persons' leavings. I dare say you don't give us what
+you could eat yourselves."
+
+"We give the best we can afford, Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with no
+such feeling as you suppose. How is the child? Is it better?"
+
+"Yes, no thanks to Doctor Mayhew either."
+
+"Did he not call, then?"
+
+"Call! Yes, but he made me tramp to his house for the physic, and when
+he passed the cottage the other day, I called after him; but devil a bit
+would he come back. We might have died first, of course: he knows, he
+isn't paid, and what does he care?"
+
+"It is very wrong of you to talk so. You are well aware that he was
+hurrying to a case of urgency, and could not be detained. He visited you
+upon the following day, and told you so."
+
+"Oh yes, the following day! What's that to do with it?"
+
+"Woman" exclaimed Mr Fairman, solemnly, "my heart bleeds for those poor
+children. What will become of them with such an example before their
+eyes? I can say no more to you than I have repeated a hundred times
+before. I would make you happy in this world if I could; I would save
+you. You forbid me. I would be your true friend, and you look upon me as
+an enemy. Heaven, I trust, will melt your heart! What is that child
+screaming for?"
+
+"What! she hasn't had a blessed thing to-day. We had nothing for her."
+
+Mr Fairman took some biscuits from his pockets, and placed them on the
+table. "Let the girl come in, and eat," said he. "I shall send you some
+meat from the village. Warden, I cannot tell you how deeply I feel your
+wickedness. I did expect you to come to the parsonage and say you were
+sorry. It would have looked well, and I should have liked it. You put it
+out of my power to help you. It is most distressing to see you both
+going headlong to destruction. May you live to repent! I shall see you
+again this evening, and I will speak to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely, our
+time is getting short."
+
+The incumbent spoke rapidly, and seemed affected. I looked at him, and
+could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I had
+at first imagined him.
+
+We pursued our way towards the village.
+
+"There, sir," said the minister in a quick tone of voice, "what is the
+beautiful prospect, and what are the noble trees, to the heart of that
+man? What have they to do at all with man's morality? Had those people
+never seen a shrub or flower, could they have been more impenetrable,
+more insolent and suspicious, or steeped in vice much deeper? That man
+wants only opportunity, a large sphere of action, and the variety of
+crime and motive that are to be found amongst congregated masses of
+mankind, to become a monster. His passions and his vices are as wilful
+and as strong as those of any man born and bred in the sinks of a great
+city. They have fewer outlets, less capability of mischief--and there is
+the difference."
+
+I ventured no remark, and the incumbent, after a short pause, continued
+in a milder strain.
+
+"I may be, after all, weak and inefficient. Doubtless great delicacy and
+caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to
+these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is
+useless to sow the seed. Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?"
+
+Mr Fairman stopped at the first house in the village--the prettiest of
+the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages before alluded to. Here he tapped
+softly, and a gentle foot that seemed to know the visitor hastened to
+admit him.
+
+"Well, Mary," said the minister, glancing round the room--a clean and
+happy-looking room it was--"where's Michael?"
+
+"He is gone, sir, as you bade him, to make it up with Cousin Willett. He
+couldn't rest easy, sir, since you told him that it was no use coming to
+church so long as he bore malice. He won't be long, sir."
+
+Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his grey eye might be, it did not seem so
+steady now.
+
+"Mary, that is good of him; tell him his minister is pleased. How is
+work with him?"
+
+"He has enough to do, to carry him to the month's end, sir."
+
+"Then at the month's end, Mary, let him come to the parsonage. I have
+something for him there. But we can wait till then. Have you seen the
+itinerary preacher since?"
+
+"It is not his time, sir. He didn't promise to come till Monday week."
+
+"Do neither you nor Michael speak with him, nor listen to his public
+preachings. I mean, regard him not as one having authority. I speak
+solemnly, and with a view to your eternal peace. Do not forget."
+
+Every house was visited, and in all, opportunity was found for the
+exercise of the benevolent feelings by which the incumbent was
+manifestly actuated. He lost no occasion of affording his flock sound
+instruction and good advice. It could not be doubted for an instant that
+their real welfare, temporal and everlasting, lay deeply in his heart. I
+was struck by one distinguishing feature in his mode of dealing with his
+people; it was so opposed to the doctrine and practice of Mr Clayton,
+and of those who were connected with him. With the latter, a certain
+degree of physical fervour, and a conventional peculiarity of
+expression, were insisted upon and accepted as evidences of grace and
+renewed life. With Mr Fairman, neither acquired heat, nor the more
+easily acquired jargon of a clique, were taken into account. He rather
+repressed than encouraged their existence; but he was desirous, and even
+eager, to establish rectitude of conduct and purity of feeling in the
+disciples around him: these were to him tangible witnesses of the
+operation of that celestial Spirit before whose light the mists of
+simulation and deceit fade unresistingly away. I could not help
+remarking, however, that in every cottage the same injunction was given
+in respect of the itinerant; the same solemnity of manner accompanied
+the command; the same importance was attached to its obedience. There
+seemed to me, fresh from the hands of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry
+and uncharitableness in all this. I did not hint at this effect upon my
+own mind, nor did I inquire into the motives of the minister. I was not
+pleased; but I said nothing. As if Mr Fairman read my very thoughts, he
+addressed me on the subject almost before the door of the last cottage
+was closed upon us.
+
+"_Bigoted_ and _narrow-minded,_ are the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the
+extremely liberal would characterize the line of conduct which I am
+compelled by duty to pursue. I cannot be frightened by harsh terms. I am
+the pastor of these people, and must decide and act for them. I am their
+shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor and ignorant, and unripe in
+judgment, and easily deceived by the shows and counterfeits of truth as
+the ignorant are, is it for me to hand them over to perplexity and risk?
+They are simple believers, and are contented. They worship God, and are
+at peace. They know their lot, and do not murmur at it. Is it right that
+they should be disturbed with the religious differences and theological
+subtleties which have already divided into innumerable sects the
+universal family of Christians whom God made one? Is it fair or merciful
+to whisper into their ears the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction,
+envy, and complaining, to which the uninformed of all classes but too
+eagerly listen? I have ever found the religious and the political
+propagandist united in the same individual. The man who proposes to the
+simple to improve his creed, is ready to point out the way to better his
+condition. He succeeds in rendering him unhappy in both, and there he
+leaves him. So would this man, and I would rather die for my people,
+than tamely give them over to their misery."
+
+A tall, stout, weather-beaten man, in the coarse dress of a fisherman,
+descending the hill, intercepted our way. It was the man Cuthbert,
+already mentioned by Mr Fairman. He touched his southwester to the
+incumbent.
+
+"How is the boy, Cuthbert?" asked the minister, stopping at the same
+moment.
+
+"All but well, sir. Doctor Mayhew don't mean to come again. It's all
+along of them nourishments that Miss Ellen sent us down. The Doctor says
+he must have died without them."
+
+"Well, Cuthbert, I trust that we shall find you grateful."
+
+"Grateful, sir!" exclaimed the man. "If ever I forget what you have done
+for that poor child, I hope the breath----" The brawny fisherman could
+say no more. His eyes filled suddenly with tears, and he held down his
+head, ashamed of them. He had no cause to be so.
+
+"Be honest and industrious, Cuthbert; give that boy a good example.
+Teach him to love his God, and his neighbour as himself. That will be
+gratitude enough, and more than pay Miss Ellen."
+
+"I'll try to do it, sir. God bless you!"
+
+We said little till we reached the parsonage again; but before I
+re-entered its gate the Reverend Walter Fairman had risen in my esteem,
+and ceased to be considered a cold and unfeeling man.
+
+We dined; the party consisting of the incumbent, the six students, and
+myself. The daughter, the only daughter and child of Mr Fairman, who was
+himself a widower, had not returned from the cottage to which she had
+been called in the morning. It was necessary that a female should be in
+constant attendance upon the aged invalid; a messenger had been
+despatched to the neighbouring village for an experienced nurse; and
+until her arrival Miss Fairman would permit no one but herself to
+undertake the duties of the sick chamber. It was on this account that we
+were deprived of the pleasure of her society, for her accustomed seat
+was at the head of her father's table. I was pleased with the pupils.
+They were affable and well-bred. They treated the incumbent with marked
+respect, and behaved towards their new teacher with the generous
+kindness and freedom of true young gentlemen. The two eldest boys might
+be fifteen years of age. The remaining four could not have reached their
+thirteenth year. In the afternoon I had the scholars to myself. The
+incumbent retired to his library, and left us to pass our first day in
+removing the restraint that was the natural accompaniment of our
+different positions, and in securing our intimacy. I talked of the
+scenery, and found willing listeners. They understood me better than
+their master, for they were worshippers themselves. They promised to
+show me lovelier spots than any I had met with yet; sacred corners,
+known only to themselves, down by the sea, where the arbute and
+laurustinus grew like trees, and children of the ocean. Then there were
+villages near, more beautiful even than their own; one that lay in the
+lap of a large hill, with the sea creeping round, or rolling at its feet
+like thunder, sometimes. What lanes, too, Miss Fairman knew of! She
+would take me into places worth the looking at; and oh, what drawings
+she had made from them! Their sisters had bought drawings, and paid very
+dearly for them too, that were not half so finely done! They would ask
+her to show me her portfolio, and she would do it directly, for she was
+the kindest creature living. It was not the worst trait in the
+disposition of these boys, that, whatever might be the subject of
+conversation, or from whatever point we might start in our discourse,
+they found pleasure in making all things bear towards the honour and
+renown of their young mistress. The scenery was nothing without Miss
+Fairman and her sketches. The house was dull without her, and the
+singing in the church, if she were ill and absent, was as different as
+could be. There were the sweetest birds that could be, heard warbling in
+the high trees that lined the narrow roads; but at Miss Fairman's window
+there was a nightingale that beat them all. The day wore on, and I did
+not see the general favourite. It was dusk when she reached the
+parsonage, and then she retired immediately to rest, tired from the
+labours of the day. The friend of the family, Doctor Mayhew, had
+accompanied Miss Fairman home; he remained with the incumbent, and I
+continued with my young companions until their bedtime. They departed,
+leaving me their books, and then I took a survey of the work that was
+before me. My duties were to commence on the following day, and our
+first subject was the tragedy of _Hecuba_. How very grateful did I feel
+for the sound instruction which I had received in early life from my
+revered pains-taking tutor, for the solid groundwork that he had
+established, and for the rational mode of tuition which he had from the
+first adopted. From the moment that he undertook to cultivate and inform
+the youthful intellect, this became itself an active instrument in the
+attainment of knowledge--not, as is so often the case, the mere idle
+depositary of encumbering _words_. It was little that he required to be
+gained by rote, for he regarded all acquisitions as useless in which the
+understanding had not the chiefest share. He was pleased to communicate
+facts, and anxious to discover, from examination, that the principles
+which they contained had been accurately seen and understood. Then no
+labour and perseverance on his part were deemed too great for his pupil,
+and the business of his life became his first pleasure. In the study of
+Greek, for which at an early age I evinced great aptitude, I learnt the
+structure of the language and its laws from the keen observations of my
+master, whose rules were drawn from the classic work before us--rather
+than from grammars. To this hour I retain the information thus obtained,
+and at no period of my life have I ever had greater cause for
+thankfulness, than when, after many months of idleness and neglect, with
+a view to purchase bread I opened, not without anxiety, my book again,
+and found that time had not impaired my knowledge, and that light shone
+brightly on the pages, as it did of old. Towards the close of the
+evening, I was invited to the study of Mr Fairman. Doctor Mayhew was
+still with him, and I was introduced to the physician as the teacher
+newly arrived from London. The doctor was a stout good-humoured
+gentleman of the middle height, with a cheerful and healthy-looking
+countenance. He was, in truth, a jovial man, as well as a great
+snuff-taker. The incumbent offered me a chair, and placed a decanter of
+wine before me. His own glass of port was untouched, and he looked
+serious and dejected.
+
+"Well, sir, how does London look?" enquired the doctor, "are the folks
+as mad as they used to be? What new invention is the rage now? What
+bubble is going to burst? What lord committed forgery last? Who was the
+last woman murdered before you started?"
+
+I confessed my inability to answer.
+
+"Well, never mind. There isn't much lost. I am almost ashamed of old
+England, that's the truth on't. I have given over reading the
+newspapers, for they are about as full of horrors as Miss
+What's-her-name's tales of the Infernals. What an age this is! all crime
+and fanaticism! Everyman and everything is on the rush. Come, Fairman,
+take your wine."
+
+Mr Fairman sat gazing on the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the
+request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned
+topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are
+about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an
+advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my
+father was alive, as a ship sailing along this coast keel upwards. You
+saw it, Fairman. It was just under the Everlasting Life Pill
+advertisement; and announced that the Reverend Mr Somebody would preach
+on the Sunday following, at some conventicle, when the public were
+invited to listen to him--and that the doors would be opened half an
+hour earlier than usual to prevent squeezing. That's modern religion,
+and it looks as much like ancient play-acting as two peas. Where will
+these marching days of improvement bring us to at last?"
+
+"Tell me, Mayhew," said Mr Fairman, "does it not surprise you that a
+girl of her age should be so easily fatigued?"
+
+"My dear friend, that makes the sixth time of asking. Let us hope that
+it will be the last. I don't know what you mean by '_so easily_'
+fatigued. The poor girl has been in the village all day, fomenting and
+poulticing old Mrs Barnes, and if it had been any girl but herself, she
+would have been tired out long before. Make your mind easy. I have sent
+the naughty puss to bed, and she'll be as fresh as a rose in the
+morning."
+
+"She must keep her exertions within proper bounds," continued the
+incumbent. "I am sure she has not strength enough to carry out her good
+intentions. I have watched her narrowly, and cannot be mistaken."
+
+"You do wrong, then, Fairman. Anxious watching creates fear, without the
+shadow of an excuse for it. When we have anything like a bad symptom, it
+is time to get uneasy."
+
+"Yes, but what do you call a bad symptom, Doctor?"
+
+"Why, I call your worrying yourself into fidgets, and teazing me into an
+ill temper, a shocking symptom of bad behaviour. If it continue, you
+must take a doze. Come, my friend, let me prescribe that glass of good
+old port. It does credit to the cloth."
+
+"Seriously, Mayhew, have you never noticed the short, hacking cough that
+sometimes troubles her?"
+
+"Yes; I noticed it last January for the space of one week, when there
+was not a person within ten miles of you who was not either hacking, as
+you call it, or blowing his nose from morning till night. The dear child
+had a cold, and so had you, and I, and everybody else."
+
+"And that sudden flush, too?"
+
+"Why, you'll be complaining of the bloom on the peach next! That's
+health, and nothing else, take my word for it."
+
+"I am, perhaps, morbidly apprehensive; but I cannot forget her poor
+mother. You attended her, Mayhew, and you know how suddenly that came
+upon us. Poor Ellen! what should I do without her!"
+
+"Fairman, join me in wishing success to our young friend here. Mr
+Stukely, here's your good health; and success and happiness attend you.
+You'll find little society here; but it is of the right sort, I can tell
+you. You must make yourself at home." The minister became more cheerful,
+and an hour passed in pleasant conversation. At ten o'clock, the horse
+of Doctor Mayhew was brought to the gate, and the gentleman departed in
+great good-humour. Almost immediately afterwards, the incumbent himself
+conducted me to my sleeping apartment, and I was not loth to get my
+rest. I fell asleep with the beautiful village floating before my weary
+eyes, and the first day of my residence at the parsonage closed
+peacefully upon me.
+
+It was at the breakfast table on the succeeding morning that I beheld
+the daughter of the incumbent, the favourite and companion of my pupils,
+and mistress of the house--a maiden in her twentieth year. She was
+simply and artlessly attired, gentle and retiring in demeanour, and
+femininely sweet rather than beautiful in expression. Her figure was
+slender, her voice soft and musical; her hair light brown, and worn
+plain across a forehead white as marble. The eye-brows which arched the
+small, rich, hazel eyes were delicately drawn, and the slightly aquiline
+nose might have formed a study for an artist. With the exception,
+however, of this last-named feature, there was little in the individual
+lineaments of the face to surprise or rivet the observer. Extreme
+simplicity, and perfect innocence--these were stamped upon the
+countenance, and were its charm. It was a strange feeling that possessed
+me when I first gazed upon her through the chaste atmosphere that dwelt
+around her. It was degradation deep and unaffected--a sense of shame and
+undeservedness. I remembered with self-abhorrence the relation that had
+existed between the unhappy Emma and myself, and the enormity and
+disgrace of my offence never looked so great as now, and here--in the
+bright presence of unconscious purity. She reassured and welcomed me
+with a natural smile, and pursued her occupation with quiet cheerfulness
+and unconstraint. I did not wonder that her father loved her, and
+entertained the thought of losing her with fear; for, young and gentle
+as she was, she evinced wisdom and age in her deep sense of duty, and in
+the government of her happy home. Method and order waited on her doings,
+and sweetness and tranquillity--the ease and dignity of a matron
+elevating and upholding the maiden's native modesty. And did she not
+love her sire as ardently? Yes, if her virgin soul spoke faithfully in
+every movement of her guileless face. Yes, if there be truth in tones
+that strike the heart to thrill it--in thoughts that write their meaning
+in the watchful eye, in words that issue straight from the fount of
+love, in acts that do not bear one shade of selfish purpose. It was not
+a labour of time to learn that the existence of the child, her peace and
+happiness, were merged in those of the fond parent. He was every thing
+to her, as she to him. She had no brother--he no wife: these natural
+channels of affection cut away, the stream was strong and deep that
+flowed into each other's hearts. My first interview with the young lady
+was necessarily limited. I would gladly have prolonged it. The morning
+was passed with my pupils, and my mind stole often from the work before
+me to dwell upon the face and form of her, whom, as a sister, I could
+have doated on and cherished. How happy I should have been, I deemed, if
+I had been so blessed. Useless reflection! and yet pleased was I to
+dwell upon it, and to welcome its return, as often as it recurred. At
+dinner we met again. To be admitted into her presence seemed the reward
+for my morning toil--a privilege rather than a right. What labour was
+too great for the advantage of such moments?--moments indeed they were,
+and less--flashes of time, that were not here before they had
+disappeared. We exchanged but few words. I was still oppressed with the
+conviction of my own unworthiness, and wondered if she could read in my
+burning face the history of shame. How she must avoid and despise me,
+thought I, when she has discovered all, and how bold and wicked it was
+to darken the light in which she lived with the guilt that was a part of
+me! Not the less did I experience this when she spoke to me with
+kindness and unreserve. The feeling grew in strength. I was conscious of
+deceit and fraud, and could not shake the knowledge off. I was taking
+mean advantage of her confidence, assuming a character to which I had no
+claim, and listening to the accents of innocence and virtue with the
+equanimity of one good and spotless as herself. In the afternoon the
+young students resumed their work. When it was over, we strolled amongst
+the hills; and, at the close of a delightful walk, found ourselves in
+the enchanting village. Here we encountered Miss Fairman and the
+incumbent, and we returned home in company. In one short hour we reached
+it. How many hours have passed since _that_ was ravished from the hand
+of Time, and registered in the tenacious memory! Years have floated by,
+and silently have dropped into the boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted;
+and these few minutes--sacred relics--live and linger in the world, in
+mercy it may be, to lighten up my lonely hearth, or save the whitened
+head from drooping. The spirit of one golden hour shall hover through a
+life, and shed glory where he falls. What are the unfruitful,
+unremembered years that rush along, frightening mortality with their
+fatal speed--an instant in eternity! What are the moments loaded with
+passion, intense, and never-dying--years, ages upon earth! Away with the
+divisions of time, whilst one short breath--the smallest particle or
+measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. Breathless and silent is the
+dewy eve. Trailing a host of glittering clouds behind him, the sun
+stalks down, and leaves the emerald hills in deeper green. The lambs are
+skipping on the path--the shepherd as loth to lead them home as they to
+go. The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back. The
+minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family. They hear
+the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them
+think it over. Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the
+twilight group. She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the
+good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us: she
+smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful
+eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss,
+and cannot bear their weight of happiness.
+
+Another day of natural gladness--and then the Sabbath; this not less
+cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding. The sun shone fair upon the
+ancient church, and made its venerable gray stones sparkle and look
+young again. The dark-green ivy that for many a year has clung there,
+looked no longer sad and sombre, but gay and lively as the newest of the
+new-born leaves that smiled on every tree. The inhabitants of the
+secluded village were already a-foot when we proceeded from the
+parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to
+join them. The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale;
+for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature. Willows
+and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the
+living wend their way beneath them, subdued to seriousness, it may be,
+by the breathless voice that dwells in every well-remembered mound.
+There is not one who does not carry on his brow the thoughts that best
+become it now. All are well dressed, all look cleanly and contented. The
+children are with their parents, their natural and best instructors.
+Whom should they love so well? To whom is honour due if not to them? The
+village owns no school to disannul the tie of blood, to warp and weaken
+the affection that holds them well together.
+
+All was quietness and decorum in the house of prayer. Every earnest eye
+was fixed, not upon Mr Fairman, but on the book from which the people
+prayed, in which they found their own good thoughts portrayed, their
+pious wishes told, their sorrow and repentance in clearest form
+described. Every humble penitent was on his knees. With one voice, loud
+and heartfelt, came the responses which spoke the people's acquiescence
+in all the pastor urged and prayed on their behalf. The worship over, Mr
+Fairman addressed his congregation, selecting his subject from the
+lesson of the day, and fitting his words to the capacities of those who
+listened. Let me particularly note, that whilst the incumbent pointed
+distinctly to the cross as the only ground of a sinner's hope, he
+insisted upon good works as the necessary and essential accompaniment of
+his faith. "Do not tell me, my dear friends," he said, at the conclusion
+of his address--"do not tell me that you believe, if your daily life is
+unworthy a believer. I will not trust you. What is your belief, if your
+heart is busy in contrivances to overreach your neighbour? What is it,
+if your mind is filled with envy, malice, hatred, and revenge? What if
+you are given over to disgraceful lusts--to drunkenness and debauchery?
+What if you are ashamed to speak the truth, and are willing to become a
+liar? I tell you, and I have warrant for what I say, that your conduct
+one towards another must be straightforward, honest, generous, kind, and
+affectionate, or you cannot be in a safe and happy state. You owe it to
+yourselves to be so; for if you are poor and labouring men, you have an
+immortal soul within you, and it is your greatest ornament. It is that
+which gives the meanest of us a dignity that no earthly honours can
+supply; a dignity that it becomes the first and last of us by every
+means to cherish and support. Is it not, my friends, degrading, fearful
+to know that we bear about with us the very image of our God, and that
+we are acting worse than the very brutes of the field? Do yourselves
+justice. Be pure--pure in mind and body. Be honest, in word and deed. Be
+loving to one another. Crush every wish to do evil, or to speak harshly;
+be brothers, and feel that you are working out the wishes of a
+benevolent and loving Father, who has created you for love, and smiles
+upon you when you do his bidding." There was more to this effect, but
+nothing need be added to explain the scope and tendency of his
+discourse. His congregation could not mistake his meaning; they could
+not fail to profit by it, if reason was not proof against the soundest
+argument. As quietly as, and, if it be possible, more seriously than,
+they entered the church, did the small band of worshippers, at the close
+of the service, retire from it. Could it be my fancy, or did the wife in
+truth cling closer to her husband--the father clasp his little boy more
+firmly in his hand? Did neighbour nod to neighbour more eagerly as they
+parted at the churchyard gate--did every look and movement of the many
+groups bespeak a spirit touched, a mind reproved? I may not say so, for
+my own heart was melted by the scene, and might mislead my judgment.
+There was a second service in the afternoon. This concluded, we walked
+to the sea-beach. In the evening Mr Fairman related a connected history
+from the Old Testament, whilst the pupils tracked his progress on their
+maps, and the narrative became a living thing in their remembrances.
+Serious conversation then succeeded; to this a simple prayer, and the
+day closed, sweetly and calmly, as a day might close in Paradise.
+
+The events of the following month partook of the character of those
+already glanced at. The minister was unremitting in his attendance upon
+his parishioners, and no day passed during which something had not been
+accomplished for their spiritual improvement or worldly comfort. His
+loving daughter was a handmaid at his side, ministering with him, and
+shedding sunshine where she came. The villagers were frugal and
+industrious; and seemed, for the most part, sensible of their
+incumbent's untiring efforts. Improvement appeared even in the cottage
+of the desperate Warden. Mr Fairman obtained employment for him. For a
+fortnight he had attended to it, and no complaint had reached the
+parsonage of misbehaviour. His wife had learned to bear her imagined
+wrongs in silence, and could even submit to a visit from her best friend
+without insulting him for the condescension. My own days passed smoothly
+on. My occupation grew every day more pleasing, and the results of my
+endeavours as gratifying as I could wish them. My pupils were attached
+to me, and I beheld them improving gradually and securely under their
+instruction. Mr Fairman, who, for a week together, had witnessed the
+course of my tuition, and watched it narrowly, was pleased to express
+his approbation in the warmest terms. Much of the coldness with which I
+thought he had at first encountered me disappeared, and his manner grew
+daily more friendly and confiding. His treatment was most generous. He
+received me into the bosom of his family as a son, and strove to render
+his fair habitation my genuine and natural home.
+
+Another month passed by, and the colour and tone of my existence had
+suffered a momentous change. In the acquirement of a fearful joy, I had
+lost all joy. In rendering every moment of my life blissful and
+ecstatic, I had robbed myself of all felicity. A few weeks before, and
+my state of being had realized a serenity that defied all causes of
+perturbation and disquiet. Now it was a sea of agitation and disorder;
+and a breath, a nothing had brought the restless waves upon the quiet
+surface. Through the kindness of Mr Fairman, my evenings had been almost
+invariably passed in the society of himself and his daughter. The lads
+were early risers, and retired, on that account, at a very early hour to
+rest. Upon their dismission, I had been requested to join the company in
+the drawing-room. This company included sometimes Doctor Mayhew, the
+neighbouring squire, or a chance visitor, but consisted oftenest only of
+the incumbent and his daughter. Aware of the friendly motive which
+suggested the request, I obeyed it with alacrity. On these occasions,
+Miss Fairman used her pencil, whilst I read aloud; or she would ply her
+needle, and soothe at intervals her father's ear with strains of music,
+which he, for many reasons, loved to hear. Once or twice the incumbent
+had been called away, and his child and I were left together. I had no
+reason to be silent whilst the good minister was present, yet I found
+that I could speak more confidently and better when he was absent. We
+conversed with freedom and unrestraint. I found the maiden's mind well
+stored--her voice was not more sweet than was her understanding clear
+and cloudless. Books had been her joy, which, in the season of
+suffering, had been my consolation. They were a common source of
+pleasure. She spoke of them with feeling, and I could understand her. I
+regarded her with deep unfeigned respect; but, the evening over, I took
+my leave, as I had come--in peace. Miss Fairman left the parsonage to
+pay a two-days' visit at a house in the vicinity. Until the evening of
+the first day I was not sensible of her absence. It was then, and at the
+customary hour of our reunion, that, for the first time, I experienced,
+with alarm, a sense of loneliness and desertion--that I became
+tremblingly conscious of the secret growth of an affection that had
+waited only for the time and circumstance to make its presence and its
+power known and dreaded. In the daily enjoyment of her society, I had
+not estimated its influence and value. Once denied it, and I dared not
+acknowledge to myself how precious it had become, how silently and
+fatally it had wrought upon my heart. The impropriety and folly of
+self-indulgence were at once apparent--yes, the vanity and
+wickedness--and, startled by what looked like guilt, I determined
+manfully to rise superior to temptation. I took refuge in my books; they
+lacked their usual interest, were ineffectual in reducing the ruffled
+mind to order. I rose and paced my room, but I could not escape from
+agitating thought. I sought the minister in his study, and hoped to
+bring myself to calm and reason by dwelling seriously on the business of
+the day--with him, the father of the lady, and _my master_. He was not
+there. He had left the parsonage with Doctor Mayhew an hour before. I
+walked into the open air restless and unhappy, relying on the freshness
+and repose of night to be subdued and comforted. It was a night to
+soften anger--to conquer envy--to destroy revenge--beautiful and bright.
+The hills were bathed in liquid silvery light, and on their heights, and
+in the vale, on all around, lay passion slumbering. What could I find on
+such a night, but favour and incitement, support and confirmation,
+flattery and delusion? Every object ministered to the imagination, and
+love had given that wings. I trembled as I pursued my road, and fuel
+found its unobstructed way rapidly to the flame within. Self-absorbed, I
+wandered on. I did not choose my path. I believed I did not, and I
+stopped at length--before the house that held her. I gazed upon it with
+reverence and love. One room was lighted up. Shadows flitted across the
+curtained window, and my heart throbbed sensibly when, amongst them, I
+imagined I could trace her form. I was borne down by a conviction of
+wrong and culpability, but I could not move, or for a moment draw away
+my look. It was a strange assurance that I felt--but I did feel it,
+strongly and emphatically--that I should see her palpably before I left
+the place. I waited for that sight in certain expectation, and it came.
+A light was carried from the room. Diminished illumination there, and
+sudden brightness against a previously darkened casement, made this
+evident. The light ascended--another casement higher than the last was,
+in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed her figure. She approached the
+window, and, for an instant--oh how brief!--looked into the heavenly
+night. My poor heart sickened with delight, and I strained my eyes long
+after all was blank and dark again.
+
+Daylight, and the employments of day, if they did not remove, weakened
+the turbulence of the preceding night. The more I found my passion
+acquiring mastery, with greater vigour I renewed my work, and with more
+determination I pursued the objects that were most likely to fight and
+overcome it. I laboured with the youths for a longer period. I undertook
+to prepare a composition for the following day which I knew must take
+much thought and many hours in working out. I armed myself at all
+points--but the evening came and found me once more conscious of a void
+that left me prostrate. Mr Fairman was again absent from home. I could
+not rest in it, and I too sallied forth, but this time, to the village.
+I would not deliberately offer violence to my conscience, and I shrunk
+from a premeditated visit to the distant house. My own acquaintances in
+the village were not many, or of long standing, but there were some half
+dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent's daughter. To one of these
+I bent my steps, with no other purpose than that of baffling time that
+hung upon me painfully and heavily at home. For a few minutes I spoke
+with the aged female of the house on general topics; then a passing
+observation--in spite of me--escaped my lips in reference to Miss Ellen.
+The villager took up the theme and expatiated widely. There was no end
+to what she had to say of good and kind for the dear lady. I could have
+hugged her for her praise. Prudence bade me forsake the dangerous
+ground, and so I did, to return again with tenfold curiosity and zest. I
+asked a hundred questions, each one revealing more interest and ardour
+than the last, and involving me in deeper peril. It was at length
+accomplished. My companion hesitated suddenly in a discourse, then
+stopped, and looked me in the face, smiling cunningly. "I tell you what,
+sir," she exclaimed at last, and loudly, "you are over head and ears in
+love, and that's the truth on't."
+
+"Hush, good woman," I replied, blushing to the forehead, and hastening
+to shut an open door. "Don't speak so loud. You mistake, it is no such
+thing. I shall be angry if you say so--very angry. What can you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say, sir. Why, do you know how old I am? Seventy-three. I
+think I ought to tell, and where's the harm of it? Who couldn't love the
+sweetest lady in the parish--bless her young feeling heart!"
+
+"I tell you--you mistake--you are to blame. I command you not to repeat
+this to a living soul. If it should come to the incumbent's ears"--
+
+"Trust me for that, sir. I'm no blab. He shan't be wiser for such as me.
+But do you mean to tell me, sir, with that red face of your'n, you
+haven't lost your heart--leave alone your trembling? ah, well, I hopes
+you'll both be happy, anyhow."
+
+I endeavoured to remonstrate, but the old woman only laughed and shook
+her aged head. I left her, grieved and apprehensive. My secret thoughts
+had been discovered. How soon might they be carried to the confiding
+minister and his unsuspecting daughter! What would they think of me! It
+was a day of anxiety and trouble, that on which Miss Fairman returned to
+the parsonage. I received my usual invitation; but I was indisposed, and
+did not go. I resolved to see her only during meals, and when it was
+impossible to avoid her. I would not seek her presence. Foolish effort!
+It had been better to pass hours in her sight, for previous separation
+made union more intense, and the passionate enjoyment of a fleeting
+instant was hoarded up, and became nourishment for the livelong day.
+
+It was a soft rich afternoon in June, and chance made me the companion
+of Miss Fairman. We were alone: I had encountered her at a distance of
+about a mile from the parsonage, on the sea-shore, whither I had walked
+distressed in spirit, and grateful for the privilege of listening in
+gloomy quietude to the soothing sounds of nature--medicinal ever. The
+lady was at my side almost before I was aware of her approach. My heart
+throbbed whilst she smiled upon me, sweetly as she smiled on all. Her
+deep hazel eye was moist. Could it be from weeping?
+
+"What has happened, Miss Fairman?" I asked immediately.
+
+"Do I betray my weakness, then?" she answered. "I am sorry for it; for
+dear papa tells all the villagers that no wise man weeps--and no wise
+woman either, I suppose. But I cannot help it. We are but a small family
+in the village, and it makes me very sad to miss the old faces one after
+another, and to see old friends dropping and dropping into the silent
+grave."
+
+As she spoke the church-bell tolled, and she turned pale, and ceased. I
+offered her my arm, and we walked on.
+
+"Whom do you mourn, Miss Fairman?" I asked at length.
+
+"A dear good friend--my best and oldest. When poor mamma was dying, she
+made me over to her care. She was her nurse, and was mine for years. It
+is very wrong of me to weep for her. She was good and pious, and is
+blest."
+
+The church-bell tolled again, and my companion shuddered.
+
+"Oh! I cannot listen to that bell," she said. "I wish papa would do away
+with it. What a withering sound it has! I heard it first when it was
+tolling for my dear mother. It fell upon my heart like iron then, and it
+falls so now."
+
+"I cannot say that I dislike the melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its
+messenger should not be gay."
+
+"It is the soul that sees and hears. Beauty and music are created
+quickly if the heart be joyful. So my book says, and it is true. You
+have had no cause to think that bell a hideous thing."
+
+"Yet I have suffered youth's severest loss. I have lost a mother."
+
+"You speak the truth. Yes, I have a kind father left me--and you"--
+
+"I am an orphan, friendless and deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman, you
+may be spared my fate for years."
+
+"Not friendless or deserted either, Mr Stukely," answered the young lady
+kindly; "papa does not deserve, I am sure, that you should speak so
+harshly."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did not mean to say that. He has been most
+generous to me--kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still
+must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He needs
+no greater punishment."
+
+"You must not talk so. Papa will, I am sure, be a father to you, as he
+is to all who need one. You do not know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is
+overflowing with tenderness and charity. You cannot judge him by his
+manner. He has had his share of sorrow and misfortune; and death has
+been at his door oftener than once. Friends have been unfaithful and men
+have been ungrateful; but trial and suffering have not hardened him. You
+have seen him amongst the poor, but you have not seen him as I have; nor
+have I beheld him as his Maker has, in the secret workings of his
+spirit, which is pure and good, believe me. He has received injury like
+a child, and dealt mercy and love with the liberality of an angel. Trust
+my father, Mr Stukely."--
+
+The maiden spoke quickly and passionately, and her neck and face
+crimsoned with animation. I quivered, for her tones communicated
+fire--but my line of conduct was marked, and it shone clear in spite of
+the clouds of emotion which strove to envelope and conceal it--as they
+did too soon.
+
+"I would trust him, Miss Fairman, and I do," I answered with a faltering
+tongue. "I appreciate his character and I revere him. I could have made
+my home with him. I prayed that I might do so. Heaven seemed to have
+directed my steps to this blissful spot, and to have pointed out at
+length a resting place for my tired feet. I have been most happy
+here--too happy--I have proved ungrateful, and I know how rashly I have
+forfeited this and every thing. I cannot live here. This is no home for
+me. I will go into the world again--cast myself upon it--do any thing. I
+could be a labourer on the highways, and be contented if I could see
+that I had done my duty, and behaved with honour. Believe me, Miss
+Fairman, I have not deliberately indulged--I have struggled, fought, and
+battled, till my brain has tottered. I am wretched and forlorn--but I
+will leave you--to-morrow--would that I had never come----." I could say
+no more. My full heart spoke its agony in tears.
+
+"What has occurred? What afflicts you? You alarm me, Mr Stukely."
+
+I had sternly determined to permit no one look to give expression to the
+feeling which consumed me, to obstruct by force the passage of the
+remotest hint that should struggle to betray me; but as the maiden
+looked full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance of me, and against
+all opposition, the tell-tale passion rising from my soul, and creeping
+to my eye. It would not be held back. In an instant, with one
+treacherous glance, all was spoken and revealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    By that dejected city, Arno runs,
+    Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.
+    There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes
+    Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.
+    And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring
+    Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing
+    Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,
+    And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,
+    Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest
+    My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:
+    For many griefs had wounded it, and more
+    Thy little hands could lighten were in store.
+    But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow
+    Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.
+    What then the bliss to see again thy face,
+    And all that Rumour has announced of grace!
+    I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.
+    O! could I sleep to wake again in May.
+
+    WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.
+
+
+_Sandt_.--Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice
+of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into
+their studies or their society.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--They should rather those than others. The young _must_
+cease to be young, and the unlearned _may_ cease to be unlearned.
+According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth
+against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have
+studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other
+courses than the paths of wisdom.
+
+_Sandt_.--Do you approve of the pursuit?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Who does not?
+
+_Sandt_.--None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the
+game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the
+slough. May I ask you another question?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Certainly.
+
+_Sandt_.--Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
+to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek
+information from you?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
+truth and happiness.
+
+_Sandt_.--If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from
+civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful
+persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at
+seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our
+consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what
+rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only
+to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is
+better than falsehood; and we come to that.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--How?
+
+_Sandt_.--No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to
+happiness--I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe
+that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we
+are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our
+tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer
+who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a
+truth--whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me
+a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet,
+the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has
+not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or
+reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his
+rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless
+for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even
+the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much
+lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of
+the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own
+scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for
+more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you,
+even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where
+the Old Serpent went before you.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic
+and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.
+
+_Sandt_.--I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the
+power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease,
+comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The idea is, truly, no humble one.
+
+_Sandt_.--A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The
+power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my
+aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine
+work of creating the capacity.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Childish! childish!--Men have cravings enow already; give
+them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be
+contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place
+us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power,
+without idle aspirations after impracticable good.
+
+_Sandt_.--O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of
+your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small
+and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Is this to me?
+
+_Sandt_.--To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could
+not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and
+travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.
+
+_Sandt_.--You sought celebrity.--I blame not that. The thick air of
+multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of
+solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping
+of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us
+come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What
+letters do they countenance--do they tolerate?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Plays.
+
+_Sandt_.--Playthings.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Travels.
+
+_Sandt_.--On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along
+which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke
+of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--We are not such drudges.
+
+_Sandt_.--Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can
+call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich
+possessions.
+
+_Sandt_.--None; not the highest.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost
+yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow
+them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force.
+The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude.
+The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that
+she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both;
+in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never
+more agitated than in the midst of peace.
+
+_Sandt_.--The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing
+that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that
+lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our
+homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and
+where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir,
+at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them,
+quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age--neither in
+difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself
+the tutor or the guardian of mankind.
+
+_Sandt_.--I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and
+gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the
+travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of
+princes in strange countries?
+
+_Kotzebue_.--They themselves.
+
+_Sandt_.--They have no more right to take you away from your country,
+than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to
+the land that bore you, and were not at liberty--(if right and liberty
+are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)--you were not
+at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
+freedom are these!
+
+_Sandt_.--A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the
+servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in
+his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that
+he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and
+tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you
+voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be
+coerced to act against Germans.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would not.
+
+_Sandt_.--Perhaps you think so.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Sir, I know my duty.
+
+_Sandt_.--We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the
+will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you
+left the ranks of your fellow-citizens--already have you taken the
+enlisting money and marched away.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very
+polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak
+rather the language of books than of men.
+
+_Sandt_.--What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect
+than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men.
+I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the
+productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the
+continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to
+maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware
+that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can
+think of the matter, and bad enough is this.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our
+circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our
+patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical
+mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so
+minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and
+governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take
+pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out
+of place.
+
+_Sandt_.--We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is
+better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this
+indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He
+who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other,
+soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every
+thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men.
+Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and
+familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate
+for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with
+people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to
+those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others:
+but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We
+irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the
+water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those
+that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once
+with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them,
+and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must
+have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to
+us, will be useless.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at
+all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old
+enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no
+means deficient in the relations I bear to society.
+
+_Sandt_.--Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds
+can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover
+against the rain and the wind.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with
+large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my
+dear young man! and less enthusiastic.
+
+_Sandt_.--They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by
+force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must
+love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all,
+profess a parity.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.
+
+_Sandt_.--I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and
+kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could
+speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their
+ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died
+sadly!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of
+authority, your voice is gentle--almost plaintive.
+
+_Sandt_.--It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor
+require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each
+other for many years.
+
+_Sandt_.--What! should I have asked you such a question as the last,
+after long knowing you?
+
+_Kotzebue_, (_aside_.)--This resembles insanity.
+
+_Sandt_.--The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick
+apprehensions.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I really beg your pardon.
+
+_Sandt_.--I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness
+could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them
+grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again
+and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that
+fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the
+remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have
+held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have
+nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and
+security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful.
+Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that
+never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France
+falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and
+crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried
+in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the
+wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most
+literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those
+laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we
+surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled
+cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push
+us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the
+victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are
+the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed
+are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what
+they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you.
+There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.
+
+_Sandt_.--There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great,
+for instance, in our disunion.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.
+
+_Sandt_.--No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny
+princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns
+from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and
+spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured
+them, and slept upon their feathers.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of
+our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to
+us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages
+of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.
+
+_Sandt_.--Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
+and hirelings.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival
+us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.
+
+_Sandt_.--While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with
+England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on
+our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than
+they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their
+children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our
+desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and
+generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under
+disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose
+through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to
+be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and
+secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat
+by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in
+the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
+poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the
+future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush
+we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure
+at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms
+ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps
+of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow
+on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her
+venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am bound to oppose such a project.
+
+_Sandt_.--Say not so: in God's name, say not so.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and
+rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if
+possible.
+
+_Sandt._--Bound! I must then release you.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--How should you, young gentleman, release me?
+
+_Sandt_.--May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again:
+think better: spare me!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I will not betray you.
+
+_Sandt_.--That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me
+can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has
+been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper;
+here is your ink.
+
+_Kotzebue_.--Do you imagine me an informer?
+
+_Sandt_.--From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood,
+the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good
+men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the
+bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to
+think of losing you! Be my friend!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I would be.
+
+_Sandt_.--Be a German!
+
+_Kotzebue_.--I am.
+
+_Sandt_, (_having gone out_.)--Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is
+kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of
+the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I
+lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls:
+I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people
+together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim
+follows willingly. (_Enters again_.)
+
+Turn! die! (_strikes_.)
+
+Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with
+one guilty! and writhe longer!
+
+Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me.
+In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have
+sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals
+dishonour, commiseration covers it.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.
+
+A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.
+
+
+When the Empecinado, after escaping from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined his
+band, and again repaired to the favourite skirmishing ground on the
+banks of the Duero, he found the state of affairs in Old Castile
+becoming daily less favourable for his operations. The French overran
+the greater part of the province, and visited with severe punishment any
+disobedience of their orders; so that the peasantry no longer dared to
+assist the guerillas as they had previously done. Many of the villages
+on the Duero had become _afrancesados_, not, it is true, through love,
+but through dread of the invaders, and in the hope of preserving
+themselves from pillage and oppression. However much the people in their
+hearts might wish success to men like the Empecinado, the guerillas were
+too few and too feeble to afford protection to those who, by giving them
+assistance or information, would incur the displeasure of the French.
+The clergy were the only class that, almost without an exception,
+remained stanch to the cause of Spanish independence, and their purses
+and refectories were ever open to those who took up arms in its defence.
+
+Noways deterred by this unfavourable aspect of affairs, the Empecinado
+resolved to carry on the war in Old Castile, even though unaided and
+alone. He established his bivouac in the pine-woods of Coca, and sent
+out spies towards Somosierra and Burgos, to get information of some
+convoy of which the capture might yield both honour and profit.
+
+It was on the second morning after the departure of the spies, and a few
+minutes before daybreak, that the little camp was aroused by a shot from
+a sentry, placed on the skirt of the wood. In an instant every man was
+on his feet. It was the Empecinado's custom, when outlying in this
+manner, to make one-half his band sleep fully armed and equipped, with
+their horses saddled and bridled beside them; and a fortunate precaution
+it was in this instance. Scarcely had the men time to untether and
+spring upon their horses, when the sentry galloped headlong into the
+camp.
+
+"_Los Franceses! Los Franceses_!" exclaimed he, breathless with speed.
+
+One of the Empecinado's first qualities was his presence of mind, which
+never deserted him even in the most critical situations. Instantly
+forming up that moiety of his men which was already in the saddle, he
+left a detachment in front of those who were hastily saddling and
+arming, and with the remainder retired a little to the left of the open
+ground on which the bivouac was established. Almost before he had
+completed this arrangement, the jingling of arms and clattering of
+horses' feet were heard, and a squadron of French cavalry galloped down
+the glade. The Empecinado gave the word to charge, and as Fuentes at the
+head of one party advanced to meet them, he himself attacked them in
+flank. The French, not having anticipated much opposition from a foe
+whom they had expected to find sleeping, were somewhat surprized at the
+fierce resistance they met. A hard fight took place, rendered still more
+confused by the darkness, or rather by a faint grey light, which was
+just beginning to appear, and gave a shadowy indistinctness to
+surrounding objects. The Spaniards were inferior in number to their
+opponents, and it was beginning to go hard with them, when the remainder
+of the guerillas, now armed and mounted, came up to their assistance. On
+perceiving this accession to their adversaries' force, the French
+thought they had been led into an ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable
+order to the edge of the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for
+it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued
+for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in
+making one prisoner. This was a young man in the dress of a peasant, who
+being badly mounted, was easily overtaken. On being brought before the
+Empecinado, the latter with no small surprize recognized a native of
+Aranda, named Pedro Gutierrez, who was one of the emissaries he had sent
+out two days previously to get information concerning the movements of
+the enemy.
+
+With pale cheek and faltering voice, the prisoner answered the
+Empecinado's interrogatories. It appears that he had been detected as a
+spy by the French, who had given him his choice between a halter and the
+betrayal of his countrymen and employers. With the fear of death before
+his eyes, he had consented to turn traitor.
+
+The deepest silence prevailed among the guerillas during his narrative,
+and remained unbroken for a full minute after he had concluded. The
+Empecinado's brow was black as thunder, and his features assumed an
+expression which the trembling wretch well knew how to interpret.
+
+"_Que podia hacer, senores_?" said the culprit, casting an appealing,
+imploring glance around him. "The rope was round my neck; I have an aged
+father and am his only support. Life is very sweet. What could I do?"
+
+"_Die_!" replied the Empecinado, in his deep stern voice--"Die like a
+man _then_, instead of dying like a dog _now_!"
+
+He turned his back upon him, and ten minutes later, the body of the
+unfortunate spy was dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree,
+and the guerillas marched off to seek another and a safer bivouac.
+
+A few days after this incident the other spies returned, and after
+receiving their report, and consulting with his lieutenant, Mariano
+Fuentes, the Empecinado broke up the little camp, and led his band in
+the direction of the _camino real_.
+
+Along that part of the high-road, from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which
+winds through the mountain range of Onrubias, an escort of fifty French
+dragoons was marching, about an hour before dusk, on an evening of early
+spring. Two carriages, and three or four heavily-laden carts, each drawn
+by half-a-dozen mules, composed the whole of the convoy; the value of
+which, however, might be deemed considerable, judging from the strength
+of the escort, and the precautions observed by the officer in command to
+avoid a surprise--precautions which were not of much avail; for, on
+reaching a spot where the road widened considerably, and was traversed
+by a broad ravine, the party was suddenly charged on either flank by
+double their number of guerillas. The dragoons made a gallant
+resistance, but it was a short one, for they had no room or time to form
+in any order, and were far overmatched in the hand-to-hand contest that
+ensued. With the very first who fled went a gentleman in civilian's
+garb, who sprang out of the most elegant of the two carriages, and
+mounting a fine Andalusian horse led by a groom, was off like the wind,
+disregarding the shrieks of his travelling companion, a female two or
+three-and-twenty years old, of great beauty, and very richly attired.
+The cries and alarm of the lady thus deserted were redoubled, when an
+instant later a guerilla of fierce aspect presented himself at the
+carriage-door.
+
+"Have no fear, senora," said the Empecinado, "you are in the hands of
+honourable men, and no harm shall be done you." And having by suchlike
+assurances succeeded in calming her terrors, he obtained from her some
+information as to the contents of the carts and carriages, as well as
+regarding herself and her late companion.
+
+The man who had abandoned her, and consulted his own safety by flying
+with the escort, was her husband, Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond
+merchant to the late King Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the unsettled
+state of things in Spain, he was hastening to take refuge in France,
+with his handsome wife and his great wealth--of the latter of which no
+inconsiderable portion was contained in the carriage, in the shape of
+caskets of jewellery, diamonds, and other valuables.
+
+Repairing to the neighbouring mountains, the guerillas proceeded to
+examine their booty, which the Empecinado permitted them to divide among
+themselves, with the exception of the carriage and its contents,
+including the lady, which he reserved for his own share.
+
+On the following day came letters from the French military governor of
+Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur Barbot, who had taken refuge in that
+town, and offered a large sum as ransom for his wife. To this
+application the Empecinado did not vouchsafe any answer, but marched off
+to his native village of Castrillo, taking with him jewels, carriage,
+and lady. The latter he established in the house of his brother Manuel,
+recommending her to the care of his sister-in-law, and commanding that
+she should be treated with all possible respect, and her wishes attended
+to on every point.
+
+The Empecinado's exultation at the success of his enterprize was great,
+but he little foresaw all the danger and trouble that his rich capture
+was hereafter to occasion him. He had become violently enamoured of his
+fair prisoner, and in order to have leisure to pay his court to her, he
+sent off his partida on a distant expedition under the command of
+Fuentes, and himself remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost to find
+favour in the eyes of the beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then in the
+prime of life, a remarkably handsome man, and notwithstanding that the
+French affected to treat him as a brigand, his courage and patriotism
+were admitted by the unprejudiced among all parties, and his bold and
+successful deeds had already procured him a degree of renown that was an
+additional recommendation of him to the fair sex. It may not, therefore,
+be deemed very surprising that, after the first few days of her
+captivity were passed, and she had become a little used to the novelty
+of her position, the lady began to consider the Empecinado with some
+degree of favour, and seemed not altogether disposed to be inconsolable
+in her widowhood. He on his part spared no pains to please her. His very
+nature seemed changed by the violence of his new passion; and so great
+was the metamorphosis that his best friends scarcely recognized him for
+the same man. He seemed totally to have forgotten the career to which he
+had devoted himself, and the hatred and war of extermination he had
+vowed against the French. The restless activity and spirit of enterprize
+which formed such distinguishing traits in his character, were
+completely lulled to sleep by the charms of the fair Barbot. Nor was the
+change in his external appearance less striking. Aware that the rude
+manners and attire of a guerilla were not likely to please the
+fastidious taste of a town-bred dame, he hastened to discard them. His
+rough bushy beard and mustaches were carefully trimmed and adjusted by
+the most expert barber of the neighbourhood; his sheepskin jacket, heavy
+boots, and jingling double-roweled spurs thrown aside, and in their
+place he assumed the national garb, so well adapted to show off a
+handsome person, and which, although now almost disused throughout
+Spain, far surpasses in elegance the prevailing costumes of the
+nineteenth century: a short light jacket of black velvet, and waistcoat
+of the richest silk, both profusely decorated with gold filigree
+buttons; purple velvet breeches fastened at the knee with bunches of
+ribands; silk stockings, and falling boots of chamois leather, by the
+most expert maker in Cordova; a crimson silk sash round his waist, and
+round his neck a silk handkerchief, of which the ends were drawn through
+a magnificent jewelled ring. A green velvet cap, ornamented with sables
+and silver, and an ample cloak trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of a
+commandant of French gendarmes, completed this picturesque costume.
+
+Thus attired, and mounted on a splendid horse, the Empecinado escorted
+the object of his new flame to all the fetes and merry-makings of the
+surrounding country. Not a _romeria_ in the neighbouring villages, not a
+fair or a bull-fight in all the valley of the Duero, but were graced by
+the presence of Martin Diez and his dulcinea, whose fine horse and
+gallant equipment, but more especially the beauty of the rider, inspired
+universal admiration. As might be expected, many of those who had known
+the Empecinado a poor vine-dresser, became envious of his good fortune,
+and others who envied him not, were indignant at seeing him waste his
+time in such degrading effeminacy, instead of following up the career
+which he had so nobly begun. There was much murmuring, therefore, to
+which, however, he gave little heed; and several weeks had passed in the
+manner above described, when an incident occurred to rouse him from the
+sort of lethargy in which he was sunk.
+
+A despatch reached him from the Captain-General, Don Gregorio Cuesta,
+requiring his immediate presence at Ciudad Rodrigo, there to receive
+directions concerning the execution of a service of the greatest
+importance, and which was to be intrusted to him.
+
+This order had its origin in circumstances of which the Empecinado was
+totally ignorant. The jeweller Barbot, finding that neither large offers
+nor threats of punishment had any effect upon the Empecinado, who
+persisted in keeping his wife prisoner, made interest with the Duke of
+Infantado, then general of one of the Spanish armies, and besought him
+to exert his influence in favour of the captive lady, and to have her
+restored to her friends. The duke, who was a very important personage at
+the court of Charles the Fourth, and the favourite of Ferdinand the
+Seventh at the beginning of his reign, entertained a particular
+friendship for Barbot; and, if the _chronique scandaleuse_ of Madrid
+might be believed, a still more particular one for his wife. He
+immediately wrote to General Cuesta, desiring that the lady might be
+sent back to her husband without delay, as well as all the jewels and
+other spoil that had been seized by the Empecinado.
+
+With much difficulty did the guerilla make up his mind to abandon the
+inglorious position, and to go where duty called him. Strongly
+recommending his captive to his brother and sister-in-law, he set out
+for Ciudad Rodrigo, escorted by a sergeant and ten men of his partida.
+They had not proceeded half a mile from Castrillo, when, from behind a
+hedge bordering the road, a shot was fired, and the bullet slightly
+wounded the Empecinado's charger. Two of the escort pushed their horses
+through the hedge, and immediately returned, dragging between them a
+grey-haired old man, seventy years of age, who clutched in his wrinkled
+fingers a rusty carbine that had just been discharged.
+
+"He is surely mad!" exclaimed the Empecinado, gazing in astonishment at
+the venerable assassin. "_Dime, viejo_; do you know me? And why do you
+seek my life?"
+
+"_Si, si, te conozes_. You are the Empecinado--the bloody Empecinado.
+Give me back my Pedro, whom you murdered. _Ay di me! mi Pedrillo, te han
+matado!_"
+
+And the old man's frame quivered with rage, as he glared on the
+Empecinado with an expression of unutterable hate.
+
+One of the guerillas stepped forward--
+
+"'Tis old Gutierrez, the father of Pedro, who was hung in the Pinares de
+Coca, for betraying us to the French."
+
+"Throw his carbine into yonder pool, and leave the poor wretch," said
+the Empecinado; "his son deserved the death he met."
+
+"He missed his aim to-day, but he may point truer another time," said
+one of the men, half drawing a pistol from his holster.
+
+"Harm him not!" said the Empecinado sternly, and the party rode on.
+
+"_Maldito seas_!" screamed the old man, casting himself in the dust of
+the road, in a paroxysm of impotent fury. "_Maldito! Maldito! Ay de mi!
+mi Pedrillo!_"
+
+And his curses and lamentations continued till the guerillas were out of
+hearing.
+
+On arriving at Ciudad Rodrigo, the Empecinado went immediately to
+General Cuesta, who, although he did not receive him unkindly, could not
+but blame him greatly for the enormous crime he had committed in
+carrying off a lady who was distinguished by so mighty a personage as
+the Duke of Infantado. He told him it was absolutely necessary to devise
+some plan by which the Duke's anger might be appeased. Murat also had
+sent a message to the central junta, saying, that if satisfaction were
+not given, he would send troops to lay waste the whole district of
+Penafiel, in which Castrillo was situated; and it was probable, that if
+he had not done so already, it was because a large portion of the
+inhabitants of that district were believed to be well affected to the
+French. Without exactly telling him what he must do, the old general
+gave him a despatch for the _corregidor_ of Penafiel, and desired him to
+present himself before that functionary, and concert with him the
+measures to be taken.
+
+The Empecinado took his leave, and was quitting the governor's palace
+when he overtook at the door an _avogado_, who was a countryman of his,
+and whom he had left at Castrillo when he set out from that place. The
+sight of this man was a ray of light to the Empecinado, who immediately
+suspected that his enemies were intriguing against him. He proposed to
+the lawyer that they should walk to the inn, to which the latter
+consented. They had to traverse a lonely place, known by the name of San
+Francisco's Meadow, and on arriving there, behind the shelter of some
+walls, the Empecinado seized the advocate by the collar, and swore he
+would strangle him if he did not instantly confess what business had
+brought him to Ciudad Rodrigo, as well as all the plans or plots against
+the Empecinado to which he might be privy.
+
+The lawyer, who had known Diez from his childhood, and was fully aware
+of his desperate character and of his own peril, trembled for his life,
+and besought him earnestly to use no violence, for that he was willing
+to tell all he knew. Thereupon the Empecinado loosened his grasp, which
+had wellnigh throttled the poor avogado, and cocking a pistol, as a sort
+of warning to the other to tell the truth, bade him sit down beside him
+and proceed with his narrative.
+
+The lawyer informed him that the _ayuntamiento_ or corporation of
+Castrillo, and those of all the towns and villages of the district,
+found themselves in great trouble on account of the convoy he had
+intercepted, and more particularly of the lady whom he kept prisoner,
+and whose friends it appeared were persons of much influence with both
+contending parties, for that the junta and the French had alike demanded
+her liberty; and while the latter were about to send troops to put the
+whole country to fire and sword, the former, as well as the Spanish
+generals, had refused to afford them any protection against the
+consequences of her detention, and accused the ayuntamiento and the
+priests of encouraging the Empecinado to hold her in captivity. He
+himself had been sent to Ciudad Rodrigo to beg General Cuesta's advice,
+and the general had declared himself unable to assist them, but
+recommended them to restore the lady and treasure, if they did not wish
+the French to lay waste the country, and take by force the bone of
+contention.
+
+The Empecinado, suspecting that General Cuesta had not used all due
+frankness with him in this matter, handed to the lawyer the letter that
+had been given him for the corregidor of Penafiel, and compelled him,
+much against his will, to open and read it. Its contents coincided with
+what the avogado had told him; the general advising the corregidor to
+use every means to compromise the matter, rather than wait till the
+French should do themselves justice by the strong hand.
+
+Perceiving that, from various motives, every body was against him in
+this matter, the Empecinado bethought himself how he should get out of
+the scrape.
+
+"As an old friend and countryman, and more especially as a lawyer," said
+he to the avogado, "you are the most fitting man to give me advice in
+this difficulty. Tell me, then, what I ought to do, in order that our
+native town, which is innocent in the matter, should suffer no
+prejudice."
+
+"You speak now like a sensible man," replied the other, "and as a friend
+will I advise you. Let us immediately set off to Penafiel, deliver the
+general's letter to the corregidor, and take him with us to Castrillo.
+There, for form's sake, an examination of your conduct in the affair can
+take place. You shall give up the jewels, the carriage, and the lady,
+and set off immediately to join your partida."
+
+"To the greater part of that I willingly agree," said the Empecinado.
+"The jewels are buried in the cellar, and the carriage is in the stable.
+Take both when you list. But as to the lady, before I give her up, I
+will give up my own soul. She is my property; I took her in fair fight,
+and at the risk of my life."
+
+"You will think better of it before we get to Castrillo," replied the
+lawyer.
+
+The Empecinado shook his head, but led the way to the inn, where they
+took horse, and the next day reached Penafiel, whence they set out the
+following morning for Castrillo, which is a couple of leagues further,
+accompanied by the corregidor, his secretary, and two alguazils. The
+Empecinado was induced to leave his escort at Penafiel, in order that
+the sort of _pro forma_ investigation which was to be gone through might
+not appear to have taken place under circumstances of intimidation. The
+avogado started a couple of hours earlier than the rest of the party, to
+have things in readiness, so that the proceedings might be got through
+as rapidly as possible.
+
+It was about eight o'clock on a fine summer's morning that the
+Empecinado and his companions reached Castrillo. As they entered the
+town, an old mendicant, who was lying curled up like a dog in the
+sunshine under the porch of a house, lifted his head at the noise of the
+horses. As his eyes rested upon Diez, he made a bound forward with an
+agility extraordinary in one of his years, and fell almost under the
+feet of the Empecinado's horse, making the startled animal spring aside
+with a violence and suddenness sufficient to unhorse many a less
+practised rider than the one who bestrode him. The Empecinado lifted his
+whip in anger, but the old man, who had risen to his feet, showed no
+sign of fear, and as he stood in the middle of the road, and immediately
+in the path of the Empecinado, the latter recognized the wild features
+and long grey hair of old Gutierrez.
+
+"_Maldito seas_!" cried the old man, extending his arms towards the
+guerilla. "Murderer! the hour of vengeance is nigh. I saw it in my
+dreams. My Pedrillo showed me his assassin trampled under the feet of
+horses. _Asesino! Venga la hora de tu muerte!_"
+
+And the old man, who was half crazed by his misfortunes, relapsed into
+an incoherent strain of lamentations for his son, and curses upon him
+whom he called his murderer.
+
+The Empecinado, who, on recognizing old Gutierrez, had lowered his
+riding-whip, and listened unmoved to his curses and predictions, rode
+forward, explaining as he went, to the astonished corregidor, the scene
+that had just occurred. A little further on he separated from his
+companions, giving them rendezvous at ten o'clock at the house of the
+ayuntamiento. Proceeding to his brother's dwelling, he paid a visit to
+Madame Barbot, breakfasted with her, and then prepared to keep his
+appointment. He placed a brace of pistols and a poniard in his belt, and
+taking a loaded _trabuco_ or blunderbuss, in his hand, wrapped himself
+in his cloak so as to conceal his weapons, and repaired to the
+town-hall.
+
+He found the tribunal already installed, and every thing in readiness.
+Saluting the corregidor, he began pacing up and down the room without
+taking off his cloak. The corregidor repeatedly urged him to be seated,
+but he refused, and continued his walk, replying to the questions that
+were put to him, his answers to which were duly written down. About a
+quarter of an hour had passed in this manner, when a noise of feet and
+talking was heard in the street, and the Empecinado, as he passed one of
+the windows that looked out upon the _plaza_, saw, with no very
+comfortable feelings, that a number of armed peasants were entering the
+town hall. He perceived that he was betrayed, but his presence of mind
+stood his friend, and with his usual promptitude, he in a moment decided
+how he should act. Without allowing it to appear that he had any
+suspicion of what was going on, he walked to the door of the audience
+chamber, and before any one could interfere, shut and locked it. Then
+stepping up to the corregidor, he threw off his cloak, and presented his
+trabuco at the magistrate's head.
+
+"Senor Corregidor," said he, "this is not our agreement, but a base act
+of treachery. Commend yourself to God, for you are about to die."
+
+The corregidor was so dreadfully terrified at these words, and at the
+menacing action of the Empecinado, that he swooned away, and fell down
+under the table--the escribano fled into an adjoining chamber, and
+concealed himself under a bed--while the alguazils, trembling with fear,
+threw themselves upon their knees, and petitioned for mercy. The
+Empecinado, finding himself with so little trouble master of the field
+of battle, took possession of the papers that were lying upon the table,
+and, unlocking the door, proceeded to the principal staircase, which he
+found occupied by inhabitants of the town, armed with muskets and
+fowling-pieces. Placing his blunderbuss under his arm, with his hand
+upon the trigger, "Make way!" cried he; "the first who moves a finger
+may reckon upon the contents of my trabuco." His menace and resolute
+character produced the desired effect; a passage was opened, and he left
+the house in triumph. On reaching the street, however, he found a great
+crowd of men, women, and even children, assembled, who occupied the
+plaza and all the adjacent streets, and received him with loud cries of
+"Death to the Empecinado! _Muera el ladron y mal Cristiano_!" The armed
+men whom he had left in the town-house fired several shots at him from
+the windows, but nobody dared to lay hands upon him, as he marched
+slowly and steadily through the crowd, trabuco in hand, and casting
+glances on either side that made those upon whom they fell shrink
+involuntarily backwards.
+
+On the low roof of one of the houses of the plaza, that formed the angle
+of the Calle de la Cruz, or street of the cross, old Gutierrez had taken
+his station. With the fire of insanity in his bloodshot eyes, and a grin
+of exultation upon his wasted features, he witnessed the persecution of
+the Empecinado, and while his ears drank in the yells and hootings of
+the multitude, he added his shrill cracked voice to the uproar. When the
+shots were fired from the town-hall, he bounded and capered upon the
+platform, clapping his meagre fingers together in ecstasy; but as the
+Empecinado got further from the house, and the firing was discontinued,
+an expression of anxiety replaced the look of triumph that had lighted
+up the old maniac's face. Diez still moved on unhurt, and was now within
+a few paces of the house on which Gutierrez had perched himself. The old
+man's uneasiness increased. "Va a escapar!" muttered he to himself;
+"they will let him escape. Oh, if I had a gun, my Pedrillo would soon be
+avenged!"
+
+The Empecinado was passing under the house. A sudden thought struck
+Gutierrez. Stamping with his foot, he broke two or three of the tiles on
+which he was standing, and snatching up a large heavy fragment, he
+leaned over the edge of the roof to get a full view of the Empecinado,
+who was at that moment leaving the plaza and entering the Calle de la
+Cruz. In five seconds more he would be out of sight. As it was, it was
+only by leaning very far forward that Gutierrez could see him, walking
+calmly along, and keeping at bay the angry but cowardly mob that yelped
+at his heels, like a parcel of village curs pursuing a bloodhound, whose
+look alone prevents their too near approach.
+
+Throwing his left arm round a chimney, the old man swung himself
+forward, and with all the force that he possessed, hurled the tile at
+the object of his hate. The missile struck the Empecinado upon the
+temple, and he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the ground.
+
+"_Viva_!" screamed Gutierrez; but a cry of agony followed the shout of
+exultation. The chimney by which the old man supported himself was loose
+and crumbling, and totally unfit to bear his weight as he hung on by it,
+and leaned forward to gloat over his vengeance. It tottered for a
+moment, and then fell with a crash into the street. The height was not
+great, but the pavement was sharp and uneven; the old man pitched upon
+his head, and when lifted up was already a corpse.
+
+When the mob saw the Empecinado fall, they threw themselves upon him
+with as much ferocity as they had previously shown cowardice, and beat
+and ill-treated him in every possible manner. Not satisfied with that,
+they bound him hand and foot, and pushed him through a cellar window,
+throwing after him stones, and every thing they could find lying about
+the street. At last, wearied by their own brutality, they left him for
+dead, and he remained in that state till nightfall, when the corregidor
+and the ayuntamiento proceeded to inspect his body, in order to certify
+his death, and have him buried. When he was brought out of the cellar,
+however, they perceived he still breathed, and sent for a surgeon, and
+also for a priest to administer the last sacraments. They then carried
+him upon a ladder to the _posito_, or public granary, a strong building,
+where they considered he would be in safety, and put him to bed, bathed
+in blood and covered with wounds and bruises.
+
+The corregidor, fearing that the news of the riot, and of the death of
+the Empecinado, would reach Penafiel, and that the escort which had been
+left there, and the many partizans that Diez had in that town, would
+come over to Castrillo to avenge his death, persuaded one of the cures
+or parish priests of the latter place, to go over to Penafiel in all
+haste, and, counterfeiting great alarm, to spread the report that the
+French had entered Castrillo, seized the Empecinado, and carried him off
+to Aranda. This was accordingly done; and the Empecinado's escort being
+made aware of the vicinity of the French and the risk they ran,
+immediately mounted their horses and marched to join Mariano Fuentes,
+accompanied by upwards of fifty young men, all partizans of the
+Empecinado, and eager to revenge him. This matter being arranged, the
+corregidor had the jewels that were buried in the cellar of Manuel Diez
+dug up, and having taken possession of them, and installed Madame Barbot
+with all due attention in one of the principal houses of the town, he
+forwarded a report to General Cuesta of all that had occurred. The
+general immediately sent an escort to conduct the lady and the treasure
+to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ordered that as soon as the Empecinado was in a
+state to be moved, he should also be sent under a strong guard to that
+city.
+
+Meanwhile, the Empecinado's vigorous constitution triumphed over the
+injuries he had received, and he was getting so rapidly better, that for
+his safer custody the corregidor thought it necessary to have him
+heavily ironed. Deeming it impossible he should escape, and there being
+no troops in the village, no sentry was placed over him, so that at
+night his friends were able to hold discourse with him through the
+grating of one of the windows of the posito. In this manner he contrived
+to send a message to his brother Manuel, who, having also got into
+trouble on account of Madame Barbot's detention, had been compelled to
+take refuge in the mountains of Bilbuena, three leagues from Castrillo.
+Manuel took advantage of a dark night to steal into the town in
+disguise, and to speak with the Empecinado. He informed him that the
+superior of the Bernardine Monastery, in the Sierra de Balbuena, had
+been advised that it was the intention of the Empecinado's enemies to
+deliver him over to the French, in order that they might shoot him. The
+Empecinado replied, that he strongly suspected there was some such plot
+in agitation, and desired his brother to seek out Mariano Fuentes, and
+order him to march his band into the neighbourhood of Castrillo, and
+that on their arrival he would send them word what to do.
+
+Eight days elapsed, and the Empecinado was now completely cured of his
+wounds, so that he was in much apprehension lest he should be sent off
+to Ciudad Rodrio before the arrival of Fuentes. On the eighth night,
+however, his brother came to the window, and informed him that the
+partida was in the neighbourhood, and only waited his orders to march
+upon Castrillo, rescue him, and revenge the treatment he had received.
+This the Empecinado strongly enjoined them not to do, but desired his
+brother to come to his prison door at two o'clock the next morning with
+a led horse, and that he had the means to set himself at liberty. Manuel
+Diez did as he was ordered, wondering, however, in what manner the
+Empecinado intended to get out of the posito, which was a solidly
+constructed edifice with a massive door and grated windows. But the next
+night, when the guerilla heard the horses approaching his prison, he
+seized the door by an iron bar that traversed it on the inner side, and,
+exerting his prodigious strength, tore it off the hinges as though it
+had been of pasteboard. His feet being fastened together by a chain, he
+was compelled to sit sideways upon the saddle; but so elated was he to
+find himself once more at liberty that he pushed his horse into a
+gallop, and with his fetters clanking as he went, dashed through the
+streets of Castrillo, to the astonishment and consternation of the
+inhabitants, who knew not what devil's dance was going on in their
+usually quiet town.
+
+At Olmos, a village a quarter of a league from Castrillo, the fugitives
+halted, and roused a smith, who knocked off the Empecinado's irons.
+After a short rest at the house of an approved friend they remounted
+their horses, and a little after daybreak reached the place where
+Fuentes had taken up his bivouac. The Empecinado was received with great
+rejoicing, and immediately resumed the command. He passed a review of
+his band, and found it consisted of two hundred and twenty men, all well
+mounted and armed.
+
+Great was the alarm of the inhabitants of Castrillo when they found the
+prison broken open and the prisoner gone; and their terror was increased
+a hundred-fold, when a few hours later news was brought that the
+Empecinado was marching towards the town at the head of a strong body of
+cavalry. Some concealed themselves in cellars and suchlike
+hiding-places, others left the town and fled to the neighbouring woods;
+but the majority, despairing of escape by human means from the terrible
+anger of the Empecinado, shut themselves up in their houses, closed the
+doors and windows, and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance from the
+impending evil. Never had there been seen in Castrillo such a counting
+of rosaries and beating of breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling of
+aves and paters, as upon that morning.
+
+At noon the Empecinado entered the town at the head of his band,
+trumpets sounding, and the men firing their pistols and carbines into
+the air, in sign of joy at having recovered their leader. Forming up the
+partida in the market-place, the Empecinado sent for the corregidor and
+other authorities, who presented themselves before him pale and
+trembling, and fully believing they had not five minutes to live.
+
+"Fear nothing!" said the Empecinado, observing their terror. "It is
+certain I have met foul treatment at your hands; and it was the harder
+to bear coming from my own countrymen and townsfolk. But you have been
+misled, and will one day repent your conduct. I have forgotten your ill
+usage, and only remember the poverty of my native town, and the misery
+in which this war has plunged many of its inhabitants."
+
+So saying, he delivered to the alcalde and the parish priests a hundred
+ounces of gold for the relief of the poor and support of the hospital,
+and ten more to be spent in a _novillada_, or bull-bait and festival for
+the whole town. Cutting short their thanks and excuses, he left
+Castrillo and marched to the village of Sacramenia, where he quartered
+his men, and, accompanied by Mariano Fuentes, went to pay a visit to a
+neighbouring monastery. The monks received him with open arms and a
+hearty welcome, hailing him as the main prop of the cause of
+independence in Old Castile. They sat down to dinner in the refectory;
+and the conversation turning upon the state of the country, the
+Empecinado expressed his unwillingness to carry on the war in that
+province, on account of the little confidence he could place in the
+inhabitants, so many of whom had become _afrancesados_; and as a proof
+of this, he related all that had occurred to him at Castrillo. Upon
+hearing this the abbot, who was a man distinguished for his talents and
+patriotism, recommended Diez to lead his band to New Castile, where he
+would not have to encounter the persecutions of those who, having known
+him poor and insignificant, envied him his good fortune, and sought to
+throw obstacles in his path. He offered to get him letters from the
+general of the order of San Bernardo to the superiors of the various
+monasteries, in order that he might receive such assistance and support
+as they could give, and he might chance to require.
+
+"No one is a prophet in his own country," said the good father; "Mahomet
+in his native town of Medina met with the same ill-treatment that you,
+Martin Diez, have encountered in the place of your birth. Abandon, then,
+a province which does not recognize your value, and go where your
+reputation has already preceded you, to defend the holy cause of Spain
+and of religion."
+
+Struck by the justice of this reasoning, the Empecinado resolved to
+change the scene of his operations, and the next morning marched his
+squadron in the direction of New Castile.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.
+
+HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME.
+
+
+After Jack and Martin parted company, you may remember that Jack, who
+had turned his face northward, got into high favour with the landlord of
+the North Farm Estate, who, being mightily edified with his discourses
+and sanctimonious demeanour, and not aware of his having been mad
+before, or being, perchance, just as mad himself--took him in, made much
+of him, gave him a cottage upon his manor to live in, and built him a
+tabernacle in which he might hold forth when the spirit moved him. In
+process of time, however, it happened that North Farm and the Albion
+Estates came into the possession of one proprietor, Esquire Bull, in
+whose house Martin had always been retained as domestic chaplain--at
+least, ever since that desperate scuffle with Lord Peter and his crew,
+when he tried to land some Spanish smugglers on the coast, for the
+purpose of carrying off Martin, and establishing himself in Squire
+Bull's house in his stead. Squire Bull, who was a man of his word, and
+wished to leave all things on North Farm as he found them, Jack and his
+tabernacle included, undertook at once to pay him a reasonable salary,
+with the free use of his house and tabernacle to him and his heirs for
+ever. But knowing that on a previous occasion, (which you may
+recollect,[46]) Jack's melancholy had gone so far that he had hanged
+himself, though he was cut down just before giving up the ghost, and by
+dint of bloodletting and galvanism, had been revived; and also that,
+notwithstanding his periodical fits and hallucinations, he could beat
+even Peter himself, who had been his instructor, for cunning and
+casuistry, he took care that, before Jack was allowed to take possession
+under his new lease, every thing should be made square between them. So
+he had the terms of their indenture all written out on parchment,
+signed, sealed, and delivered before witnesses, and even got a private
+Act of Parliament carried through, for the purpose of making every thing
+between them more secure. And well it was for the Squire that he
+bethought himself of his precaution in time, as you will afterwards
+hear.
+
+     [46] John Bull, Part IV. ch. ii.
+
+This union of the two entailed properties in the Bull family, brought
+Jack and Martin a good deal more into one anothers' company than they
+had formerly been; and 'twas clear, that Jack, who had now got somewhat
+ashamed of his threadbare raiment, and tired of his spare oatmeal diet,
+was mightily struck with the dignified air and comfortable look of
+Martin, and grudged him the frequency with which he was invited to
+Squire Bull's table. By degrees, he began to conform his own uncouth
+manner to an imitation of his. He wore a better coat, which he no longer
+rubbed against the wall to take the gloss from off it; he ceased to
+interlard all his ordinary speech with texts of Scripture; his snuffle
+abated audibly; he gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody, and lost, in
+a great measure, his aversion to Christmas tarts and plum-pudding. After
+a time, he might even be seen with a fishing-rod over his shoulder; then
+he contrived sundry improvements in gun-locks and double-barrels, for
+which he took out a patent, and in fact did not entirely escape the
+suspicion of being a poacher. He held assemblies in his house, where at
+times he allowed a little singing; nay, on one occasion, a son of
+his--for he had now a large family--was found accompanying a psalm-tune
+upon the (barrel) organ, and it was rumoured about the house, that Jack,
+though he thought it prudent to disclaim this overture, had no great
+objection to it. Be that as it may, it is certain, that instead of his
+old peaked hat and band, Jack latterly took to wearing broad-brimmed
+beavers, which he was seen trying to mould into a spout-like shape, much
+resembling a shovel. And so far had the transformation gone, that the
+Vicar of Fudley, meeting him one evening walking to an assembly arrayed
+in a court coat, with this extraordinary hat upon his head, and a pair
+of silver buckles in his shoes, pulled off his hat to him at a little
+distance, mistaking him for a near relation of Martin, if not for Martin
+himself.
+
+There was no great harm you will think in all these whims, and for my
+own part, I believe that Jack was never so honest a fellow as he was
+during this time, when he was profiting by Martin's example. He kept his
+own place, ruling his family in a quiet and orderly way, without
+disturbing the peace of his neighbours: and seemed to have forgotten his
+old tricks of setting people by the ears, and picking quarrels with
+constables and justices of the peace. Howbeit, those who knew him
+longest and best, always said that this was too good to last: that with
+him these intervals of sobriety and moderation were always the prelude
+to a violent access of his peculiar malady, and that by-and-bye he would
+break out again, and that there would be the devil to pay, and no pitch
+hot.
+
+It so happened that Squire Bull had a good many small village schools on
+his Estate of North Farm, to which the former proprietors had always
+been in the custom of appointing the ushers themselves; and much to
+Jack's annoyance, when Squire Bull succeeded, the latter had taken care
+in his bargain with him, to keep the right of appointment to these in
+his own hand. But, at the same time, he told Jack fairly, that as he had
+no wish to dabble in Latin, Greek, or school learning himself, he left
+him at full liberty to say whether those whom he appointed were fit for
+the situation or not--so that if they turned out to be ignoramuses,
+deboshed fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack had only to say so on good
+grounds, and they were forthwith sent adrift. Matters went on for a time
+very smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was even said that Jack was
+inclined to carry his complaisance rather far, and after a time seldom
+troubled himself much about the usher's qualifications, provided his
+credentials were all right. He might ask the young fellow, who presented
+John's commission, perhaps, what was the first letter of the Greek
+alphabet? what was Latin for beef and greens? or where Moses was when
+the candle was blown out?--but if the candidate answered these questions
+correctly, and if there were no scandal or _fama clamosa_ against him,
+as Jack in his peculiar jargon expressed it, he generally shook hands
+with him at once, put the key of the schoolhouse in his hand, and told
+him civilly to walk up-stairs.
+
+The truth was, however, that in this respect Jack had little reason to
+complain; for though the Squire, in the outset, may not have been very
+particular as to his choice, and it was said once or twice gave an
+ushership to an old exciseman, on account of his skill in mensuration of
+fluids, he had latterly become very particular, and would not hear of
+settling any body as schoolmaster on North Farm, who did not come to him
+with an excellent character, certified by two or three respectable
+householders at least. But, strangely enough, it was observed that just
+in proportion as the Squire became more considerate, Jack became more
+arrogant, pestilent, and troublesome. Now-a-days he was always
+discovering some objection to the Squire's appointments: one usher, it
+seemed, spoke too low, another too loud, one used an ear-trumpet,
+another a pair of grass-green spectacles; one had no sufficient gifts
+for flogging; another flogged either too high or too low--(for Jack was
+like the deserter, there was no pleasing him as to the mode of
+conducting the operation;) and, finally, another was rejected because he
+was unacquainted with the vernacular of Ossian--to the great injury and
+damage, as was alleged, of two Highland chairmen, who at an advanced
+period of life were completing their education in the school in
+question. At first Squire Bull, honest gentleman, had given in to these
+strange humours on the part of Jack, believing that this new-born zeal
+on his part was in the main conscientious, though he could not help
+thinking it at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous. He had
+even gone so far, occasionally, as to send Jack a list of those to whom
+he proposed giving the usherships, accompanied with a polite note, in
+some such terms as these, "Squire Bull presents his respects, and begs
+his good friend Jack will read over the enclosed list, and take the
+trouble of choosing for himself;" a request with which Jack was always
+ready to comply. And, further, as Jack had always a great hankering
+after little-goes and penny subscriptions of every kind, and was
+eternally trumpeting forth some new nostrum or _scheme_ of this kind, as
+he used to call it, the Squire had been prevailed upon to purchase from
+him a good many tickets for these schemes from time to time, for which
+he always paid in hard cash, though I have never heard that any of them
+turned up prizes, except it may have been to Jack himself.
+
+Jack, as we have said, grew bolder as the Squire became more complying,
+thinking that, in the matter of these appointments, as he had once got
+his hand in, it would be his own fault if he could not contrive to
+wriggle in his whole body. It so happened, too, that just about the very
+time that one of John's usherships became vacant, one of those
+atrabilious and hypochondriac fits came over Jack, with which, as we
+have said, he was periodically afflicted, and which, though they
+certainly unsettled his brain a little, only served, as in the case of
+other lunatics, to render him, during the paroxysm, more cunning,
+inventive, and mischievous. After moving about in a moping way for a day
+or two--mumbling in corners, and pretending to fall on his knees, in his
+old fashion, in the midst of the street, he suddenly got up, flung his
+broad-brimmed beaver into the kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt, so
+as to expose his large ears as of old, ran home, pulled his rusty black
+doublet out of the chest where it had lain for years, squeezing it on as
+he best could--for he had got somewhat corpulent in the mean time--and
+thus transfigured, he set out to consult the village attorney, with whom
+it was observed he remained closeted for several hours, turning over
+Burns' Justice, and perusing an office-copy of his indenture with the
+Squire--a planetary conjunction from which those who were astrologically
+given boded no good.
+
+What passed between these worthies on this occasion--whether the
+attorney really persuaded Jack that, if he set about it, he would
+undertake to find him a flaw in his contract with Squire Bull, which
+would enable him to take the matter of the usherships into his own hand,
+and to do as he pleased; or whether Jack--as he seemed afterwards to
+admit in private--believed nothing of what the attorney told him, but
+was resolved to take advantage of the Squire's good-nature, and to run
+all risks as to the result, 'tis hard to say. Certain it was, however,
+that Jack posted down at once from the attorney's chamber to the village
+school, which happened to be then vacant, and gathering the elder boys
+about him, he told them he had reason to believe the Squire was about to
+send them another usher, very different from the last, who was a mortal
+enemy to marbles, pitch-and-toss, chuck-farthing, ginger-bread, and half
+holydays; with a corresponding liking to long tasks and short commons;
+that the use of the cane would be regularly taught, along with that of
+the globes, accompanied with cuts and other practical demonstrations;
+that the only chance of escaping this visitation was to take a bold
+line, and show face to the usher at once, since otherwise the chance
+was, that at no distant period they might be obliged to do the very
+reverse.
+
+Jack further reasoned the matter with the boys learnedly, somewhat in
+this fashion--"That as no one could have so strong an interest in the
+matter, so no one could be so good a judge of the qualifications of the
+schoolmaster as the schoolboy; that the close and intimate relation
+between these parties was of the nature of a mutual contract, in the
+formation of which both had an equal right to be consulted; so that,
+without mutual consent, or, as it were, a harmonious call by the boys,
+there could be no valid ushership, but a mere usurpation of the power of
+the tawse, and unwarrantable administration of the birchen twig; that,
+further, this latter power involved a fundamental feature, in which they
+could not but feel they had all a deep interest--and which, he might
+say, lay at the bottom of the whole question; that he himself perfectly
+remembered that, in former days, the schoolboys had always exercised
+this privilege, which he held to be equally salutary and constitutional;
+and that he would, at his leisure, show them a private memorandum-book
+of his own, in which, though he had hitherto said nothing about it, he
+had found an entry to that effect made some thirty years before. In
+short, he told them, if they did not wish to be rode over rough-shod,
+they must stand up boldly for themselves, and try to get all the schools
+in the neighbourhood to join them, if necessary, in a regular
+barring-out, or general procession, in which they were to appear with
+flags and banners, bearing such inscriptions as the following: "_Pro
+aris et focis_"--"Liberty is like the air we breathe," &c. &c., and,
+lastly, in large gilt capitals--"_No usher to be intruded into any
+school contrary to the will of the scholars in schoolroom assembled_."
+And, in short, that this process was to be repeated until they succeeded
+in getting quit of Squire Bull's usher, and getting an usher who would
+flog them with all the forbearance and reserve with which Sancho
+chastised his own flesh while engaged in the process of disenchanting
+Dulcinea del Toboso. At the same time, with that cunning which was
+natural to him, Jack took care to let the scholars know that _his_ name
+was not to be mentioned in the transaction; and that, if they were asked
+any questions, they must be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for that
+matter, that they objected to John's usher from no personal dislike to
+the man himself, and without having received fee or reward, in the shape
+of apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar, or sweetmeats
+whatever--or sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or other current coin
+of the realm.
+
+It will be readily imagined that this oration of Jack, pronounced as it
+was with some of his old unction, and accompanied with that miraculous
+and subtle twist of the tongue which we have described in a former
+chapter,[47] produced exactly the effect upon his audience which might
+be expected. The boys were delighted--tossed up their caps--gave Jack
+three cheers, and told him if he stood by them they would stand by him,
+and that they were much mistaken if they did not contrive to make the
+schoolhouse too hot for any usher whom Squire Bull might think fit to
+send them.
+
+     [47] Tale of a Tub. Sect. xi.
+
+It happened not long after, as Jack had anticipated, that one morning a
+young man called upon with a letter from the Squire, intimating that he
+had named him to the vacant ushership; and requesting Jack to examine
+into his qualifications as usual. Jack begged him to be seated, and
+(having privately sent a message to the schoolboys) continued to
+entertain him with enquiries as to John's health and the state of the
+weather, till he heard, by the noise in the court, that the boys had
+arrived. In they marched accordingly, armed with horn-books, primers,
+slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales, and copy-books, taking up their station
+near the writing-desk. The young usher-elect, though he thought this a
+whimsical exhibition, supposed that the urchins had been brought there
+only to do honour to his examination, and accordingly begged Jack, as he
+was in a hurry, to proceed. "Fair and softly, young man," said Jack, in
+his blandest tones; "we must first see what these intelligent young
+gentlemen have got to say to that. Tom, my fine fellow, here is a
+gentleman sent by Squire Bull to be your usher. What do you say to him?"
+"I don't like him," said Tom. "May I venture to ask why?" said the
+usher, putting in a word. "Don't like him," repeated Tom. "Don't like
+him neither," said Dick. "And no mistake," added Peter, with a grin,
+which immediately circulated round the school. "It is quite impossible,"
+said Jack, "under existing circumstances, that the matter can proceed
+any further; it is plain the school can never be edified by such an
+usher. But, stop, that there may be no misconception on the subject.
+Here you, Smith--do you really mean to say, on soul and conscience, you
+don't think this respectable gentleman can do you any good?" Of course,
+Smith stated that his mind was quite made up on the subject. "Come here,
+Jenkins," said Jack, beckoning to another boy; "tell the truth
+now--honour bright, remember. Has any body given or promised you any
+apples, parliament, or other sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to vote
+against the usher?" Jenkins, who had just wiped his lips of the last
+remains of a gingerbread cake, which somehow or other had dropped into
+his pocket by accident, protested, on his honour, that he was quite
+above such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated purely by a conscientious
+zeal for the cause of flogging all over the world. "The scruples of
+these intelligent and ingenuous youths," said John, turning to the
+usher, "must, in conscience, receive effect; the law, as laid down in my
+copy of Squire Bull's own contract, is this--'That noe ushere be
+yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in
+schoole-roome assembled.' So, with your permission, we will adjourn the
+consideration of the case till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas, if
+that be more convenient." And, so saying, he left John's letter lying on
+the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished
+usher.
+
+Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and
+mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and
+chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had
+really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old
+his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to
+the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected,
+and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an
+extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain--generating
+therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations--than to any
+settled intention on Jack's part to pick a quarrel with him or evade
+performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not
+under the influence of hypochondria. And having this notion as to Jack's
+motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village
+lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of
+purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment--and without resorting to a
+strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended
+him to adopt--he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours,
+which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries.
+"I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy
+into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore
+him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire
+it, before the Justices of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred to one but
+he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a
+decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when
+he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit
+with a good grace.'"
+
+So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the
+usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings,
+who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused
+performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day
+appointed, attended by the attorney--though for that matter he might
+have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all
+equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills
+and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect
+of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting
+distinctions and Jesuistical casuistries, notwithstanding his dislike to
+the man himself, he had a certain admiration, founded on a secret
+affinity of nature. Indeed it was wonderful to observe how, with all
+Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended, he took after him in so many
+points--insomuch that at times, their look, voice, manner, and way of
+thinking, were so closely alike, that those who knew them best might
+very well have mistaken them for each other. The usher having produced
+the Squire's copy of the indenture, pointed out the clause by which Jack
+became bound to examine and admit to the schools on North Farm any
+qualified usher whom the Squire might send--as the condition on which he
+was to retain his right to the tabernacle and his own mansion upon the
+Farm--at the same time showing Jack's seal and signature at the bottom
+of the deed. Jack, being called upon by the justices to show cause,
+pulled out of his pocket an old memorandum-book--very greasy, musty, and
+ill-flavoured--and which, from the quantity of dust and cobwebs with
+which it was overlaid, had obviously been lying on the shelf for half a
+century at least. This he placed in the hands of his friend Snacks the
+attorney, pointing out to him a page or two which he had marked with his
+thumb nail, as appropriate to the matter in hand. And there, to be sure,
+was to be found, among a quantity of other nostrums, recipes, cooking
+receipts, prescriptions, and omnium-gatherums of all kinds, an entry to
+this effect:--"That no ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye
+wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled." Whereupon the
+attorney maintained, that, as this memorandum-book of Jack's was plainly
+of older date than the indenture, and had evidently been seen by the
+Squire at or prior to the time of signing, as appeared from some of the
+entries which it contained being incorporated in the deed, it must be
+presumed, that its whole contents, though not to be found in the
+indenture _per expressum_, or _totidem verbis_, were yet included
+therein _implicitly_, or in a latent form, inasmuch as they were not
+_per expressum_ excluded therefrom;--this being, as you will recollect,
+precisely the argument which Jack had borrowed from Peter, when the
+latter construed their father's will in the question as to the
+lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots; and very much of the same
+kind with that celebrated thesis which Peter afterwards maintained in
+the matter of the brown loaf. And though he was obliged to admit (what
+indeed from the very look of the book he could not well dispute) that no
+such rule had ever been known or acted upon--and on the contrary that
+Jack, until this last occasion, had always admitted the Squire's ushers
+without objection whatsoever; yet he contended vehemently, that now that
+his conscience was awakened on the subject, the past must be laid out of
+view; and that the old memorandum-book, as part and parcel of the
+indenture itself, must receive effect; and farther, that whether he,
+Jack, was right or wrong in this matter, the Justices had no right to
+interfere with them.
+
+But the Justices, on looking into this antiquated document, found that,
+besides this notandum, the memorandum-book contained a number of other
+entries of a very extraordinary kind--such, for instance, as that Martin
+was no better than he should be, and ought to be put down speedily: that
+Squire Bull had no more right to nominate ushers than he had to be Khan
+of Tartary: that that right belonged exclusively to Jack himself, or to
+the schoolboys under Jack's control and direction: that Jack was to have
+the sole right of laying down rules for his own government, and of
+enforcing them against himself by the necessary compulsitors, if the
+case should arise; thus, that Jack should have full powers to censure,
+fine, punish, flog, flay, banish, imprison, or set himself in the stocks
+as often as he should think fit; but that whether Jack did right or
+wrong, in any given case, Jack was himself to be the sole judge, and
+neither Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of the Peace was to have one
+word to say to him or his proceedings in the matter: on the contrary,
+that any such interference on their part, was to be regarded as a high
+grievance and misdemeanour on their part, for which Jack was to be
+entitled at the least to read them a lecture from the writing-desk, and
+shut the schoolroom door in their own or their children's face.
+
+There were many other whimsical and extravagant things contained in this
+private note-book, so much so, that it was evident no man in his senses
+could ever have intended to make them part of his bargain with Jack. But
+the matter was put beyond a doubt by the usher producing the original
+draft of the indenture, on which some of these crotchets, including this
+fancy about the right of the schoolboys to reject the usher if they did
+not like him, had been _interlined_ in Jack's hand: but all of which the
+Squire, on revising the deed, had scored out with his own pen, adding in
+the margin, opposite to the very passage, the words, in italics--"_See
+him damned first.--J.B._" And as it could not be disputed that Jack and
+the Squire ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting all this
+nonsense--the Justices had no hesitation in holding, that Jack's private
+memorandum-book, even if he had always carried it in his breeches
+pocket, and quoted it on all occasions, instead of leaving it--as it was
+plain he had done--for many a long year, in some forgotten corner of his
+trunk or lumber-room, could no more affect the construction of the
+indenture between himself and Squire, or afford him any defence against
+performance of his part of that indenture, than if he had founded on the
+statutes of Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug, Fee-Faw-Fum, or any
+other Emperor of China for the time being. And so, after hearing very
+deliberately all that the attorney for Jack had to say to the contrary,
+they decided that Jack must forthwith proceed to examine the usher, and
+give him possession, if qualified, of the schoolhouse and other
+appurtenances; or else make up his mind to a thundering action of
+damages if he did not.
+
+The Justices thought that Jack, on hearing the case fairly stated, and
+their opinion given against him, with a long string of cases in point,
+would yield, and give the usher possession in the usual way; but no: no
+sooner was the sentence written out than Jack entered an appeal to the
+Quarter-sessions. There the whole matter was heard over again, at great
+length, before a full bench; but after Jack and his attorney had spoken
+till they were tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a moment's
+hesitation, confirmed the sentence of the Justices, with costs.
+
+Jack, who had blustered exceedingly as to his chances of bamboozling the
+Quarter-sessions, and quashing the sentence of the Justices, looked
+certainly not a little discomfited at the result of his appeal. For some
+days after, he was observed to walk about looking gloomy and
+disheartened, and was heard to say to some of his family, that he began
+to think matters had really gone too far between him and his good friend
+the Squire, to whom he owed his bread; that, on second thoughts, he
+would give up the point about intruding ushers on the schools, and see
+whether the Squire might not be prevailed on to arrange matters on an
+amicable footing; and that he would take an opportunity, the next time
+he had an assembly at his house, of consulting his friends on the
+subject. And had Jack stuck to this resolution, there is little doubt
+that, by some device or other, he would have gained all he wanted; for
+the Squire, being an easy, good-natured man, and wishing really to do
+his duty in the matter of the ushership, would probably, if Jack had
+yielded in this instance with a good grace, have probably allowed him in
+the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of
+everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose
+up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his
+countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify
+his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a
+long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no
+one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices
+and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not
+understand a word of Jack's contract, and knew nothing of black-letter
+whatever; but that, nevertheless, as they had decided against him, he,
+as a loyal subject, must and would submit;--not, however, that he had
+the least idea of taking the Squire's usher, or any other usher
+whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the schoolboys' wishes; _that_, he
+begged to say, he would never hear of:--still he would obey the law by
+laying no claim himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering with the
+usher's drawing it; and yet that he could not exactly answer for others
+not doing so;"--Jack knowing all the time, that, claim as he might, he
+himself had no more right to the salary than to the throne of the
+Celestial Empire; while, on the other hand, by locking up the
+schoolroom, and keeping the key in his pocket, he had rendered it
+impossible for the poor wight of an usher to recover one penny of
+it--the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of
+the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manoeuvre, had
+contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove
+the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got
+a _private_ friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme
+had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the
+case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund which would have
+belonged to the unlucky usher--in terms, as he said, of some old
+arrangement made by the Squire's predecessor as to school-salaries
+during vacancy; to be applied, as the writ very coolly stated it, "for
+behoof of Jack's destitute widow, in the event of his decease, and of
+his numerous and indigent family."
+
+Many of Jack's own family, who were present on this occasion,
+remonstrated with him on the subject, foreseeing that if he went on as
+he had begun and threatened to proceed, he must soon come to a rupture
+with the Squire, which could end in nothing else than his being turned
+out of house and hall, and thrown adrift upon the wide world, without a
+penny in his pocket. But the majority--who were puffed up with more than
+Jack's own madness and had a notion that by sheer boldness and bullying
+on their part, the Squire would, after a time, be sure to give way,
+encouraged Jack to go on at all hazards, and not to retract a hair's
+breadth in his demands. And Jack, who had now become mischievously
+crazed on the subject, and began to be as arrogant and conceited of his
+own power and authority, as ever my Lord Peter had been in his proudest
+and most pestilential days, was not slow to follow their advice.
+
+'Twas of no consequence that a friend of the Squire's, who had known
+Jack long, and had really a great kindness towards him, tried to bring
+about an arrangement between him and the Squire upon very handsome
+terms. He had a meeting with Jack;--at which he talked the matter over
+in a friendly way--telling him that though the Squire must reserve in
+his own hands the nomination of his own ushers, he had always been
+perfectly willing to listen to reason in any objections that might be
+taken to them; only some reason he must have, were it only that Jack
+could not abide the sight of a red-nosed usher:--let that reason, such
+as it was, be put on paper, and he would consider of it; and if, from
+any peculiar idiosyncracy in Jack's temperament and constitution, he
+found that his antipathy to red noses was unsuperable, probably he would
+not insist on filling up the vacancy with a nose of that colour. Jack,
+who was always more rational when alone than when he had got the
+attorney and the more frantic members of his family at his elbow,
+acknowledged, as he well might, that all this seemed very reasonable;
+and that he really thought that on these terms the Squire and he would
+have little difficulty in coming to an agreement. So they parted,
+leaving the Squire's friend under the impression that all was right, and
+that he had only to get an agreement to that effect drawn out, signed
+and sealed by the parties.
+
+Next morning, however, he received a letter by the penny-post, written
+no doubt in Jack's hand, but obviously dictated by the attorney, in
+these terms:--
+
+     "Honoured Sir--Lest there should be any misconception between
+     us as to our yesterday's conversation, I have put into writing
+     the substance of what was agreed on between us, which I
+     understand to be this: that there shall be no let or impediment
+     to the Squire's full and absolute right of naming an usher in
+     all cases of vacancy; that I shall have an equally full right
+     to object to the said usher for any reasons that may be
+     satisfactory to myself, and thereupon to exclude him from the
+     school; leaving it to the Squire, if he pleases, to send
+     another, whom I shall have the right of handling in the same
+     fashion, with this further proviso, that if the Squire does not
+     fill up the office to my satisfaction within half-a-year, I
+     shall be entitled to take the appointment into my own hands. I
+     need hardly add that no Justices of the Peace are to take
+     cognizance of anything done by me in the matter, be it good,
+     bad, or indifferent. Hoping that this statement of our mutual
+     views will be found correct and satisfactory--I remain, your
+     humble servant,
+
+     "JACK."
+
+The moment the Squire's friend perused this missive, he saw plainly that
+all hope of bringing Jack to his senses was at an end; and that under
+the advice of evil counsellors, lunatic friends, and lewd fellows of the
+baser sort, Jack would shortly bring himself and his family to utter
+ruin.
+
+And now, as might be expected, Jack's disorder, which had hitherto been
+comparatively of the calm and melancholy kind, broke out into the most
+violent and phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes raved incoherently, for
+hours together, against the Squire; often, in the midst of his speeches,
+he was assailed with epileptic fits, during which he displayed the
+strangest contortions and most laughable gestures; he threw entirely
+aside the decent coat he had worn for some time back, and habitually
+attired himself in the old and threadbare raiment, which he had worn
+after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously sent to the right-about
+by Lord Peter, and even ran about the streets with his band tied round
+his peaked beaver, bearing thereon the motto--"_Nemo me impune
+lacessit_." If his madness had only led him to make a spectacle and
+laughing-stock of himself, by these wild vagaries and mountebank
+exhibitions, all had been well, but this did not satisfy Jack; his old
+disposition for a riot had returned, and a riot, right or wrong, he was
+determined to have. So he set to work to frighten the women of the
+village with stories, as to the monsters whom the Squire would send
+among them as ushers, who would do nothing but teach their children
+drinking, chuck-farthing, and cock-fighting; to the schoolboys
+themselves, talked of the length, breadth, and thickness, of the usher's
+birch, which he assured them was dipped in vinegar every evening, in
+order to afford a more agreeable stimulus to the part affected; he plied
+them with halfpence and strong beer; exhorted them to insurrections and
+barrings-out; taught them how to mock at any usher who would not submit
+to be Jack's humble servant; and by gibes and scurril ballads, which he
+would publish in the newspapers, try to make his life a burden to him.
+He also instructed them how best to stick darts into his wig, cover his
+back with spittle, fill his pockets with crackers, burn assafoetida in
+the fire, extinguish the candles with fulminating powder, or blow up the
+writing-desk by a train of combustibles. Above all, he counselled the
+urchins to stand firm the next time that John sent an usher down to that
+quarter, and vehemently to protest for the doctrine of election as to
+their own usher, and reprobation as to the Squire's; assuring them, that
+provided they took his advice, and followed the plan which he would
+afterwards impart to them in confidence at the proper time, he could
+almost take it upon himself to say, that in a short time, no tyrannical
+usher, or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should venture to show his face,
+with or without tawse or ferule, within the boundaries of North Farm.
+
+It was not long before an opportunity offered of putting these precious
+schemes in practice; for shortly afterwards, the old usher of a school
+on the northermost boundary of the North Farm estates having died, the
+ushership became vacant, and John, as usual, appointed a successor in
+his room. Being warned this time by what had taken place on the last
+occasion, the Squire took care to apply beforehand to the Justices of
+the Peace--got a peremptory _mandamus_ from them, directing Jack to
+proceed forthwith, and, after the usual trials, to put the usher in
+possession of the schoolhouse by legal form, and without re-regard to
+any protest or interruption from any or all of the schoolboys put
+together. So down the usher proceeded, accompanied by a posse of
+constables and policemen of various divisions, till they arrived at the
+schoolhouse, which lay adjacent to the churchyard, and then demanded
+admittance. It happened that in this quarter resided some of Jack's
+family, who, as we have already mentioned, differed from him entirely,
+thinking him totally wrong in the contest with the Squire and being
+completely satisfied that all his glosses upon his contract were either
+miserable quibbles or mere hallucinations, and that it was his duty, so
+long as he ate John's bread, and slept under John's roof, to perform
+fairly the obligations he had come under:--and so, on reading the
+Justices' warrant, which required them, on pain of being set in the
+stocks, and forfeiture of two shillings and sixpence of penalty, besides
+costs, to give immediate possession to the Squire's usher, they at once
+resolved to obey, called for the key of the schoolhouse, and proceeded
+to the door, accompanied by the usher and the authorities, for the
+purpose of complying with the warrant and admitting the usher as in
+times past. But on arriving there, never was there witnessed such a
+scene of confusion. The churchyard was crowded with ragamuffins of every
+kind, from all the neighbouring parishes; scarcely was there a sot or
+deboshed fellow within the district who had not either come himself or
+found a substitute; gipsies, beggarwomen, and thimbleriggers were thick
+as blackberries; while Jack himself--who, upon hearing of what was going
+forward, had come down by the night coach with all expedition--was
+standing on a tombstone near the doorway, and holding forth to the whole
+bevy of rascals whom he had assembled about him. It was evident from his
+tones and gestures that Jack had been exciting the mob in every possible
+way; but as the justices and the constables drew near, he changed the
+form of his countenance, pulled a psalm-book out of his pocket, and,
+with much sanctity and appearance of calmness, gave out the tune; in
+which the miscellaneous assemblage around him joined, with similar
+unction and devotion. When the procession reached the door, they found
+the whole inside of the schoolhouse already packed with urchins and
+blackguards of all kinds, who, having previously gained admission by the
+window, had forcibly barricaded the door against the constables, being
+assisted in the defence thereof by the mob without, who formed a double
+line, and kept hustling the poor usher and the constables from side to
+side, helping themselves to a purse or two in passing, and calling out
+at the same time, "take care of pickpockets"--occasionally amusing
+themselves also by playfully smashing the beaver of some of the justices
+of the peace over their face, to the tune of "all round my hat," sung in
+chorus, on the Mainzerian system, amidst peals of laughter.
+
+Meantime Jack was skipping up and down upon the tombstone, calling out
+to his myrmidons--"Good friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your
+spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very
+handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly
+entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the
+respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of
+his--though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just
+provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a
+third--"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder
+puddle--the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there;
+though, to be sure, the ground _is_ slippery, and the thing _might_
+happen, in a manner without any one's being able to prevent it." And so
+on he went, taking care to say nothing for which the justices could
+afterwards venture to commit him to Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring
+up the rabble to the utmost, by nods, looks, winks, and covert speeches,
+intended to convey exactly the opposite meaning from what the words
+bore.
+
+At last by main force, and after a hard scuffle, the constables
+contrived to force the schoolhouse door open, and so to make way for the
+justices, the usher, and those of Jack's family who, as we have seen
+already, had made up their minds to give the usher possession, to enter.
+But having entered, the confusion and bedevilment was ten times worse
+than even in the churchyard itself. The benches were lined with a pack
+of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments, and with leather at the
+knees, from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a
+Scotch bagpiper, flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant performer
+on the hurdygurdy, accompanied by his monkey--who in the course of his
+circuit through the village, had that morning received a special
+retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion;
+while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen
+years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl,
+with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the
+writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence--till the
+Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he
+opened his mouth than the whole multitude burst forth as if the
+confusion of tongues had taken place for the first time; twenty spoke
+together, ten whistled, as many more sang psalms and obscene songs
+alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes
+that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the
+hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in
+which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the
+honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones,
+tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and
+desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, in
+the most agreeable confusion.
+
+One of the justices tried to speak, but even from the first it was all
+dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded through two sentences, when his
+oration was extinguished as suddenly and by the same means as the
+conflagration of the Royal Palace at Lilliput. After many attempts to
+obtain a hearing, it became obvious that all chance of doing so in the
+schoolhouse was at an end; and so the usher, the justices, and the rest,
+adjourned to the next ale-house, where they had the usher's commission
+quietly read over in presence of the landlord and the waiter, and handed
+him over the keys of the house before the same witnesses; of all which,
+and of their previous deforcement by a mob of rapscallions, they took
+care to have an instrument regularly drawn out by a notary-public.
+Thereafter they ordered a rump and dozen, being confident that as the
+day was bitterly cold, and the snow some feet deep upon the ground, the
+courage of the rioters would be cooled before they had finished dinner;
+and so it was, for towards evening, the temperature having descended
+considerably beneath the freezing point, the mob, who had now exhausted
+their beer and gin, and who saw that there was no more fun to be
+expected for the day, began to disperse each man to his home, so that
+before nightfall the coast was clear; on which the justices, with the
+_posse comitatus_, escorted the usher to the schoolhouse, opened the
+door, put him formally in possession, and, wishing him much good of his
+new appointment, departed.
+
+But how did Jack, you will ask, bear this rebuff on the part of his own
+kin? Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he became furious, and seemed to
+have lost all natural feelings towards his own flesh and blood. He
+summoned such of his family as had given admission to the usher before
+him, called a sort of court-martial of the rest of his relations to
+enquire into their conduct; and, notwithstanding the accused protested
+that they had the highest respect and regard for Jack, were his humble
+servants to command in all ordinary matters, and only acted in this
+instance in obedience to the justices' warrant, (the which, if they had
+disobeyed, they were certain to have been at that moment cooling their
+heels in the stocks,) Jack, who was probably worked up to a kind of
+frenzy by his more violent of his inmates, kicked them out of the room,
+and sent a set of his myrmidons after them, with instructions to tear
+their coats off their backs, strip them of their wigs and small-clothes,
+and turn them into the street. Against this the unlucky wights appealed
+to the justices for protection, who, to be sure, sent down some
+policemen, who beat off the mob, and enabled them to make their doors
+fast against Jack and his emissaries. But beyond that they could give
+them little assistance; for though Jack and his abettors could not
+actually venture upon a trespass by forcing their way within doors, they
+contrived to render the very existence of all who were not of their way
+of thinking miserable. If it was an usher who, in spite of all their
+efforts to exclude him, had fairly got admittance into the schoolhouse,
+they set up a sentry-box at his very door, in which a rival usher held
+forth on Cocker and the alphabet; they drew off a few stray boys from
+the village school, and this detachment, recruited and reinforced by all
+the idlers of the neighbourhood, to whom mischief was sport, was
+studiously instructed to keep up a perpetual whistling, hooting,
+howling, hissing, and imitations of the crowing of a cock, so as to
+render it impossible for the usher and boys within the school to hear or
+profit by one word that was said. If the scholars within were told to
+say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked
+how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be
+"ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some
+ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper,
+headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:--"We have just
+learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a
+hundred miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately been detected in various
+acts of forgery, petty larceny, sedition, high treason, burglary, &c.
+&c. If this report be not officially contradicted by the said usher
+within a fortnight, by advertisement, duly inserted and paid for in this
+newspaper, we shall hold the same to be true." Or sometimes more
+mysteriously thus:--"Delicacy forbids us to allude to the shocking
+reports which are current respecting the usher of Mullaglass. Christian
+charity would lead us to hope they were unfounded, but Christian verity
+compels us to state that we believe every word of them." And though Jack
+and his editor sometimes overshot their mark, and got soused in damages
+at the instance of those whom they had libelled, yet Jack, who found
+that it answered his ends, persevered, and so kept the whole
+neighbourhood in hot water.
+
+You would not believe me were I to tell you of half the tyrannical and
+preposterous pranks which he performed about this period; but some of
+them I can't help noticing. He had picked up some subscriptions, for
+instance, from charitable folks in the neighbourhood, to build a school
+upon a remote corner of North Farm, where not a single boy had learned
+his alphabet within the memory of man; and what, think ye, does he do
+with the money, but insists on clapping down the new school exactly
+opposite the old school in the village, merely to spite the poor usher,
+against whom he had taken a dislike--though there was no more need to
+build a school there than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle. Again,
+having ascertained that one of his servants had been seen shaking hands
+with some of Jack's family with whom he had quarrelled as above
+mentioned, he refused to give him a character, though the poor fellow
+was only thinking of taking service somewhere in the plantations.
+
+Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts, however, it sometimes happened that
+when an usher was appointed he could not get up a sufficient cabal
+against him, and that even the schoolboys, knowing something of the man
+before, had no objection to him. In such cases Jack resorted to various
+schemes in order to cast the candidate upon his examinations. Sometimes
+he would shut him up in a small closet, telling him he must answer a
+hundred and fifty questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry, within
+as many minutes, and that he would be allowed the assistance of
+Johnson's Dictionary, and the _Gradus ad Parnassum_, for the purpose. At
+other tines he would ask the candidate, with a bland smile, what was his
+opinion of things in general, and of the dispute between him (Jack) and
+the Squire in particular; and if that question was not answered to his
+satisfaction, he remitted him to his studies. When no objection could be
+made to the man's parts, Jack would say that he had scruples of
+conscience, because he doubted whether his commission had been fairly
+come by, or whether he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound note to
+obtain it. At last he did not even take the trouble of going through
+this farce, but would at once, if he disliked the look of the man's
+face, tell him he was busy at the moment;--that he might lay the
+Squire's letter on the table, and call again that day six months for an
+answer. He no longer pretended, in fact, to any fairness or justice in
+his dealings; for though those who sided with him might be guilty of all
+the offences in the calendar, Jack continued to wink so hard, and shut
+his ears so close, as not to see or hear of them; while as to the
+unhappy wights who differed from him, he had the eyes of Argus and the
+ear of Dionysius, and the tender mercies of a Spanish inquisitor,
+discovering _scandalum magnatum_ and high treason in ballads which they
+had written twenty years before, and in which Jack, though he received a
+presentation copy at the time, had never pretended, up to that moment,
+to detect the least harm.
+
+The last of these freaks which I shall here mention took place on this
+wise. Jack had never been accustomed to invite any one to his assemblies
+but the ushers who had been appointed by the Squire, and it was always
+understood that they alone had a vote in all vestry matters. But when
+John quarrelled with his family, as above mentioned, and a large part of
+the oldest and most respectable of his relatives drew off from him, it
+occurred to Jack that he could bring in a set of new auxiliaries, upon
+whose vote he could count in all his family squabbles, or his deputes,
+with Squire Bull; and the following was the device he fell upon for that
+end.
+
+Here and there upon North Farm, where the village schools were crowded,
+little temporary schoolhouses had been run up, where one or two of the
+monitors were accustomed to teach such of the children as could not be
+accommodated in the larger school. But these assistants had always been
+a little looked down upon, and had never been allowed a seat at Jack's
+board. Now, however, he began to change his tone towards them, and to
+court and flatter them on all occasions. One fine morning he suddenly
+made his appearance on the village green, followed by some of his
+hangers on, bearing a theodolite, chains, measuring rods, sextants,
+compasses, and other instruments of land-surveying. Jack set up his
+theodolite, took his observations, began noting measurements, and laying
+down the bases of triangles in all directions, then, having summed up
+his calculations with much gravity, gave directions to those about him
+to line off with stakes and ropes the space which he pointed out to
+them, and which in fact enclosed nearly half the village. In the course
+of these operations, the usher, who had witnessed these mathematical
+proceedings of Jack from the window, but could not comprehend what the
+man would be at, sallied forth, and accosting Jack, asked him what he
+meant by these strange lines of circumvallation. "Why," answered Jack,
+"I have been thinking for some time past of relieving you of part of
+your heavy duties, and dividing the parish-school between you and your
+assistant; so in future you will confine yourself to the space outside
+the ropes, and leave all within the inclosure to him." It was in vain
+that the usher protested he was quite equal to the duty; that the boys
+liked him, and disliked his assistant; that if the village was thus
+divided, the assistant would be put upon a level with him, and have a
+vote in the vestry, to which he had no more right than to a seat in the
+House of Commons. Jack was not to be moved from his purpose, but gave
+orders to have a similar apportionment made in most of the neighbouring
+villages, and then inviting the assistants to a party at his house, he
+had them sworn in as vestrymen, telling them, that in future they had
+the same right to a seat at his board as the best of John's ushers had.
+Here again, however, he found he had run his head against a wall, and
+that he was not the mighty personage he took himself for; for, on a
+complaint to the justices of the peace, a dozen special constables were
+sent down, who tore up the posts, removed the ropes, and demolished all
+Jack's inclosures in a trice.
+
+These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic. He now began to
+quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had
+gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly
+they would never set foot in it again. He burst forth into loud
+invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his
+penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when
+Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom
+and Jack there had long been a bloody feud. Jack now denounced Martin in
+set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said
+he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of
+setting the Squire's mind against him (Jack)--whereas poor Martin, till
+provoked by Jack's abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind
+word against him. Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did
+not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly
+against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and
+knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack
+chose to tell them. He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour,
+at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which
+he endured. He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him;
+that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding
+his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one
+occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff's officer had made his way into his
+house and served him with a writ of _fieri facias_ even in the midst of
+one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could
+not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the
+corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in
+short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety--and all this
+because he had done his best to save them and their children from the
+awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers. At the conclusion of
+these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly
+women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be
+applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private
+advantage.
+
+Jack, however, with all his craze, was too knowing not to see that the
+women, beyond advancing him a few shillings at a time, would do little
+for his cause so far as any terms with Squire Bull was concerned; so,
+with the view of making a last attack upon the Squire, and driving him
+into terms, he began to look about for assistance among those with whom
+he had previously been at loggerheads. It cost him some qualms before he
+could so far abase his stomach as to do so; but at last he ventured to
+address a long and pitiful letter to Hugh, in which he set forth all his
+disputes with John, and dwelt much on his scruples of conscience; begged
+him to forget old quarrels, and put down his name to a Round Robin,
+which he was about to address to the Squire in his own behalf. To this
+epistle Hugh answered as follows:--"Dearly beloved,--my bowels are
+grieved for your condition, but I see only one cure for your scruples of
+conscience. Strip off the Squire's livery, and give up your place, as I
+did, and your peace of mind will be restored to you. In the mean time, I
+do not see very well why I should help you to pocket the Squire's wages,
+and do nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit of meekness and
+forgiveness--HUGH." After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily believe, saw
+there was little hope of assistance from that quarter.
+
+As a last resource, he called a general meeting of his friends, at which
+it was resolved to present the proposed Round Robin to John, signed by
+as many names as they could muster; in which Jack, who seemed to be of
+opinion that the more they asked the greater was their chance of getting
+something at least, set forth the articles he wanted, and without which,
+he told John, he could no longer remain in his house; but that he and
+his relatives and friends would forthwith, if this petition was
+rejected, walk out, to the infinite scandal of the neighbourhood,
+leaving the Squire without a teacher or a writing-master within fifty
+miles to supply their place. They demanded that the Squire should give
+up the nomination of the ushers entirely, though in whose favour they
+did not explain; and that Jack was in future to be a law unto himself,
+and to be supreme in all matters of education, with power to himself to
+define in what such matters consisted. On these requests being conceded,
+they stated that they would continue to give their countenance to the
+Squire as in times past; otherwise the whole party must quit possession
+incontinently. Jack prevailed on a good many to sign this
+document--though some did not like the idea of walking out, demurred,
+and added after the word _incontinently_, "i.e. when convenient,"--and
+thus signed, they put the Round Robin under a twopenny cover, and
+dispatched it to "John Bull, Esquire"--with haste.
+
+If they really thought the Squire was to be bullied into these terms by
+this last sally, they found themselves consumedly mistaken; for after a
+time down came a long and perfectly civil letter from the Squire's
+secretary, telling them their demands were totally out of the question,
+and that the Squire would see them at the antipodes sooner than comply
+with them.
+
+Did Jack then, you will ask, walk out as he had threatened, when he got
+the Squire's answer? Not he. He now gave notice that he intended to
+apply for an Act of Parliament on the subject: and that, in the
+meantime, the matter might stand over. Meantime, and in case matters
+should come to the worst, he is busily engaged begging all over the
+country, for cash to erect a new wooden tenement for him, in the event
+of his having to leave his old one of stone and lime. Some say even that
+he has been seen laying down several pounds of gunpowder in the cellar
+of his present house, and has been heard to boast of his intention to
+blow up his successor when he takes possession; but for my own part, and
+seeing how he has shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is no nearer
+removing than he was a year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially to
+several people, that even if his new house were all ready for him, he
+could not, with his asthmatic tendency, think of entering it for a
+twelvemonth or so, till the lath and plaster should be properly
+seasoned. Of all this, however, we shall hear more anon.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.
+
+BY A COCKNEY.
+
+
+When any one thinks of French literature, there immediately rises before
+him a horrid phantasmagoria of repulsive objects--murders, incests,
+parricides, and every imaginable shape of crime that horror e'er
+conceived or fancy feigned. He sees the whole efforts of a press,
+brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has
+hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the
+happiness of domestic life--marriage deliberately written down, and
+proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and
+strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords
+and strongest lances are wielded by women. Those women are received into
+society--men's wives and daughters associate with them--and their books
+are noticed in the public journals without any allusions to the
+Association for the prevention of vice, but rather with the praises
+which, in other times and countries, would have been bestowed on works
+of genius and virtue. The taste of the English public has certainly
+deteriorated within the last few years; and popularity, the surest index
+of the public's likings, though not of the writer's deservings, has
+attended works of which the great staple has been crime and
+blackguardism. A certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy energy, has
+enabled the writer to throw an interest round pickpockets and murderers;
+and if this interest were legitimately produced, by the exhibition of
+human passions modified by the circumstances of the actor--if it arose
+from the development of one real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering
+man's heart, we could only wonder at the author's choice of such a
+subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge that he had widened our
+sphere of knowledge--and made us feel, as we all do, without taking the
+same credit for it to ourselves that the old blockhead in France does,
+that being human, we have sympathies with all, even the lowest and
+wickedest of our kind. But the interest those works excite arises from
+no such legitimate source--not from the development of our common
+nature, but from the creation of a new one--from startling contrasts,
+not of two characters but of one--tenderness, generosity in one page;
+fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English _tastes_ are
+so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of
+cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press--our English
+_morals_ would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which
+forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The
+very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their
+female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to
+contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions
+of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine--high in
+rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty--has for the hero a
+villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes--we are
+not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut
+throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. He
+is the philosopher,--the instructor--the guide. The object of _his_
+introduction is to show the iniquity of human laws--the object of _her_
+introduction is to show the absurdity of the institution of marriage.
+This would never be tolerated in England. Again, a married woman is
+presented to us--for the sympathy which with us attends a young couple
+to the church-door, only begins in France after they have left it: as a
+child she has been betrothed to a person of her own rank--at five or six
+incurable idiocy takes possession of her proposed husband--but when she
+is eighteen the marriage takes place--the husband is a mere child still;
+for his intellect has continued stationary though his body has reached
+maturity--a more revolting picture was never presented than that of the
+condition of the idiot's wife--her horror of her husband--and of course
+her passion for another. The most interesting scenes between the lovers
+are constantly interrupted by the hideous representative of matrimony,
+the grinning husband, who rears his slavering countenance from behind
+the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate wife with a sacred awe for the
+holy obligations of marriage.
+
+Again, a dandy of fifty is presented to us, whose affection for his ward
+has waited, of course, till she is wedded to another, to ripen into
+love. He still continues her protector against the advances of others;
+for jealousy is a good point of character in every one but the husband,
+and there it is only ridiculous. The husband in this case is another
+admirable specimen of the results of wedlock for life--he is a
+chattering, shallow pretender--a political economist, prodigiously dull
+and infinitely conceited--an exaggerated type of the Hume-Bowring
+statesman--and, as is naturally to be expected, our sympathies are
+awakened for the wretched wife, and we rejoice to see that her beauty
+and talents, her fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated by a dashing
+young fellow, who outwits our original friend the dandy of fifty and the
+philosophical depute; the whole leaving a pleasing impression on the
+reader's mind from the conviction that the heroine is no longer
+neglected.
+
+From the similarity of these stories--and they are only taken at random
+from a great number--it will be seen that the spirit of almost all of
+them is the same. But when we go lower in the scale, and leave the class
+of philosophic novels, we find their tales of life and manners still
+more absurd in their total untrueness than the others were hateful in
+their design. There is a novel just now appearing in one of the most
+widely-circulated of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely overdone, that
+if it had been meant for a caricature of the worst parts of our own
+hulk-and-gallows authors, it would have been very much admired; but
+meant to be serious, powerful, harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is
+a most curious exhibition of a nation's taste and a writer's audacity.
+The _Mysteries of Paris_, by Eugene Sue, has been dragging its slow
+length along for a long time, and gives no sign of getting nearer its
+denouement than when it began. A sovereign prince is the hero--his own
+daughter, whom he has disowned, the heroine; and the tale commences by
+his fighting a man on the street, and taking a fancy to his unknown
+child, who is the inhabitant of one of the lowest dens in the St Giles'
+of Paris! The other _dramatis personae_ are convicts, receivers of stolen
+goods, murderers, intriguers of all ranks--the aforesaid prince,
+sometimes in the disguise of a workman, sometimes of a pickpocket,
+acting the part of a providence among them, rewarding the good and
+punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah
+McGregor--the lawful wife of the prince--her brother Tom, and Sir Walter
+Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and
+flurried--first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in
+country farms, and then in halls and palaces--and so intermixed and
+confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of
+the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds.
+How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and
+we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his
+poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step.
+Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of
+France, and in the _Mysteres de Paris_ the most confirmed glutton of
+such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst of such depraved and
+revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of satisfaction, though not of the
+loftiest kind, to turn to the coarse fun and ludicrous descriptions of
+Paul de Kock. And, after all, our friend Paul has not many more sins
+than coarseness and buffoonery to answer for. As to his attempting, of
+set purpose, to corrupt people's morals, it never entered into his head.
+He does not know what morals are; they never form any part of his idea
+of manners or character. If a good man comes in his way, he looks at him
+with a strange kind of unacquaintance that almost rises into respect;
+but he is certainly more affectionate, and on far better terms, with men
+about town--amative hairdressers, flirting grisettes, and the whole
+genus, male and female, of the epiciers. It would no doubt be an
+improvement if the facetious Paul could believe in the existence of an
+honest woman; but such women as come in his way he describes to the
+life. A ball in a dancing-master's private room up six pairs of stairs,
+a pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner at a restaurateur's, or a
+family consultation on a proposal of marriage, are far more in Paul's
+way than tales of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity. One is only
+sorry, in the midst of so much gaiety and good-humour, to stumble on
+some scene or sentiment that gives on the inclination to throw the book
+in the fire, or start, like Caesar, on the top of the diligence to pull
+the author's ears. But the next page sets all right again; and you go on
+laughing at the disasters of my neighbour Raymond, or admiring the
+graces or Chesterfieldian politeness of M. Bellequeue. French nature
+seems essentially different from all the other natures hitherto known;
+and yet, though so new, there never rises any doubt that it is _a_
+nature, a reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and not a sham. The
+personages presented to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely, in the strict
+sense of the word, be called human beings; but they are French beings of
+real flesh and blood, speaking and thinking French in the most decided
+possible manner, and at intervals possessed of feelings which make us
+inclined to include them in the great genus _homo_, though with so many
+inseparable accidents, that it is impossible for a moment to shut one's
+eyes to the species to which they belong. But such as they are in their
+shops, and back-parlours, and ball-rooms, and _fetes champetres_, there
+they are in Paul de Kock--nothing extenuated, little set down in
+malice--vain, empty, frivolous, good-tempered, gallant, lively, and
+absurd. Let us go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the
+anniversary of the marriage of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the day of St
+Eustache.
+
+"At a little distance from the ball, towards the middle of the wood, a
+numerous party is seated on the grass, or rather on the sand; napkins
+are spread on the ground, and covered with plates and cold meat and
+fruits. The bottles are placed in the cool shade, the glasses are filled
+and emptied rapidly; good appetites and open air make every thing appear
+excellent. They make plates out of paper, and toss pieces of pate and
+sausage to each other. They eat, they drink, they sing, they laugh and
+play tricks. It seems a struggle who shall be funniest. It is well known
+that all things are allowable in the country; and the cits now assembled
+in the wood of Romainville seem fully persuaded of the fact. A jolly old
+governor of about fifty tries to carve a turkey, and can't succeed. A
+little woman, very red, very fat, and very round, hastens to seize a
+limb of the bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly old governor at the
+other--the leg separates at last, and the lady goes sprawling on the
+grass, while the gentleman topples over in the opposite direction with
+the remainder of the animal in his hand. The shouts of laughter
+redouble, and M. Moutonnet--such is the name of the jolly old
+governor--resumes his place, declaring that he will never try to carve
+any thing again. 'I knew you would never be able to manage it,' said a
+large woman bluntly, in a tone that agreed exactly with her starched and
+crabbed features. She was sitting opposite the stout gentleman, and had
+seen with indignation the alacrity with which the little lady had flown
+to M. Moutonnet's assistance.
+
+"'In the twenty years we have been married,' she continued, 'have you
+ever carved any thing at home, sir?'
+
+"'No, my dear, that's very true;' replied the stout gentleman in a
+submissive voice, and trying to smile his better half into good-humour.
+
+"'You don't know how to help a dish of spinach, and yet you attempt a
+dish like that!'
+
+"'My dear--in the country, you know----'
+
+"'In the country, sir, as in the town, people shouldn't try things they
+can't perform.'
+
+"'You know, Madame Moutonnet, that generally I never attempt any
+thing--but to day'----
+
+"'To day you should have done as you do on other days,' retorted the
+lady.
+
+"'Ah, but, my love, you forget that this is Saint Eustache----'
+
+"'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!' is repeated in chorus by the whole
+company, and the glasses are filled and jingled as before.
+
+"'To the health of Eustache; Eustache for ever!'
+
+"'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,' replied M. Moutonnet graciously
+smiling--'and yours, my angel.'
+
+"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume
+an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M.
+Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue
+St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever
+protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has
+kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till
+eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and
+ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the
+bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an
+old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall
+presently become better acquainted.
+
+"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not
+commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all
+things. When she is in good-humour--a somewhat extraordinary
+occurrence--she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of
+coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the
+corner of the Rue Mauconseil--for it is famous for its liberal allowance
+of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his
+wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a
+promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the
+country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the
+fete-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder
+the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men--so true is it
+that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was
+born with simple tastes--she required to be led and managed like a
+child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen,
+so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think
+yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions
+every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M.
+Moutonnet has no fear of that--he has no passions--he knows nothing but
+his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very
+happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself
+be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is
+a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never
+was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded
+she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to
+every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her
+husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame
+Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A
+daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and
+Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at
+eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced.
+But Eugenie has been educated severely--and although possessed of a good
+deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a
+single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness,
+grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has
+received from nature--her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the
+bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish--or rather she scarcely
+ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads
+them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little
+arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror
+every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft
+and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed
+by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In
+short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first
+sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more
+regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we
+have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party
+who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint
+Eustache.
+
+"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M.
+Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who
+is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the
+fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even
+puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking,
+and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly
+breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on--for she is determined to
+have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very
+lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an
+expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom
+she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll,
+by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a
+young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes
+when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six
+months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has
+undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.
+
+"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly
+countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated
+beside Eugenie. M. Dupont--such is his name--is a rich grocer of the Rue
+aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are
+becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very
+aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat,
+give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably
+with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two
+watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great
+satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own
+remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the
+presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a
+bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where
+there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the
+Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant
+gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious
+rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he
+overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and
+perfumes--accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in
+sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has
+a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little
+Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes
+as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a
+little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never
+could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were
+delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'
+
+"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every
+opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs
+every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old
+clerk of the laceman--M. Bidois--who waits for Madame Moutonnet's
+permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she
+is not looking--is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard;
+who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that
+she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her
+neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all
+the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with
+handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is
+intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of
+calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose
+name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame
+Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him
+to the fete of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party
+who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."
+
+We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the
+party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the
+foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people
+who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to
+compare M. Moutonnet and _his_ friends, with any laceman and _his_
+friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in
+the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a
+perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at
+Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom--and as to admitting
+such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the
+unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon
+think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three
+friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for
+not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic
+manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems
+no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he
+is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has
+no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet
+seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever,
+superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed
+volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are
+all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other
+hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all
+other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated,
+but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme
+disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The
+husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the
+shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or
+seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a
+gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies
+torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely
+flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks
+are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich
+perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to
+them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters;
+whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any
+affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical
+attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real
+unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's
+character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more
+interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a
+Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only
+acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or
+the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo
+enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester
+warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may
+be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single
+exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to
+distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the
+world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of
+citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether
+our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible--all three of which
+epithets are generally applicable to the same individual--or that they
+have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic
+habits of the animal--it is certain that, however better they may be
+qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far
+less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that
+wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either
+been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie
+never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he
+does in _Rob Roy_. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the
+universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the
+prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which
+he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of
+Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude
+town--consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge
+of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit
+subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable
+Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in
+the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long
+ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon
+him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of
+the harem--threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as
+he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes
+scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from
+odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and
+brigands--but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops,
+and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set
+of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because
+non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take
+his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No
+decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the
+appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their
+rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course
+of the _chaine Anglaise_ beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at
+the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the
+above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his
+daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of
+going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have
+left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C.
+But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser--for the mere
+gleaner of beards is not intended by the name--into his own amusements.
+In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee,
+and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the
+offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his
+graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a
+very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is
+whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner,
+with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and
+his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend
+goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and
+water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night
+of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the
+order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and
+being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has
+a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to
+be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a
+tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his
+hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats
+himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and
+thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong
+ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions.
+Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with
+dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his
+next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their
+sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music
+now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a
+strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the
+coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the
+landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is
+over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is
+now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a
+distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box
+to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so
+full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that
+he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher,
+who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic
+performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces
+a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song,
+where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers,
+are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of
+admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last,
+time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr
+Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts
+he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great
+comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in
+the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in
+the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into
+mischief from an overdose of _eau sucree_, though sometimes he certainly
+becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of _vin ordinaire_; and
+nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink
+which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French
+population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative,
+and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small
+beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We
+constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of
+excitement after two rounds of a bottle--jostling the peasants, and
+talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what
+a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or
+two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious
+disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other
+from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling
+women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant
+mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and
+swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster--but not a single blow!
+The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish
+into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful _melee_, the
+violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a
+marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these
+methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we
+confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on
+the claret-cork)--all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to
+work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a
+manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel
+kind.
+
+The affectations of a French cit, when that nondescript animal
+condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those
+of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts--he talks about
+the opera--likes to know artists and authors--and, though living up five
+or six pairs of stairs in a narrow lane, gives _soirees_ and
+_conversaziones_. More ludicrous all this, and decidedly less
+disgusting, than the assumptions of our man-milliners and fishmongers.
+There is short sketch by Paul de Kock, called a _Soiree Bourgeoise_,
+which we translate entire, as an illustration of this curious phase of
+French character; and we shall take an early opportunity of bringing
+before our readers the essays of the daily feuilletonists of the
+Parisian press, which give a clearer insight into the peculiarities of
+French domestic literature than can be acquired in any other quarter.
+
+
+A CIT'S SOIREE.
+
+Lights were observed some time ago, in the four windows of an apartment
+on the second floor of a house in the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite so
+brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers, but still it announced something.
+These four windows, with lights glancing in them all, had an air of
+rejoicing, and the industrious inhabitants of the Rue Grenetat, who
+don't generally go to much expense for illumination, even in their
+shops, looked at the four windows which eclipsed the street lamps in
+their brilliancy, and said, "There's certainly something very
+extraordinary going on this evening at M. Lupot's!" M. Lupot is an
+honest tradesman, who has retired from business some time. After having
+sold stationary for thirty years, without ever borrowing of a neighbour,
+or failing in a payment, M. Lupot, having scraped together an income of
+three hundred and twenty pounds, disposed of his stock in trade, and
+closed his ledger, to devote himself entirely to the pleasures of
+domestic life with his excellent spouse, Madam Felicite Lupot--a woman
+of an amazingly apathetic turn of mind, who did admirably well in the
+shop as long as she had only to give change for half-crowns, but whose
+abilities extended no further. But this had not prevented her from
+making a very good wife to her husband, (which proves that much talent
+is not required for that purpose,) and presenting him with a daughter
+and a son.
+
+The daughter was the eldest, and had attained her seventeenth year; and
+M. Lupot, who spared nothing on her education, did not despair of
+finding a husband for her with a soul above sticks of sealing-wax and
+wafers--more especially as it was evident she had no turn for trade, and
+believed she had a decided genius for the fine arts--for she had painted
+her father as a shepherd with his crook, when she was only twelve, and
+had learned a year after to play "Je suis Lindore" by ear on the piano.
+M. Lupot was proud of his daughter, who was thus a painter and a
+musician; who was a foot taller than her papa; who held herself as
+upright as a Prussian grenadier; who made a curtsy like Taglioni, who
+had a Roman nose three times the size of other people's, a mouth to
+match, and eyes so arch and playful, that it was difficult to discover
+them. The boy was only seven; he was allowed to do whatever he chose--he
+was so very young; and Monsieur Ascanius availed himself of the
+permission, and was in mischief from morning to night. His father was
+too fond of him to scold him, and his mother wouldn't take the trouble
+to get into a passion.
+
+Well, then, one morning M. Lupot soliloquized--"I have a good fortune, a
+charming family, and a wife who has never been in a rage; but all this
+does not lead to a man's being invited, courted, and made much of in the
+world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove and red sealing-wax, I have
+seen nobody but a few friends--retired tradesmen like myself--who drop
+in to take a hand at _vingt-et-un_, or loto; but I wish more than
+that--my daughter must not live in so narrow a circle; my daughter has a
+decided turn for the arts; I ought to have artists to my house. I will
+give soirees, tea-parties--yes, with punch at parting, if it be
+necessary. We shall play _bouillote_ and _ecarte_, for my daughter can't
+endure loto. Indeed, I wish to set people talking about my re-unions,
+and to find a husband for Celanire worthy of her." M. Lupot was seated
+near his wife, who was seated on an elastic sofa, and was caressing a
+cat on her knee. He said to her--
+
+"My dear Felicite, I intend to give soirees--to receive lots of company.
+We live in too confined a sphere for our daughter, who was born for the
+arts--and for Ascanius, who, it strikes me, will make some noise in the
+world."
+
+Madame Lupot continued to caress the cat, and replied, "Well, what have
+I to do with that? Do I hinder you from receiving company? If it doesn't
+cause me any trouble--for I must tell you first of all, you musn't count
+on me to help you"--
+
+"You will have nothing at all to do, my dear Felicite, but the honours
+of the house."
+
+"I must be getting up every minute"--
+
+"You do it so gracefully," replied the husband--"I will give all the
+orders, and Celanire will second me."
+
+Mademoiselle was enchanted with the intention of her sire, and threw her
+arms round his neck.
+
+"Oh yes! papa," she said, "invite as many as you can, I will learn to
+play some country-dances that we may have a ball, and finish my head of
+Belisarius--you must get it framed for the occasion."
+
+And the little Ascanius whooped and hollo'd in the middle of the room.
+"I shall have tea and punch and cakes. I'll eat every thing!"
+
+After this conversation M. Lupot had set to work. He went to his friends
+and his friends' friends--to people he hardly knew, and invited them to
+his party, begging them to bring any body with them they liked. M. Lupot
+had formerly sold rose-coloured paper to a musician, and drawing pencils
+to an artist. He went to his ancient customers, and pressed them to come
+and to bring their professional friends with them. In short, M. Lupot
+was so prodigiously active that in four days he had run through nearly
+the whole of Paris, caught an immense cold, and spent seven shillings in
+cab hire. Giving an entertainment has its woes as well as its pleasures.
+
+The grand day, or rather the grand evening, at last arrived. All the
+lamps were lighted, and they had even borrowed some from their
+neighbours; for Celanire had discovered that their own three lamps
+did not give light enough both for the public-room and the
+supper-room--(which on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.) It was the
+first time that M. Lupot had borrowed any thing--but also it was the
+first time that M. Lupot gave a soiree.
+
+From the dawn of day M. Lupot was busy in preparation: He had ordered in
+cakes and refreshments; bought sundry packs of cards, brushed the
+tables, and tucked up the curtains. Madame Lupot had sat all the time
+quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from time to time, "I'm afraid 'twill
+be a troublesome business all this receiving company."
+
+Celanire had finished her Belisarius, who was an exact likeness of Blue
+Beard, and whom they had honoured with a Gothic frame, and placed in a
+conspicuous part of the room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed with
+amazing care. She had a new gown, her hair plaited _a la Clotilde_. All
+this must make a great sensation. Ascanius was rigged out in his best;
+but this did not hinder him from kicking up a dust in the room, from
+getting up on the furniture, handling the cards, and taking them to make
+houses; from opening the cupboards, and laying his fingers on the cakes.
+
+Sometimes M. Lupot's patience gave way, and he cried, "Madame, I beg
+you'll make your son be quiet." But Madame Lupot answered without
+turning her head, "Make him quiet yourself, M. Lupot--You know very well
+it's _your_ business to manage him."
+
+It was now eight o'clock, and nobody was yet arrived. Mademoiselle
+looked at her father, who looked at his wife, who looked at her cat. The
+father of the family muttered every now and then--"Are we to have our
+grand soiree all to ourselves?" And he cast doleful looks on his lamps,
+his tables, and all his splendid preparations. Mademoiselle Celanire
+sighed and looked at her dress, and then looked in the mirror. Madame
+Lupot was as unmoved as ever, and said, "Is this what we've turned every
+thing topsy-turvy for?" As for little Ascanius, he jumped about the
+room, and shouted, "If nobody comes, what lots of cakes we shall have!"
+At last the bell rang. It is a family from the Rue St Denis, retired
+perfumers, who have only retained so much of their ancient profession,
+that they cover themselves all over with odours. When they enter the
+room, you feel as if a hundred scent-bottles were opened at once. There
+is such a smell of jasmine and vanille, that you have good luck if you
+get off without a headache. Other people drop in. M. Lupot does not know
+half his guests, for many of them are brought by others, and even these
+he scarcely knows the names of. But he is enchanted with every thing. A
+young fashionable is presented to him by some unknown third party, who
+says, "This is one of our first pianists, who is good enough to give up
+a great concert this evening to come here." The next is a famous singer,
+a lion in musical parties, who is taken out every where, and who will
+give one of his latest compositions, though unfortunately labouring
+under a cold. This man won the first prize at the Conservatory, an
+unfledged Boildieu, who will be a great composer of operas--when he can
+get librettos to his music, and music to his librettos. The next is a
+painter. He has shown at the exhibition--he has had wonderful success.
+To be sure nobody bought his pictures, because he didn't wish to sell
+them to people that couldn't appreciate them. In short, M. Lupot sees
+nobody in his rooms that is not first-rate in some way or other. He is
+delighted with the thought--ravished, transported. He can't find words
+enough to express his satisfaction at having such geniuses in his house.
+For their sakes he neglects his old friends--he scarcely speaks to them.
+It seems the new-comers, people he has never seen before, are the only
+people worthy of his attentions. Madame Lupot is tired of getting up,
+curtsying, and sitting down again. But her daughter is radiant with joy;
+her husband goes from room to room, rubbing his hands, as if he had
+bought all Paris, and got it a bargain. And little Ascanius never comes
+out of the bed-room without his mouth full. But it is not enough to
+invite a large party; you must know how to amuse them; it is a thing
+which very few people have the art of, even those most accustomed to
+have soirees. In some you get tired, and you are in great ceremony; you
+must restrict yourself to a conversation that is neither open, nor
+friendly, nor amusing. In others, you are pestered to death by the
+amphitryon, who is perhaps endowed with the bump of music, and won't
+leave the piano for fear some one else should take his place. There are
+others fond of cards, who only ask their friends that they may make up a
+table. Such individuals care for nothing but the game, and don't trouble
+themselves whether the rest of their guests are amused or not. Ah! there
+are few homes that know how to receive their company, or make every body
+pleased. It requires a tact, a cleverness, an absence of self, which
+must surely be very unusual since we see so few specimens of them in the
+soirees we attend.
+
+M. Lupot went to and fro--from the reception-room to the bed-chamber,
+and back again--he smiled, he bowed, and rubbed his hands. But the
+new-comers, who had not come to his house to see him smile and rub his
+hands, began to say, in very audible whispers, "Ah, well, do people pass
+the whole night here looking at each other? Very delightful--very!"
+
+M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation with a big man in spectacles,
+with a neckcloth of great dimensions, and who makes extraordinary faces
+as he looks round on the company. M. Lupot has been told, that the
+gentleman with the large neckcloth is a literary man, and that he will
+probably be good enough to read or recite some lines of his own
+composition. The ancient stationer coughs three times before venturing
+to address so distinguished a character, but says at last--"Enchanted to
+see at my house a gentleman so--an author of such----"
+
+"Ah, you're the host here, are you?--the master of the house?"--said the
+man in the neckcloth.
+
+"I flatter myself I am--with my wife, of course--the lady on the
+sofa--you see her? My daughter, sir--she's the tall young lady, so
+upright in her figure. She designs, and has an excellent touch on the
+piano. I have a son also--a little fiend--it was he who crept this
+minute between my legs--he's an extraordinary clev----"
+
+"There is one thing, sir," replied the big man, "that I can't
+comprehend--a thing that amazes me--and that is, that people who live in
+the Rue Grenetat should give parties. It is a miserable street--a horrid
+street--covered eternally with mud--choked up with cars--a wretched part
+of the town, dirty, noisy, pestilential--bah!"
+
+"And yet, sir, for thirty years I have lived here."
+
+"Oh Lord, sir, I should have died thirty times over! When people live in
+the Rue Grenetat they should give up society, for you'll grant it is a
+regular trap to seduce people into such an abominable street. I"----
+
+M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing his hands. He moves off from the
+big man in the spectacles, whose conversation had by no means amused
+him, and he goes up to a group of young people who seem examining the
+Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.
+
+"They're admiring my daughter's drawing," said M. Lupot to himself; "I
+must try to overhear what these artists are saying." The young people
+certainly made sundry remarks on the performance, plentifully intermixed
+with sneers of a very unmistakable kind.
+
+"Can you make out what the head is meant for?"
+
+"Not I. I confess I never saw any thing so ridiculous."
+
+"It's Belisarius, my dear fellow."
+
+"Impossible!--it's the portrait of some grocer, some relation, probably,
+of the family--look at the nose--the mouth--"
+
+"It is intolerable folly to put a frame to such a daub."
+
+"They must be immensely silly."
+
+"Why, it isn't half so good as the head of the Wandering Jew at the top
+of a penny ballad."
+
+M. Lupot has heard enough. He slips off from the group without a word,
+and glides noiselessly to the piano. The young performer who had
+sacrificed a great concert to come to his soiree, had sat down to the
+instrument and run his fingers over the notes.
+
+"What a spinnet!" he cried--"what a wretched kettle! How can you expect
+a man to perform on such a miserable instrument? The thing is
+absurd--hear this A--hear this G--it's like a hurdygurdy--not one note
+of it in tune!" But the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding,
+and played incessantly, thumping the keys with such tremendous force,
+that every minute a chord snapped; when such a thing happened--he burst
+into a laugh, and said, "Good! there's another gone--there will soon be
+none left."
+
+M. Lupot flushed up to the ears. He felt very much inclined to say to
+the celebrated performer, "Sir, I didn't ask you here to break all the
+chords of my piano. Let the instrument alone if you don't like it, but
+don't hinder other people from playing on it for our amusement."
+
+But the good M. Lupot did not venture on so bold a speech, which would
+have been a very sensible speech nevertheless; and he stood quietly
+while his chords were getting smashed, though it was by no means a
+pleasant thing to do.
+
+Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to her father. She is distressed at the
+way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but
+she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old
+neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar.
+
+It is not without some difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his
+daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a
+smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the
+gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ,
+and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to
+hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time
+with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much
+the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see on a mantelpiece.
+Nevertheless Mademoiselle Lupot essays her ballad; but she can never
+manage to overtake her accompanier, who, instead of following the
+singer, seems determined to make no alteration in the movement of his
+head and feet. The ballad is a failure--Celanire is confused, she has
+mistaken her notes--she loses her recollection; and, instead of hearing
+his daughter's praises, M. Lupot overhears the young people
+whispering--"It wouldn't do in a beer-shop."
+
+"I must order in the tea," thought the ex-stationer--"it will perhaps
+put them into good-humour."
+
+And M. Lupot rushes off to give instructions to the maid; and that old
+individual, who has never seen such a company before, does not know how
+to get on, and breaks cups and saucers without mercy, in the effort to
+make haste.
+
+"Nannette, have you got ready the other things you were to bring in with
+the tea?--the muffins--the cakes?"
+
+"Yes, sir"--replied Nannette--"all is ready--every thing will be in in a
+moment."
+
+"But there is another thing I told you, Nannette--the sandwiches."
+
+"The witches, sir?--the sand?"--enquired the puzzled Nannette.
+
+"It is an English dish--I explained it to you before--slices of bread
+and butter, with ham between."
+
+"Oh la, sir!" exclaimed the maid--"I have forgotten that ragout--oh
+dear!"
+
+"Well--make haste, Nannette; get ready some immediately, while my
+daughter hands round the tea and muffins--you can bring them in on a
+tray."
+
+The old domestic hurries into the kitchen grumbling at the English
+dainty, and cuts some slices of bread and covers them with butter; but
+as she had never thought of the ham, she cogitates a long time how she
+can supply the want of it--at last, on looking round, she discovers a
+piece of beef that had been left at dinner.
+
+"Pardieu," she says, "I'll cut some lumps of this and put them on the
+bread. With plenty of salt they'll pass very well for ham--they'll drive
+me wild with their English dishes--they will."
+
+The maid speedily does as she says, and then hurries into the room with
+a tray covered with her extempore ham sandwiches.
+
+Every body takes one,--for they have grown quite fashionable along with
+tea. But immediately there is an universal murmur in the assembly. The
+ladies throw their slices into the fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on
+the furniture, and they cry--"why the devil do people give us things
+like these?--they're detestable."
+
+"It's my opinion, God forgive me! the man means to feed us with scraps
+from the pig-trough," says another.
+
+"It's a regular do, this soiree," says a third.
+
+"The tea is disgustingly smoked," says a fourth.
+
+"And all the little cakes look as if they had been fingered before,"
+says the fifth.
+
+"Decidedly they wish to poison us," says the big man in the neckcloth,
+looking very morose.
+
+M. Lupot is in despair. He goes in search of Nannette, who has hidden
+herself in the kitchen; and he busies himself in gathering up the
+fragments of the bread and butter from the floor and the fireplace.
+
+Madame Lupot says nothing; but she is in very bad humour, for she has
+put on a new cap, which she felt sure would be greatly admired; and a
+lady has come to her and said--
+
+"Ah, madame, what a shocking head-dress!--your cap is very
+old-fashioned--those shapes are quite gone out."
+
+"And yet, madame," replies Madame Lupot, "I bought it, not two days ago,
+in the Rue St Martin."
+
+"Well, madame--Is that the street you go to for the fashions? Go to
+Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous Gaillon--you'll get delicious caps
+there--new fashions and every thing so tasteful: for Heaven's sake,
+madame, never put on that cap again. You look, at least, a hundred."
+
+"It's worth one's while, truly," thought Madame Lupot, "to tire one's
+self to death receiving people, to be treated to such pretty
+compliments."
+
+Her husband, in the meanwhile, continued his labours in pursuit of the
+rejected sandwiches.
+
+The big man in spectacles, who wondered that people could live in the
+Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless, of coming there for nothing. He
+has seated himself in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, and
+informs the company that he is going to repeat a few lines of his own to
+them.--The society seems by no means enchanted with the announcement,
+but forms itself in a circle, to listen to the poet. He coughs and
+spits, wipes his mouth, tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has the lamps
+raised, the doors shut, asks a tumbler of sugar and water, and passes
+his hand through his hair. After continuing these operations for some
+minutes, the literary man at last begins. He spouts his verses in a
+voice enough to break the glasses; before he has spoken a minute, he has
+presented a tremendous picture of crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds,
+sufficient to appal the stoutest hearts, when suddenly a great crash
+from the inner room attracts universal attention. It is the young
+Ascanius, who was trying to get a muffin on the top of a pile of dishes,
+and has upset the table, with muffin, and dishes, and all on his own
+head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain the cause of the dreadful cries of
+his son; the company follow him, not a little rejoiced to find an excuse
+for hearing no more of the poem; and the poet, deprived in this way of
+an audience, gets up in a furious passion, takes his hat, and rushes
+from the room, exclaiming--"It serves me right. How could I have been
+fool enough to recite good verses in the Rue Grenetat!"
+
+Ascanius is brought in and roars lustily, for two of the dishes have
+been broken on his nose; and as there is no chance now, either of poetry
+or music, the party have recourse to cards--for it is impossible to sit
+all night and do nothing.
+
+They make up a table at _bouillote_, and another at _ecarte_. M. Lupot
+takes his place at the latter. He is forced to cover all the bets when
+his side refuses; and M. Lupot, who never played higher than shilling
+stakes in his life, is horrified when they tell him--"You must lay down
+fifteen francs to equal our stakes."
+
+"Fifteen francs!" says M. Lupot, "what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+"It means, that you must make up the stakes of your side, to what we
+have put down on this. The master of the house is always expected to
+make up the difference."
+
+M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays down his fifteen francs and loses
+them; next game the deficiency is twenty. In short, in less than half an
+hour, the ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His eyes start out of his
+head--he scarcely knows where he is; and to complete his misery, the
+opposite party, in lifting up the money they have won, upset one of the
+lamps he had borrowed from his neighbours, and smashed it into fifty
+pieces.
+
+At last the hour of separation comes. The good citizen has been anxious
+for it for a long time. All his gay company depart, without even wishing
+good-night to the host who has exerted himself so much for their
+entertainment. The family of the Lupots are left alone; Madame, overcome
+with fatigue, and vexed because her cap had been found fault with;
+Celanire, with tears in her eyes, because her music and Belisarius had
+been laughed at; and Ascanius sick and ill, because he has nearly burst
+himself with cakes and muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the unhappiest of
+all, thinking of his ninety francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette
+gathered up the crumbs of the sandwiches, and muttered--"Do they think
+people make English dishes to have them thrown into the corners of the
+room?"
+
+"It's done," said M. Lupot; "I shall give no more soirees. I begin to
+think I was foolish in wishing to leave my own sphere. When people of
+the same class lark and joke each other, it's all very well; but when
+you meddle with your superiors, and they are uncivil, it hurts your
+feelings. Their mockery is an insult, and you don't get over it soon. My
+dear Celanire, I shall decidedly try to marry you to a stationer."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.
+
+THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.
+
+OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.
+
+
+The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in our last for the admiration and
+instruction of remote ages. When the nineteenth century shall be long
+out of date, and centuries in general out of their _teens_, posterity
+will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure
+undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the
+macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in
+our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is,
+after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his
+_monomania_, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly
+be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if,
+indeed, it can be said to injure him who glories in his vocation--who is
+the echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.
+
+The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to
+society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold
+iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families,
+and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the
+text of Scripture, which commandeth us, "in whatever station we are,
+therewith to be content."
+
+The gentility-monger is a family man, having a house somewhere in
+Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is sometimes a man of independent
+fortune--how acquired, nobody knows; that is his secret, his mystery. He
+will let no one suppose that he has ever been in trade; because, when a
+man intends gentility-mongering, it must never be known that he has
+formerly carried on the tailoring, or the shipping, or the
+cheese-mongering, or the fish-mongering, or any other mongering than the
+gentility-mongering. His house is very stylishly furnished; that is to
+say, as unlike the house of a man of fashion as possible--the latter
+having only things the best of their kind, and for use; the former
+displaying every variety of extravagant gimcrackery, to impress you with
+a profound idea of combined wealth and taste, but which, to an educated
+eye and mind only, conveys a lively idea of ostentation. When you call
+upon a gentility-monger, a broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike
+footman, in Aurora plushes, ushers you to a drawing-room, where, on
+tables round, and square, and hexagonal, are set forth jars, porcelain,
+china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed parrots under bell-glasses;
+corals, minerals, and an infinity of trumpery, among which albums,
+great, small, and intermediate, must by no means be forgotten.
+
+The room is papered with some _splendacious_ pattern in blue and gold; a
+chandelier of imposing gingerbread depends from the richly ornamented
+ceiling; every variety of ottoman, lounger, settee, is scattered about,
+so that to get a chair involves the right-of-search question; the
+bell-pulls are painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels carpet of flaming
+colours, curtains with massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous frames;
+prints, after Ross, of her Majesty and Prince Albert, of course; and
+mezzotints of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for whom the
+gentility-monger has a profound respect, and of whom he talks with a
+familiarity showing that it is not _his_ fault, at least, if these
+exalted personages do not admit him to the honour of their acquaintance.
+
+In fact, you see the drawing-room is not intended for sitting down in,
+and when the lady appears, you are inclined to believe she never sits
+down; at least the full-blown swell of that satin skirt seems never
+destined to the compression of a chair. The conversation is as
+usual--"Have you read the morning paper?"--meaning the Court Circular
+and fashionable intelligence; "do you know whether the Queen is at
+Windsor or Claremont, and how long her Majesty intends to remain;
+whether town is fuller than it was, or not so full; when the next
+Almacks' ball takes place; whether you were at the last drawing-room,
+and which of the fair _debutantes_ you most admire; whether Tamburini is
+to be denied us next year?" with many lamentations touching the possible
+defection, as if the migrations of an opera thrush were of the least
+consequence to any rational creature--of course you don't say so, but
+lament Tamburini as if he were your father; "whether it is true that we
+are to have the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito, this season; and what
+a heaven of delight we shall experience from the united action of these
+twenty supernatural pettitoes." You needn't express yourself after this
+fashion, else you will shock miss, who lounges near you in an agony of
+affected rapture: you must sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your cane,
+and say "divine--yes--hope it may be so--exquisite--_exquisite_." This
+naturally leads you to the last new songs, condescendingly exhibited to
+you by miss, if you are _somebody_, (if _nobody_, miss does not appear;)
+you are informed that "_My heart is like a pickled salmon_" is dedicated
+to the Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon you are favoured with sundry
+passages (out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages, &c., of that
+illustrious family; you are asked whether Bishop is the composer of "_I
+saw her in a twinkling_," and whether the _minor_ is not fine? Miss
+tells you she has transposed it from G to C, as suiting her voice
+better--whereupon mamma acquaints you, that a hundred and twenty guineas
+for a harp is moderate, she thinks; you think so too, taking that
+opportunity to admire the harp, saying that you saw one exactly like it
+at Lord (any Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in St James's Square.
+This produces an invitation to dinner; and with many lamentations on
+English weather, and an eulogium on the climate of Florence, you pay
+your parting compliments, and take your leave.
+
+At dinner you meet a claret-faced Irish absentee, whose good society is
+a good dinner, and who is too happy to be asked any where that a good
+dinner is to be had; a young silky clergyman, in black curled whiskers,
+and a white _choker_; one of the meaner fry of M.P.'s; a person who
+_calls himself_ a foreign count; a claimant of a dormant peerage; a
+baronet of some sort, not above the professional; sundry propriety-faced
+people in yellow waistcoats, who say little, and whose social position
+you cannot well make out; half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age,
+dressed in grand style, with turbans of imposing _tournure_; and a
+young, diffident, equivocal-looking gent who sits at the bottom of the
+table, and whom you instinctively make out to be a family doctor, tutor,
+or nephew, with expectations. No young ladies, unless the young ladies
+of the family, appear at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers;
+because the motive of the entertainment is pride, not pleasure; and
+therefore prigs and frumps are in keeping, and young women with brains,
+or power of conversation, would only distract attention from the grand
+business of life, that is to say, dinner; besides, a seat at table here
+is an object, where the expense is great, and nobody is asked for his or
+her own sake, but for an object either of ostentation, interest, or
+vanity. Hospitality never enters into the composition of a
+gentility-monger: he gives a dinner, wine, and a shake of the hand, but
+does not know what the word _welcome_ means: he says, now and then, to
+his wife "My dear, I think we must give a dinner;" a dinner is
+accordingly determined on, cards issued three weeks in advance, that you
+may be premeditatedly dull; the dinner is gorgeous to repletion, that
+conversation may be kept as stagnant as possible. Of those happy
+surprize invitations--those unexpected extemporaneous dinners, that as
+they come without thinking or expectation, so go off with _eclat_, and
+leave behind the memory of a cheerful evening--he has no idea; a man of
+fashion, whose place is fixed, and who has only himself to please, will
+ask you to a slice of crimped cod and a hash of mutton, without
+ceremony; and when he puts a cool bottle on the table, after a dinner
+that he and his friend have really enjoyed, will never so much as
+apologize with, "my dear sir, I fear you have had a wretched dinner," or
+"I wish I had known: I should have had something better." This affected
+depreciation of his hospitality he leaves to the gentility-monger, who
+will insist on cramming you with fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are
+like to burst; and then, by way of apology, get his guests to pay the
+reckoning in plethoric laudation of his mountains of victual.
+
+If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after
+the appointed time, although you arrived to a _minute_, as every
+Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the
+gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and
+has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host,
+hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of
+Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats
+attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the
+other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow
+waistcoats, and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig
+of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of
+miss, asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back
+of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening
+parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and
+another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every
+opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes
+with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud
+but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a
+prolonged _rat-tat-tat_ announces the arrival of the noble beast, the
+lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in
+the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the
+day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed
+coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a
+sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by
+the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and
+wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.
+
+As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not
+strictly understood, the host desires Honourable Sniftky to take down
+miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master
+of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where
+you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has
+inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.
+
+You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that
+distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky,
+_ex-officio_, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy
+round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured
+by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in
+attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of
+assize, go circuit.
+
+Then comes hobnobbing, with an interlocutory dissertation upon a
+_plateau, candelabrum_, or some other superfluous machine, in the centre
+of the table. One of the professed diners-out, discovers for the
+twentieth time an inscription in dead silver on the pedestal, and
+enquires with well-affected ignorance whether that is a _present_; the
+gentility-monger asks the diner-out to wine, as he deserves, then enters
+into a long apologetical self-laudation of his exertions in behalf of
+the CANNIBAL ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION, AND BRITISH SUBJECT
+TRANSPORTATION SOCIETY, (some emigration crimping scheme, in short,) in
+which his humble efforts to diffuse civilization and promote
+Christianity, however unworthy, ("No, no!" from the diner-out,) gained
+the esteem of his fellow-labourers, and the approbation of his own
+con----"Shall I send you some fish, sir?" says the man at the foot of
+the table, addressing himself to the Honourable Sniftky, and cutting
+short the oration.
+
+A monstrous salmon and a huge turbot are now dispensed to the hungry
+multitude; the gentility-monger has no idea that the biggest turbot is
+not the best; he knows it is the _dearest_, and that is enough for him;
+he would have his dishes like his cashbook, to show at a glance how much
+he has at his banker's. When the flesh of the guests has been
+sufficiently fishified, there is an _interregnum_, filled up with
+another circuit of wine, until the arrival of the _pieces de
+resistance_, the imitations of made dishes, and the usual _etceteras_.
+The conversation, meanwhile, is carried on in a _staccato_ style; a
+touch here, a hit there, a miss almost every where; the Honourable
+Sniftky turning the head of mamma with affected compliments, and
+hobnobbing to himself without intermission. After a sufficiently tedious
+interval, the long succession of wasteful extravagance is cleared away
+with the upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a look from our hostess,
+rise with dignity and decorously retire, miss modestly bringing up the
+rear--the man at the foot of the table with the handle of the door in
+one hand, and a napkin in the other, bowing them out.
+
+Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair
+closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive
+dinner, can be jovial _to order_. The wine goes round, and laudations go
+with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr
+Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking
+only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several
+speakers, as much as to say, "What a fellow you are, to talk;" the host
+essays a _bon-mot_, or tells a story bordering on the _ideal_, which he
+thinks is fashionable, and shows that he knows life; the Honourable
+Sniftky drinks claret from a beer-glass, and after the third bottle
+affects to discover his mistake, wondering what he could be thinking of;
+this produces much laughter from all save the professed diners-out, who
+dare not take such a liberty, and is _the_ jest of the evening.
+
+When the drinkers, drinkables, and talk are quite exhausted, the noise
+of a piano recalls to our bewildered recollections the ladies, and we
+drink their healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending that it is
+foreign-post night at the Foreign Office, walks off without even a bow
+to the assembled diners, the gentility-monger following him submissively
+to the door; then returning, tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone,
+he's such a good-natured fellow, while the gentleman so characterized
+gets into his cab, drives to his club, and excites the commiseration of
+every body there, by relating how he was bored with an old _ruffian_,
+who insisted upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner in Bryanston Square;
+at which there are many "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" and "what could you
+expect?--Bryanston Square!--served you right."
+
+In the mean time, the guests, relieved of the presence of the Honourable
+Sniftky, are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor,
+or something of that sort) waxes jocular, and gives decided indications
+of something like "how came you so;" the man at the foot of the table
+contradicts one of the diners-out, and is contradicted in turn by the
+baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured
+man, supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of
+the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands' Aborigines Protection
+Society, in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the
+dormant peerage retails his pedigree, pulling to pieces the
+attorney-general, who has expressed an opinion hostile to his
+pretensions.
+
+In the mean time, the piano is joined by a harp, in musical solicitation
+of the company to join the ladies in the drawing-room; they do so,
+looking flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs, sip tea, the
+younger beaux turning over, with miss, Books of Beauty and Keepsakes: at
+eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with
+a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the
+evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a
+bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless,
+stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual,
+selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon,
+assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where
+gulosity has been unrelieved by one single sally of wit, humour,
+good-nature, humanity, or charity; where you come without a welcome, and
+leave without a friend.
+
+The whole art of the gentility-mongers of all sorts in London, and _a
+fortiori_ of their wives and families, is to lay a tax upon social
+intercourse as nearly as possible amounting to a prohibition; their
+dinners are criminally wasteful, and sinfully extravagant to this end;
+to this end they insist on making _price_ the test of what they are
+pleased to consider _select society_ in their own sets, and they
+consequently cannot have a dance without guinea tickets nor a _pic-nic_
+without dozens of champagne. This shows their native ignorance and
+vulgarity more than enough; genteel people go upon a plan directly
+contrary, not merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying themselves
+without extravagance or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers
+would do well to imitate people of fashion.
+
+The exertions a gentility-monger will make, to rub his skirts against
+people above him; the humiliations, mortifications, snubbing, he will
+submit to, are almost incredible. One would hardly believe that a
+retired tradesman, of immense wealth, and enjoying all the respect that
+immense wealth will secure, should actually offer large sums of money to
+a lady of fashion, as an inducement to procure for him cards of
+invitation to her _set_, which he stated was the great object of his
+existence. Instead of being indignant at his presumption, the lady in
+question, pitying the poor man's folly, attempted to reason with him,
+assuring him with great truth that whatever might be his wealth, his
+power or desire of pleasing, he would be rendered unhappy and
+ridiculous, by the mere dint of pretension to a circle to which he had
+no legitimate claim, and advising him, as a friend, to attempt some more
+laudable and satisfactory ambition.
+
+All this good advice was, however, thrown away; our gentility-monger
+persevered, contriving somehow to gain a passport to some of the _outer_
+circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed, laughed at, and honoured
+with the _soubriquet_ (he was a pianoforte maker) of the _Semi-Grand_!
+
+We know another instance, where two young men, engaged in trade in the
+city, took a splendid mansion at the West End, furnished it sumptuously,
+got some desperate knight or baronet's widow to give parties at their
+house, inviting whomsoever she thought proper, at their joint expense.
+It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows succeeded in getting into
+good society, not indeed in the _Court Circular_, but in the--_Gazette_.
+
+There is another class of gentility-mongers more to be pitied than the
+last; those, namely, who are endeavouring to "make a connexion," as the
+phrase is, by which they may gain advancement in their professions, and
+are continually on the look-out for introductions to persons of quality,
+their hangers-on and dependents. There is too much of this sort of thing
+among medical men in London, the family nature of whose profession
+renders connexion, private partiality, and personal favour, more
+essential to them than to others. The lawyer, for example, need not be a
+gentility-monger; he has only to get round attorneys, for the
+opportunity to show what he can do, when he has done this, in which a
+little toadying, "_on the sly_," is necessary--all the rest is easy. The
+court and the public are his judges; his powers are at once appreciable,
+his talent can be calculated, like the money in his pocket; he can now
+go on straight forward, without valuing the individual preference or
+aversion of any body.
+
+But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women,
+and an inexhaustible variety of _sotto voce_ contrivances, must needs
+have a tendency to create a subserviency of spirit and of manner, which
+naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering: where realities, such
+as medical experience, reading, and skill, are remotely, or not at all,
+appreciable, we must take up with appearances; and of all appearances,
+the appearance of proximity to people of fashion is the most taking and
+seductive to people _not_ of fashion. It is for this reason that a
+rising physician, if he happen to have a lord upon his sick or visiting
+list, never has done telling his plebeian patients the particulars of
+his noble case, which they swallow like almond milk, finding it an
+excellent _placebo_.
+
+As it is the interest of a gentility-monger, and his constant practice,
+to be attended by a fashionable physician, in order that he may be
+enabled continually to talk of what Sir Henry thinks of this, and how
+Sir Henry objects to that, and the opinion of Sir Henry upon t'other, so
+it is the business of the struggling doctor to be a gentility-monger,
+with the better chance of becoming one day or other a fashionable
+physician. Acting on this principle, the poor man must necessarily have
+a house in a professional neighbourhood, which usually abuts upon a
+neighbourhood fashionable or exclusive; he must hire a carriage by the
+month, and be for ever stepping in and out of it, at his own door,
+keeping it purposely bespattered with mud to show the extent of his
+visiting acquaintance; he must give dinners to people "who _may_ be
+useful," and be continually on the look-out for those lucky accidents
+which have made the fortunes, and, as a matter of course, the _merit_,
+of so many professional men.
+
+He becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society, which gives him the chance of
+conversing with a lord, and the right of entering a lord's (the
+president's) house, which is turned into sandwich-shop four times a-year
+for his reception; this, being the nearest approach he makes to
+acquaintance with great personages, he values with the importance it
+deserves.
+
+His servants, with famine legibly written on their bones, are assiduous
+and civil; his wife, though half-starved, is very genteel, and at her
+dinner parties burns candle-ends from the palace.[48]
+
+     [48] In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St.
+     James's Street, may be seen stumps, or, as the Scotch call
+     them, _doups_ of wax-lights, with the announcement "Candle-ends
+     from Buckingham Palace." These are eagerly bought up by the
+     gentility-mongers, who burn, or it may be, in the excess of
+     their loyalty, _eat_ them!
+
+If you pay her a morning visit, you will have some such conversation as
+follows.
+
+"Pray, Mr ----, is there any news to-day?"
+
+"Great distress, I understand, throughout the country."
+
+"Indeed--the old story, shocking--very.--Pray, have you heard the
+delightful news? The Princess-Royal has actually cut a tooth!"
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, I assure you; and the sweet little royal love of a martyr has
+borne it like a hero."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+"Positively, I assure you; Doctor Tryiton has just returned from a
+consultation with his friend Sir Henry, upon a particularly difficult
+case--Lord Scruffskin--case of elephantiasis I think they call it, and
+tells me that Sir Henry has arrives express from Windsor with the news."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Do you think, Mr ----, there will be a general illumination?"
+
+"Really, madam, I cannot say."
+
+"_There ought to be_, [with emphasis.] You must know, Mr ----, Dr
+Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter a beautifully bound copy of his
+work on ulcerated sore throat; he says there is a great analogy between
+ulcers of the throat and den--den--den--something, I don't know
+what--teething, in short. If nothing comes of it, Dr Tryiton, thank
+Heaven, can do without it; but you know, Mr ----, it may, on a future
+occasion, be _useful to our family_."
+
+If there is, in the great world of London, one thing more spirit-sinking
+than another, it is to see men condemned, by the necessities of an
+overcrowded profession, to sink to the meannesses of pretension for a
+desperate accident by which they may insure success. When one has had an
+opportunity of being behind the scenes, and knowing what petty shifts,
+what poor expedients of living, what anxiety of mind, are at the bottom
+of all this empty show, one will not longer marvel that many born for
+better things should sink under the difficulties of their position, or
+that the newspapers so continually set forth the miserably unprovided
+for condition in which they so often are compelled to leave their
+families. To dissipate the melancholy that always oppresses us when
+constrained to behold the ridiculous antics of the gentility-mongers,
+which we chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation--let us contrast
+the hospitality of those who, with wiser ambition, keep themselves, as
+the saying is, "_to themselves_;" and, as a bright example, let us
+recollect our old friend Joe Stimpson.
+
+Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller in Bermondsey, the architect
+of his own fortune, which he has raised to the respectable elevation of
+somewhere about a quarter of a million sterling. He is now in his
+seventy-second year, has a handsome house, without and pretension,
+overlooking his tanyard. He has a joke upon prospects, calling you to
+look from the drawing-room window at his tanpits, asking you if you ever
+saw any thing like that at the west end of the town; replying in the
+negative, Joe, chuckling, observes that it is the finest prospect _he_
+ever saw in his life, and although he has been admiring it for half a
+century, he has not done admiring it yet. Joe's capacity for the
+humorous may be judged of by this specimen; but in attention to business
+few can surpass him, while his hospitality can command a wit whenever he
+chooses to angle for one with a good dinner. He has a wife, a venerable
+old smiling lady in black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes; three
+daughters, unmarried; and a couple of sons, brought up, after the London
+fashion, to inherit their father's business, or, we might rather say,
+_estate_.
+
+Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain unmarried, we cannot say, nor would
+it be decorous to enquire; but hearing them drop a hint now and then
+about visits, "a considerable time ago," to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we
+are led, however reluctantly in the case of ladies _now_ evangelical, to
+conclude, their attention has formerly been directed to
+gentility-mongering at these places of fashionable resort; the tanyard
+acting as a repellent to husbands of a social position superior to their
+own, and their great fortunes operating in deterring worthy persons of
+their own station from addressing them; or being the means of inducing
+them to be too prompt with refusals, these amiable middle-aged young
+ladies are now "on hands," paying the penalty of one of the many curses
+that pride of wealth brings in its train. At present, however, their
+"affections are set on things above;" and, without meaning any thing
+disrespectful to my friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet, and Susan
+Stimpson are certainly the three least agreeable members of the family.
+The sons are, like all other sons in the houses of their fathers,
+steady, business-like, unhappy, and dull; they look like fledged birds
+in the nest of the old ones, out of place; neither servants nor masters,
+their social position is somewhat equivocal, and having lived all their
+lives in the house of their father, seeing as he sees, thinking as he
+thinks, they can hardly be expected to appear more than a brace of
+immature Joe Stimpsons. They are not, it is true, tainted with much of
+the world's wickedness, neither have they its self-sustaining trials,
+its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles, or that experience which is
+gathered only by men who quit, when they can quit it, the petticoat
+string, and the paternal despotism of even a happy home. As for the old
+couple, time, although silvering the temples and furrowing the front, is
+hardly seen to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder of either, much less
+to put his finger on eyes, ears, or lips--the two first being yet as
+"wide awake," and the last as open to a joke, or any other good thing,
+as ever they were; in sooth, it is no unpleasing sight to see this jolly
+old couple with nearly three half centuries to answer for, their
+affection unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and temper undisturbed by the
+near approach, beyond hope of respite, of that stealthy foe whose
+assured advent strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson, if he thinks of
+death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down
+stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far
+from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring.
+The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife,
+unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual
+absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings,
+somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven,
+they don't care who goes to ----," a place that Virgil and Tasso have
+taken much pains in describing, but which the old gentleman sufficiently
+indicates by one emphatic monosyllable.
+
+Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates cant and humbug, and has no
+prejudices--hating the French he will not acknowledge is a prejudice,
+but considers the bounden duty of an Englishman; and, though fierce
+enough upon other subjects of taxation, thinks no price too high for
+drubbing them. He was once prevailed upon to attempt a journey to Paris;
+but having got to Calais, insisted upon returning by the next packet,
+swearing it was a shabby concern, and he had seen enough of it.
+
+He takes in the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ because his father did it before
+him--but he never reads it; he takes pride in a corpulent dog, which is
+ever at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache, and swears at any
+body who calls it _tic-douloureux._
+
+When you go to dine with him, you are met at the door by a rosy-checked
+lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles a hearty welcome, and assures
+you, though an utter stranger, of the character of the house and its
+owner. You are conducted to the drawing-room, a plain, substantial,
+_honest_-looking apartment; there you find the old couple, and are
+received with a warmth that gives assurance of the nearest approach to
+what is understood by _home_. The sons, released from business, arrive,
+shake you heartily by the hand, and are really glad to see you; of the
+daughters we say nothing, as there is nothing in _them_.
+
+The other guests of the day come dropping in--all straightforward,
+business-like, free, frank-hearted fellows--aristocrats of wealth, the
+best, because the _unpretending_, of their class; they come, too,
+_before_ their time, for they know their man, and that Joe Stimpson
+keeps nobody waiting for nobody. When the clock--for here is no
+_gong_--strikes five, you descend to dinner; plain, plentiful, good, and
+well dressed; no tedious course, with long intervals between; no
+oppressive _set-out_ of superfluous plate, and what, perhaps, is not the
+least agreeable accessory, no piebald footmen hanging over your chair,
+whisking away your plate before you have done with it, and watching
+every bit you put into your mouth.
+
+Your cherry-cheeked friend and another, both in the family from
+childhood, (another good sign of the house,) and looking as if they
+really were glad--and so they are--to have an opportunity of obliging
+you, do the servitorial offices of the table; you are sure of a glass of
+old sherry, and you may call for strong beer, or old port, with your
+cheese--or, if a Scotchman, for a dram--without any other remark than an
+invitation to "try it again, and make yourself comfortable."
+
+After dinner, you are invited, as a young man, to smoke a cigar with the
+"boys," as Joe persists in calling them. You ascend to a bed-room, and
+are requested to keep your head out o' window while smoking, lest the
+"Governor" should snuff the fumes when he comes up stairs to bed: while
+you are "craning" your neck, the cherry-cheeked lass enters with brandy
+and water, and you are as merry and easy as possible. The rest of the
+evening passes away in the same unrestrained interchange of friendly
+courtesy; nor are you permitted to take your leave without a promise to
+dine on the next Sunday or holiday--Mrs Stimpson rating you for not
+coming last Easter Sunday, and declaring she cannot think "why young men
+should mope by themselves, when she is always happy to see them."
+
+Honour to Joe Stimpson and his missus! They have the true _ring_ of the
+ancient coin of hospitality; none of your hollow-sounding _raps_: they
+know they have what I want, _a home_, and they will not allow me, at
+their board, to know that I want one: they compassionate a lonely,
+isolated man, and are ready to share with him the hearty cheer and
+unaffected friendliness of their English fireside: they know that they
+can get nothing by me, nor do they ever dream of an acknowledgment for
+their kindness; but I owe them for many a social day redeemed from
+cheerless solitude; many an hour of strenuous labour do I owe to the
+relaxation of the old wainscotted dining-room at Bermondsey.
+
+Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all who are satisfied with their station,
+happy in their home, have no repinings after empty sounds of rank and
+shows of life; and who extend the hand of friendly fellowship to the
+homeless, _because they have no home_!
+
+
+THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.
+
+     "There is a quantity of talent latent among men, ever rising to
+     the level of the great occasions that call it forth."
+
+This illustration, borrowed by Sir James Mackintosh from chemical
+science, and so happily applied, may serve to indicate the undoubted
+truth, that talent is a _growth_ as much as a _gift_; that circumstances
+call out and develop its latent powers; that as soil, flung upon the
+surface from the uttermost penetrable depths of earth, will be found to
+contain long-dormant germs of vegetable life, so the mind of man, acted
+upon by circumstances, will ever be found equal to a certain sum of
+production--the amount of which will be chiefly determined by the force
+and direction of the external influence which first set it in motion.
+
+The more we reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more,
+that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing
+in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various
+countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that
+example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing
+after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds,
+and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes
+of expression; in brief, that great occasions will have great
+instruments, and there never was yet a noted time that had not noted
+men. Dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial times will make, if they
+do not find, dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial men: in times when
+ostentation and expense are the measures of respect, when men live
+rather for the world's opinion than their own, poverty becomes not only
+the evil but the shame, not only the curse but the disgrace, and will be
+shunned by every man as a pestilence; every one will fling away
+immortality, to avoid it; will sink, as far as he can, his art in his
+trade; and _he_ will be the greatest genius who can turn most money.
+
+It may be urged that true genius has the power not only to _take_
+opportunities, but to make them: true, it may make such opportunities as
+the time in which it lives affords; but these opportunities will be
+great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise.
+All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low
+Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon,
+a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but
+which we take leave to designate the "_dot-and-carry-one_" century. If a
+Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five
+seconds would elapse until he would be "_hooked_" off to the
+station-house by Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D division, with an
+exulting mob of men and boys hooting at his heels: if Demosthenes or
+Cicero, disguised as Chartist orators, mounting a tub at Deptford, were
+to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against
+Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division,
+with a _posse_ of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator
+from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice
+of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing
+point of view with any other vagabond.
+
+What is become of the eloquence of the bar? Why is it that flowery
+orators find no grist coming to their mills? How came it that, at
+Westminster Hall, Charles Philips missed his market? What is the reason,
+that if you step into the Queen's Bench, or Common Pleas, or Exchequer,
+you will hear no such thing as a speech--behold no such animal as an
+orator--only a shrewd, plain, hard-working, steady man, called an
+attorney-general, or a sergeant, or a leading counsel, quietly talking
+over a matter of law with the judge, or a matter of fact with the jury,
+like men of business as they are, and shunning, as they would a
+rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments, figures, flowers, and the obsolete
+embroidery of rhetoric?
+
+The days of romantic eloquence are fled--the great constitutional
+questions that called forth "thoughts that breathe, and words that
+burn," from men like Erskine, are _determined_. Would you have men
+oratorical over a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about an action of trespass
+on the case, or a rule to compute?
+
+To be sure, when Follett practised before committees of the House of
+Commons, and, by chance, any question involving points of interest and
+difficulty in Parliamentary law and practice came before the Court,
+there was something worth hearing: the _opportunity_ drew out the _man_,
+and the _orator_ stepped before the _advocate_. Even now, sometimes, it
+is quite refreshing to get a topic in these Courts worthy of Austin, and
+Austin working at it. But no man need go to look for orators in our
+ordinary courts of law; judgment, patience, reading, and that rare
+compound of qualities known and appreciated by the name of _tact_, tell
+with judges, and influence juries; the days of _palaver_ are gone, and
+the talking heroes extinguished for ever.
+
+All this is well known in London; but the three or four millions (it may
+be _five_) of great men, philosophers, poets, orators, patriots, and the
+like, in the rural districts, require to be informed of this our
+declension from the heroics, in order to appreciate, or at least to
+understand, the modesty, sobriety, business-like character, and division
+of labour, in the vast amount of talent abounding in every department of
+life in London.
+
+London overflows with talent. You may compare it, for the purpose of
+illustration, to one of George Robins' patent filters, into which pours
+turbid torrents of Thames water, its sediment, mud, dirt, weeds, and
+rottenness; straining through the various _strata_, its grosser
+particles are arrested in their course, and nothing that is not pure,
+transparent, and limpid is transmitted. In the great filter of London
+life, conceit, pretension, small provincial abilities, _pseudo_-talent,
+_soi-disant_ intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung out again. True
+genius is tested by judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty,
+privation; and, passing through many ordeals, persevering, makes its way
+through all; and at length, in the fulness of time, flows forth, in
+acknowledged purity and refinement, upon the town.
+
+There is a perpetual onward, upward tendency in the talent, both high
+and low, mechanical and intellectual, that abounds in London:
+
+     "Emulation hath a thousand sons,"
+
+who are ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time
+to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but
+step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied--you are
+edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle
+slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to
+be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses
+you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you
+_live_ but while you _labour_, and are no longer remembered than while
+you are reluctant to repose.
+
+Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated
+upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise
+and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although _knowledge_
+diffused immortalizes itself, diffused _talent_ is but a shallow pool,
+glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated; _concentrated_, it
+is a well, from whose depths perpetually may we draw the limpid waters.
+Therefore is the talent of London concentrated, and the division of
+labour minute. When we talk of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, in
+a provincial place, we recognize at once a man who embraces all that his
+opportunities present him with, in whatever department of his
+profession. The lawyer is, at one and the same time, advocate, chamber
+counsel, conveyancer, pleader; the doctor an accoucheur, apothecary,
+physician, surgeon, dentist, or at least, in a greater or less degree,
+unites in his own person, these--in London, distinct and
+separate--professions, according as his sphere of action is narrow or
+extended; the country journalist is sometimes proprietor, editor,
+sub-editor, traveller, and canvasser, or two or more of these
+heterogeneous and incompatible avocations. The result is, an obvious,
+appreciable, and long-established superiority in that product which is
+the result of minutely divided labour.
+
+The manufacture of a London watch or piano will employ, each, at least
+twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers, importers, and venders of the
+raw material used in these articles; every one of these tradesmen shall
+be nay, _must_ be, the best of their class, or at least the best that
+can be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are
+held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment
+enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same
+with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be
+placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor,
+a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to
+understand the case; each of these doctors shall have read lectures and
+published books, and made himself known for his study and exclusive
+attention to one of the "thousand ills that flesh is heir to:" the
+latter shall go through the hands of dozens of men skilful in that
+branch of the law connected with the particular injury. So it is with
+every thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both,
+that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute
+division of labour, and the minute division of labour reacts upon the
+market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs
+of a legitimate superiority.
+
+Hence the superior intelligence of working men, of all classes, high and
+low, in the World of London; hence that striving after excellence, that
+never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that
+so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place; hence the
+improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow;
+hence speculation, enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants of less
+extended spheres of action.
+
+Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent,
+genius, skill, _tact_, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by
+no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better
+classes, stand prominently before their fellows _socially_, or, that one
+is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after anybody in the
+World of London.
+
+In this respect, no capital, no country on the face of the earth,
+resembles us; every where else you will find a leading class, giving a
+tone to society, and moulding it in some one or other direction; a
+predominating _set_, the pride of those who are _in_, the envy of those
+who are _below_ it. There is nothing of this kind in London; here every
+man has his own set, and every man his proper pride. In every set,
+social or professional, there are great names, successful men, prominent;
+but the set is nothing the greater for them: no man sheds any lustre
+upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister a whit more thought of
+because he and Lyndhurst are of the same profession.
+
+Take a look at other places: in money-getting places, you find society
+following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of 'Change: every man
+knows the worth of every other man, that is to say, _what_ he is worth.
+
+A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is _there_ a man good for _so_
+much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten
+thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the
+aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you
+are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to "doing a
+bill."
+
+Go abroad, to Rome for example--You are smothered beneath the petticoats
+of an ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northern courts of
+Europe--You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in
+military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every
+turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing.
+Make your way into Germany--What do you find there? an aristocracy of
+functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von,
+Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von,
+crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess--for the women there
+must be _better_-half even in their titles--you find society led, or, to
+speak more correctly, society _consisting_ of functionaries, and they,
+every office son of them, and their wives--nay, their very curs--alike
+insolent and dependent. "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at
+_me_!" There, to get into society, you must first get into a place: you
+must contrive to be the _servant_ of the public before you are permitted
+to be the _master_: you must be paid by, before you are in a condition
+to despise, the _canaille_.
+
+Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English
+people, as respects the supremacy of honest industry, its independent
+exercise, and the comparative insignificance of aristocracies,
+conventionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there we find a provincial
+and a Parisian aristocracy--the former a servile mob of placemen, one in
+fifty, at least, of the whole population; and the latter--oh! my poor
+head, what a _clanjaffrey_ of _journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes_,
+dramatists, novelists, _vaudivellistes_, poets, literary ladies, lovers
+of literary ladies, _hommes de lettres, claqueurs, litterateurs,
+gerants, censeurs, rapporteurs_, and _le diable boiteux_ verily knows
+what else!
+
+These people, with whom, or at least with a great majority of whom,
+common sense, sobriety of thought, consistency of purpose, steady
+determination in action, and sound reasoning, are so sadly eclipsed by
+their vivacity, _empressement_, prejudice, and party zeal, form a
+prominent, indeed, _the_ prominent aristocracy of the _salons_: and only
+conceive what must be the state of things in France, when we know that
+Paris acts upon the provinces, and that Paris is acted upon by this
+foolscap aristocracy, without station, or, what is perhaps worse,
+enjoying station without property; abounding in maddening and exciting
+influences, but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed,
+_ungenius-like_ qualities of patience, prudence, charity, forbearance,
+and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn nation, more than any other
+in Europe, stands in need.
+
+When, in the name of goodness, is the heart of the philanthropist to be
+gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled over the earth? When are
+paltry family intrigues to cease, causing the blood of innocent
+thousands to be shed? When will the aristocracy of genius in France give
+over jingling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes "_gloire_" and
+"_victoire_," and apply themselves to objects worthy of creatures
+endowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if they must have fighting, if
+it is their nature, if the prime instinct with them is the thirst of
+human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound on their
+fellow-countrymen to war with England, to war with Spain, to war with
+every body, while snug in their offices, doing their little best to
+bleed nations with their pen!
+
+Why does not the foolscap aristocracy rush forth, inkhorn in hand, and
+restore the glories (as they call them) of the Empire, nor pause till
+they mend their pens victorious upon the brink of the Rhine.
+
+To resume: the aristocracies of our provincial capitals are those of
+literature in the one, and lickspittling in the other: mercantile towns
+have their aristocracies of money, or muckworm aristocracies: Rome has
+an ecclesiastical--Prussia, Russia, military aristocracies: Germany, an
+aristocracy of functionaries: France has two, or even three, great
+aristocracies--the military, place-hunting, and foolscap.
+
+Now, then, attend to what we are going to say: London is cursed with no
+predominating, no overwhelming, no _characteristic_ aristocracy. There
+is no _set_ or _clique_ of any sort or description of men that you can
+point to, and say, that's the London set. We turn round and desire to be
+informed what set do you mean: every _salon_ has its set, and every
+pot-house its set also; and the frequenters of each set are neither
+envious of the position of the other, nor dissatisfied with their own:
+the pretenders to fashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of high
+life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel set, who want the proper
+self-respecting pride which every distinct aristocracy maintains in the
+World of London.
+
+We are a great firmament, a moonless azure, glowing with stars of all
+magnitudes, and myriads of _nebulae_ of no magnitudes at all: we move
+harmoniously in our several orbits, minding our own business, satisfied
+with our position, thinking, it may be, with harmless vanity, that we
+bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all
+terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks,
+are our meteors, our _aurorae_, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting
+athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our
+tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our
+clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and
+we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday
+of our own bustling time beholds us dimly; but posterity regards us as
+it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies
+his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial
+bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his _ephemeris_
+such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.
+
+If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order--to
+true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal
+equality of outward condition, that republicanism of everyday life,
+which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather
+honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic
+hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming
+interest.
+
+Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred
+great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small
+talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are never told, as a great
+favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead, the phrenologist, is to be there,
+and that we can have our "bumps" felt for nothing; or that the Chevalier
+Doembrownski (a London pickpocket in disguise) is expected to recite a
+Polish ode, accompanying himself on the Jew's harp; we are not bored
+with the misconduct of the librarian, who _never_ has the first volume
+of the last new novel, or invited to determine whether Louisa Fitzsmythe
+or Angelina Stubbsville deserves to be considered the heroine; we are
+not required to be in raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or Clara Novello
+are expected, or to break our hearts with disappointment because they
+didn't come: the arrival, performances, and departure, of Ducrow's
+horses, or Wombwell's wild beasts, affect us with no extraordinary
+emotion; even Assizes time concerns most of us nothing.
+
+Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace in London is the aristocracy of
+wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a provincial town, keeps her carriage, and
+is at once the envy and the scandal of all the Ladies who have to
+proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr Bill Wright,
+the banker, the respected, respectable, influential, twenty per cent
+Wright, in London is merely a licensed dealer in money; he visits at
+Camberwell Hill, or Hampstead Heath, or wherever other tradesmen of his
+class delight to dwell; his wife and daughters patronize the Polish
+balls, and Mr Bill Wright, jun., sports a stall at the (English) opera;
+we are not overdone by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs Bill Wright, or
+the Misses Bill Wright, nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright the younger: in
+a word, we don't care a crossed cheque for the whole Bill Wrightish
+connexion.
+
+What are carriages, or carriage-keeping people in London? It is not
+here, as in the provinces, by their carriages shall you know them; on
+the contrary, the carriage of a duchess is only distinguishable from
+that of a _parvenu_, by the superior expensiveness and vulgarity of the
+latter.
+
+The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth with us, defeats the end it aims
+at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and
+admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to
+contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once
+recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do
+not, all extrinsic and adventitious expenditure availeth its disbursers
+nothing.
+
+What animal on earth was ever so inhumanly preposterous as a lord
+mayor's footman, and yet it takes sixty guineas, at the least, to make
+that poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?
+
+No, sir; in London we see into, and see through, all sorts of
+pretension: the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever kind of quackery
+and imposture. When I say _we_, I speak of the vast multitudes forming
+the educated, discriminating, and thinking classes of London life. We
+pass on to _what_ a man _is_, over _who_ he is, and what he _has_; and,
+with one of the most accurate observers of human character and nature to
+whom a man of the world ever sat for his portrait--the inimitable La
+Bruyere--when offended with the hollow extravagance of vulgar riches, we
+exclaim--"_Tu te trompes, Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant, ce
+grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent, et ces six betes qui te
+trainent, tu penses qu'on t'en estime d'avantage: ou ecarte tout cet
+attirail qui t'est etranger, pour penetrer jusq'a toi qui n'es qu'un
+fat_."
+
+In London, every man is responsible for himself, and his position is the
+consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist,
+or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society
+in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his
+private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity.
+Society marks the line between the _public_ and the _social_ man; and
+this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England,
+will enable a public man to confound.
+
+Wherever you are invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by
+any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great
+man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some
+quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small
+tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent
+excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form
+the Cockney school proper of art, literature, the drama, every thing;
+and they go about seeking praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects, with
+their mouths wide open; they pursue their prey in troops, like Jackals,
+and like them, utter at all times a melancholy, complaining howl; they
+imagine that the world is in a conspiracy not to admire them, and they
+would bring an action against the world if they could. But as that is
+impossible, they are content to rail against the world in good set
+terms; they are always puffing in the papers, but in a side-winded way,
+yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly,
+monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention.
+They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they
+admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears
+to the rest of mankind.
+
+These are the men who cultivate extensive tracts of forehead, and are
+deeply versed in the effective display of depending ringlets and
+ornamental whiskers; they dress in black, with white _chokers_, and you
+will be sure to find a lot of them at evening parties of the middling
+sort of doctors, or the better class of boarding-houses.
+
+This class numbers not merely literary men, but actors, artists,
+adventuring politicians, small scientifics, and a thousand others, who
+have not energy or endurance to work their way in solitary labour, or
+who feel that they do not possess the power to go alone.
+
+Public men in London appear naked at the bar of public opinion; laced
+coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail nothing, because these things
+are common, and have the common fate of common things, to be cheaply
+estimated. The eye is satiated with them, they come like shadows, so
+depart; but they do not feed the eye of the mind; the understanding is
+not the better for such gingerbread; we are compelled to look out for
+some more substantial nutriment, and we try the inward man, and test his
+capacity. Instead of measuring his bumps, like a landsurveyor, we
+dissect his brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, whether he be
+high or low, in whatever department of life, not by what he says he can
+do, or means to do, but by what he _has_ done. By this test is every man
+of talent tried in London; this is his grand, his formal difficulty, to
+get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into
+circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by
+the _ring_ of the customer and the _bite_ of the critic; for the
+opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to _wedge_ in, the
+_purchase_ whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on
+the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of
+praise, he must await the long winter of "hope deferred" passing away.
+Patience, the _courage_ of the man of talent, he must exert for many a
+dreary and unrewarded day; he must see the quack and the pretender lead
+an undiscerning public by the nose, and say nothing; nor must he exult
+when the too-long enduring public at length kicks the pretender and the
+quack into deserved oblivion. From many a door that will hereafter
+gladly open for him, he must be content to be presently turned away.
+Many a scanty meal, many a lonely and unfriended evening, in this vast
+wilderness, must he pass in trying on his armour, and preparing himself
+for the fight that he still believes _will_ come, and in which his
+spirit, strong within him, tells him he must conquer. While the night
+yet shrouds him he must labour, and with patient, and happily for him,
+if, with religious hope, he watch the first faint glimmerings of the
+dawning day; for his day, if he is worthy to behold it, will come, and
+he will yet be recompensed "by that time and chance which happeneth to
+all." And if his heart fails him, and his coward spirit turns to flee,
+often as he sits, tearful, in the solitude of his chamber, will the
+remembrance of the early struggles of the immortals shame that coward
+spirit. The shade of the sturdy Johnson, hungering, dinnerless, will
+mutely reproach him for sinking thus beneath the ills that the
+"scholar's life assail." The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith, pursued
+to the gates of a prison by a mercenary wretch who fattened upon the
+produce of that lovely mind, smiling upon him, will bid him be of good
+cheer. A thousand names, that fondly live in the remembrance of our
+hearts, will he conjure up, and all will tell the same story of early
+want, and long neglect, and lonely friendlessness. Then will reproach
+himself, saying, "What am I, that I should quail before the misery that
+broke not minds like these? What am I, that I should be exempt from the
+earthly fate of the immortals?"
+
+Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power
+has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation,
+difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should
+come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent
+assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and
+friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others
+in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude
+of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the
+unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who,
+successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques,
+coteries, and _conversaziones_, and all the littleness of inferior fry:
+that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or
+that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should
+live for and with such men alone.
+
+But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of
+_pseudo_ talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt,
+miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou
+father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast
+thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the
+schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and
+contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged
+cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and
+the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of
+managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and _claqueurs_,
+and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence
+bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of
+contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute
+necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a
+pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the
+coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O
+Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:--Time misspent, industry
+misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently
+applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions,
+solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!
+
+True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives
+to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no _social_ pre-eminence,
+nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we
+may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all
+other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of
+themselves: they are _individually_ admired, not worshipped as a
+congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their
+public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his
+closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar,
+the man of rank, the politician, the _millionaire_, must merge in the
+gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own
+person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or
+submitted to any where else.
+
+The rewards of intellectual labour applied to purposes of remote, or not
+immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the
+loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be
+worth mentioning, and pity 'tis that it should be so. The law, the
+church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair
+and legitimate remuneration for independent labour, but they have their
+several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward
+when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure
+of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigour crave some haven
+of repose, or, at the least, some mitigated toil, with greater security
+of income: some place of honour with repose--the ambition of declining
+years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and
+other professions in this country, has often been insisted upon with
+great reason: it has been said, and truly said, that not only do these
+prizes reward merit already passed through its probationary stages, but
+serve as inducements to all who are pursuing the same career. It is not
+so much the example of the prize-holder, as the _prize_, that stimulates
+men onward and upward: without the hope of reaching one of those
+comfortable stations, hope would be extinguished, talent lie fallow,
+energy be limited to the mere attainment of subsistence; great things
+would not be done, or attempted, and we would behold only a dreary level
+of indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true of professions, in which,
+after a season of severe study, a term of probation, the knowledge
+acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of
+every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force
+will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is
+perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is
+considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own
+pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and
+figures!
+
+A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the
+conveyancer, the equity craftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of
+that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is
+liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy
+throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect
+the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labour to make a
+respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years
+sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the
+hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power
+exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a
+recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes
+the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of
+course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with,
+recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his
+success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and
+pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of
+a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling
+weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion.
+
+For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox,
+humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set
+himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should
+preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor
+understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on
+respectably. If he is ambitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, he
+must have been a free-thinking reviewer, have written pamphlets, or made
+a fuss about the Greek particle, or, what will avail him more than all,
+have been tutor to a minister of state.
+
+Thus you perceive, for men whose education is _intellectual_, but whose
+practice is more or less _mechanical_, you have many great,
+intermediate, and little prizes in the lottery of life; but where, on
+the contrary, are the prizes for the historian, transmitting to
+posterity the events, and men, and times long since past; where the
+prize of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic, the epic, or the lyric
+poet, the essayist, and all whose works are likely to become the
+classics of future times; where the prize of the public journalist, who
+points the direction of public opinion, and, himself without place,
+station, or even name, teaches Governments their duty, and prevents
+Ministers of State becoming, by hardihood or ignorance, intolerable
+evils; where the prize of the great artist, who has not employed himself
+making faces for hire, but who has worked in loneliness and isolation,
+living, like Barry, upon raw apples and cold water, that he might
+bequeath to his country some memorial worthy the age in which he lived,
+and the art _for_ which he lived? For these men, and such as these, are
+no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful country sets apart for them
+no places where they can retire in the full enjoyment of their fame;
+condemned to labour for their bread, not in a dull mechanical routine of
+professional, official, or business-like duties, but in the most severe,
+most wearing of all labour, _the labour of the brain_, they end where
+they begun. With struggling they begin life, with struggling they make
+their way in life, with struggling they end life; poverty drives away
+friends, and reputation multiplies enemies. The man whose thoughts will
+become the thoughts of our children, whose minds will be reflected in
+the mirror of _his_ mind, who will store in their memories his household
+words, and carry his lessons in their hearts, dies not unwillingly, for
+he has nothing in life to look forward to; closes with indifference his
+eyes on a prospect where no gleam of hope sheds its sunlight on the
+broken spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble friends to a lowly
+sepulchre, and the newspapers of some days after give us the following
+paragraph:--
+
+"We regret to be obliged to state that Dr ----, or ---- ----, Esq. (as
+the case may be) died, on Saturday last at his lodgings two pair back in
+Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his cottage (a miserable cabin where he
+retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is our melancholy duty to
+inform our readers that this highly gifted and amiable man, who for so
+many years delighted and improved the town, and who was a most strenuous
+supporter of the (Radical or Conservative) cause, (_it is necessary to
+set forth this miserable statement to awaken the gratitude of faction
+towards the family of the dead_,) has left a rising family totally
+unprovided for. We are satisfied that it is only necessary to allude to
+this distressing circumstance, in order to enlist the sympathies, &c.
+&c., (in short, _to get up a subscription_)."
+
+We confess we are at a loss to understand why the above advertisement
+should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted with only the interpolation
+of name and date, when any man dies who has devoted himself to pursuits
+of a purely intellectual character. Nor are we unable to discover in the
+melancholy, and, as it would seem, unavoidable fates of such men,
+substantial grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy of talent to
+the pursuit of professional distinction, accompanied by profit, of which
+our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to
+suffer, the consequences.
+
+In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of
+the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite
+as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to
+pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on
+the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will
+be inadequate to maintain the energies even of _great_ minds, in a
+contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any
+man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual
+treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with
+unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse
+than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and
+dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite
+clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for
+merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that
+can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent
+should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their
+subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or
+that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to
+derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never
+extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by
+unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.
+
+We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very
+heartily bid them farewell.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST LAMB.
+
+BY DELTA.
+
+    A shepherd laid upon his bed,
+    With many a sigh, his aching head,
+    For him--his favourite boy--on whom
+    Had fallen death, a sudden doom.
+    "But yesterday," with sobs he cried,
+    "Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,
+    Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,
+    Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!
+    It cannot be that thou art gone;
+    It cannot be, that now, alone,
+    A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,
+    Whilst thou within its bosom lie?
+    Methinks I see thee smiling there,
+    With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,
+    As thou were wont, when fondling me,
+    To clasp my neck from off my knee!
+    Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,
+    My boy, or else my heart will break!"
+
+    Each adding to that father's woes,
+    A thousand bygone scenes arose;
+    At home--a field--each with its joy,
+    Each with its smile--and all his boy!
+    Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,
+    With darkness and with doubt opprest;
+    Now sank despondent, while amain
+    Unnerving tears fell down like rain:
+    Air--air--he breathed, yet wanted breath--
+    It was not life--it was not death--
+    But the drear agony between,
+    Where all is heard, and felt, and seen--
+    The wheels of action set ajar;
+    The body with the soul at war.
+    'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find
+    A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;
+    Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went--
+    The noon from midnight's azure tent
+    Shone down, and, with serenest light,
+    Flooded the windless plains of night;
+    The lake in its clear mirror show'd
+    Each little star that twinkling glow'd;
+    Aspens, that quiver with a breath,
+    Were stirless in that hush of death;
+    The birds were nestled in their bowers;
+    The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;
+    Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven
+    A while its sinless calm had given
+    To lower regions, lest despair
+    Should make abode for ever there;
+    So tranquil--so serene--so bright--
+    Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.
+
+    O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,
+    His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;
+    And, placid, in that calm profound,
+    His silent flocks lay slumbering round:
+    With flowing mantle, by his side,
+    Sudden, a stranger he espied,
+    Bland was his visage, and his voice
+    Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.--
+    "Why is thy mourning thus?" he said,
+    "Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?
+    Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so
+    Abroad despairing thou dost go?
+    As if the God who gave thee breath,
+    Held not the keys of life and death!
+    When from the flocks that feed about,
+    A single lamb thou choosest out,
+    Is it not that which seemeth best
+    That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?
+    Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,
+    With his choice little ones below
+    Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks
+    Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,
+    Early, ere sin hath render'd dim
+    The image of the seraphim!"
+
+    Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;
+    Again within his bosom burn'd
+    The light of faith; and, from that day,
+    He trode serene life's onward way.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+COMTE.
+
+     _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, par M. Auguste Comte.
+
+
+It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work,
+written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of
+truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the
+mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate
+views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a
+thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the
+more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had
+passed over its surface. Some such experience have we just had. Our
+Conservative principles, our calm and patient manner of viewing things,
+have rarely received a stronger corroboration than from the perusal or
+the extraordinary work of M. Comte--a work written, assuredly, for no
+such comfortable purpose, but for the express object (so far as we can
+at present state it to our readers) of re-organizing political society,
+by means of an intellectual reformation amongst political thinkers.
+
+We would not be thought to throw an idle sneer at those generous hopes
+of the future destiny of society which have animated some of the noblest
+and most vigorous minds. It is no part of a Conservative philosophy to
+doubt on the broad question of the further and continuous improvement of
+mankind. Nor will the perusal of M. Comte's work induce, or permit, such
+a doubt. But while he leaves with his reader a strong impression of the
+unceasing development of social man, he leaves a still stronger
+impression of the futile or mischievous efforts of those--himself
+amongst the number--who are thrusting themselves forward as the peculiar
+and exclusive advocates of progress and improvement. He exhibits himself
+in the attitude of an innovator, as powerless in effect as he is daring
+to design; whilst, at the same time, he deals a _crashing_ blow (as upon
+rival machinators) on that malignant party in European politics, whether
+it call itself liberal or of the movement, whose most distinct aim seems
+to be to unloose men from the bonds of civil government. We, too,
+believe in the silent, irresistible progress of human society, but we
+believe also that he is best working for posterity, as well as for the
+welfare of his contemporaries, who promotes order and tranquil effort in
+his own generation, by means of those elements of order which his own
+generation supplies.
+
+That which distinguishes M. Comte's work from all other courses of
+philosophy, or treatises upon science, is the attempt to reduce to
+the _scientific method_ of cogitation the affairs of human
+society--morality, politics; in short, all those general topics which
+occupy our solitary and perplexed meditation, or sustain the incessant
+strife of controversy. These are to constitute a new science, to be
+called _Social Physics_, or _Sociology_. To apply the Baconian, or, as
+it is here called, the positive method, to man in all phases of his
+existence--to introduce the same fixed, indissoluble, imperturbable
+order in our ideas of morals, politics, and history, that we attain to
+astronomy and mechanics, is the bold object of his labours. He does not
+here set forth a model of human society based on scientific conclusions;
+something of this kind is promised us in a future work; in the present
+undertaking he is especially anxious to compel us to think on all such
+topics in the scientific method, _and in no other_. For be it known,
+that science is not only weak in herself, and has been hitherto
+incompetent to the task of unravelling the complicate proceedings of
+humanity, but she has also a great rival in the form of theologic
+method, wherein the mind seeks a solution for its difficulties in a
+power above nature. The human being has contracted an inveterate habit
+of viewing itself as standing in a peculiar relation to a supreme
+Architect and Governor of the world--a habit which in many ways, direct
+and indirect, interferes, it seems, with the application of the positive
+method. This habit is to be corrected; such supreme Architect and
+Governor is to be dismissed from the imagination of men; science is to
+supply the sole mode of thought, and humanity to be its only object.
+
+We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary book, and this is an epithet
+which our readers are already fully prepared to apply. But the book, in
+our judgment, is extraordinary in more senses than one. It is as
+remarkable for the great mental energy it displays, for its originality
+and occasional profundity of thought, as it is for the astounding
+conclusions to which it would conduct us, for its bold paradoxes, and
+for what we can designate no otherwise than its egregious errors. As a
+discipline of the mind, so far as a full appreciation is concerned of
+the scientific method, it cannot be read without signal advantage. The
+book is altogether an anomaly; exhibiting the strangest mixture that
+ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual
+power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither
+does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and
+destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned.
+Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how
+they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our
+intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal
+temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure,
+will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills
+move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and
+be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and
+stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.
+
+For the _style_ of M. Comte's work, it is not commendable. The
+philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for
+excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so
+remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of
+writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which
+characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are
+occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices
+of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the
+great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow
+distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them
+of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and
+the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its
+prolixity, has become intolerable.
+
+Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features,
+remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising
+hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a
+manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers
+will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors--supposing we
+are capable of coping with them--are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as
+we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics,
+eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar
+vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to
+preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more
+calculated to render us content with an _empirical_ condition of
+tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here
+presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to
+substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the
+social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley
+of human thought. Upon that portion of the _Cours de Philosophie
+Positive_ which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not
+intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our
+limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M.
+Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any
+justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the
+subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.
+
+And first, as to the title of the work, _Philosophie Positive_, which
+has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons
+which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words;
+they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been
+given of the object he had in view.
+
+     "There is doubtless," he says, in his _Avertissement_, "a close
+     resemblance between my _Philosophie Positive_, and what the
+     English, especially since the days of Newton, understand by
+     _Natural Philosophy_. But I would not adopt this last
+     expression, any more than that of _Philosophy of the Sciences_,
+     which would have perhaps been still more precise, because
+     neither of these has yet been extended to all orders of
+     phenomena, whilst _Philosophie Positive_, in which I comprehend
+     the study of the social phenomena, as well as all others,
+     designs a uniform manner of reasoning applicable to all
+     subjects on which the human mind can be exerted. Besides which,
+     the expression _Natural Philosophy_ is employed in England to
+     denote the aggregate of the several sciences of observation,
+     considered even in their most minute details; whereas, by the
+     title of _Philosophie Positive_, I intimate, with regard to the
+     several positive sciences, a study of them only in their
+     generalities, conceiving them as submitted to a uniform method,
+     and forming the different parts of a general plan of research.
+     The term which I have been led to construct is, therefore, at
+     once more extended and more restricted than other
+     denominations, which are so far similar that they have
+     reference to the same fundamental class of ideas."
+
+This very announcement of M. Comte's intention to comprehend in his
+course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels
+us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application
+of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free
+agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional
+interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a
+manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it
+be possible to make of the affairs of society--legislation and politics,
+for instance--a department of science?
+
+The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of
+enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt
+hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that
+to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and
+dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content
+ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal
+facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of
+qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in
+the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the
+statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of
+guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing
+them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still
+more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in
+his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in
+under his conclusions _all_ the political truths he is master of! He
+reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the
+usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone
+to others of more extensive or more urgent application.
+
+But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the
+task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the
+half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only
+prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is
+here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict
+application of _the method_. There is, however, one essential,
+distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in
+the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same
+scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world
+that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and
+incessant _developement_ which humanity has displayed, and is still
+displaying. Who can tell us that that _experience_ on which a fixed and
+positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From
+age to age that experience is enlarging.
+
+In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and
+continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears
+new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable
+sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of
+childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not
+the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we
+possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before
+a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism,
+notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself,
+and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this
+department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is
+otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at
+work--has a progressive movement--_grows_ from age to age. He discovers,
+he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor;
+his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here
+_new facts_ are actually from time to time starting into existence; new
+elements are introduced into society, which science could not have
+foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have
+been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of
+speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey
+society, a _creator_. In short, that stability in the order of events,
+that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science
+depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such
+degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or
+developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the
+scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us,
+but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but
+half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts _we are_ in
+our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some
+extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need
+to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but
+variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand
+such a race as ours.
+
+What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of
+society than that of property?--a law which so justly governs all our
+political reasonings, and determines the character of our political
+measures the most prospective--a law which M. Comte has not failed
+himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of
+demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so
+that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress?
+That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in
+the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of
+property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all
+regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as
+far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the
+basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it
+must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in
+man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a
+quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we
+should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our
+proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted.
+Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been
+manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the
+individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the
+participated prosperity of the general body--where the good of the whole
+should be felt as the interest of each. _How_ such a principle is to be
+established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that
+no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the
+circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and
+establish such a principle--this is what no scientific mind would
+venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of
+activity, nor need it, nor _can_ it, pass beyond that sphere. We know
+that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an
+attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we
+know this also, that _at no time_ can its opposite principle be
+established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous
+harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where
+it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our
+convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no
+confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different
+principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be
+intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for
+their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?
+
+"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the
+impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of
+his age--"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of
+ancient times, (_la plus forte tete de toute l'antiquite_,) could not
+conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable
+abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."--Vol. iv.
+p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a
+fundamental law.
+
+There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which
+bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot
+now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the
+comparative _happiness_ of the savage and the civilized man. He will not
+entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and
+contents himself with asserting the fuller _development_ of his nature
+displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale
+for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was
+there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of
+our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind--of
+the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are,
+for the most part, practically decided by those who have to _feel_; but
+to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the
+task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to
+establish a _standard measure_ for human felicity.
+
+We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science.
+A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the
+examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the
+moralist, the jurist, and the politician--though it is worthy of
+observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some
+measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently
+and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author,
+for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental
+law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of
+this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of
+a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will
+not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of
+society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which
+secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and
+obeyed.
+
+With relation to the _past_, and in one point of view--namely, so far as
+regards the development of man in his speculative career--our
+Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the
+peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific
+survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the
+threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a _new law_,
+which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest
+state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M.
+Comte's system--as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work--as
+it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific
+manner--as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to
+explain the _provisional existence_ of all theology, explaining it in
+the past, and removing it from the future--it becomes necessary to enter
+into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers'
+attention to the following statement of it:--
+
+     "In studying the entire development of the human intelligence
+     in its different spheres of activity, from its first efforts
+     the most simple up to our own days, I believe I have discovered
+     a great fundamental law, to which it is subjected by an
+     invariable necessity, and which seems to me capable of being
+     firmly established, whether on those proofs which are furnished
+     by a knowledge of our organization, or on those historical
+     verifications which result from an attentive examination of the
+     past. The law consists in this--that each of our principal
+     conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively
+     through three different states of theory: the _theologic_, or
+     fictitious; the _metaphysic_, or abstract; the scientific, or
+     _positive_. In other terms, the human mind, by its nature,
+     employs successively, in each of its researches, three methods
+     of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially
+     different, and even radically opposed; at first the theologic
+     method, then the metaphysical, and last the positive method.
+     Hence three distinct philosophies, or general systems of
+     conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, which mutually
+     exclude each other; the first is the necessary starting-point
+     of the human intelligence; the third is its fixed and definite
+     state; the second is destined to serve the purpose only of
+     transition.
+
+     "In the _theologic_ state, the human mind, directing its
+     researches to the intimate nature of things, the first causes
+     and the final causes of all those effects which arrest its
+     attention, in a word, towards an absolute knowledge of things,
+     represents to itself the phenomena as produced by the direct
+     and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less
+     numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the
+     apparent anomalies of the universe.
+
+     "In the _metaphysic_ state, which is, in its essence, a
+     modification of the former, the supernatural agents are
+     displaced by abstract forces, veritable entities (personified
+     abstractions) inherent in things, and conceived as capable of
+     engendering by themselves all the observed phenomena--whose
+     explanation, thenceforth, consists in assigning to each its
+     corresponding entity.
+
+     "At last, in the _positive_ state the human mind, recognizing
+     the impossibility of obtaining absolute notions, renounces the
+     search after the origin and destination of the universe, and
+     the knowledge of the intimate causes of phenomena, to attach
+     itself exclusively to the discovery, by the combined efforts of
+     ratiocination and observation, of their effective laws; that is
+     to say, their invariable relations of succession and of
+     similitude. The explanation of things, reduced now to its real
+     terms, becomes nothing more than the connexion established
+     between the various individual phenomena and certain general
+     facts, the number of which the progress of science tends
+     continually to diminish.
+
+     "The _theologic_ system has reached the highest state of
+     perfection of which it is susceptible, when it has substituted
+     the providential action of one only being for the capricious
+     agency of the numerous independent divinities who had
+     previously been imagined. In like manner, the last term of the
+     _metaphysic_ system consists in conceiving, instead of the
+     different special entities, one great general entity, _nature_,
+     considered as the only source of all phenomena. The perfection
+     of the _positive_ system, towards which it unceasingly tends,
+     though it is not probable it can ever attain to it, would be
+     the ability to represent all observable phenomena as particular
+     cases of some one general fact; such, for instance, as that of
+     gravitation."--Vol. I. p. 5.
+
+After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the
+necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early
+period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought
+whatever, he proceeds thus:--
+
+     "It is easily conceivable that our understanding, compelled to
+     proceed by degrees almost imperceptible, could not pass
+     abruptly, and without an intermediate stage, from the
+     _theologic_ to the _positive_ philosophy. Theology and physics
+     are so profoundly incompatible, their conceptions have a
+     character so radically opposed, that before renouncing the one
+     to employ exclusively the other, the mind must make use of
+     intermediate conceptions of a bastard character, fit, for that
+     very reason, gradually to operate the transition. Such is the
+     natural destination of metaphysical conceptions; they have no
+     other real utility. By substituting, in the study of phenomena,
+     for supernatural directive agency an inseparable entity
+     residing in things, (although this be conceived at first merely
+     as an emanation from the former,) man habituates himself, by
+     degrees, to consider only the facts themselves, the notion of
+     these metaphysical agents being gradually subtilized, till they
+     are no longer in the eyes of men of intelligence any thing but
+     the names of abstractions. It is impossible to conceive by what
+     other process our understanding could pass from considerations
+     purely supernatural, to considerations purely natural, from the
+     theologic to the positive _regime_."--P. 13.
+
+We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition
+that theology is not the _last_, as well as the _first_, of our forms of
+thought--against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work,
+made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its
+appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great
+argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of
+theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous
+for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more
+displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject,
+though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified
+by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought
+conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with
+this protest, and with adding--as a fact of experience, which, in
+estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted
+on--that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident.
+Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation
+requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great
+article of religion--that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the
+remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times,
+men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to
+the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact
+that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their
+inductive labours by assigning that _unity_ and _correlation_ which
+science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining
+intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in
+this age to find a reflective man who does not read _thought_ in this
+unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in
+some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to
+see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference
+of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to
+blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating
+this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.
+
+Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration
+of the _new law_. That there is, in the statement here made of the
+course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of
+truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be
+traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be
+at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling
+of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have
+welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a
+_law_--a scientific law--which from its nature admits of no exception;
+at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of
+necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some
+branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be
+understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in
+cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely
+difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they
+bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application
+of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on
+this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find
+the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically
+speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger
+commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"--that,
+in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and
+proportions, both _theologic_ and _positive_.
+
+What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the _succession_ of these
+several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here
+called the positive method of thought is not equally _spontaneous_ to
+the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its
+development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its
+complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and
+an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified,
+or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have
+been a portion of his experience entertained merely _as experience_. The
+very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a
+practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces
+observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a
+theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on
+the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The
+rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates
+the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and
+then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?
+
+Or does M. Comte mean this only--which we presume to be the case--that
+these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to
+maturity? If so, what necessity for this _metaphysic_ apparatus for the
+sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive
+and theological, has its independent source, and is equally
+spontaneous--if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though
+in different stages of development, the function attributed to the
+metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it;
+there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law
+of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of
+invariable sequence, between the phenomena?
+
+Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his
+two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between
+which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are _not_
+equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature
+precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition,
+it would follow--since the mind, or _organization_, of man remains from
+age to age the same in its fundamental powers--that, at this very time,
+no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of
+knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic.
+Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be
+eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a
+theology of the rudest description--a result certainly not contemplated
+by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they _are_ equally
+spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we
+repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed
+to the _metaphysic_ of effectuating a transition between them? And how
+can we describe that as a scientific _law_ in which there is confessedly
+no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The
+statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or
+laws, capable of explaining it.
+
+Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in
+a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps,
+concluded that this author could not have here required their assent,
+strictly speaking, to a _law_, but that he used the term vaguely, as
+many writers have done--meaning nothing more by it than a course of
+events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this
+impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth
+contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed
+M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he
+requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the
+recognized laws of science--to that of gravitation for instance, to
+which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his
+work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think
+what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could
+not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social
+science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the
+past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at
+once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates
+our mundane affairs.
+
+It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of
+the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto
+unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival
+in the field--theology--which, besides imparting its own supernatural
+tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions.
+Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those
+tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly
+above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule
+absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by
+explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is
+destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate,
+it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or
+has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure--otherwise
+it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the
+office which the law of development we have just considered is intended
+to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must
+now leave our readers to decide.
+
+Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and
+exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect
+the _hierarchy_, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several
+sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most
+intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish
+from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as
+seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review
+of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and
+independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which
+presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage
+of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge
+acquired in the one preceding.
+
+     "The positive philosophy," he tells us, "falls naturally into
+     five divisions, or five fundamental sciences, whose order of
+     succession is determined by the necessary or invariable
+     subordination (estimated according to no hypothetical opinions)
+     of their several phenomena; these are, astronomy, mechanics,
+     (_la physique_,) chemistry, physiology, and lastly, social
+     physics. The first regards the phenomena the most general, the
+     most abstract, the most remote from humanity; they influence
+     all others, without being influenced by them. The phenomena
+     considered by the last are, on the contrary, the most
+     complicated, the most concrete, the most directly interesting
+     to man; they depend more or less on all the preceding
+     phenomena, without exercising on them any influence. Between
+     these two extremes, the degrees of speciality, of complication
+     and personality, of phenomena, gradually increase, as well as
+     their successive dependence."--Vol. I. p. 96.
+
+The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt
+out of this _hierarchy_? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are
+wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit--where are
+they? They are dismissed from their labours--their place is occupied by
+others--and what was considered as having substance and reality in their
+proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist
+is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto
+an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician,
+with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte
+considers the _mind_ as one of those abstract entities which it is the
+first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man,
+of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his
+_mind_. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the _metaphysic_
+stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory
+psychology, the last transformation of theology!"--though, by the way,
+so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the
+_metaphysic_ condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old,
+quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether
+M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not
+stay to discuss--it were too wide a question; but thus much we can
+briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as
+underrates, the _kind of research_ to which psychologists are addicted.
+As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole
+passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of
+demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole
+class of Parisian _savans_, added something to the piquancy of the
+style?
+
+     "Such has gradually become, since the time of Bacon, the
+     preponderance of the positive philosophy; it has at present
+     assumed indirectly so great an ascendant over those minds even
+     which have been most estranged from it, that metaphysicians
+     devoted to the study of our intelligence, can no longer hope to
+     delay the fall of their pretended science, but by presenting
+     their doctrines as founded also upon the observation of facts.
+     For this purpose they have, in these later times, attempted to
+     distinguish, by a very singular subtilty, two sorts of
+     observations of equal importance, the one external, the other
+     internal; the last of which is exclusively destined for the
+     study of intellectual phenomena. This is not the place to enter
+     into the special discussion of this sophism. I will limit
+     myself to indicate the principal consideration, which clearly
+     proves that this pretended direct contemplation of the mind by
+     itself, is a pure illusion.
+
+     "Not a long while ago men imagined they had explained vision by
+     saying that the luminous action of bodies produces on the
+     retina pictures representative of external forms and colours.
+     To this the physiologists [query, the _physiologists_] have
+     objected, with reason, that if it was _as images_ that the
+     luminous impressions acted, there needed another eye within the
+     eye to behold them. Does not a similar objection hold good
+     still more strikingly in the present case?
+
+     "It is clear, in fact, from an invincible necessity, that the
+     human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own.
+     For by whom can the observation be made? It is conceivable
+     that, relatively to moral phenomena, man can observe himself in
+     regard to the passions which animate him, from this anatomical
+     reason, that the organs which are the seat of them are distinct
+     from those destined to the function of observation. Though each
+     man has had occasion to make on himself such observations, yet
+     they can never have any great scientific importance; and the
+     best means of knowing the passions will be always to observe
+     them without; [_indeed_!] for every state of passion very
+     energetic--that is to say, precisely those which it would be
+     most essential to examine, are necessarily incompatible with
+     the state of observation. But as to observing in the same
+     manner intellectual phenomena, while they are proceeding, it is
+     manifestly impossible. The thinking individual cannot separate
+     himself in two parts, of which the one shall reason, and the
+     other observe it reasoning. The organ observed and the organ
+     observing being in this case identical, how can observation be
+     carried on?
+
+     "This pretended psychological method is thus radically absurd.
+     And only consider to what procedures profoundly contradictory
+     it immediately conducts! On the other hand, they recommend you
+     to isolate yourself as much as possible from all external
+     sensation; and, above all, they interdict you every
+     intellectual exercise; for if you were merely occupied in
+     making the most simple calculation, what would become of your
+     _internal_ observation? On the other hand, after having thus,
+     by dint of many precautions, attained to a perfect state of
+     intellectual slumber, you are to occupy yourself in
+     contemplating the operations passing in your mind--while there
+     is no longer any thing passing there. Our descendants will one
+     day see these ludicrous pretensions transferred to the
+     stage."--P. 34.
+
+They seem transferred to the stage already--so completely burlesqued is
+the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does
+not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember
+previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual
+effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no
+difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being
+much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of
+objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them,
+in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering,
+in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness
+to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate,
+this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in
+search--something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be
+applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary
+course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply
+pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences;
+observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but
+which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human
+being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology,
+let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as
+speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of
+the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone
+that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so
+exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the
+fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately
+absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which
+at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so
+far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his
+consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And
+how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the
+cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of
+craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal
+observations which he is pleased here to deride?
+
+His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several
+received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous,
+application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a
+portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall
+we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before
+opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will
+not be beside our object to take a glance at the _method_ itself, as
+applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it
+is called--to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.
+
+We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of
+the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated
+mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline--to make room
+for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid
+waste.
+
+Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of
+their succession--such is the material of science. All enquiry into
+causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory;
+the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed,
+perhaps, to have a meaning--such is the supreme dictate of the method,
+and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is
+the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities,
+than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard
+from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen,
+gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying
+experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The
+museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to
+another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as
+strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls
+through space--ask not how!--the mathematician will tell you at what
+rate it flies--let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations
+are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous
+transformations--the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of
+proportions--names and figures both--_why_ these transmutations take
+place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from
+the earth, and _grow_, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with
+delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask
+what is _life?_ Science will generalize the fact to you--give you its
+formula for the expression of _growth, decomposition, and
+recomposition_, under circumstances not as yet very accurately
+collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since
+stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such
+subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it
+needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain!
+Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his
+formula of decomposition and recomposition. As _attraction_ in the
+planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical
+expression, so _life_ in the plant is to be known only as decomposition
+and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it
+as such--no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall
+tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will
+believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will
+believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something
+I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what
+life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks
+why? Child! I respond, that the hands _do_ move is an ultimate fact--so,
+represent it to yourself--and here, moreover, is the law of their
+movement--the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter
+revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you--more you
+cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye
+upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.
+
+But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this
+beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth--what is
+this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined
+motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing,
+seeking, this way and that, its pasture?--what have we here?
+_Irritability and a tissue._ Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the
+philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself--what is this?
+_Sensation and a nerve._ Does the nerve _feel_? you inconsiderately ask,
+or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which
+sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the
+philosopher. _There is sensation_--you cannot express the fact in
+simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope,
+on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask
+not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of
+ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the
+thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more
+perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to
+have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the
+surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something
+else within him, _think_?--does the organization of that worm, or
+something else within it, _feel_?--they are virtually the same
+questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science.
+Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like
+sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we
+can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with
+me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with
+which it is, or _was_, connected.
+
+All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this _method_,
+for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it
+imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and
+well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that
+leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of
+steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem,
+by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to
+Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on
+earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it
+rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable
+abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our
+intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the
+fantastic, inexplicable interval.
+
+We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of
+_Physique Social_. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if
+our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall
+reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the
+work--perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole--where, in order
+to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte
+enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more
+or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being
+to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of
+organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the
+purpose of exposition will allow:--
+
+     "It is impossible to deny that the political world is
+     intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of
+     _order_ are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of
+     religious and military power, regarded especially in its
+     constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the
+     philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents
+     incontestably the _theologic_ state of the social science. All
+     our ideas of _progress_ continue to be exclusively deduced from
+     a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from
+     Protestantism, has taken in the last age its final form and
+     complete development; the doctrines of which constitute, in
+     reality, the _metaphysic_ state of politics. Different classes
+     of society adopt the one or the other of these, just as they
+     are disposed to feel chiefly the want of conservation or that
+     of amelioration. Rarely, it is true, do these antagonist
+     doctrines present themselves in all their plenitude, and with
+     their primitive homogeneity; they are found less and less in
+     this form, except in minds purely speculative. But the
+     monstrous medley which men attempt in our days of their
+     incompatible principles, cannot evidently be endowed with any
+     virtue foreign to the elements which compose it, and tends
+     only, in fact, to their mutual neutralization.
+
+     "However pernicious may be at present the theologic doctrine,
+     no true philosophy can forget that the formation and first
+     development of modern societies were accomplished under its
+     benevolent tutelage; which I hope sufficiently to demonstrate
+     in the historical portion of this work. But it is not the less
+     incontestably true that, for about three centuries, its
+     influence has been, amongst the nations most advanced,
+     essentially retrograde, notwithstanding the partial services it
+     has throughout that period rendered. It would be superfluous to
+     enter here into a special discussion of this doctrine, in order
+     to show its extreme insufficiency at the present day. The
+     deplorable absence of all sound views of social organization
+     can alone account for the absurd project of giving, in these
+     times, for the support of social order, a political system
+     which has already been found unable to sustain itself before
+     the spontaneous progress of intelligence and of society. The
+     historical analysis which we shall subsequently institute of
+     the successive changes which have gradually brought about the
+     entire dissolution of the catholic and feudal system, will
+     demonstrate, better than any direct argument, its radical and
+     irrevocable decay. The theologic school has generally no other
+     method of explaining this decomposition of the old system than
+     by causes merely accidental or personal, out of all reasonable
+     proportion with the magnitude of the results; or else, when
+     hard driven, it has recourse to its ordinary artifice, and
+     attempts to explain all by an appeal to the will of Providence,
+     to whom is ascribed the intention of raising a time of trial
+     for the social order, of which the commencement, the duration,
+     and the character, are all left equally obscure."...--P.14
+
+     "In a point of view strictly logical, the social problem might
+     be stated thus:--construct a doctrine that shall be so
+     rationally conceived that it shall be found, as it develops
+     itself, to be still always consistent with its own principles.
+     Neither of the existing doctrines satisfies this condition,
+     even by the rudest approximation. Both display numerous and
+     direct contradictions, and on important points. By this alone
+     their utter insufficiency is clearly exhibited. The doctrine
+     which shall fulfil this condition, will, from this test, be
+     recognized as the one capable of reorganizing society; for it
+     is an _intellectual reorganization_ that is first wanted--a
+     re-establishment of a real and durable harmony amongst our
+     social ideas, disturbed and shaken to the very foundation.
+     Should this regeneration be accomplished in one intelligence
+     only, (and such must necessarily be its manner of
+     commencement,) its extension would be certain; for the number
+     of intelligences to be convinced can have no influence except
+     as a question of time. I shall not fail to point out, when the
+     proper opportunity arrives, the eminent superiority, in this
+     respect, of the positive philosophy, which, once extended to
+     social phenomena, will necessarily combine the ideas of men in
+     a strict and complete manner, which in no other way can be
+     attained."--P. 20.
+
+M. Comte then mentions some of the inconsistencies of the theologic
+school.
+
+     "Analyze, for example, the vain attempts, so frequently renewed
+     during two centuries by so many distinguished minds, to
+     subordinate, according to the theologic formula, reason to
+     faith; it is easy to recognize the radical contradiction this
+     attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme
+     judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of
+     which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid
+     decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic
+     school, the illustrious _De Maistre_, himself affords a proof,
+     as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction
+     in his philosophy, when, renouncing all theologic weapons, he
+     labours in his principal work to re-establish the Papal
+     supremacy on purely historical and political reasonings,
+     instead of limiting himself to command it by right divine--the
+     only mode in true harmony with such a doctrine, and which a
+     mind, at another epoch, would not certainly have hesitated to
+     adopt."--P. 25.
+
+After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school,
+he turns to the _metaphysic_, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes
+_doctrine critique_, for M. Comte is rich in names.
+
+     "In submitting, in their turn, the _metaphysic_ doctrine to a
+     like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though
+     exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it
+     has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of
+     progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal
+     political improvements accomplished in the course of the three
+     last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a _negative_
+     description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its
+     dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when
+     viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to
+     the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state,
+     necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.
+
+     "By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity
+     inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social
+     system to another can never be direct and continuous; it
+     supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of
+     interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and
+     duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation
+     to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though
+     undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a
+     class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we
+     see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_--a
+     source which at once explains the indispensable services it has
+     hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now
+     opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies....
+
+     "Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the
+     metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a
+     normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and
+     transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of
+     political notions, the most fundamental, it represents
+     government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of
+     society, against which it sedulously places itself in a
+     constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed
+     incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity,
+     in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to
+     leave it no other than the simple functions of general police,
+     without any essential participation in the supreme direction of
+     the action of the collective body or of its social development.
+
+     "Approaching to a more detailed examination of this doctrine,
+     it is evident that the absolute right of free examination
+     (which, connected as it is with the liberty of the press and
+     the freedom of education, is manifestly its principal and
+     fundamental dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the
+     consecration, under the vicious abstract form common to all
+     metaphysic conceptions, of that transitional state of unlimited
+     liberty in which the human mind has been spontaneously placed,
+     in consequence of the irrevocable decay of the theologic
+     philosophy, and which must naturally remain till the
+     establishment in the social domain of the positive method.[49]
+     ... However salutary and indispensable in its historical
+     position, this principle opposes a grave obstacle to the
+     reorganization of society, by being erected into an absolute
+     and permanent dogma. To examine always without deciding ever,
+     would be deemed great folly in any individual. How can the
+     dogmatic consecration of a like disposition amongst all
+     individuals, constitute the definitive perfection of the social
+     order, in regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so
+     peculiarly important, and so difficult, to establish? Is it not
+     evident, on the contrary, that such a disposition is, from its
+     nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as, if it could be
+     indefinitely prolonged, it must hinder every true mental
+     organization?
+
+     "No association whatever, though destined for a special and
+     temporary purpose, and though limited to a small number of
+     individuals, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal
+     confidence, both intellectual and moral, between its members,
+     each one of whom finds a continual necessity for a crowd of
+     notions, to the formation of which he must remain a stranger,
+     and which he cannot admit but on the faith of others. By what
+     monstrous exception can this elementary condition of all
+     society be banished from that total association of mankind,
+     where the point of view which the individual takes, is most
+     widely separated from that point of view which the collective
+     interest requires, and where each member is the least capable,
+     whether by nature or position, to form a just appreciation of
+     these general rules, indispensable to the good direction of his
+     personal activity. Whatever intellectual development we may
+     suppose possible, in the mass of men it is evident, that social
+     order will remain always necessarily incompatible with the
+     permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into
+     endless discussion the first principles even of society....
+
+     "The dogma of _equality_ is the most essential and the most
+     influential after that which I have just examined, and is,
+     besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the
+     unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly
+     leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental
+     character--an equality of intelligence. In its bearing on the
+     ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of
+     modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of
+     the old social classification. But this function constitutes
+     the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which
+     tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since
+     its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis
+     of every new classification. For, whatever that basis may be,
+     it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to
+     all intelligent men, can now only signify the triumph of the
+     inequalities developed by modern civilization, over those which
+     had predominated in the infancy of society....
+
+     "The same philosophical appreciation is applicable with equal
+     ease to the dogma of the _sovereignty of the people_. Whilst
+     estimating, as is fit, the indispensable transitional office of
+     this revolutionary dogma, no true philosopher can now
+     misunderstand the fatal anarchical tendency of this
+     metaphysical conception, since in its absolute application it
+     opposes itself to all regular institution, condemning
+     indefinitely all superiors to an arbitrary dependence on the
+     multitude of their inferiors, by a sort of transference to the
+     people of the much-reprobated right of kings."
+
+     [49] "There is," says M. Comte here in a note, which consists
+     of an extract from a previous work--"there is no liberty of
+     conscience in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in
+     physiology; every one would think it absurd not to give credit
+     to the principles established in these sciences by competent
+     men. If it is otherwise in politics, it is because the ancient
+     principles having fallen; and new ones not being yet formed,
+     there are, properly speaking, in this interval no established
+     principles."
+
+As our author had shown how the _theologic_ philosophy was inconsistent
+often with itself, so, in criticising the _metaphysics_, he exposes here
+also certain self-contradictions. He reproaches it with having, in its
+contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and
+adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was
+engaged in destroying.
+
+     "Thus," he says, "there arose a Christianity more and more
+     simplified, and reduced at length to a vague and powerless
+     theism, which, by a strange medley of terms, the metaphysicians
+     distinguished by the title of _natural religion_, as if all
+     religion was not inevitably _supernatural_. In pretending to
+     direct the social reorganization after this vain conception,
+     the metaphysic school, notwithstanding its destination purely
+     revolutionary, has always implicitly adhered, and does so,
+     especially and distinctly, at the present day, to the most
+     fundamental principle of the ancient political doctrine--that
+     which represents the social order as necessarily reposing on a
+     theological basis. This is now the most evident, and the most
+     pernicious inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine. Armed with
+     this concession, the school of Bossuet and De Maistre will
+     always maintain an incontestable logical superiority over the
+     irrational detractors of Catholicism, who, while they proclaim
+     the want of a religious organization, reject, nevertheless, the
+     elements indispensable to its realization. By such a concession
+     the revolutionary school concur in effect, at the present day,
+     with the retrograde, in preventing a right organization of
+     modern societies, whose intellectual condition more and more
+     interdicts a system of politics founded on theology."
+
+Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political
+parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to
+abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author)
+displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one
+of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions
+to make. We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly
+_conservative_, and this quotation has already borne us out. For without
+implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here
+put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in
+Westminster Hail, _if this be so_, then it follows that we of the
+retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England--seeing this
+country has not progressed so rapidly as France--we of the stationary
+party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory
+though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been
+revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political
+world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no
+proper office but that of destruction--if its nature be essentially
+transitional--can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our
+present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred? Shall
+we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our
+church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange? M. Comte
+would not advise so irrational a proceeding.
+
+But M. Comte has himself a _constructive_ doctrine; M. Comte will give
+us in exchange--what? The Scientific Method!
+
+We have just seen something of this scientific method. M. Comte himself
+is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the
+multitude. Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an
+altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race
+of _savans_ or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to
+exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the
+truths to which that method shall give birth. This class will take under
+its control all that relates to education. It will be the seat of the
+moral power, not of the administrative. This, together with some
+arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the
+fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all
+that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of
+society.
+
+We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which
+lies at the basis of all this--how far it is possible to construct a
+science of Sociology. There is only one way in which the question can be
+resolved in the affirmative--namely, by constructing the science.
+
+Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order
+of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the
+purposes of government. We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the
+chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed
+principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the
+graduated politician. But it is worth while to consider what it is we do
+when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the
+astronomer. We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts
+which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these
+facts we must be able to comprehend. We follow him as he explains the
+facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a
+rational conviction. Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any
+knowledge whatever of the subject--any chemistry or astronomy at all.
+Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as
+that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of
+understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by
+it. We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which
+can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.
+
+In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility
+of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side
+of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of
+their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the
+apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume
+it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of
+the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once
+taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a
+submission of their reason to political teachers--teachers who have no
+sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated
+authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very
+reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a
+difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true
+Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.
+
+We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be
+simply classed amongst the _Destructives_, so little applicable to the
+generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it
+is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great
+sacrifices.
+
+The fifth volume--the most remarkable, we think, of the whole--contains
+that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the
+foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any
+expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of
+original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above
+all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte
+has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical
+facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete
+matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the
+volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are
+shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.
+
+We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we
+must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind,
+he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of
+Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that
+primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which _things themselves_
+were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a
+life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.
+
+     "Exclusively habituated, for so long a time, to a theology
+     eminently metaphysic, we must feel at present greatly
+     embarrassed in our attempt to comprehend this gross primitive
+     mode of thought. It is thus that fetishism has often been
+     confounded with polytheism, when to the latter has been applied
+     the common expression of idolatry, which strictly relates to
+     the former only; since the priests of Jupiter or Minerva would,
+     no doubt, have as justly repelled the vulgar reproach of
+     worshipping images, as do the Catholic doctors of the present
+     day a like unjust accusation of the Protestants. But though we
+     are happily sufficiently remote from fetishism to find a
+     difficulty in conceiving it, yet each one of us has but to
+     retrace his own mental history, to detect the essential
+     characters of this initial state. Nay, even eminent thinkers of
+     the present day, when they allow themselves to be involuntarily
+     ensnared (under the influence, but partially rectified, of a
+     vicious education) to attempt to penetrate the mystery of the
+     essential production of any phenomenon whose laws are not
+     familiar to them, they are in a condition personally to
+     exemplify this invariable instinctive tendency to trace the
+     generation of unknown effects to a cause analogous to life,
+     which is no other, strictly speaking, than the principle of
+     fetishism....
+
+     "Theologic philosophy, thoroughly investigated, has always
+     necessarily for its base pure fetishism, which deifies
+     instantly each body and each phenomenon capable of exciting the
+     feeble thought of infant humanity. Whatever essential
+     transformations this primitive philosophy may afterwards
+     undergo, a judicious sociological analysis will always expose
+     to view this primordial base, never entirely concealed, even in
+     a religious state the most remote from the original point of
+     departure. Not only, for example, the Egyptian theocracy has
+     presented, at the time of its greatest splendour, the
+     established and prolonged coexistence, in the several castes of
+     the hierarchy, of one of these religious epochs, since the
+     inferior ranks still remained in simple fetishism, whilst the
+     higher orders were in possession of a very remarkable
+     polytheism, and the most exalted of its members had probably
+     raised themselves to some form of monotheism; but we can at all
+     times, by a strict scrutiny, detect in the theologic spirit
+     traces of this original fetishism. It has even assumed, amongst
+     subtle intelligences, the most metaphysical forms. What, in
+     reality, is that celebrated conception of a soul of the world
+     amongst the ancients, or that analogy, more modern, drawn
+     between the earth and an immense living animal, and other
+     similar fancies, but pure fetishism disguised in the pomp of
+     philosophical language? And, in our own days even, what is this
+     cloudy pantheism which so many metaphysicians, especially in
+     Germany, make great boast of, but generalized and systematized
+     fetishism enveloped in a learned garb fit to amaze the
+     vulgar."--Vol. V. p. 38.
+
+He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to
+the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the
+labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The
+mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to
+transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we
+feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our
+own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute
+unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with
+quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition
+of the rude intellect.
+
+     "All observable bodies," he says "being thus immediately
+     personified and endowed with passions suited to the energy of
+     the observed phenomena, the external world presents itself
+     spontaneously to the spectator in a perfect harmony, such as
+     never again has been produced, and which must have excited in
+     him a peculiar sentiment of plenary satisfaction, hardly by us
+     in the present day to be characterized, even when we refer back
+     with a meditation the most intense on this cradle of humanity."
+
+Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and
+censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of
+man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The
+principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many
+respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application;
+but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the
+origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst
+rude thinkers--we do not find any condition of mankind which displays
+that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author
+would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly
+a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of
+fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this
+animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with
+a desire to explain _their_ phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied
+relation between those objects and the human being. The _charm_ or the
+_amulet_--some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases,
+or bring good-luck--grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading
+the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of
+granting his prayer.[50]
+
+     [50] Take, for instance, the following description of fetishism
+     in Africa. It is the best which just now falls under our hand,
+     and perhaps a longer search would not find a better. Those only
+     who never read _The Doctor_, will be surprised to find it
+     quoted on a grave occasion:--
+
+     "The name Fetish, though used by the negroes themselves, is
+     known to be a corrupt application of the Portuguese word for
+     witchcraft, _feitico_; the vernacular name is _Bossum_, or
+     _Bossifoe_. Upon the Gold Coast every nation has its own, every
+     village, every family, and every individual. A great hill, a
+     rock any way remarkable for its size or shape, or a large tree,
+     is generally the national Fetish. The king's is usually the
+     largest tree in his country. They who choose or change one,
+     take the first thing they happen to see, however worthless--a
+     stick, a stone, the bone of a beast, bird, or fish, unless the
+     worshipper takes a fancy for something of better appearance,
+     and chooses a horn, or the tooth of some large animal. The
+     ceremony of consecration he performs himself, assembling his
+     family, washing the new object of his devotion, and sprinkling
+     them with the water. He has thus a household or personal god,
+     in which he has as much faith as the Papist in his relics, and
+     with as much reason. Barbot says that some of the Europeans on
+     that coast not only encouraged their slaves in this
+     superstition, but believed in it, and practised it
+     themselves."--Vol. V. p. 136.
+
+We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating
+the impracticable _unmanageable_ nature of our author's generalizations
+when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the
+development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to
+extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such
+scientific precision, fixed it.
+
+     "Speculatively regarded, this great transformation of the
+     religious spirit (from fetishism to polytheism) is perhaps the
+     most fundamental that it has ever undergone, though we are at
+     present so far separated from it as not to perceive its extent
+     and difficulty. The human mind, it seems to me, passed over a
+     less interval in its transit from polytheism to monotheism, the
+     more recent and better understood accomplishment of which has
+     naturally taught us to exaggerate its importance--an importance
+     extremely great only in a certain social point of view, which I
+     shall explain in its place. When we reflect that fetishism
+     supposes matter to be eminently active, to the point of being
+     truly alive, while polytheism necessarily compels it to an
+     inertia almost absolute, submitted passively to the arbitrary
+     will of the divine agent; it would seem at first impossible to
+     comprehend the real mode of transition from one religious
+     _regime_ to the other."--P. 97.
+
+The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of
+generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects,
+and classified them into one species, so they approximated the
+corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal
+Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from
+matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became
+a god.
+
+     "For the gods differ essentially from pure fetishes, by a
+     character more general and more abstract, pertaining to their
+     indeterminate residence. They, each of them, administer a
+     special order of phenomena, and have a department more or less
+     extensive; while the humble fetish governs one object only,
+     from which it is inseparable. Now, in proportion as the
+     resemblance of certain phenomena was observed, it was necessary
+     to classify the corresponding fetishes, and to reduce them to a
+     chief, who, from this time, was elevated to the rank of a
+     god--that is to say, an ideal agent, habitually invisible,
+     whose residence is not rigorously fixed. There could not exist,
+     properly speaking, a fetish common to several bodies; this
+     would be a contradiction, every fetish being necessarily
+     endowed with a material individuality. When, for example, the
+     similar vegetation of the several trees in a forest of oaks,
+     led men to represent, in their theological conceptions, what
+     was _common_ in these objects, this abstract being could no
+     longer be the fetish of a tree, but became the god of the
+     forest."--P. 101.
+
+This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is
+utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate
+a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any
+natural event is _invisible_, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism;
+it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be
+theologically explained--and there is no event in nature more likely to
+suggest such explanation--the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it
+must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose
+mind had not been solely and purely _scientific_, would have created for
+itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.[51]
+
+     [51] At the end of the same chapter from which this extract is
+     taken, the _Doctor_ tells a story which, if faith could be put
+     in the numerous accounts which men relate of themselves, (and
+     such, we presume, was the original authority for the anecdote,)
+     might deserve a place in the history of superstition.
+
+     "One of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a
+     reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a
+     boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful
+     schoolmaster; and in the state of mind which that constant fear
+     produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used
+     every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXIX., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12761.txt or 12761.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/7/6/12761/
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page images provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/12761.zip b/old/12761.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c222fcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12761.zip